European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Exit Day) (Amendment) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-03-27
Topic: International Affairs
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, Members of this and the other House have spoken of their shame or embarrassment about how the Prime Minister and the negotiators she appointed, Messieurs Davis, Raab and Barclay, have handled our dealings with the EU. Today’s statutory instrument is a manifestation of their failure. The Prime Minister has failed to unite her Cabinet, her Government, her party or the Commons, let alone the country. It starts with red lines and a failure to reach out to the 48%. It ends with a lonely, tax-funded, failed plea to the public and the humiliation of eating hundreds of her words. Those words, "We are leaving on 28 March", have been repeated endlessly by Mrs May and here by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for whom some of us —almost—feel sorry, for having to digest the words he parroted so many times The noble Lord’s embarrassment, which he carries with a good grace, is as nothing to the uncertainty now facing our ports, businesses, holidaymakers, citizens living across the EU, farmers, importers, manufacturers, traders and hospitals, and EU citizens here. Today, they see us changing our law, not simply to remove Friday’s date from the statute book but to insert two new dates. It still is not clear when we are due to leave the EU. It is almost beyond parody. I now wonder what phrase the Minister will use to replace the old mantra. Will it be, "We will leave on a date yet to be confirmed," or "We will leave, don’t know when, don’t know how"? Perhaps we will meet again some sunny day Today’s change via this SI is, of course, necessary, but it would have been unnecessary had the Government heeded the advice of your Lordships’ House. In May last year, the amendment proposed and so convincingly argued by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, replaced 29 March with the words, "such day as a Minister of the Crown may by regulations appoint" My colleagues behind me have begged me not to use the words "I told you so" today, but I cannot resist. In May, I warned the Minister that, "the negotiations … will be affected by the timetable", and that, given that, "the negotiations could go on a bit later than everyone wants", having a particular date fixed in an Act of Parliament, passed in mid-2018, would be, "a very unhelpful position for our negotiators to be in" I predicted—I promise these are my words in Hansard—that, "the withdrawal agreement could contain a leaving date of a week or two … after the two-year period, which would allow the last-minute arrangements to be made", and continued, "if that suits all the parties and if our Government would like to sign up to it, it would seem silly not to be able to do that",—[Official Report, 8/5/18; cols. 37-38.] without amending the Act Of course, it was not just me. Our own EU Committee said: "The rigidity of the … deadline of 29 March 2019 … makes a no deal outcome more likely … enshrining the same deadline in domestic law would not … be in the national interest" Your Lordships agreed. By 311 votes to 233, we passed the amendment tabled by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, by a tidy majority of 78. We are here today because the Government did not listen. Unfortunately, we now face the same again, which is why the last part of our amendment calls on the Government to pursue any course of action in those negotiations sanctioned by a resolution of the Commons. We stress this because Ministers and Mrs May keep telling us that they will not be bound by today’s votes in the elected House, which might be a bit of a problem for them anyway, if Robert Peston is correct. He reports that the Cabinet Secretary and the Attorney-General informed Cabinet that if, at the end of the Letwin process, MPs passed a Motion mandating the Prime Minister to pursue a new route through the Brexit mess, whether a referendum, a customs union or another option, then the Prime Minister and the Government would be in breach of the Ministerial Code and the law if they failed to follow MPs’ instructions. The impression created by the Prime Minister that she could ignore the results of the indicative vote process is not true if those Ministers who briefed out of the Cabinet are to be believed. Perhaps it is because those briefings are right that the Government down the other end have just tried, shamefully, to end the indicative vote process, although they lost that vote. It is that reluctance to heed the views of MPs that makes the last part of our amendment so important, even if, as I said, it might be unnecessary should the law indeed require the Government to follow the outcome.