European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-20
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Mandelson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and his very intelligent contribution to this debate, but I want, first, to make a remark about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hague. Contrary to what he said today, the noble Lord believes that we should stay just, "one step short of the single market" I know this because he wrote it. He could therefore not possibly agree, in my view, with the Government’s present approach George Osborne was right when he said that the Government are being driven by politics not economics in their approach to Brexit. This is what has changed since the noble Lord wrote his original article. That is why the Government can contemplate Brexit at any cost: the economics are secondary; the trade is secondary; the investment and the jobs are secondary. What matters instead is assuaging the ideologues. Herein lies the danger for the country: the Government have lost their sense of perspective in this matter. The Prime Minister is terrified of looking less than full-hearted, so she is overcompensating. Debate is discouraged in case it gives the impression of being faint-hearted. Critics are attacked in case their arguments catch on As is well known, I was a remainer: not, I might say, because of my pension rights but because I am a patriot—a patriot rather than a nationalist. That is why I think that the approach the Government have chosen to take to Brexit is wrong. Instead of saying, "We are leaving the European Union but want the closest possible relationship with the European Union" and meaning it, the Government have decided that we are not just out of the European Union, but fully out of the entirety of the single market and the customs union as well. We do not want to have anything to do with one single bit of it, as Mrs May wrote in her article on Friday. In other words, to all intents and purposes we are going to be out of Europe altogether and we will be the worse for that as a country I can tell noble Lords that our former EU partners have heard the Government loud and clear. I travel on the continent still: the people with whom we are going to negotiate have got the message that we want clean out of the place. This cannot avoid having consequences in the negotiations However, the most important point, and the main point I want to make in this debate, is that this is not what a lot of leave supporters backed when they voted in the referendum. Yes, they wanted to leave the European Union but they did not want to turn Britain into a poorer, politically isolated offshore tax haven without reach or influence in the world. Once they see the consequences, they may—I stress may—want to think again about the outcome of the Government’s chosen path, and Parliament’s job will be to reflect that change of view and create the means of expressing it I will conclude by saying one thing about trade, and I have been a Trade Secretary at home, as well as a Trade Commissioner in Europe. The Government can say they want a comprehensive trade agreement to give us, "the exact same benefits as we have",—[Official Report, Commons, 24/1/17; col. 169.] as David Davis said in the other place some weeks ago, but unless we comply with Europe’s market rules and accept its common product standards and the regulation of services that it prescribes, we will not have the same trade. We will not have the equal benefits, and to say otherwise is a fraud on the public. We can pay for access—and no doubt we will have to pay through the nose for this—but it will not bring the same volume of trade or the same rights, and we will not have the same means of enforcing those rights in our trade in Europe That is why, when all this becomes apparent—it having been carefully obscured in the referendum—the political circumstances will change and so might people’s minds. We cannot foretell exactly what the context will be in 18 months’ or two years’ time but I believe, and I hope noble Lords will agree, that we cannot simply consign Britain’s economic future to this headlong rush towards Brexit at any cost. We have a responsibility not to next year’s growth figures or inflation figures but to the prosperity of our country for decades to come.