Update on EU Exit Negotiations — House of Lords, 2017-10-17
Topic: Mixed Topics
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is 16 months after the referendum. The brazen and airy assertions by the leave campaign that negotiations would be easy and our economy would prosper have been revealed as the empty rhetoric they always were. The Government believe that, "we are on the right path" That path seems not only to be a long one, but to have an unknown end point On citizens’ rights, it seems true that some progress has been made, but 4 million to 5 million citizens are still in limbo. The Government’s approach is still flawed because of their concept that EU citizens resident in the UK will have to secure settled status, even if the Government claim the process will be streamlined and low-cost. Those citizens should not have to secure what they already have by right, and it remains a matter of great regret that the Government refuse to give the unilateral guarantee of existing rights that a majority in this House wanted. Can the Minister assure us that we will have the novel experience of witnessing a process by the Home Office that is administered efficiently, quickly and accurately To complain that, "the sequencing of negotiations, has always been an EU construct", is rather feeble. It has always been clear that this sequence would be followed—so what is it now that takes the Government by surprise? The Secretary of State even accepted the sequencing a few months ago after a little bit of huffing and puffing. The Government maintain that they are ready and well prepared to start the negotiations on transition and final status, but as the right honourable Kenneth Clarke MP has said, that sounds like la-la land—there is no substance. The truth is that members of the Cabinet are fighting like ferrets in a sack, with no agreement in prospect. This is a key reason for lack of progress The sensible approach would be to stay in the single market and customs union not only in the transition but in the permanent relationship. Instead of that stability, we hear the deeply destabilising nonsense about no deal. The Secretary of State told the other place that he had not talked up no deal, but he has failed to disown it. Many of his ultra-hard Brexiteer colleagues have talked it up. Those ideological obsessives positively want no deal as the destructive revolution they crave. Will the Government now rule out the hugely harmful no-deal prospect The former top official at the department of trade, Sir Martin Donnelly, rightly calls this reckless bravado. The OECD says that it would immediately cut UK growth by 1.5 percentage points. The Resolution Foundation predicts that in a no-deal scenario the "just about managing", the people whom the Prime Minister professes to care about so much, would suffer the most from an inflation hit to the tune of £5 a week on top of the current 3% rate of inflation. No wonder polls show that 47% of people are now against Brexit—it is 49% of women; I shall not make any remarks about how sensible women are—compared to 42%. Has not the time now come to offer the British people an honourable way out of this morass through an opportunity to think again, to really reflect in a further referendum, once they can see the concrete reality of what Brexit entails?