Brexit: Domestic and International

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, there has been considerable agreement this afternoon in that we all appear to support free trade. We lack the leader of the Official Opposition, Mr Corbyn, who perhaps does not agree with free trade in the same way. However, across your Lordships’ House there seems to be some agreement and a sense that there are opportunities from global free trade.

These opportunities are not cut off by our membership of the European Union. We are already able to trade globally. A set of questions needs to be considered in the current period before we leave the European Union in the transitional period and looking forward, about what the UK’s relations might look like after we leave.

During the referendum, it was entirely unclear what the leave campaign meant by “leaving the European Union”. Did it mean leaving the single market? Did it mean leaving the customs union? There has been a bit of rewriting of history. In the last week I have heard Matthew Elliott and Douglas Carswell of Vote Leave saying, “It was always entirely clear, we have to leave the single market”. It was not clear to me and I spent a lot of time listening to the leavers during the referendum.

There are real questions about where the UK is going and where we want to end up in trading relations with the EU. At the moment our trade with the EU is 44%. Some Ministers may feel that it is a price worth paying to walk away and trade simply on WTO terms, but have the Government undertaken any sort of review of the financial costs of increased tariffs?

Beyond that, the EU and the single market clearly offer far more than simply tariff-free trade. They allow us to get beyond non-tariff barriers to trade, to give a level playing field. That was precisely the reason why Margaret Thatcher pushed for it 30 years ago. To what extent have the Government begun to look at the implications for the UK if we walk away and then need access to the market, without being part of it? The EU is a rules-based system. If we seek to export to the European Union from the outside, we will still need to meet EU standards.

We have heard that somewhere between 6% and 11% of British companies currently export—a relatively small percentage. Some hard Brexiteers have suggested that we can take the opportunity of leaving the European Union to have a bonfire of red tape. But if some companies are going to export to the EU, they will still be bound by EU regulations. Are we going to have a two-tier system, where exporters have to abide by different rules for health and safety and environmental standards from those companies that do not export? Is that what the Government are thinking about? If not, are we going to leave the European Union and somehow create our own legal system? Or will we simply follow the European Union in its entirety but without any seat at the table? That would be true whether we were in the EEA, EFTA or entirely outside—we would have no say in those rules.

However, there are opportunities for trading now, for free trade and for expanding trade. We already trade significantly with the Commonwealth. We could do more. The old Commonwealth countries that have already suggested that they might be interested in free trade deals with us have relatively small economies, nothing like the size of the US or our European market.

There is one way in which the United Kingdom could demonstrate right now that it wants to go global—that it is open for business. That is in the area where I spend my time when I am not in your Lordships’ House. I declare my interest as an academic at Cambridge. Higher education and education more generally are massive global exports. The United Kingdom has a considerable competitive advantage in this area yet it links to an issue that the Brexiteers were not comfortable with—immigration. Here, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, for a fantastic maiden speech and note the points he made about immigration and the importance of people coming to this country. They may be teachers or academics, but they may also be students. Will the Minister take back to her colleagues in the Home Office—across departments—the importance of looking again at visa restrictions? At the moment, the UK does not look as if it is open to business for Indian and other students who would happily come here. If we are going to go global we need to show we are open. We need to look again at our visa regimes for students.