UK and EU Relations — House of Lords, 2017-09-12
Topic: International Affairs
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, to start, while I fully share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, about the spread of diseases, the sealing of our borders is not the answer. If instead of co-operating we start blaming each other—Britain needs to remember its own track record on exporting animal diseases—we are doomed to hang separately. I thought Brexit was supposed to mean global Britain, not closet Britain The Government’s attitude to parliamentary scrutiny of its conduct of Brexit negotiations is rather perfectly illustrated by the publication of the foreign, security and defence paper today: the Minister appears on the "Today" programme, the media have the paper under embargo, and parliamentarians and the public get it many hours later at lunchtime, when it finally appears on the website Last week’s Statement on the progress of negotiations said that the negotiating rounds were about reaching detailed understanding of each side’s position and beginning to drill down into technical detail. However, the Brexit Secretary just days before referred to the partnership paper on future customs arrangements as blue-sky thinking, so detailed it was not. That paper will not help retain the jobs of the Airbus workers in Wales to which my noble friend Lady Humphreys referred The Brexit Secretary also said last week that the rationale for the partnership papers is that they are, "designed to make points to our European partners so that they could see what the future might look like under our vision".—[Official Report, Commons, 5/9/17; col. 48.] As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham said, we need a strategy—and, I would add, practicalities. Vision butters no parsnips. The Minister said in her introduction that the Government do not aim to dictate the future arrangements. Leaving aside the obvious fact that they cannot dictate as it is a negotiation, this fig leaf does not cover the lack of hard proposals with realistic content It is hard to blame Michel Barnier for his exasperated reaction to the UK’s demand to start negotiations on future relations. He said: "We must start negotiating seriously. We need UK papers that are clear in order to have constructive negotiations. The sooner we remove the ambiguity, the sooner we will be in a position to discuss the future relationship and the transitional period" As my noble friend Lord Newby said, the Government’s ambiguity is not constructive It is largely the behaviour of the UK Government that is preventing an important linkage between the withdrawal negotiations and the future relationship negotiations, and a speedy move to the latter—not least their refusal to deal honourably, as well as toughly, on the divorce bill, which echoes what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, and their ungenerous positions on the rights of EU citizens. I contend that this Government are not generating the necessary trust to move the negotiations on. This is not a case of bad, rigid, punishment-mode Brussels; it is a case of a Government who, 15 months after the referendum, are unable to act in a grown-up, competent, organised manner and who indulge in occasional, extremely unproductive hissy fits. The Government need to be honest and willing to compromise, as the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, urged. My noble friend Lady Kramer, with good reason, thanked the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for revealing the Brexiteer war mentality, which helps explain the lack of progress. The Government would do well not to listen too much to that mentality My noble friend Lady Kramer also raised the prospect of how the Government seem to be pursuing international regulatory co-operation, rather than focusing on a relationship with the EU regulatory regime. I suspect that the UK is trying to subvert the importance of EU regulation by diluting it, and I really do not think that is going to be helpful Other noble Lords have produced their own lists of rules and themes. I have detected eight common features of the position and partnership papers. First, there is always an assertion of common goals, that continued co-operation is in both sides’ interests, and a declaration of undying devotion to all things European, including as my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire noticed in the paper today, a paean of praise for the European co-operation, foreign and defence policy that we have never heard from any government before probably. There is even sometimes an assertion that we will co-operate even more once we are out of the EU. Often this is accompanied by a strong hint of "they need us more than we need them" Secondly, there is an assumption that the degree of benefit and convenience for us Brits will stay pretty much the same as we enjoy now through membership of the European Union, even when we leave its arrangements. So nobody needs to worry Thirdly, there is a declaration that the deep and special partnership we seek goes way beyond any existing run-of-the-mill third country, because we are special. Our relationship would be unprecedented, which I have come to realise is an excuse for not pointing to any concrete examples of existing co-operation for a non-EU member state, or practical guidance on how ours would work. The term unprecedented is a convenient peg not to explain Fourthly, there is a tone ranging from optimism to fantasy that runs through all of the papers. Indeed, the fifth feature is insufficient detail of how the Government see the actual arrangements working in the context of a future relationship. Several noble Lords have mentioned that in the context of the science field. There is also a lack of realism on the costs involved. The Institute for Government yesterday published a report which says that the costs of the customs arrangements could be up to £9 billion. We need to confront those kinds of figures The sixth feature is to cite other third countries—variously Norway and Switzerland, sometimes Canada. But we then reject EEA membership, so quite how these are good examples I am not sure. Then it is said that the UK’s relationship will be unique, or uniquely ambitious, because of our starting point of close integration. The seventh feature is that we want to maximise certainty about what the arrangements will be while supplying no basis for what that certainty looks like. The last feature is that we are to have autonomy of UK laws, with the prospect of therefore diverging from European laws and a regulatory gap—but that we want the maximum depth and specialness in the relationship, including lots of mutual recognition and reciprocity. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, dealt with this very well.