European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
David John Maclean (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble and right reverend Lord with his customary thoughtful speech. I must admit that I agreed with some of it, but not as much as I agreed with the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Trevethin and Oaksey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech Some noble Lords have suggested that people voted to leave the EU but did not vote to leave the customs union or the single market. I am sorry but that is nonsense. The government-funded propaganda leaflet, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the whole remain machine and the global elite stressed over and over again that a vote to leave would mean leaving the single market and customs union, with all the dire consequences that would entail. Of course, the Treasury in its May 2016 dodgy dossier also said that there would be an immediate loss of 500,000 jobs and the economy would crash into recession. As John Longworth, writing in the paper on Monday, said, either the Treasury economic experts got their model hopelessly wrong or they were deliberately lying. I thought at the time that it was just sloppy modelling for them to be so wrong by as much as 400%. Now it seems the Treasury is at it again with the leaked Project Fear forecasts. I admire its astonishing accuracy. It forecasts a 0.3% reduction in growth every year for the next 15 years. That is amazingly accurate considering that over the last 12 months it has been 400% out. Producing that dodgy dossier once may have been a mistake but its latest leaked analysis by the same discredited economists is clearly a deliberate attempt to foist more ludicrous forecasts on the British public. I find it a very sad day when reports by Her Majesty’s Treasury have less credibility than the Zinoviev letter We have this Bill before us because the electorate wanted back control of our money, laws and trade policy, and they knew that by voting leave we would leave the single market and the customs union. When the Bill goes into Committee, I understand that there will be amendments seeking to ensure that no British Government can diverge from EU rules and regulations, and that is what I want to concentrate on. I believe that is foolish and it shows little faith in our Parliament, which will once again be free to properly hold the Government to account. The whole point of Brexit is to give the UK Government and Parliament the right to make our own laws and diverge from EU bureaucracy, bad law, Luddite regulations and the concept of a socialist Europe, which is making us more and more uncompetitive in comparison to the Far East and the USA. I do not want us stuck at the bottom of the regulatory scrapheap making analogue laws for a digital world. We are a great country and we need the freedom to make better regulations I ask noble Lords to cast their minds back to Monday of this week, when we debated the 25-year environment plan. What an inspiring document that is—inspiring because it shows how much better our land and marine environment will be when we do not have EU law destroying our fishing stocks, damaging our wildlife and ruining our soil. We can get rid of the wicked CAP, which the EU still boasts is a marvellous achievement. We can ban any plastic products we like without having to wait for EU approval. We can restore our fish stocks. We can impose proper biosecurity regimes to stop our plants and trees being decimated by imported diseases we are currently unable to stop because of the free movement of goods. And of prime importance, we can impose our own much higher animal welfare standards to replace the cruelty of live animal exports, which the EU happily endorses We will have the freedom to set our own VAT rates on any products we choose. German car companies paid out billions to US consumers within months of the diesel car scandal breaking. Not one single EU consumer has had a penny compensation because of the cosy, corrupt cartel between EU policymakers and German car firms. I would hope that an independent UK could impose our own air quality standards and ban dangerous polluting vehicles On financial regulations, there are those who say that we must not do a Singapore and have a race to the bottom. I agree entirely: we must not race to the bottom, but Singapore has a GDP per capita of $53,000 and ours is $40,000. The cost of living in Singapore is 14% cheaper than London. It is the third in the world for life expectancy and we are the 20th. If that is the bottom, I want to race to it as soon as possible. Singapore has risen to be one of the most successful economies in the world, with an exceptionally high quality of life, because its people embrace free trade and cutting regulation When we read yesterday about the head of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who is a remain supporter, complaining about onerous EU red tape and looking for opportunities outside Europe, we got a snapshot in that tiny area of the dead hand of EU regulation holding back not just our productive industries but our creative ones also I have just rushed through a few examples, but in every sector of our economic and public life we are being constrained by poor, bad EU regulation. As the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, said yesterday, we will need the freedom to move very quickly to regulate for technological change, which the Luddite EU cannot do. We will need the freedom to regulate quickly on artificial intelligence, genetic modification, innovative medicines and treatments to name but three. We need better regulation. We need British regulation. We need this withdrawal Bill, with some technical amendments, passed as soon as possible.