Extracts from Lords debate on the Queen's Speech - June 28
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD):...No senior Minister has yet touched
on the importance of maintaining the good will of our continental
neighbours through these negotiations and after our departure. Over
the last year some Ministers have appeared to believe that
relations with China and Saudi Arabia will become more
important than those with Germany, France, Italy or Spain and that
authoritarian countries are more natural partners for Britain than
our immediate and democratic...Request free trial
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
(LD):...No senior Minister has yet touched on the
importance of maintaining the good will of our continental
neighbours through these negotiations and after our departure. Over
the last year some Ministers have appeared to believe that
relations with China and Saudi Arabia will
become more important than those with Germany, France, Italy or
Spain and that authoritarian countries are more natural partners
for Britain than our immediate and democratic neighbours. That is
one of the greatest illusions—or lies—of the Eurosceptic camp.
British prosperity, British security and British values are most
closely linked to the interests and values of our democratic
neighbours. Over the last year, the Government have lost the
respect of our continental partners. This House will wish to press
the Government to work to regain that respect and good will as
vital to a successful negotiation and to our future relationship
after we leave...
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab):...I want to mention the matter of regulation. If you look at the recent flaming inferno in the Kensington tower block, you see where lowering building regulation standards and sneering about health and safety standards gets you—scores of people dead. Our children are protected by many of the regulations that we have created over the years, with British lawyers often taking the lead because it is a collaborative project: insisting that there should be no lead in paint; that plastic toys should contain no poisons; that fertilisers and insecticides are not toxic; and that pharmaceuticals and other drugs and medicines reach high standards so that we do not have repeats of disasters like thalidomide. You will not get those kinds of relationships in trading with China for some time to come. By being included in a trading bloc but, more importantly, by being an active participant in it, providing our legal expertise and joining in with others, we raise the bar for other countries within the EU, for ourselves and across the world for the people we trade with as a bloc. For years, we have been subjected to a barrage of tripe from the tabloid press claiming that there was a tide of laws coming at us, when in fact we have been at the heart of creating some of that very good law... Lord Howard of Rising (Con):...Great Britain must also leave the customs union which prevents this country making trade agreements with other parts of the world. May I remind your Lordships that many other countries trade successfully with the European Union without a customs union, notably the United States and China, both of which sell more to the rest of the European Union than does the United Kingdom? The Commission itself has said that 90% of future global growth will happen outside Europe’s borders. It would be folly to allow the customs union to prevent Great Britain having the greatest possible access to world markets. I do not know whether insisting on these fundamentals makes a hard or a soft Brexit; what I do know is that it is not worth sacrificing our laws, our ability to make trade agreements with the rest of the world and control of immigration into this country in pursuit of a trade agreement which already costs this country more than £60 billion every year, and will get worse if our exports to the European Union continue to decline at the present rate. Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab):..If we start talking to other countries, what is the basis of the deal that we might do with them? If we go to China and say, “We’d like to have an FTA with you”, the first thing the Chinese will say is, “Well, we’d like you to get rid of the EU steel quotas, please”. That is fine but what are the Government going to say to the workers at Port Talbot to whom they have made promises? If we go to India, Mr Modi will say, “The first thing on my agenda is that I want more immigration into the UK”. That will be pretty rum because apparently we have to leave the single market as we have too much immigration and want to bring it down to tens of thousands a year, so we cannot fulfil that particular requirement. If we go to Australia or New Zealand, we shall be told, “Well, the first thing we want to do is sell you more meat”. We will have enormous vessels arriving with frozen meat from those countries every week, which will put out of business large sections of the British livestock industry. Is that what we are going to do? Is that what the Government consider to be an opportunity? If we go to the United States, the same thing will happen, except that the meat will come full of hormones and antibiotics, with threats to public health... Lord Spicer (Con):...In the beginning it all worked out quite well for the British. The Common Market had few disbenefits for them and a number of benefits in terms of a wider market. But as time has gone by, new forces have emerged in the world which have affected this position. The rise of competitive areas of the world—the South American countries, China and India—and, indeed, the strengthening of American protectionism have all forced the European Union to do what I personally think has always been endemic in it, which is to turn itself into a controlled trade bloc: a protectionist trade bloc, basically, protecting its own members. The controls that it has introduced have gone a long way, including setting up a monetary union with many controls... Lord Monks (Lab):..The Brexit answer to all this is that our future tends to lie outside Europe, in the emerging economies. Perhaps we can roam as free-traders through the rest of the world. But, in case your Lordships have not noticed, it is not 1850 anymore, and there is no British Empire. There is a need to deal with President “America First” Trump and with China and India, which as others have pointed out have their own agendas and some raw grievances about British imperialism in the past. There are not so many other attractive markets to which you can look to replace this huge, rich, single market of which we are currently a member....
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie)
(Con):...I turn to some observations of the noble Lord,
Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and of some of
his colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches. He suggested that
the United Kingdom Government are somehow asserting that they
hold all the cards in this negotiation. That is not the position
that we adopt. Indeed, if we held all the cards, there would not
be a negotiation; it would be a matter of dictating terms. There
has to be an open and mutually beneficial negotiation to achieve
the outcome we all seek. He also suggested that we were somehow
simply turning our face away from the European Union and towards
countries such as New Zealand, India, China and others. Of course, we seek to
embrace the opportunities that will arise with regard to trade in
these other parts of the world, but we are not closing off trade
with the European Union in any sense whatever. We are not turning
our back on our partners in Europe; we will continue to engage
with them to our mutual interest and mutual benefit...
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