I am grateful to my noble friend. I long ago came to the painful recognition that many Members of your Lordships’ House think that to serve in this place without having served down the Corridor in the other place is an absolutely enormous advantage. Therefore, it is with some temerity that I seek to draw on my 27 years’ experience in the other place—not as long as my noble friend Lord Heseltine—to make a preliminary observation. At the end of the negotiations, there will be either an agreement or a decision by the Government to leave the European Union without an agreement. Whichever of those scenarios comes about, the other place will have its say. Not only will it have its say, it will have its way. If the agreement that is reached by the Government is unacceptable to a majority of the Members of the House of Commons, they will vote accordingly. If the Government propose to leave the European Union on terms which are unacceptable to a majority of the Members of the House of Commons, they will vote accordingly. They do not need the authority of Mr David Jones to do that. They do not even need the authority of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to do that, and they certainly do not need this proposed new clause to do that. They do not need any authority to do that. They will have their say. They will have their way. For those of us who believe that parliamentary supremacy rests with the House of Commons, that is the ultimate safeguard.
I make a couple of observations about the proposed new clause. In the end, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, admitted—not quite explicitly but in effect—that, in its present form at any rate, it provides a veto for your Lordships’ House. He said that it was extremely unlikely that your Lordships would exercise that veto. In the end, he was obliged to accept a lifeline from my noble friend Lord Hailsham. However, as is so often the case
when you examine a lifeline in detail, it proves not to be quite as effective as at first sight it appeared. The lifeline offered by my noble friend was that the Government might enshrine the Motions necessary by virtue of the proposed new clause in an Act of Parliament so that the Parliament Act could be activated. I ask your Lordships to consider that situation. The Government will have agreed the terms on which they are going to leave the European Union. The House of Commons will have approved those terms but this House will have rejected them and we will have to hang around for a year until the Parliament Act can be used to ensure that the House of Commons gets its way. That was suggested by my noble friend Lord Hailsham. Even my noble friend Lord Heseltine acknowledged the need for the minimum of delay. We all want the minimum of delay. The notion that the nation should stand around for a year waiting for the Parliament Act to be invoked for the House of Commons to get its way illustrates how unnecessary this amendment and proposed new clause are.
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I want to make one other general point about the proposed new clause. If we put the requirement for approval by this House and the other House on the face of the statute, it will become justiciable. I have long ago given up any attempt to anticipate the ingenuity of the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, can deploy in the courts—but just think of the potential for arguing that the Motion approved by one House or the other did not quite match up to this or that interpretation of the proposed new clause, which would by then be on the face of the statute.
The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, said that he thought further intervention by the courts would be unhelpful. I could not agree more—but that is a sentiment that may not be shared by all your Lordships. I suspect it will not be shared by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. However, I think it has much to commend it. I do not think we should lightly embark on a course that would run the risk not only of putting one House in conflict with the other, but of putting Parliament in conflict with the courts.
I agree with what my noble friend Lord Lawson said about Amendment 4. I shall not repeat everything I said last week, but we have still not yet had an answer to the fact that subsection (4) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 3 would facilitate repeated coming and going between Parliament, Government and the European Union. The Government would say, “We haven’t done a deal, and we propose to leave”; then, according to proposed new subsection (4), Parliament could say, “Go back to the table”. That could happen again and again, which would put our Government in an absurd position.
For the reasons that I have tried to express, the amendment is totally unnecessary. It is also a recipe for conflict between this House and the other place, and between Parliament and the courts. I urge your Lordships to reject it.