UK Withdrawal from the EU and Potential Withdrawal from the Single Market

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, we seem to be connected to Germany. My wife was not quite born in Germany, but my father-in-law was working for the Control Commission in Hamburg. My wife’s parents had such trust in the German health system in the late 1940s that my mother-in-law was flown back to Woking to give birth to my wife. She was almost German; I am just glad that she is not, having heard of the antics the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, may have to go through.

I will talk about the role of the staff of EU agencies in Britain. We have two EU agencies—the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Authority—based in the UK with European staff working in them, as well as UK staff. We are saying to them that not only are we leaving the EU, but we are apparently unable to give them any undertakings, even though they are working for the EU, as to whether they will be able to have any continuation of employment in this country. Indeed, we appear to be trying to chase the agencies out of Britain. When the European Medicines Agency goes we will have a lot of work to do in our self-regulation of medicines. When the European Banking Authority goes, I doubt that the City of London will be overjoyed to see the back of an EU agency devoted to banking.

In Britain we also have two other institutions. I am not quite clear whether they will be thrown out. We have the marvellously named European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts based in Reading and Euratom in Culham. To what extent do the Government intend to withdraw from these agencies? At the moment it is unclear.

The point is that the people who work for these agencies were, effectively, British public servants who went to do the best for their country. They are feeling very let down. The European civil servants are similarly feeling let down. Many of them wanted to come to work in Britain. They were pleased that there were international agencies spread around the European Union making Europe a reality. Now, they are suddenly told—they are not all married to nationals of the same nationality as themselves—that they are to be uprooted, that their children are to be pulled out of schools, and that there are no guarantees being given at all. I put it to the Minister that it would be very simple to give some comfort to these people, either by saying, “You can stay”, or by saying, “If you have to leave, we will at least make it as easy as possible”, and that we will not carry on with what seems to me to be an unreasonable approach to the whole business.

I hope the situation of British nationals working in and for Europe will be fully taken into account. I know people keep saying it is, but the fact is a number of these civil servants do not feel that the Government are yet on side. I hope the Minister will reassure us today that the Government realise the human dimensions of this problem that we have set ourselves—because we voted for it—and will do everything they can to make as easy and humane as possible the lives of these civil servants, their pensions and their future responsibilities. I ask the Minister to take this into account in his reply.