EU: Recent Developments

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Davidson of Glen Clova

Thursday 16th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, given the length of this debate, it is not customary for quite so many interventions to take place during speeches. It might perhaps enable the debate to be more effective if noble Lords are not interrupted quite so frequently.

[Lord Davidson of Glen Clova]

I am much obliged. I was interested in the lists of people who were to be expelled from the EU that the noble Lord was perhaps hinting at. I return to what I describe as the greater long-term question, which is emerging from the Government’s approach to EU relationships. The point I am trying to make concerns the strategy that the UK will adopt in promoting its position in the world, which is perhaps the greater question.

It has been the foundation of the UK’s foreign policy over recent decades that we maintain good and strong relationships with both our EU partners and the United States. The emphasis has varied from time to time with the attendant tensions, but on balance our positioning has at least to a degree been within our control. However, major global shifts are under way. With the so-called pivot—the United States moving away from Europe and towards Asia-Pacific—our relationship in that direction may become less close. The rise of the economies of China, India, South Africa, South Korea, Brazil and Indonesia inevitably reduces the UK’s relative economic standing in the world. At such a juncture it would seem that the UK’s relationship with our EU partners must objectively become of greater importance. The UK’s capacity to pursue its interests increasingly depends on being part of the world’s richest market—the European Union. Being an influential and effective partner of our fellow EU member states is the best route to being a persuasive interlocutor in international affairs both within the EU and externally.

There is a danger that the UK is becoming of declining relevance to a US turning towards Asia. As we face the rise of the new economies, the importance of the UK to world trade declines relatively. Were we then to become less involved in the EU, and take the role of bystander, the relevance of the UK would diminish. A reduced engagement with the EU would leave the UK further away from influencing decision-making within the world’s richest market.

It therefore follows that, whether by accident or by design, the UK being isolated at the December 2011 EU summit was, objectively, a foreign policy failure. Were such a policy direction to become entrenched—with talk of repatriation and so on—leading to the UK becoming a semi-detached member of the EU, may I take it the Minister would regard such an outcome as retrograde and inimical to the UK’s interests?

More significantly, perhaps, where do the Government see the position of the UK strategically in the light of changes in US priorities, the rise of new economies and events in the EU and the eurozone? What is the strategic vision of Her Majesty’s Government for the UK’s relationship with the EU? It is necessary to ask this as recent events leave no great clarity and give rise to some concern.