European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, I support the Bill although I was pro-European for a long time. Following the referendum and all that has happened since, I am now convinced that withdrawal is not only inevitable but in our country’s best interests—and the sooner the better, so that business and the rest of us can adjust our lives and plans to the new situation.

As my time in Parliament draws near its end, I reflect more on how one’s perspective changes. I had three Minister of State jobs several decades ago, which involved negotiating with the EU. The first was on health and safety and all that. The next was on regional matters from Northern Ireland. Then, when I was Paymaster-General, I had detailed responsibility for, among other things, negotiating the annual EU budget, including a spell as president of the EU budget council. I came to appreciate the expertise of the UK representative and the importance of the Committee of Permanent Representatives, as well as similar things.

Throughout that time, some in Europe worked continually towards a united states of Europe in various ways, which we were always against. During my time as a Minister, there were 12 member states but it turned out that widening, which we often discussed, did not rule out deepening, as we hoped at one point. The EU is all about such negotiations happening every day. It is important to realise that the various councils are representative of diverse nations. Some are large like us, but Luxembourg, for example, is smaller than Leeds, as we heard today in a couple of good speeches.

The EU is not a team with a leader as our Cabinet is at least supposed to be and has been, at least for most of the time in history. It is therefore inclined to make continual, complex compromises reflecting national stresses and strains and special interests. Those compromises then become fixed in stone. Of course, at any given time, several member states have elections pending, reshuffles looming and so on, which affects all these negotiations. Everyone round those tables must be able to go home and say how hard they pressed their national case. That is why the last-minute culture is so strong in these areas. It is also why it is right to fix the deadline in law, as the Bill does, because it focuses minds.

Of course, the coming negotiations will be hard pounding, with many simultaneous strands. Ministers and officials will need 20:20 vision and to be dedicated, disciplined and decisive. Fortunately, the political background here now makes that possible. Our negotiating team can expect to take no holidays this year. I should imagine that August will be a time of working flat out under maximum pressure, while no doubt compromises and interim arrangements will be agreed. But let them get on with the process.

On the detailed provisions of the Bill, I commend the excellent speech of my noble friend Lord Bridges of Headley, with whom I agree entirely. For that matter, I also commend the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, which was full of common sense from his long experience in government.

EU Withdrawal

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot comment on the reflections of the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, on the Labour Party as I am not sufficiently knowledgeable of its manoeuvrings. I have not yet spoken in this series of debates, so I will start with a staccato summary of my general views on the subject before coming to particular points.

Like my noble friend Lord Cormack, I do not care for referendums, but we voted to hold it. I campaigned and voted to remain in both 1975 and 2016. However, I accept the result. There are times in life when things change, and one simply has to come to attention, turn and march forward in the new direction, making the best of it that one can. Change can come suddenly, as when one loses an election—some of us have had experience of that—or it can creep up more gradually like old age, and some of us are experiencing that now. Either way, you accept it. A third referendum would not be wise. People talk of a second referendum, but of course it would be a third referendum on the same subject. Of course, those who think that the present result was unacceptable want to try again, but whoever lost a third referendum would want a fourth. The idea that it would settle the matter is wrong. It will be many years before history can judge whether or not it was the right decision. I suspect that in future many PhDs will be earned by academics arguing both ways. The judgment will depend, of course, among other things, on what happens to the EU in the coming years, as well as what happens to Britain.

Like my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford, I believe that so-called alternative arrangements can be found so that the borders—both the land border in Ireland and our sea borders in south-east England—can remain much as they are now. From the trade point of view, it is the customs authorities which will organise that. We had a stark warning from the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, about the stress on the Civil Service at the moment, and I firmly agreed with that part of what he said. I base my conviction that alternative arrangements can be found on my dealings, as Customs Minister many years ago, with the late lamented King’s Beam House, then the headquarters of customs. There had been a series of organisational changes since then, but I doubt that they have led to better practical advice to Ministers—I fear the opposite.

The former proud department of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, with all its experience, was merged with the Inland Revenue in 2006. Then in 2008, the Border Agency was created under the Home Office, and took over the border duties at ports, airports and the land border, and the customs cutters with them. Its responsibilities for immigration work, given the problems, were the main concern of management and Ministers at that time and since. These days, port, airport and cutters officers belong to the Border Force under the Home Office, whereas taxation officials collecting VAT, excise duties and so on are mostly inland and come under a different organisation.

We all know that tax, particularly VAT, excise rates and coverage, differs sharply between the United Kingdom and Ireland and between the United Kingdom and our continental neighbours. This makes smuggling at land and sea borders worth while if you can get away with it. Supplies for personal consumption are taxed in the country of purchase, so people in Northern Ireland cross the border to buy things without problems, and the same applies at Dover and elsewhere. That should not change. On the whole, smuggling is effectively countered by the relevant agencies in the various countries co-operating, and there is every reason why, if customs duties eventually differ, as presumably they will, in addition to the tax differences, the same will apply.

In designing alternative arrangements for handling cross-border trade, either on the land or the sea border, it should be remembered that the merged HMRC is trying to manage a range of complex IT changes all at once, including Making Tax Digital and its part in universal credit. It is also, unrelated to Brexit, introducing a new customs declaration service—a computer system that will replace CHIEF, the 25 year-old customs handling of import and export freight computer system. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether the introduction of the new customs declaration service is going to timetable. It was scheduled to finish in March—an interesting combination of dates. Both CHIEF and CDS are linked to the existing EU export control system and will still need to be after Brexit as well. All this reorganisation must be making life very difficult for the customs management. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that alternative arrangements are technically possible and that they would work just as well as the existing and long-standing taxation and border arrangements work at both land and sea borders.

This debate has been, to some extent, a repeat of previous ones—the holding pattern that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, so charmingly introduced us to in his speech. Some contributions have simply repeated or developed further people’s previous views, but some important contributions have been very positive, starting with the noble and learned Lord’s. I was interested that he urged acceptance of the agreement, except for the backstop, and then carefully set out in a very good way solutions that sounded extremely reachable. I also noted the intervention by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, regarding the Northern Ireland aspects. They were most important interventions that should be taken into account and carefully considered as to what we do today.

I believe that in the end we shall emerge from this process battered, no doubt, but unbowed. I believe that this country has a great future whether or not we succeed in solving all these problems in the next few weeks. It might be that the backstop has to be extended, but only for a specific purpose. It is the next few weeks that will count, even if there is a bit of tidying up to do, as it were, in the few weeks after 29 March.

Brexit: Preparations and Negotiations

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, that was a constructive speech, even if the last sentence or two differed from the earlier part of it—in an attempt to be helpful, it seemed to me. The noble Lord always makes a thoughtful and useful contribution to our debates.

The Chequers White Paper encouraged me, because of its indication that the Government really want to get down to negotiating in detail on all these complex matters—and, like the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and others who have spoken, I hope that the EU will respond. I, too, agreed with the excellent speech by my noble friend Lord Bridges, who described the White Paper as a pragmatic approach to negotiations, and went on to the considerations that followed.

Some decades ago I was involved in negotiating in the Council of Ministers as a Minister of State in various roles—on health and safety issues involving the Department of Employment, and later on the EU budget and indirect tax on behalf of the Treasury, and so on. My previous enthusiasm for the EU took some knocks during those years, because of the difficulties of the negotiations—and that was when there were only 12 members, not 28 as there are now, for the moment at any rate. Looking back, I see that the important negotiations at that time were really with the other countries sitting round the table, and not so much with the Commission itself. There is an important lesson in that for our present negotiators, and also for those who comment on such matters—that they should not always take Mr Barnier’s word as the only possible word to come out of the EU. I should add that I was greatly assisted in some of my time dealing with such matters by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, in his then role as the United Kingdom’s representative.

One important aspect that has been referred to several times this afternoon in apocalyptic terms is the Northern Ireland border—which I, like the noble Lord, Lord King, came to know during a spell in the Northern Ireland Office. The land, sea and air borders between the EU and the UK have long been important fiscal borders, and VAT and excise duties vary widely in scope, coverage and amounts across all those borders. VAT was supposed to be harmonised across the EU some years ago, but of course it was not, and will not be—and nor will excise duties.

The financial incentive for smuggling is therefore, as one would expect, considerable across all those borders, and the anti-smuggling work is consequently vigorous. But the tax involved—the same will apply to any customs duties that come in—has long been collected well away from the borders, through accountancy, which these days is entirely digital. Most companies want to comply, and digital collection, as VAT and excise duties show, does not require a hard border with customs posts.

The Republic of Ireland will clearly suffer more from Brexit than we will, more or less whatever happens. The end of our contributions to the EU will affect all the countries, but on trade the Irish have every self-interest in negotiating an agreement on customs facilitation, whatever problems that may give the theologians in the Commission. The best thing would be to sit the British and Irish customs teams together in a room, and they would work out a solution. Then we should do the same with France—allowing personal shopping to continue as normal across all these borders, both the Northern Ireland border and the channel border, and involving trusted trader arrangements. Dublin politics are more difficult than usual at the moment, but the technical problems are soluble, and the self-interest is strong and mutual, so a deal can be done—and in the end, the EU must accept that.

The Commons debates last week were depressing, but the Recess is coming. The zealots at both ends of the spectrum suspect the motives of their opposite numbers, and both ends build up the scare stories and read difficulties into any wording that is chosen—and all that weakens our negotiating position. My right honourable friend Dominic Raab should do his best to ignore them and get on with detailed negotiations. He has a reputation as a hard worker and a pragmatist, and he needs to be both. He and his colleagues, both Ministers and officials, must talk to all the countries, businesses and interests involved across the EU to reach agreement. The message is that summer holidays are cancelled.