Brexit: Parliamentary Approval of the Outcome of Negotiations with the European Union — House of Lords, 2019-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Roger John Liddle (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin. I greatly admire his personal courage and integrity, but I say to him that I think nothing is more likely to strengthen the anti-democratic forces in this country or to see the emergence of a strong populist, nationalist party with tendencies to fascism than the economic disaster that would follow from having no deal on our exit from the European Union. It would set off social forces that I really am concerned about As we again debate Brexit, I fear I am again part of the "here we go again" consensus in the debate today. I support my noble friend Lady Smith’s Motion. It seems to me that an Article 50 extension is inevitable if no deal is to be avoided. That would be the case even if by some miracle Mrs May were to get her deal through the House of Commons in the next couple of weeks So what is it worth talking about today? Something very significant has happened in the last fortnight, and it is about what the Prime Minister gives her top priority to. After the deal was defeated by 230 votes, there was a lot of talk of a plan B, of seeking cross-party agreement for a compromise that could have carried both Labour and Conservative MPs and other parties. I know this was not helped by the leader of the Opposition’s decision not to join those talks, but the true analysis of what went wrong was well summed up by Hilary Benn, the chair of the Brexit Select Committee in the Commons. He said that he had been to see the Prime Minister and that, yes, there was an open door, but he was faced with a closed mind. That is the only conclusion we can come to on what we are told is now the Government’s plan B: to go back to revising the backstop. So I am afraid the Prime Minister has not taken the good advice that I remember the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, offering her: that she should seek to be Sir Robert Peel in these circumstances. Rather, she continues the pathetic performance of the indecisive Arthur Balfour in the Administration of 1902-1905, faced with Conservative divisions on tariffs So what does going back to the backstop mean? Will the Minister give some specific answers to questions about that? This seems to be the substantive point of content in today’s debate. Are the Government, as I hope and assume they are, sticking fully to the commitments they made in the December 2017 agreement with the European Commission and to the amendment that was passed by this House to the EU (Withdrawal) Act—that the Good Friday agreement would be adhered to and that as a consequence of Brexit there would in no circumstances whatever be a reinstatement of a hard border in the island of Ireland? Is that still the Government’s position Secondly, do the Government accept—I have heard Ministers say at times that they do—what the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, have said about what would happen in the event of no deal: in other words, that the problem of the border arises from our adherence to the very WTO rules which the Brexiteers go on about incessantly? If we do not stick to those rules, in the absence of a comprehensive free trade agreement, the most favoured nation principle comes into play, and that means that every other country in the world would have the right to trade with us and the EU on the principle of no tariffs, no quotas and no rules of origin. Do the Government accept that analysis Thirdly, do the Government accept that for the foreseeable future—and no one knows how long that future might be—while advanced technology and behind-the-border checks may minimise the policing, bureaucracy and delays involved in border checks, they cannot substitute for them? That was the authoritative evidence given to our Select Committee by the customs experts who came from Norway and Switzerland to talk to us Fourthly, do the Government therefore logically agree that the only way of avoiding the re-imposition of border checks in Ireland is an agreement whereby the island of Ireland remains within the EU customs territory and regulations on both sides of the border are closely aligned? If not, will the Minister tell us what might be possible Fifthly, if the Minister does agree and the Government want to avoid a customs border in the Irish Sea because they want, reasonably, to maintain the integrity of the United Kingdom, is not the logic of that position that it requires Great Britain as a whole to abide by the rules of a customs union and maintain general regulatory alignment with the EU The Government have to come clean on these questions. What are their answers? I look forward to the summing up of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, and whether he has anything to say If the Government accept these propositions, how can they honestly go back to Brussels and argue that the backstop can be time limited, have a unilateral exit clause or even be eliminated altogether, when as recently as last autumn they agreed to all these things? What credibility would such a request have in Brussels without some clearly specified alternative, of which at the moment there is precisely none? Can the Minister give us an inkling of what the alternative to the backstop might be Finally, is it not sad and deplorable that a desperate attempt to restore the unity of the Conservative Party is once again being put ahead of the national interest and continued peace in Ireland?