A New Partnership with the EU

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I am sorry to say that I think the noble Lord’s assessment of where we are currently is not strictly true. There are various regulations that are not part of our law but, again, we will outline more as regards this when we set out an approach to the great repeal Bill. There are two clear reasons why we are doing this. First, as I said in the Statement, it is to provide certainty for everyone—be they businesses or organisations in any walk of life—as regards the state of play on day one when we leave. Secondly, it is because the Government believe that it should be for Parliament to decide on what then to do. It can then be free to keep, amend or repeal EU law, once it has been transposed into UK law, as it so wishes.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, can I ask the Minister about the financial services sector, which is about 7% of our GDP? As he will know, if we are leaving the single market and the customs union, most of the financial services sector can essentially no longer operate across Europe unless it redomiciles something like a third of its operations. The Minister says that he wants a bespoke agreement and an implementation transition period. But how long does he think the industry can wait for those to be confirmed before it has to decide to relocate in order to meet the needs of its clients?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Baroness makes a valid point; we have had good discussions about this issue and I thank her for that. I understand the needs of some parts of the sector and the fiduciary duty that certain businesses will be under to make contingency plans. I can only hope that they will look at the remarks made today and see that while we are coming out of the single market, we are intent on negotiating as free and as frictionless access to the markets as possible. Once again, I repeat my earlier remarks: we are obviously starting from a unique position here, in that we are not just equivalent to EU law but absolutely identical to it. This puts us in a good position.

The second point is that, as the Governor of the Bank of England made clear yesterday, once again it would be to our mutual benefit—that is, our benefit and Europe’s benefit—to ensure that we avoid a cliff-edge. It was interesting to see that the German Finance Minister said today, “London as a financial centre will play an important role for Europe, even after Brexit”. I hope that those in Europe and in our financial institutions will be looking at these remarks and planning with due respect for what is happening and mindful of the fact that we are looking for this free and frictionless approach.