European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Other
George Foulkes (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this has been a valuable debate—up until the reply. I have been in this House now for 13 years but I have never heard such an inadequate reply to a debate, and I have heard some pretty inadequate ones. I warn the Minister, my colleagues are outside now I was very grateful to my noble friend Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, bringing his eloquence and erudition that we normally hear on "Thought for the Day" to the Labour Front Bench, where it goes down equally well. The only thing I am having difficulty with is picturing Mike Russell in short trousers, but I will try to put that out of my mind To return to the Minister’s reply, I am glad the Government Chief Whip is here. I ask him: why do we have a Minister, who is a nice enough man, replying when he does not know any of the answers? On three occasions he turned to the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, to get briefing. The noble Lord, Lord Duncan, is perfectly able to deal with this matter; he should be up at the Dispatch Box dealing with it. He knows what is happening; he is working at it on a day-to-day basis. He could have dealt with all the questions, as he has on previous debates. Even the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, would have done better than the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. [Laughter.] As we know, we are always obliged to the noble and learned Lord for his contributions to this House I say to the Government Chief Whip: please think about this. I know he does not always listen to me, but when we get to Clause 11 it would be much better to put a Minister up to reply who knows what is going on, sits in on these meetings and deals with this matter on a day-to-day basis. I hope it is a case of horses for courses. The Minister could not answer the question from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace. He could not even answer the question from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. That is unusual—actually, no, it is not unusual on that side The debate has been very valuable for positive suggestions about the procedures to deal with this issue, and we have had some information about the amendments coming forward and how we deal with them. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and others for their suggestions. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, rightly identified, this amendment is born out of frustration. I share the frustration of the devolved Parliament. We saw it when they came down to give a very good briefing to Peers, and this amendment was born out of that The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, paid me the greatest tribute that he has ever paid me: he likened me to himself. I must say that I was flattered. He understood what I am up to, and I know what he is up to. I know he is a real, committed Brexiteer and he knows I am not. I say to him that we would not have had all this debate about powers being transferred back from Brussels, and we need not have them if we stay in the EU. We can let the EU get on with doing what it is doing well on the environment, health and safety and a whole range of other things. That is what we are aiming for.