My Lords, Amendment 17 is tremendously important because it seeks to assert that the decisions on these matters should be taken by Parliament. I have great difficulty understanding why the Prime Minister and, apparently, the Government have seemed so determined to avoid that happening, to the extent of bringing a totally unnecessary court case. They could have gone back right from the start on the procedure we are now going through at considerable public expense. Against that background, it is very important that we should get this amendment right. We must have an awful lot of thought between now and next week to ensure that the amendment we actually pass is the right amendment.
The other point that one needs to take into account is the situation likely to arise towards the conclusion of the negotiations. It seems to me essential that Parliament should decide whether it does or does not accept those negotiations. The difficulty is that if no deal is reached, the whole deal is off and we are back to the situation before we joined the European Union. The interesting question is: if the deal is clearly worse than remaining in the European Union, what happens then? At that point, Parliament needs to consider whether it has accepted the result of the referendum. If it has done everything possible to bring it about but now finds itself in the situation where it is blatantly obvious that the deal is worse than remaining in, it ought to make that decision. Those who voted in the referendum in favour of leaving should realise that that is a sensible solution for us to adopt.
There is one further point that we need to consider before next week and we will need to read very carefully everything that has been said this evening. We may find at the end of negotiations that we would like to
change our minds and it would be better to go back to the situation before the referendum. A committee of your Lordships’ House dealt with that issue very clearly having taken expert advice from, I am assured, some very good lawyers, who said that we could change our minds. That possibility was disputed by a number of other lawyers, not least international lawyers. It would be extremely helpful if we could have a definitive view from the Government next week on what the situation is.
We have a lot of work ahead of us for the next few days, but this has been an immensely helpful debate. There is a problem with proposed new subsection (4) of the amendment. I interpreted that as being enormously pro-Brexit. It states that Ministers are not allowed to stop the arrangements if they want to. Having said all that, it has been helpful to have this debate this evening and I look forward to hearing my noble friend Lord Hailsham, who was kind enough to give way to let me speak before him.