Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Monday 7th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, by way of explanation, I said that the DUP were not represented here. I see that they have now taken their seats, and we look forward to hearing from them.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hope that the Minister understands that part of the reason for our demand to see the full text is that many of us neither trust the Government nor are convinced that they understand quite where they are going. In answer to my question last week, the Minister insisted, as he just has again, that the Government are aiming for higher standards than common European standards. Yet, since he gave that any answer, I have seen a number of briefings for the press from Ministers and sources in No. 10 which suggest that we want more flexible standards to be able to open up to a range of things, which suggests lower standards. It says here that we are not prepared to be a “rule-taker”. It also says that we want to renegotiate the political declaration so that we can have our own regulations.

When I was following Margaret Thatcher’s proposals for the single market in the early 1980s—the Minister is probably too young to remember that period—the argument which was made by those around Margaret Thatcher was that we were a rule-taker. We by and large took US regulations and taking part in creating European regulations would give us much more of a handle on questions such as how we coped with the internet, and what is now the whole digital economy, and we would therefore be able to take part in making our own regulations.

There seems to be a fantasy in the Government that we are not going to follow American regulations or European regulations but we will be a wonderful island with our own special regulations in this whole area, which will make it much more difficult to trade and produce services in collaboration with others. Is that the direction we are going in, or are we going back, as some Ministers seem to have suggested at the weekend, to following American regulations instead?