My Lords, I am not quite sure what I have done to deserve the honour of being squeezed between the noble Lords, Lord Pearson and Lord Mandelson. I will separate them temporally; I do not suppose that I will need to separate them ideologically. They will leave a vast ideological lowland across which I can wander with great freedom—oh happy days.
In 2015, this House approved the European Union Referendum Bill. In 2016, that referendum was held and its result was decisive. The people spoke. They spoke again in the 2017 election, when the vast majority of votes were given to parties that supported the outcome. Then, in 2018, bringing us bang up to date, the elected House of Commons—the people’s House—supported this withdrawal Bill. We cannot say that we have not been warned.
Yet now, from some quarters, we hear all sorts of reasons why we must duck and dive and dilly-dally, all dressed up in the language of constitutional propriety. There are some who let their honest ambitions slip and openly talk, outside the House, of sabotaging Brexit. That is sad and unwise. They will not sabotage Brexit, but they might well sabotage the credibility of this House, which is not well loved. Our support among MPs is falling and there are many in the press who are waiting with sharpened knives, particularly after the Data Protection Bill, to slit our veins. We ourselves agonise over reform, about reducing our
numbers and increasing our effectiveness, which is, I suppose, tacit acceptance that the House of Lords is not entirely fit for purpose. If we were to make a constitutional Horlicks of this Bill, we will have made that point inescapable. We are unfit for purpose and the tumbrils will not be far behind.
I know that I tend to dramatise everything—it is what cheap novelists do—but since the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, began with a little bit of history, let me indulge in a bit, too. Some 100 years ago, this House came to the brink of disaster through naked self-indulgence. We turned our backs on Lloyd George’s “people’s Budget”. We cut ourselves off from the people. The House of Lords was accused then of being,
“one-sided … unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible”—
the words, incidentally, of that notorious troublemaker Winston Churchill. The Liberal Government of the time were left with no choice but to threaten to create hundreds of new Peers to get their legitimate business through, even to plan for the complete abolition of this place. Does any of that sound familiar? “So what?” one might say. The rights of this unelected House are clear, but so are its responsibilities. We have a duty to advise, enhance and improve where we can, but not to obstruct or overturn, least of all to sabotage.
Yet I am an optimist. Cool heads and sweet reason will, I am sure, see us through. The Government have made it clear that they will listen—they have already moved on several fronts—and the Labour Front Bench has offered wise and sensible words as to the limits of its ambitions. Undoubtedly the Bill needs scrutiny and improvement. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, gave a fascinating insight into some of those expectations. I hope that this will be our finest hour, or our finest week, or our finest months, as it will probably turn out to be. Am I being naive in thinking that there are those who talk of their parliamentary duty and the need for delay when in fact they intend to destroy? “It is too soon, too quick, too complicated”, they cry, “let us talk some more”. Like Penelope at her loom, they protest their innocence, while in the dark hours they do their best to unstitch it all and hope that Jean-Claude Juncker, or maybe even Tony Blair, will suddenly appear on the horizon and turn back the clock. Never let failure piled upon failure stand in the way of personal ambition.
The ambition of this Bill is modest—simply to ensure continuity from day one. Very little will change. Yet, I grant, in these modest changes, everything will change. We will bring government back closer to the people. We will once again make our own laws and be subject to our own courts. That is what the people have given their voice to, time and again, and that is what we must enable, through this Bill, and in a timely manner. This is one of those special parliamentary moments; it might even be called historic. A hundred years ago it was the people’s Budget. Today it is the people’s Brexit and I profoundly welcome it.
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