European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-14
Topic: Mixed Topics
William Fletcher-Vane (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I rise to add a few words to what has been said already. In particular, I will focus my remarks on the amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Wigley. I should add that I and members of my family have been involved in the creative industries I want essentially to talk about broadcasting and its allied sectors, for which it has been said that the UK is the principal centre in the European Union and, as a result, has become one of the pre-eminent broadcasting hubs in the world. The industry as it is now is essentially a child of the 1990s—a child of a union between digital technology and the European Union single market. In this country, noble Lords will remember, digital television was launched by the Broadcasting Act 1996, and the European single market officially came into being in 1993. Perhaps I ought to explain that I was the Minister for Broadcasting responsible for that legislation. For much of the 1990s, I was working in the European Parliament on the single market. I have always been a strong supporter of this Conservative initiative, but I am aware that that is perhaps a rather unfashionable stance at present We do not live in a laissez-faire, devil-take-the-hindmost market. We live in a regulated market like all the countries with which we usually compare ourselves. One of the characteristics of that is that legal access to a market does not of and by itself confer a right to trade in it. It is through the instrument of the single market that this sector has beneficially enlarged UK sovereignty in an interdependent world so that across the entire EU it has done things to its own and our nation’s advantage We have had a number of figures quoted already about the value of this sector to the country, so there is absolutely no need for me to repeat them. It is interesting that the two sets of confidential documents I have seen in 100 Parliament Street confirm the damaging impact of leaving that marketplace If we do not attain equivalent arrangements in any post-Brexit world, the capabilities of this sector will be much diminished, as has been said. As we speak, the sector is rearranging its modus operandi and exporting not only its products but its infrastructure elsewhere in the EU. Furthermore, as has also been said, its capabilities are becoming much reduced, as London is a magnet and a melting pot for many of the most talented across Europe Only a couple of weekends ago, I was talking to a friend who is a very senior director of one of the UK’s most well-known, globally esteemed firms of architects, a name that I suspect that every noble Lord would recognise without problem. He told me that the greatest damage Brexit was going to do to his business was to dry up the stream of highly talented people who wanted to work with them and contribute to this country in that way. It is happening now We sometimes forget that one of the United States’s greatest instruments of soft power is Hollywood, and this sector does something equivalent for this country. If we cannot reverse the inevitable consequences of serving Article 50 in this respect, real damage will be done to this country. The Prime Minister, to her great credit, recognised that and has assured us that she is striving to do whatever she can to mitigate that consequence. Parliament should support her in doing that The implications of all this should be spelled out to everybody in this country, not just the privileged few who are given access to 100 Parliament Street. That should strengthen the Prime Minister’s hand, not least here at home, as the reality of what is at stake—both the prize to be won and what could be lost—should be available to everybody.