My Lords, I associate myself with much of what the noble Baroness has said about the role of your Lordships’ House. The role played by the Lords on this Bill has been completely in line with constitutional precedent. We indeed defeated the Government 15 times, but the Government used the Lords stages of the Bill to introduce more than 150 amendments of their own, including extremely important ones on devolution. That is because they recognised that your Lordships’ House was indeed the place in which the Bill could be improved.
Of the 15 amendments we passed, as the noble Baroness said, the Government have accepted almost half, either in whole or in part. This is not, incidentally, something that one would gather by reading the popular press. The Government have also chosen to use this stage of the Bill to introduce an amendment of their own in an attempt, possibly unsuccessful, to resolve the “meaningful vote” issue. They clearly recognise that the Lords has a vital part to play in improving legislation, even at ping-pong stage, and they are sensibly seeking to do so in this case.
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I realise that the Leader and the Government Chief Whip have a lot on their plate at the moment, but I wonder whether, as the dust settles, they might conduct a seminar for some of their colleagues, both in the other place and here, to which selected journalists might usefully be invited, to explain how ping-pong works, as some of them seem to be having some difficulty in understanding it.
Amendment 1A is a masterpiece of imprecision. It states simply that the Government must,
“seek to negotiate an agreement … with the EU … to participate in a customs arrangement with the EU”.
It is perhaps unsurprising that all sides of the Conservative Party could agree with this, as it covers every conceivable post-Brexit eventuality: unless we cease trading with the EU completely, which as far as I am aware no noble Lord on the other side of the House is prepared to contemplate, there will have to be some agreement over what happens when goods pass the border. The amendment obviously goes nowhere near the amendment which we passed in your Lordships’ House, but in this case ping-pong is not the last word on the issue: it will be debated in the Trade Bill when it comes out of hibernation in the Commons. It seems inevitable that attempts will be made there to amend that Bill to provide for continued membership of the customs union. Indeed, Commons Amendment 25D on Northern Ireland, which we will be discussing later today, paves the way for membership of the customs union by ruling out any checks or controls at the Northern Ireland border with the Republic. Of course, the only way to avoid checks or controls is to be part of a customs union. As with so many Brexit-related issues, this one has simply been kicked down the road, but at some stage in the reasonably near future it will have to be decisively addressed. It is clear, however, that today is not the day for doing so.