European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-26
Topic: International Affairs
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I strongly support this amendment, to which I have added my name. I fully agree with everything said by the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme. Perhaps being a mere politician, I am a little more cynical than he is. The February 2017 White Paper on leaving the EU contained statements that gave considerable comfort, including an assurance of the Government’s strong intentions to get a deal. They said, for instance: "Our fundamental responsibility to the people of the UK is to ensure that we secure the very best deal possible from the negotiations … The Government will then put the final deal that is agreed between the UK and the EU to a vote in both Houses of Parliament" When the Government gave their assurance in the other place in February last year, at about the same time as the White Paper, the Minister of State for Exiting the EU said, "the vote will cover not only the withdrawal arrangements but also the future relationship with the European Union’.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/2/17; col. 264.] As we know, there is an issue about what that actually means. It will not be any more than a political declaration All this sounded quite reassuring. The trouble is that in the year since then, we have heard too many threats of no deal—not that, as the Brexit Secretary David Davis said over the weekend, it is like an insurance policy, in that you have to be aware that it could happen, but the overwhelming likelihood is a deal. That sounded quite benign, but I am afraid that we have had a rather more celebratory approach to the prospect of no deal from other personalities in the Government. They think that threatening it is a good negotiating tactic. Many of us think that that is not the expression of a committed partner. I do not recall that when the United States was negotiating a possible TTIP agreement with the EU, it kept stressing that it might instead have no deal. It might have made all kinds of comments about the adequacy or otherwise of the EU offer, but we did not hear that sort of rhetoric, and we are not used to it in a trade or political negotiation. These statements have come too often. They are perhaps fewer now, but they still come sometimes and with too great a frequency for there to be total trust in the Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, said earlier in another context, there is a fundamental issue of trust as to what the Government’s intentions might be. Therefore, it is necessary to try to dot the "I"s and cross the "T"s on this matter The first amendment in this group might have been inspired by my noticing that in one context, the phrase used was "final terms of withdrawal" but in another it was "withdrawal agreement", which raises the question of whether the Government mean exactly the same thing with those two phrases. That accounts for Amendment 337, in which we say yes, they mean the same thing Amendment 341 says that "withdrawal agreement" also means the absence of a withdrawal agreement. It is necessary to spell that out because I am afraid the Government have not always given full grounds for total confidence and trust in their intentions. We need to close off any nefarious options that might still be floating around and make absolutely sure that we pin down the Government on what Parliament will supervise, and that there are no nooks and crannies through which they can duck and weave. That is what the amendments are about: total clarity in order to ensure that the Government act with total trust and in good faith.