European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-04-30
Topic: International Affairs
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, my name is also on this amendment, and I wish to speak briefly on the role that this Chamber needs to play. We are a revising Chamber and we have spent some time looking at the detail of this extremely complex and important proposal to leave the European Union. We also have to be concerned with constitutional propriety, and we are rightly concerned that a referendum which was partly won on an argument to restore parliamentary sovereignty should not be allowed to lead to greater executive power As the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, the Prime Minister has promised that Parliament would be allowed a meaningful vote on negotiations once they are completed. The Secretary of State for DExEU has promised that the resolution presented to Parliament will cover both the withdrawal agreement and the terms for our future relationship with the EU. That should provide some reassurance against fears that most difficult issues are likely to be left for further discussion after the UK has formally the EU This amendment puts those promises into legislative form. It spells out the deadlines required to ensure that Parliament is permitted to scrutinise whatever is agreed in good time before the end of March next year. The amendment requires Commons approval by November 30 and Royal Assent by 31 January, and provides a backstop for ensuring parliamentary sovereignty if no agreement is reached by the Government by the end of February. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is quoted in today’s Daily Mail as saying that these are "false deadlines". I hope that in replying as the Minister he will tell us, if these deadlines are to be disregarded, how the UK will get through the constitutional requirements for leaving the EU by the end of March 2019 and what deadlines he might propose instead We are acutely aware of divisions within the Cabinet and the Conservative Party about what form of customs arrangements ought to be acceptable. That is a fundamental issue which is not yet decided but which the Government ought to have resolved, at the latest, by the time that they triggered Article 50 some 18 months ago. In her Mansion House speech two months ago, our Prime Minister admitted that it is in Britain’s national interests to remain associated with many of the EU agencies that hard-line Brexiteers wanted to break away from. She promised in that speech a new security treaty with the EU, to ensure continuing co-operation in combating organised crime and counterterrorism, and a close partnership in foreign policy and defence. But we have been told almost nothing more since then about such important issues or about the compromises of sovereignty in the national interest which they would require. We risk a backlash from all sides when the terms for leaving are sprung at the last minute on an uninformed country Ministers have repeatedly assured us that negotiations are well on track, even though they will not tell us what they are doing, and that an agreement can be reached by October—in less than five months’ time. If that is true, this amendment offers no difficulties for the Government; if it is not true and the likelihood is that all that will be agreed by October is a loose statement of principles, with the hard details of our future relationship kicked down the track to be sorted out in the implementation period—as the Government like to call it—after we have left the EU, then Parliament needs to intervene. Leaving the European Union without a clear and detailed agreement on the future relationship would be a disaster for our economy, our foreign policy, our relationship with Ireland and our internal and external security. This amendment guards against that unfortunate outcome.