Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, it is my pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. He has given me yet another reason why I should support the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. I wondered whether, having spoken in the original incarnation of this debate, I should take part in its successor, but 6 December seems so long ago and the ground is shifting, so I feel justified in taking another bite at Brexit.

In December I voiced my concerns about the withdrawal agreement and its concentration on trade in goods while it is services that are pivotal to the UK economy. Those concerns have been deepened by the latest news from the Office for National Statistics. Yesterday it reported that, in the third quarter of last year, production in the services sector was just 0.1% higher than a year earlier. That is the slowest growth rate in two years and a very bad omen for our economy since services account for three-quarters of our earning power. If that sector does not grow at a decent rate, nor will the economy as a whole. We should not be surprised by these gloomy numbers. It is the uncertainty over what Brexit really means for services, particularly financial services, which has forced organisations to take the wise precaution of preparing for the worst. Research just published by Ernst & Young shows that, since 2016, financial services companies have announced plans to move around £800 billion-worth of staff, operations and customer funds out of the UK to the other EU 27 countries. Gradually, those moves are happening. Day by day, jobs, money and investment are leaving the UK.

As we contemplate that massive hit being inflicted on our economy, it is worth reminding ourselves just what in theory we will save by leaving the EU. The ONS tells us that in 2016 our net contribution was £9.4 billion. Remember that I have just mentioned the sum of £800 billion leaving the UK. That £9.4 billion is only 1.2% of government expenditure, and that is before taking account of any of the money that flows from the EU back to the private sector in this country.

EU membership in 2016 cost us just 39p per person per day. That is very much less than the business being haemorrhaged out of the country now. Just think what that 39p bought us in benefits, not least the ongoing security and peace that we have enjoyed for so long.

I have listened to those noble Lords who have assured us that Britain will be great again and we must go forth with confidence. My noble friend Lord True, while urging us to look to the future, declared yesterday that,

“the world out there is as big and round now as it was in 1492 and people are waiting to do business with us”.—[Official Report, 9/1/19; col. 2272.]

What are they waiting for? We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, that Germany and other EU countries are already strong within the EU, doing much more in export markets than the UK. It is not membership of the EU that is holding us back. It might be products; it might be services; it might be our abysmal productivity, as the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, said yesterday, but it is not membership of the EU. If my noble friend Lord True knows those countries and those people who are waiting to do business with us, could he just urge them not to wait any longer? We would very much welcome them now.

Neither do I believe that it is a lack of functioning ports that is holding us back. Nevertheless, I hoped that the Brexit chaos might have produced just a small nugget of good news with the plans to reinvigorate Ramsgate as a freight port. A few years ago, the Royal Military Canal in Hythe was being dredged. Along its length there were big placards declaring that this work was being in part funded by the EU and bearing the wonderful slogan, “Dredging for a better future”. I pledged that I would do my best to find an occasion when I could use that slogan. When I heard what was going on in Ramsgate, it seemed to me that this, at least, might be an example of the Government dredging for a better future. Yesterday, however, the Mayor of Ostend put paid to that. He told the BBC that it was “completely impossible” that Ostend would be ready to cope with freight ferries from Ramsgate any time soon, and certainly not by 29 March this year. Whatever is going on in Ramsgate, I am afraid that it is not dredging for a better future. In fact, there is no better future ahead at the moment. It looks unutterably gloomy.

Brexit is not Brexit: it is an embarrassing shambles. Whether it is this deal or no deal, it is not in the interests of this country. The only democratic way to determine what happens next is to give the people a vote on whether they want to proceed with this nonsense or stop it. My belief is that, at 39p per person per day, they will decide that staying in the EU is a very sensible thing to do and will vote to remain. After that, business could invest with confidence, people could move freely around Europe, and the embarrassing exercise that this national hara-kiri is amounting to could be abandoned.