Vol. 800 Saturday No. 5 19 October 2019 PARLIAMENTARYDEBATES (HANSARD) HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICIAL REPORT ORDEROFBUSINESS Brexit Motion to Take Note......................................................................................................279 Lords wishing to be supplied with these Daily Reports should give notice to this effect to the Printed Paper Office. No proofs of Daily Reports are provided. Corrections for the bound volume which Lords wish to suggest to the report of their speeches should be clearly indicated in a copy of the Daily Report, which, with the column numbers concerned shown on the front cover, should be sent to the Editor of Debates, House of Lords, within 14 days of the date of the Daily Report. This issue of the Official Report is also available on the Internet at https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2019-10-19 The first time a Member speaks to a new piece of parliamentary business, the following abbreviations are used to show their party affiliation: Abbreviation Party/Group CB Cross Bench Con Conservative DUP Democratic Unionist Party GP Green Party Ind Lab Independent Labour Ind LD Independent Liberal Democrat Ind SD Independent Social Democrat Ind UU Independent Ulster Unionist Lab Labour Lab Co-op Labour and Co-operative Party LD Liberal Democrat LD Ind Liberal Democrat Independent Non-afl Non-affiliated PC Plaid Cymru UKIP UK Independence Party UUP Ulster Unionist Party No party affiliation is given for Members serving the House in a formal capacity, the Lords spiritual, Members on leave of absence or Members who are otherwise disqualified from sitting in the House. © Parliamentary Copyright House of Lords 2019, this publication may be reproduced under the terms of the Open Parliament licence, which is published at www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/. 279 Arrangement of Business [19 OCTOBER 2019] Brexit 280 House of Lords The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con): My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords on all Saturday 19 October 2019 sides of the House for assembling on a Saturday for the first time in 37 years. I know that this has involved 10 am sacrificing personal time, time with families and, of course, missing the end of England’s World Cup quarter Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of London. final, although the result is looking quite promising. On behalf of us all, I thank all parliamentary staff and the police who have made this sitting possible. I Arrangement of Business shall open this debate by replicating a Statement on Announcement the new agreement with our European friends made in the other place by my right honourable friend the 10.07 am Prime Minister. Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con): My Lords, I should like to say a few words regarding our business today. Noble Lords will need no reminding that this is the This is a very important debate and there are a large second deal and the fourth vote to be held in the other number of speakers, so there is an advisory limit of place—three and a half years after the nation voted five minutes for Back-Bench contributions. I urge for Brexit. During those years, friendships have been noble Lords to stick to that out of consideration for strained and families divided, and the attention of all the other noble Lords who wish to speak. Even so, both Houses has been consumed by a single issue that it will mean that our debate will finish after 4 pm. has at times felt incapable of resolution. But this is the moment when we can finally achieve that resolution My noble friend the Leader of the House will open and reconcile the instincts that compete within us. the debate by repeating a Statement given by the Prime Minister. We will then proceed with the speakers’ list Many times in the last 30 years, we have heard our as published in today’slist. My noble friend Lord Callanan European friends remark that this country is half-hearted will wind up the debate in the usual way— in its EU membership. It is true that we have often been a back-marker, opting out of the single currency, Noble Lords: Oh! not taking part in Schengen and trying to block some collective ambition. In the last three and a half years, Lord Ashton of Hyde: I should have said “in his it has been very striking that Members on all sides normal, smooth manner”. have debated Brexit in almost entirely practical terms, I urge noble Lords to raise any questions when they in an argument that has focused on the balance of make their speeches rather than make interventions. economic risk and advantage, rather than calling for Your Lordships will have noticed that there are two Britain to play her full part in the political construction Motions on the Order Paper today and, as indicated of a federal Europe, ever closer union, ever deeper by today’s list, we will be moving only the first of those integration or a federal destiny. There is a whole side Motions. of the debate that you hear regularly in other European capitals that has been absent from our national conversation, and that has not changed much in the Brexit last 30 years. Motion to Take Note But if we have been sceptical, if we have been anxious about the remoteness of the bureaucracy, if 10.08 am we have been dubious about the rhetoric of union and Moved by Baroness Evans of Bowes Park integration, and if we have been half-hearted Europeans, it follows logically that with part of our hearts—with That for the purposes of section 1(1)(b) of the half our hearts—we feel something else: a sense of European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019 and love and respect for European culture and civilisation, section 13(1)(c) of the European Union (Withdrawal) of which we are a part; a desire to co-operate with our Act 2018, this House takes note of the negotiated friends and partners in everything, creatively,intellectually withdrawal agreement titled “Agreement on the and artistically; a sense of our shared destiny; and a withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain deep understanding of the eternal need, especially and Northern Ireland from the European Union after the horrors of the last century, for Britain to and the European Atomic Energy Community” and stand as one of the guarantors of peace and democracy the framework for the future relationship titled in our continent—and it is our continent. “Political Declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the European It is precisely because we are capable of feeling Union and the United Kingdom” that the United both things at once—sceptical about the modes of Kingdom has concluded with the European Union EU integration but passionate and enthusiastic about under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Europe—that the whole experience of the last few Union, as well as a “Declaration by Her Majesty’s years has been so difficult and divisive. That is why it is Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain so urgent for us now to move on and build a new and Northern Ireland concerning the operation of relationship with our friends in the EU on the basis of the ‘Democratic consent in Northern Ireland’provision a new deal—a deal that can heal the rift in British of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland”, copies politics and unite the warring instincts in all of us. of which three documents were laid before the Now it is time for all sides in both Houses to come House on Saturday 19 October. together and bring the country together today, as we 281 Brexit [LORDS] Brexit 282 [BARONESS EVANS OF BOWES PARK] But in this agreement we have gone further by also believe people at home are hoping and expecting, with finding a solution to the vexed question of customs, a new way forward and a new and better deal for both which many in both Houses have raised. Our agreement Britain and our friends in the EU. ensures, That is the advantage of the agreement that we have “unfettered market access for goods moving from Northern Ireland to other parts of the United Kingdom’s internal market”. struck with our friends in the last two days, because this new deal allows the UK, whole and entire, to leave It ensures that there should be no tariffs on goods the EU on 31 October in accordance with the referendum, circulating within the UK customs territory—that is, while simultaneously looking forward to a new partnership between Great Britain and Northern Ireland—unless based on the closest ties of friendship and co-operation. they are at risk of entering the EU. It ensures an open border on the island of Ireland, a common objective As a Government, we pay tribute to our European of everyone in both Houses. It ensures that for those friends for escaping the prison of existing positions living and working alongside the border there will be and showing the vision to be flexible by reopening the no visible or practical changes; their lives can carry on withdrawal agreement and addressing the deeply felt as before. concerns of many in both Houses. One of the most This Government believe that this is a good important jobs of my right honourable friend the arrangement, reconciling the special circumstances in Prime Minister has been to express those concerns to Northern Ireland with the minimum possible bureaucratic our European friends. We shall continue to listen to all consequences at a few points of arrival into Northern Members in both Houses throughout the debates taking Ireland.