EU Exit Negotiations — House of Lords, 2017-11-13
Topic: International Affairs
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, and I give the warmest of welcomes to the announcement that the withdrawal agreement will now be implemented by means of primary legislation—something for which this House has long argued. However, there remain serious questions in regard to the withdrawal Bill and the current negotiations First, what on earth is this gimmick of an amendment to fix, down to the exact minute, the timing of our departure from the EU? Is it a panic measure for the Prime Minister to reassure doubters in her own party that she can deliver a workable Brexit—a response perhaps to the Johnson/Gove letter—rather than a serious piece of British legislation or diplomatic sensitivity, or was she jinxed by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, or is it to undermine the opposition amendment that it should be Parliament, not a Minister, that decides the exit date Certainly, the government amendment would have Parliament fix the date, but it would decide it now, well before the withdrawal deal is complete, with imperfect knowledge of what will be needed by way of preparation or even whether a more suitable date, such as 5 April—the traditional start of our tax year—is available and with no thought to what might be happening at the time. It does not allow for an earlier date, nor does it give any room for manoeuvre for, for example, another foot and mouth crisis, a general election or some other national issue, let alone any decision by the 27 to extend the talks by a few days if they thought that we were on the edge of a breakthrough More seriously, it cuts across the Prime Minister’s Florence speech, which envisaged that should there be a "heads of agreement" on our future relationship with the EU by March 2019, we could contribute to the EU budget for a period, during which we would abide by existing EU processes, including of course the ECJ for some matters. However, Clause 6, with the Government’s new amendment, would disallow this from 11 o’clock on 29 March 2019. Will the Minister agree that it is for Parliament nearer the time to fix the date, not the Prime Minister or even Parliament now, regardless of the interests of business, consumers, the pound or any other contemporary event Secondly, on what basis are the Government negotiating if they are blind to the costs and benefits of each option? We thought they had done their homework but we are told now that perhaps those 58 impact assessments do not exist—they certainly have not been read by all the Ministers. Without these, on what basis are the Government taking decisions about this country’s future Thirdly, will the Minister say whether the Government will heed the excellent advice of his predecessor but one, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges? He has called for "honesty and clarity" and that, "Ministers should stop pretending an implementation period will begin at the end of March 2019" Perhaps I should let the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, speak for himself, but it is too tempting to read out his words. He reminded the Government that implementation implies a treaty, well beyond the withdrawal deal, which will take years to negotiate and requires consent around the 27 parliaments. He urged the Government to clarify what they want to do with this supposed new-found freedom and to put some urgency—that is the word he used—into negotiations on the future framework Finally, on Northern Ireland, I wonder if the Government are regretting their "rash and reckless" ruling out of continued membership of the customs union. Even as the Government accept the introduction of a UK-EU border, albeit as "seamless and frictionless" as possible, they must realise that achieving this outside the customs union is a serious challenge. Had the Prime Minister not ruled out membership of the customs union, albeit from outside the European Union, then the apparently intractable conundrum in Northern Ireland might have been avoided, without David Davis having to reassert in this Statement his understandable rejection of a "new border" within the United Kingdom This week saw the commemoration of 11 November, a World War I date but, for my generation, with World War II resonance, and a reminder of all that the EU has done to end conflict in western Europe. We also commemorated the 9 November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and everything that the EU did to bed-in democracies in former Soviet territories, as earlier it had done with the former dictatorships in Spain, Greece and Portugal. I therefore ask the Minister how much the UK’s continued and future role in such developments will be ensured after Brexit, and how much this part of diplomacy features in Ministers’ thinking as they negotiate our future relationship with continental Europe.