Brexit: Foreign and Security Policy Co-operation — House of Lords, 2016-10-20
Topic: International Affairs
John Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I had better start with a confession: I think that I made a mistake—I do not think that I was alone in making it, but I think it was a serious mistake. A number of us who campaigned for the remain cause in the referendum campaign were quite excessively optimistic about what the result might be of our losing that contest and of the country voting to leave the European Union. Though I raised several times, both in the House and in meetings outside the House, the possibility that it could theoretically happen if we lost the Brexit vote, I never really believed that it was likely that any British Government would actually decide to deliver devastating, perhaps crippling, blows to the major assets of our economy—such as the City of London—by planning to leave the single market. That is exactly what we now hear the Government propose to do. It was extraordinary to hear the other day the Prime Minister, in exchange for half an hour’s popularity, fan the flames of Eurosceptic populism in her speech at the party conference, which led to sterling losing 6% of its value in the course of a few minutes and every person in this country finding himself or herself 6% worse off as a result of that irresponsible action. The question we have to ask today which is germane to this debate—a question to which we urgently need an answer from the Minister, so I hope we get one—is will this same spirit of frivolity, irrationality and self-destructiveness be applied also to our foreign and security policy A very important aspect of security policy that affects the lives or deaths of people in this country concerns our defences against terrorism, which depend fundamentally—not a single professional policeman or member of the security services would not say this—on our co-operation with our EU partners and co-operation between our police forces and the police forces of our EU partners. That is not ex post, ad hoc co-operation—that, of course, could exist if we were part of the EU or not—but permanent structured co-operation so that we exchange information in advance of any incident occurring for which that information might be relevant. That is what is important. The common arrest warrant, Europol—these things are vital. Are we going to throw them away for applause at a speech in which we make a xenophobic attack on the EU, immigrants, refugees and other foreigners coming to this country? Is that the real order of priorities on which the Government intend to conduct the nation’s business over the coming months? That is a very serious question to which we want a very serious answer. I listen with horror to statements by the Government that we are now going to adopt a completely new set of foreign policies and that we are going to be much better off dealing with countries outside the EU because we have left the EU. On what possible basis is that statement made? It is quite extraordinary. What is more, it is quite contrary to the message we have been getting from those countries themselves. In the months before the referendum, all our major trade partners, including Shinzo Abe in Japan, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping, all said, "Don’t leave the European Union. We don’t want you to leave the European Union". There is absolutely no way at all that we are more interesting or valuable as partners for any of those countries, or any other country in the world, outside the EU than we are inside the EU. The Government have never come up with any concrete specific suggestions why we should be more interesting and valuable as a partner of those countries than we currently are. On the contrary, we are less interesting and less valuable; that is the terrible truth What in the world is the point of setting up a new ministry designed to negotiate foreign trade agreements and starting off the process by destroying 35 foreign trade agreements which we have with about 45 countries as a member of the European Union? Which rational person would proceed in that way in any other context? When it comes to negotiating foreign trade agreements the Government display extraordinary naivety. They say, "Wonderful, the Chinese want to talk to us. The Australians want to talk to us". Of course they do. I say to the Government that people want to sell things in this world. When someone comes along and says "foreign trade agreement", immediately people think, "Ah, we can sell them something which we could not otherwise sell them". With the Chinese it is steel. They would love to sell us some cheap steel. Are we going to buy it? Are we going to close down the Port Talbot works? Are we going to get rid of the British steel industry? If the Government are prepared to do that—there may well be a free-market argument for doing that—perhaps that is what we should do, but are the Government prepared to do that? If not, what is the point of the policy? The Australians want to sell us a lot of meat. That is fine. They can sell us the meat, I am sure it is fine, but that would be at the expense of the British livestock industry. Has that been taken into account? No, not at all; so when you go into the talks, and they actually say, "Right, we’d like to sign this agreement and sell you the steel and sell you the meat", we are going to have the problems then. How will they be resolved? It is an extraordinary way to conduct the business of this country. It is really quite horrifying. I hope the Government will think again and that the Minister will give us some straightforward and honest answers to absolutely critical questions about our future, here and now in the House this afternoon.