My Lords, I have a specific question for the Minister: do the Government accept the proposition, put forward so clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, in introducing the amendment, that they are bound by the promises made by the leave campaign? They say, “It is the voice of the people that we are following”. The Government had a number of choices that they could have made, but in fact they have chosen to follow a model that must bring great delight to the most extreme Brexiteers. If they do that, they are bound by those promises, I submit—I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said.
It is suggested—this is the weak and feeble argument put forward by the leave people these days—that it did not make any difference, and that what they said really had no impact whatever. Before the people spoke and before we heard the voice of the people, the people listened. And what did they listen to? They listened to a universal lie about the National Health Service, that it would receive £350 million a week. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has referred to this as “lying”, but I prefer the word “cheating”, which has been used elsewhere in this building this week. The campaign, we now learn, was prepared to send out contradictory messages to targeted people. We do not know what those messages
were and we do not know who the people targeted were, but that was cheating. So when the people spoke, they had listened to the lying and cheating propaganda that had been put forward.
Let me be more specific about Wales, where specific promises were made. Wales has been the net recipient of £650 million a year from European funds. That is not something to be proud of; it is because Europe recognised the needs of Wales, and gave money in structural funds and agricultural support that addressed those needs. I will not enumerate precisely what they are, because my noble friend Lady Humphreys has already covered that ground quite fully.
There is a moral imperative about this Government: if they are going to campaign for the sort of Brexit that the most extreme Brexiteers want, they should fulfil those promises, and make it clear in the report that the amendment calls for. In Wales it was said by leave campaigners, in terms, “You will not lose a penny”; that was said widely, across Wales, in all the campaigning that took place.