European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued) & Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I think that the context has changed. When the Benn amendment went through, it was suspected of having the intention to thwart or delay Brexit. We are not in that position now: Brexit is going to go ahead. Surely, then, it is the job of the whole of Parliament to defend and promote its own interests and those of the Government in the negotiations going forward. So, in a perverse way, this amendment strengthens the hand of the Government by bringing in Parliament to back it and provide support as they embark on their negotiations; it does not diminish it.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I wish to support Amendment 27, and at this stage in proceedings I will be brief. I found it endearing when the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said that we must place our trust in the Government. I tend more to side with the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, on this. The Government have made it very clear that their version of taking back control is to do their best to shut out Parliament as far as possible. We need only to look at the illegal attempt to prorogue Parliament to see that in action. Why, if they were very keen for us to be involved in the trade negotiations, would they go to the trouble of taking out of the Bill the clause that would have given us that involvement? It might be right—as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said—that we should put our faith in the Speaker of the Commons. But, again, why should we do that when we could have the safety of having our own involvement on the face of the Bill?

My second point is quite straightforward. I find it embarrassing when this House is threatened that trying to do its job will result in a potential threat to its survival. We have a very simple role: it is scrutiny—not to thwart the will of the Commons but to ensure that we improve legislation. We can improve this piece of legislation. We should do that, and if we do not have the courage to do that because we are worried about our own survival, we do not deserve to survive.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I am going to make a rather cynical contribution to the debate. The debate has brought out very clearly the difference between accountability and a mandate. I am not in favour of the Government’s hands being tied by Parliament in these negotiations. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that it is for the Government to conduct these negotiations, not for Parliament. We will have the opportunity to comment and to give our views, and we should. We certainly should not be cowed from doing that.

However, I will quote a recent example that I really think establishes this point. The Government unexpectedly, before the election, got an agreement with the European Union that the European Union always said that it would not make. How did they get it? They did it by making a concession on the Irish Sea that they would never have got through Parliament. They made a concession which they had said they would not make—but they found it necessary to do it, and when they had done it, Parliament and the electorate came to the conclusion that it was the right thing to have done. If Parliament had been able to control what the Government were able to do, the Government would not have been able to make that concession.

We might be cynical about that concession—we might think it was the wrong thing to do—but it was the thing that got the agreement and that was necessary to get the agreement. Certainly, the Government will need friends in these negotiations, but they will also need flexibility, and Parliament should not seek to take away that flexibility.

European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stern, whose informed comments about the effects of no deal none of us should dismiss.

Earlier this evening the noble Lord, Lord Warner, reminded us of the film career of James Dean. I was reminded of another James Dean performance: “The Dark, Dark Hours”. We have been through the dark, dark hours—not least this afternoon. I feel that at last, with this Bill, we are beginning to see the light. When the country so desperately needs cross-party co-operation, as even my right honourable friend the Prime Minister now seems to accept, it is a huge relief that in the other place Sir Oliver Letwin has been able to work with colleagues from across that House to bring us this important piece of legislation. My noble friend Lord Cormack pointed out just what hostility some of these individuals in the Commons have had to face. They have been incredibly brave and I am full of admiration for them.

It is now clear that after three years of limping towards Brexit, the country needs significant time to plot a sensible course ahead. That is certainly not the Prime Minister’s deal, which has little to recommend it; nor is it to simply leave without a deal—we have already heard just how bad that would be. Business has been yelling from the rafters that no deal would be a disaster for this country. So we need time to come to a consensus on what the country could accept as its future relationship with the EU. The 27 have consistently said that they need the UK to say what it wants, not what it does not want. We have spent nearly three years establishing what we do not want; it is going to take us a bit of time to work out what we do want.

We have heard much today about the dangers of Parliament taking control. In normal times I would join that chorus urging caution, but if our unwritten constitution were working effectively, there would have been no need for such radical action. If the constitution were functioning, the Executive would have been listening to Parliament. Instead, they have consistently tried to ignore Parliament, from the start of this process until the recent attempts, over and over again, to bludgeon the Commons into accepting a flawed deal. This Bill gives Parliament the ammunition to require an extension to Article 50, which gives us time to plot an acceptable course. I always pay attention to what the noble and noble and learned Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Judge—and sometimes Lord Hope—have to say and I shall study their amendments, but in principle I support the Bill, which provides an insurance policy against our crashing out without a deal.

Earlier today, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, accused those of us who support the Bill of suggesting that we do not trust Mrs May. It is not about not trusting Mrs May; it is that Mrs May has to respond to changing events, and therefore what she says changes as events change. She may not even be there when D-day comes, so we need an insurance policy to avoid crashing out without a deal. I continue to believe that the best use of an extension would be to thrash out a deal that is acceptable to Parliament and then to put it to the people. Three years on from the 2016 referendum, such a major step as changing our relationship with Europe seems to me to require the informed consent of the public, and this is our opportunity to get it.

Brexit: Non-Disclosure Agreements

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Wheatcroft]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many companies have signed non-disclosure agreements with them in relation to preparations for the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union.

[The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, government departments make use of non-disclosure agreements when structuring engagement with businesses or other organisations on preparations for leaving the EU. They are a common component of contractual arrangements that are used to protect the commercial considerations of the parties involved or to protect sensitivities around the development of government policy. With regard to my department, DExEU, as of mid-January there were seven NDAs in place covering standard commercial contracts.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his response. The Government have been rightly critical of the use of NDAs in some cases that have come to light recently. It is crucial that Parliament and the public should have access to all relevant information about the potential costs and risks of Brexit, so could my noble friend assure the House that the NDAs the Government have signed are not keeping important data out of the public domain? At such a pivotal time for the country, business should not be gagged.

[Lord Callanan]

I totally agree that business should not be gagged. Many businesses have rightly spoken out with their opinions on Brexit, both for and against. But we have been extremely open about no deal and the costs of Brexit. We published 106 technical notices and there has been extensive debate. A lot of economic analysis has been published. Nobody can say that they have not had all the relevant information.

Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. I congratulate her on finding a relatively unexplored but vital angle on the issue. Although she said “could”, not “will” many times, I note that she also said “must” many times, and I hope that the Minister will take account of that.

It is also a pleasure to speak in this debate, for it is not like other debates on Article 50. For more than two years, we have been told repeatedly that the UK is leaving the EU on 29 March 2019. In the other place, the honourable Member for Wellingborough, who keeps tabs on this sort of thing, calculates that the Prime Minister has issued this declaration 108 times. My noble friend must have come quite close to that total. I was going to ask him if, just this once, he could bring himself to utter the words, “The UK may not be leaving the EU on 29 March 2019”, but I sympathise with his Brexit throat issue, so I wonder whether my noble and learned friend Lord Keen might utter that sentence for the general delectation of the House.

There is, however, no reason for sanguinity. Despite what was said yesterday, the possibility of leaving the EU without a deal remains real—merely potentially postponed. If anyone really believes that leaving without a deal would not be a disaster for our country, they need only to read the document produced yesterday by the Government—not, one might think, a bad day to bury bad news—which has been mentioned several times in the House already. The grim forecasts for the economy in there are eye-popping. It could shrink by 9% on average and 10.5% in the north-east. Between the first quarter of 2008 and that almighty financial crash and the second quarter of 2009, the economy shrank by just 6%. Just think of the many years of austerity it took to finish that. We are talking about a much worse situation and potentially walking right into it of our own volition.

The costs of a no-deal Brexit are literally horrendous. HMRC estimates that the burden on business from customs declarations alone, based on 2016 UK-EU trade in goods, could be around £13 billion a year. I am really sorry that my noble friend Lord Lilley is not in his place to put that £13 billion in context with the £10 billion—it is not really £10 billion—that he feels we might be saving. According to HMRC, that is without,

“accounting for any behavioural change”,

which is HMRC-speak for companies just stopping exporting because it is too much trouble.

Business is simply not ready for no deal. Only 40,000 of the 240,000 businesses that currently export to the EU have even applied for the necessary licences. Apparently HMRC is capable of issuing them at the rate of 11,000 a day, so there is no way they are all going to get their licences for 29 March—and probably not for two months later. Can the Minister tell the House whether he thinks all this trouble is truly worth while. The Government tell us there will need to be import tariffs; of course there will. The document tells us:

“Further details will be announced in due course”.


I wonder whether the Minister could tell us in due course when that might be. The boats are already having to get loaded up with the items to be exported. Indeed, some of those boats have already set off.

We know trade deals have not been signed. The no-deal briefing tells us that certain deals will categorically not be in place for exit day. For some reason, the ones it singles out are,

“Andorra, Japan, Turkey, and San Marino”,

as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, remarked. Quite why Japan and San Marino are viewed in the same way by our Government I cannot imagine. I ask the Minister whether, when these trade deals are put in place, Parliament will have a proper opportunity to scrutinise them. Not all of us may be as terrified of chlorinated chicken as some, but we ought to be able to have parliamentary scrutiny of the trade deals to which we are thinking of signing up.

It is already clear that shop prices are going up, but figures from the ONS only today show that last year the poorest 20% in this country saw their real incomes fall by 1.6%. They are already finding life a real struggle, and as shop prices go up they will find it harder and harder.

As my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, said, this is not just about the economy. There is far more at stake, and many of us believe that the UK is better off from every point of view—not just financial but in terms of culture and security—as part of the EU. That is why I listened with interest to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and took note of the four elements he saw as the temptations—but I am afraid I cannot agree with him in his call for compromise. I find it absolutely appalling to be asked to take our country into a situation that I believe will make us worse off in every way. I will not refer to Churchill but to GK Chesterton, who said that compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen, it really seems to me that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf. I want the country to have the whole loaf.

EU Withdrawal

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dykes. I was delighted to hear his positive comments on immigration.

Today’s Motion refers to the,

“ongoing discussions with the European Union”;

“interminable” might be a more appropriate adjective. If kicking the can down a dead-end street was an Olympic sport, we would have a gold medal winner. But it is not a sport. Brexit has become a constitutional crisis. I am staggered by the contempt with which Parliament is being treated in this process. It has now been suggested that the real meaningful vote on any deal might be put back until just days before exit day. That would be a travesty. I would support anything they can do in the other House to bring back some parliamentary control over this process. Brexit is not a sport, a mere matter of tactics— which seems to be the way it is being played at the moment. It is about our place in the world, and every day this fiasco goes on our stature in that world is being damaged, as is our economy.

Some noble Lords might have taken heart this morning from banner headlines. The Daily Telegraph trumpeted:

“Bank chief says Brexit can kick-start golden era of trade in contrast to earlier warnings”.


The Sun told its readers that the Governor of the Bank of England admits that Brexit could “spark a golden era”. I fear that Mark Carney has not discovered a new vat of optimism. These headlines were exactly like the deftly edited posters that appear outside theatres. The reviewer wrote that the play was “stunning in its ham-fisted approach, the acting amazing in its mediocrity”, and the poster simply boils down the review to “stunning, amazing”. Alas, the speech from which Mark Carney’s “golden era” was extracted was a heavyweight one on global trade, delivered yesterday in the City. On reading it, the phrase “golden era” seemed to be missing; the closest I could find was:

“Brexit can lead to a new form of international co-operation and cross-border commerce”.


Well, that must be a possibility. But in the meantime, the governor pointed out that:

“With fundamental uncertainty about future market access, UK investment hasn’t grown since the referendum was called and has dramatically underperformed both history and peers”.


The Telegraph and the Sun are cherry-picking on a heroic scale. They have been taking lessons from our Brexit negotiators, and they are misleading the public still in pursuit of their Brexit ideal.

Yesterday, the Office for National Statistics reeled off a set of gloomy numbers, including a 0.4% drop in GDP. We are already getting poorer. A trade deal with the Faroe Islands will not save us, although at least it amounts to some progress for Dr Fox. It is also great news for lovers of crustaceans. Our main imports from the Faroe Islands—£200 million of them—are fish and crustaceans. Our GDP, however, is not going to benefit hugely from this deal. In 2017, our trade deficit with the Faroes was £167 million. We buy £200 million-worth of their shellfish; they buy just £33 million-worth of goods from us. So it is a trade deal, but hardly a triumph.

The time has come to stop this nonsense. Opinion polls now show a consistently significant majority in favour of remaining in the EU. Yet the Prime Minister persists in pursuing Brexit, even declaring it, as my noble friend Lady Altmann reminded us, her “sacred duty”. I applaud her sense of duty, but I see the Government’s duty as safeguarding the best interests of this country, not deliberately leading it into decline. Where is the sense in pursuing this crazy course? It is, one might say, “Jacob’s folly”. Follies, I remind the House, are rich men’s fantasies. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, they are, “costly, generally nonfunctional”. Why on earth are we indulging this rich man’s folly when it is clear that it is already endangering the livelihoods of ordinary working people and will further impoverish them?

As the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and others have pointed out, European workers are quitting the UK in droves every day—nurses, doctors, vets and even vegetable pickers. The cost of a broccoli harvester, I am told, is now up to £13.50 an hour. The effects on broccoli prices are soon going to be feeding through into the shops: your five a day will soon be costing you a great deal more.

It is not just the economic effects of Brexit that we have to be conscious of. One of our major cultural institutions had until recently 40% of its front of house staff from overseas. It is losing them at a rate of 2% a month and one of the reasons they are going is because they are encountering such hostility. People are horrible to them because they have foreign accents. It is so bad that the institution has offered to swap their name badges, which currently have just their Christian names on, for one with a name of their choice, so that instead of Emile they might choose to be Len and they might get a better reception that way. We have become a horribly xenophobic country in some quarters, but what are we doing pandering to that tendency? We should be fighting it, not being bullied by it.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister held a conference call with business leaders. They made very clear to her that the possibility of no deal should be taken off the table straightaway. They stressed the need for certainty. The withdrawal agreement gives them no certainty at all. It is better than no deal, but it promises, as others have said, years of more negotiations, and the one thing that is certain is that while those negotiations go on we will continue to see business and investment drift away from this country. Parliament is spending all its time pursuing a course that, even if it succeeds, amounts to failure.

I do not think that I have ever done this before, but I want to quote the very thoughtful recent words of the Leader of the other place, Andrea Leadsom. She wrote:

“my constituents … are increasingly concerned that the business case is being undermined from all angles, and the basis for which Parliament gave its support to the project may no longer exist”.

She mooted the idea that it might be wise therefore to abandon the entire project. How wise. When new evidence appears, sensible people respond to it and, day by day, the damage that any Brexit does becomes more apparent. To be fair to Mrs Leadsom, she was actually referring to HS2, but she has seen the light over that and if she can see the light over that, I hope she might see the wisdom in applying similar logic to Brexit. The case made for it was flawed. The evidence has changed.

The public should be given the opportunity to vote against Jacob’s folly. I dislike referenda for the same reasons as my noble friend Lord Cormack, but when you have got into a mess through a referendum, the only way out may well be another referendum. Otherwise, we just pursue a course of self-harm. To leave without a deal would be disastrous, and that is why I shall be supporting the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, this evening.

Brexit: Parliamentary Approval of the Outcome of Negotiations with the European Union

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, it is my pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. He certainly shows no sign of metal fatigue.

I have always been proud to be British, but that is becoming harder. This country is looking increasingly ludicrous. As my noble friend Lord Cormack said, we are in a mess. It is fair to say that, thanks to David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, we are in a veritable Eton mess. The public deserve the opportunity to save the country from that mess. A referendum is their right. It is in the public’s interest that they should have a say.

The opposition to a referendum is highly vocal, and I find it puzzling. We are told that it would be undemocratic, that the people have spoken. I do not see that that is the case at all. It seems to me that those who are opposed to a second referendum, as they call it, are worried that actually it might not produce the result that they want. That is because the people have had the sense to look at where we are going and to be worried. There are reasons to be afraid—very afraid. The Brexit that was on offer at the time of the referendum is very different from the Brexit on offer now, and it seems only right that the public should have the right to give their informed consent.

The Prime Minister says that a second referendum would threaten social cohesion. That is somewhat ironic, given that the Government are discussing the prospect of declaring a national emergency when we leave without a deal. We already are in a national emergency because we are horribly close to 29 March. When David Cameron became Prime Minister, it was on a promise to heal “broken Britain”—but if it was broken then, it is in a really bad state now. Every day brings more news of companies taking jobs out of the UK. Sony’s headquarters is one of the latest moves to be announced, along with Dyson; and Jaguar Land Rover is moving jobs. Ireland is seeing an influx of new business to the extent that there is now a real skills shortage there. It is interesting to see that the headhunter Odgers has just decided that it really needs a new office in Ireland.

A no-deal Brexit is only days away, yet Britain simply is not ready. The Federation of Small Businesses says that only one in seven of its members has made any preparation for a no-deal Brexit. The Government are doing their best to help. There is a website geared towards helping businesses prepare for such an eventuality, which tells you that you have to answer only seven simple questions and all will be made clear. Posing as a small retailer importing a little bit from Europe, I answered the seven questions. I was promptly delivered 25 documents I needed to read to prepare for what lay ahead. There was even one that told me how to work out the trade tariff code I would need—really useful, particularly as the example that had been chosen was that of a grand piano. The retailer I was posing as had little cause for grand pianos, but then I do not think many in this country do. The point is that if you are running a small business you do not have time to read 25 documents—the surprise is that one in seven businesses has got that far.

What this does make clear is that, should we leave with no deal on 29 March, there will be chaos, and not just at ports. Trade will simply not be done. We will be an impoverished country. As others have already said, even if we get a version of a deal—potentially Mrs May will find one or two fig leaves; they will be words, really, not much of substance, but the Commons may eventually be persuaded to back her deal as the clock ticks further and further—that does not give business the certainty it needs. It does not give any of us any certainty. It is only then that the negotiations over our future will begin, and we will have no negotiating chips at all.

I have listened to those who say that the Prime Minister merely has to go back to Brussels and demand more and she will get it. I have also listened to what Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker say. I just cannot see how anyone can come to the conclusion that those two—or any of the other 27—are going to bend. The withdrawal agreement is, they say, the final agreement. A customs union or Norway-style solution would be less damaging than no deal, but would still involve years of negotiation and uncertainty. In her Statement, the Prime Minister promised that the Commons would have more of a consultative role; that she would seek to secure a mandate from the Commons. As pointed out by the Leader of the Opposition, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, we attempted to give her that helping hand and to have a mandate for the negotiations in the first place. I put my name to the amendment with the noble Lords, Lord Monks and Lord Lea, and I am afraid we did not make any progress with her. I suspect that Mrs May’s definition of consultation is not the same as the ACAS definition of it.

I have listened this afternoon to many interesting speeches, including from my noble friend Lord Dobbs, who is not in his place, sadly. He spoke with his usual eloquence about two memories very heavily imprinted on his mind. He spoke of a young man in Tiananmen Square, and of the Berlin Wall coming down. I drew two very different conclusions from the noble Lord. That young man in Tiananmen Square reminded me that a very large majority of our young people do not want to leave the EU. The magic moment when the Berlin Wall came down was a sign of how powerful a united Europe is.

I do not want us to leave Europe. I do not want us to put up a metaphorical wall between the UK and Europe. I heard the President of the United States, Donald Trump, say last autumn that, in the right place, there was nothing more beautiful than barbed wire. I do not subscribe to that view.

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.

Brexit: People’s Vote

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, last Saturday, along with the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Kerslake, and more than 700,000 others, I marched through London. It was an uplifting experience. Clearly, the weather god is on our side—the sun shone on our efforts. One of the most impressive moments was when five MPs from five different parties took to the stage together to make the case for a people’s vote. Unlike my noble friend Lord Lamont, I see nothing Orwellian or absurd in the term “the people’s vote”. It is probably just as well that my noble friend is not in his place, because here I must declare an interest as a director of the People’s Vote Media Hub—which would probably sound terribly Orwellian to him. The reason why the people’s vote has adopted that name is to distinguish itself from the referendum of two years ago. It is not a rerun of that referendum. We are seeking a vote on the terms of any deal that the Government can bring forward. We have to still believe that there will be a deal, of sorts, but even if there is not and what is on offer is no deal, surely the public should have a chance to say whether this is really what they want.

In Parliament Square, Sarah Wollaston, who is a doctor as well as an MP, made the case for why any believer in democracy should support a people’s vote on the deal. It is all about the concept of informed consent. A patient might agree in principle to a certain course of treatment, but if he then learned that the side-effects are likely to be deeply damaging and the chances of success only slight, the attraction of that treatment might lessen and he might decide that he would rather not proceed. If the patient had just turned 18, and the original go-ahead had been provided not by him but by his parents, the individual on the trolley, about to be wheeled into the operating theatre for some potentially life-threatening surgery, might feel that the situation was positively Orwellian.

We are in an extraordinary situation. The Government know that they are trying to do something which will inflict long-term damage on this country. They are doing so when the economy is still fragile. Austerity may be over but the economy is not strong and individuals’ finances are precarious. Last month, credit card spending in the UK reached an all-time record level: £10.7 billion. Last year, spending outstripped earnings by an average of £900 per household. Many of those households have no cushion to help them through the difficulties that Brexit would inflict: higher food prices, job losses, and more taxes to fund that extra cash for the NHS. The rich will be insulated—they are already moving their money offshore. That arch-Brexiteer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, no less, has increasingly been directing his funds to Dublin. Those who have fared worst over recent years would suffer most from Brexit. This is looking increasingly like a posh boys’ Brexit. Those ordinary people deserve the chance to decide whether they want to consent to the Brexit that is on offer, or not.

It seems that some take the view that the country made its bed two years ago and must now lie in it, no matter how uncomfortable. The public may share that view—I doubt it—but we should at least put the question to them. Why are those who favour a bed of nails so reluctant to ask voters whether they wish to share it?

Brexit: Preparations and Negotiations

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Gadhia, as I share many of his concerns. This White Paper represents a step in the right direction. It recognises the harsh realities of the single market and opens the way for a more pragmatic negotiation. But, as I read it, I had in mind the maiden aunts of the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane. Your Lordships will recall that they planned a trip to the cinema, only to be confronted with a choice between “Reservoir Dogs” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. Did the White Paper promise them something more alluring? The answer has to be yes, but I believe that the noble Lord’s aunts would be as discerning as he, and would quickly realise that, while the programme might not be quite as gory as some, it would be a deeply uncomfortable experience, perhaps more akin to the psychological horror of “The Birds”.

There are elements of the White Paper that Monsieur Barnier has already indicated are for the birds. Most importantly, he has indicated that proposals for enhanced equivalence to ensure that our financial services industry can still flourish will not be acceptable to the 27. Why would they be? Why would they be willing to water down their concept of the single market and the rules that govern it to accommodate our financial services industry? The White Paper acknowledges repeatedly that, even in its suggested version of Brexit, Britain’s access to the EU markets for services would be reduced. I have asked my noble friend the Minister, who sadly is not in his place, if he could give an indication of how much we will have to pay for that reduction in access. I ask again: could we have an estimate of what we will lose?

Financial firms are already moving their operations out of Britain. Brexit would produce a stampede. My friend from the other place, the honourable Member for North East Somerset, is already showing the way, having just launched a second fund in Ireland—a wise move, since he has suggested that any benefits of Brexit could be 50 years away. He has said:

“We won’t know the full economic consequences for a very long time, we really won’t”.


He is in a position to do this, perhaps. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds suggested, wealthy fund managers can afford to gamble and to take such a cavalier action with their own finances, but to suggest that they should bully the Prime Minister into taking such a gamble with the finances of the country seems appalling.

The Bank of China’s UK head, Sun Yu, says that no deal would threaten London’s status as a hub for international banks. Any version of Brexit does that. The no-deal Brexit which some now favour over the White Paper version could create real hardship. The IMF calculates that no deal could cost nearly £200 billion in lost output to this country.

On trade in goods, the White Paper accepts that the price of access to the EU’s markets will be accepting EU rules without any say in their formulation. The aunts of the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, would be reaching for the smelling salts by the time they reached paragraph 16(b) of chapter 1 of the paper. This attempts to spell out how tariff collection will work. We have already heard about the inevitable tailbacks and the threat to foodstuffs and medicines, but charging the right tariff will be a matter of guesswork. The White Paper envisages that in,

“up to 96 per cent”,

of cases the tariff will be correct, but note the “up to”. For the rest, there will have to be a repayment mechanism. Given that the EU sells us more than £300 billion-worth of goods every year, that provides ample scope for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to be rather bogged down in requests for refunds.

The benefits of being in the EU are huge. The realisation of that is why the White Paper states, somewhat plaintively, that we wish to remain in many EU institutions, even while accepting that we will not have any say in their deliberations.

The benefits were what persuaded the country to join the Common Market in 1971. Incidentally, in an excellent article in the Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole recently pointed out that the 1971 White Paper sold more than 1 million copies. I doubt that this one is such a bestseller. The 1971 White Paper began by stating:

“The prime objective of any British Government must be to safeguard the security and prosperity of the United Kingdom and its peoples … The Government are convinced that our country will be more secure, our ability to maintain peace and promote development in the world greater, our economy stronger, and our industries and peoples more prosperous, if we join the European Communities than if we remain outside them”.


That remains true of our involvement in the EU today.

The calamitous cost of Brexit becomes more evident every day. It is no wonder the public are waking up and a majority have decided that they would prefer to remain in the EU than face a hard Brexit. A customs agreement and single market access, the Norway option, would be less painful and is probably the best that will eventually be on offer, but that means paying through the nose for less than we have now. It is not my idea of a bargain.

I end up in the same place as the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane: faced with two, deeply unattractive options, should not his aunts have a choice to change their mind and not to go to the movies after all? That is why the country should be given a vote on the deal. I have now to declare my interest as a director of the People’s Vote media hub. The country deserves a chance to vote on what is on offer.

EU Exit: Future Relationship White Paper

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, the Statement refers to the “flexibility” that we will retain on financial services and the services sector generally, but the White Paper acknowledges that in doing so we will reduce our access to EU markets. Could the Minister put a figure on the cost of this change?

[Lord Callanan]

We want a deep and ambitious partnership on financial services. I set out earlier exactly how we see it working. We think that is in the interests of both parties, but it is impossible to put a cost on or indeed outline the benefits of anything until we have agreed it.