UK Withdrawal from the EU and Potential Withdrawal from the Single Market

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate. I find it very difficult not to be emotional on occasions such as this for the simple reason that my mother was born in Denmark and lived in Copenhagen during the German occupation. I have had many opportunities to study and work in Denmark and Brussels and regret bitterly that future generations will not have the same opportunities.

I take this opportunity to congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the interest he has taken in British citizens who live elsewhere in Europe. I hope that he will put down a marker that we owe a sense of duty to those whom we encouraged to work in the British institutions, as the noble Lord, Lord Owen, said, and to those who, like myself, worked as EU lawyers in private practice. A whole host of people are still studying with a view to working and living elsewhere in the European Union. Others have retired to the European Union or work there in private practice as lawyers, dentists, doctors, bankers and others. There is a willing and ready workforce in European institutions who would be able to put their services to good use in assisting the Government in the difficult negotiations that we face.

I shall focus on the agriculture sector in Essex and Suffolk, where I was an MEP, and in North Yorkshire, where I served as an MP. At the last count, there were about 20,000 EU citizens working in this country in farming, horticulture, forestry and fisheries. Apparently, it is difficult to extrapolate the figures for farming alone. We currently export something like 72% of our food and drink produce to the European Union, so my question to the Minister is: who will take the place of the EU citizens who work in those industries, particularly farming and horticulture? Are we going to revert to the six-month rule? Will it be the case that someone can enter only if they have a position—so will employers have to go to other EU countries to recruit for whatever purpose—or will they still be allowed to visit the UK for three to six months and then have to leave? These are very real questions which, as my noble friend will know, are exercising the minds of those in the farming and growing industry at this point.

It is the first duty of the Government to defend the nation; it is the second duty of the Government to feed the nation. I urge the Prime Minister and my noble friend and his department to stick to their guns. Any negotiation must be done on the basis of reciprocity. It breaks my heart to see that we are giving up a single market of 505 million consumers, with free movement of goods, services, capital and people, for a potential free trade agreement with a number of other countries.

Look at the United States. I was involved with opening up liberalisation with the US carriers. The US continues to stop any new carrier flying within it, yet I hope the Prime Minister will take this very powerful message to President Trump: we will open our markets if America will open its markets. But I hope the Prime Minister will take this opportunity to say that we do not want hormone-produced, steroid-infested beef and chlorine-washed chicken in this country, and that we will continue to eat the very best of Yorkshire and British beef, produced to the highest possible safety and welfare standards, and that the Americans will take our beef in preference to their inferior produce. It has to be done on a basis of reciprocity for the simple reason that otherwise we will cave in before we know what their bargaining terms are.