European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble and right reverend Lord with his customary thoughtful speech. I must admit that I agreed with some of it, but not as much as I agreed with the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Trevethin and Oaksey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.

Some noble Lords have suggested that people voted to leave the EU but did not vote to leave the customs union or the single market. I am sorry but that is nonsense. The government-funded propaganda leaflet, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the whole remain machine and the global elite stressed over and over again that a vote to leave would mean leaving the single market and customs union, with all the dire consequences that would entail. Of course, the Treasury in its May 2016 dodgy dossier also said that there would be an immediate loss of 500,000 jobs and the economy would crash into recession.

As John Longworth, writing in the paper on Monday, said, either the Treasury economic experts got their model hopelessly wrong or they were deliberately lying. I thought at the time that it was just sloppy modelling for them to be so wrong by as much as 400%. Now it seems the Treasury is at it again with the leaked Project Fear forecasts. I admire its astonishing accuracy. It forecasts a 0.3% reduction in growth every year for the next 15 years. That is amazingly accurate considering that over the last 12 months it has been 400% out. Producing that dodgy dossier once may have been a mistake but its latest leaked analysis by the same discredited economists is clearly a deliberate attempt to foist more ludicrous forecasts on the British public. I find it a very sad day when reports by Her Majesty’s Treasury have less credibility than the Zinoviev letter.

We have this Bill before us because the electorate wanted back control of our money, laws and trade policy, and they knew that by voting leave we would leave the single market and the customs union. When the Bill goes into Committee, I understand that there will be amendments seeking to ensure that no British Government can diverge from EU rules and regulations, and that is what I want to concentrate on. I believe that is foolish and it shows little faith in our Parliament, which will once again be free to properly hold the Government to account. The whole point of Brexit is to give the UK Government and Parliament the right to make our own laws and diverge from EU bureaucracy, bad law, Luddite regulations and the concept of a socialist Europe, which is making us more and more uncompetitive in comparison to the Far East and the USA. I do not want us stuck at the bottom of the regulatory scrapheap making analogue laws for a digital world. We are a great country and we need the freedom to make better regulations.

I ask noble Lords to cast their minds back to Monday of this week, when we debated the 25-year environment plan. What an inspiring document that is—inspiring because it shows how much better our land and marine environment will be when we do not have EU law destroying our fishing stocks, damaging our wildlife and ruining our soil. We can get rid of the wicked CAP, which the EU still boasts is a marvellous achievement. We can ban any plastic products we like without having to wait for EU approval. We can restore our fish stocks. We can impose proper biosecurity regimes to stop our plants and trees being decimated by imported diseases we are currently unable to stop because of the free movement of goods. And of prime importance, we can impose our own much higher animal welfare standards to replace the cruelty of live animal exports, which the EU happily endorses.

We will have the freedom to set our own VAT rates on any products we choose. German car companies paid out billions to US consumers within months of the diesel car scandal breaking. Not one single EU consumer has had a penny compensation because of the cosy, corrupt cartel between EU policymakers and German car firms. I would hope that an independent UK could impose our own air quality standards and ban dangerous polluting vehicles.

On financial regulations, there are those who say that we must not do a Singapore and have a race to the bottom. I agree entirely: we must not race to the bottom, but Singapore has a GDP per capita of $53,000 and ours is $40,000. The cost of living in Singapore is 14% cheaper than London. It is the third in the world for life expectancy and we are the 20th. If that is the bottom, I want to race to it as soon as possible. Singapore has risen to be one of the most successful economies in the world, with an exceptionally high quality of life, because its people embrace free trade and cutting regulation.

When we read yesterday about the head of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who is a remain supporter, complaining about onerous EU red tape and looking for opportunities outside Europe, we got a snapshot in that tiny area of the dead hand of EU regulation holding back not just our productive industries but our creative ones also.

I have just rushed through a few examples, but in every sector of our economic and public life we are being constrained by poor, bad EU regulation. As the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, said yesterday, we will need the freedom to move very quickly to regulate for technological change, which the Luddite EU cannot do. We will need the freedom to regulate quickly on artificial intelligence, genetic modification, innovative medicines and treatments to name but three. We need better regulation. We need British regulation. We need this withdrawal Bill, with some technical amendments, passed as soon as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, that is rather like suggesting that one ought to remain inside a burning house in the hope of putting out the fire. I am not sure that I follow the logic of the noble Lord’s argument.

I am in a minority in this House with my views on Brexit—I have noticed that. I am very proud of the way that we in the House of Lords have conducted ourselves over the last 36 hours. I read in the newspapers that we were going to reverse the decisions of the House of Commons and wreck the Bill but, instead, we have had a typically incisive debate. We should be particularly proud of the report produced by the Constitution Committee.

I do not know where I come in the speakers list— 194th or something like that—but I thought that I needed to find something new to say, so I would like to tell the House that there is a blue moon tonight. For those who do not know what a blue moon is, it is not a reference to the Tory party; it is a reference to the fact that there has been a full moon twice in the same calendar month—a very rare thing.

When I got an email from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—who I hold in very high regard—asking me to support an amendment that we should spend four days on Second Reading, which would mean that we would now be only halfway through, I thought that perhaps the lunar effect was having an effect upon him. Then, when I read that he wanted to suggest that we have a second referendum, I just reflected that we voted on this last year in this House and voted with a majority of more than 200 against that, so I admire his courage and his consistency.

The best speech of many speeches, I think by far, was the one given from the Cross Benches by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. He set it out absolutely clearly, and I feel guilty that I took the advice from the Chief Whip and the Leader of the House and went through the Lobby the other evening, adding to the burden of these Henry VIII clauses. I am impressed that perhaps this is an opportunity for us to take a stand while looking at this Bill. But I have to say that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, disappointed me. He actually compared this Bill to Cromwell. He suggested that it was Cromwellian that we were taking powers away from Parliament in the way that Cromwell had done.

[Lord Blencathra]

Thomas Cromwell.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Ah, Thomas Cromwell.