European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Lamont of Lerwick

Monday 18th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Noble Lords opposite are living in a slight fantasy land if they think we could reach no deal without there being a very long debate and a whole set of arguments in the House of Commons.

At no stage have I been an advocate of no deal in the negotiations, but not advocating no deal does not mean that we should rule it out in all circumstances, and it does not mean that you should rule it out as being on the table as a negotiating tactic. If, as Dominic Grieve has suggested, we make no deal completely unthinkable, we in effect undermine the position of our negotiators. If our negotiators cannot walk away from the table or if the other side—Monsieur Barnier and so on—know that they cannot do so, all the other side has to do is to sit there rejecting things until we eventually agree with everything it wants. Ruling out no deal completely as an option, even as a theoretical negotiating objective, would place the Government in an impossible position.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendment we are discussing does not rule out no deal; it lays down what will happen if there is no deal. There is a fundamental difference between the two.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

But we are also talking about Motions and amendments, and the distinction was the very point I was making. Although my noble friend Lord Hailsham has removed the word “direction”, we have to consider what is meant by having amendments and the purpose of insisting that a Motion that the Government bring forward should be unamendable.

The second reason put forward, in addition to making no deal an impossibility, is parliamentary sovereignty. I do not wish to be too aggressive about this but to many of us this seems a very ironic reason when, for year after year in European matters, parliamentary sovereignty has just been ignored. A fundamental point, however, that we cannot forget is that on this issue we have ceded sovereignty to the people of this country. That is what we did when we held the referendum. Noble Lords talk about a meaningful vote but it seems that they want to make the vote on the referendum meaningless; the vote on Article 50, meaningless; and the election itself in which—

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Lamont of Lerwick

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My understanding is that it is the policy of Her Majesty’s Government to put in jeopardy the free trade we currently enjoy in the European Union. If the Government were in favour of free trade, we would stay in the customs union and in the single market. These are straightforward, obvious propositions. The policy of the Government tends only towards reducing free trade with the single biggest set of trading partners that we have at the moment.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

How is the noble Lord just about the only person in this House who does not know that the Government have stated over and over and over again that they want a free trade agreement with the European Union?

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the best free trade agreement to have with the European Union is the one that we are currently in. That is patently obvious. When you have an existing set of satisfactory arrangements, the idea that the policy for improving them is to undermine them is total nonsense.

I hope the noble Baroness will give us some assurance that she understands the significant security dimension that is at stake in our leaving the European Union and the importance of having close alignment on trade, not least so as not to weaken our collective security with our European friends and allies.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Lamont of Lerwick

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

I would like to finish a sentence without being interrupted. The EU negotiates free trade agreements but does not take into account what Turkey wants, and Turkey has no say. I will give way one last time; then I will make one other point about the single market; and then, the House will be relieved to know, I shall shut up.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord referred to Turkey twice. On the first occasion when he referred to Turkey he said that there were all kinds of disadvantages in its customs arrangements with the EU from being in the customs union but not being free to strike trade deals beyond that. Why therefore does he think that Turkey has willingly and freely stayed a member of the customs union?

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

As the noble Lord knows very well, Turkey aspires—that aspiration may now be fading—to join the European Union, so being in the customs union was for many a halfway house to joining the EU, just as for noble Lords who tabled this amendment it is a halfway house to rejoining the EU. That is what their amendment is really about.

Lastly and briefly on the single market, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, was exhorting us all to go to the Treasury, look at the papers, draw the curtains and see the forecasts that have been made. Of course those documents should be taken into account, but there are many other studies made outside Whitehall that take a very different view. I refer him to the research by the academic Michael Burrage, who was at the LSE and at Harvard. He has done an in-depth analysis, which is published on the Civitas website, of the effect of the single market on the British economy and British exports. He has come to the conclusion that there is no correlation between the single market and the growth of trade between the UK and the EU.

Furthermore, he has pointed out something that people have acknowledged in these debates before—namely, that many non-members of the single market, countries outside the continent of Europe, have increased their exports to the single market much faster than Britain has increased its exports to the single market. So the idea that this great liberalising force has had a huge impact on the British economy is absolutely not proven. I make these points simply because the debate so far has been very unbalanced and, as my noble friend Lord Hailsham said, we ought to be considering, in a sober, balanced way, what is in the interests of our own economy now that the decision has irrevocably been made.