Government Political Priorities and Legislative Agenda

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, raised the question of Europe, because it probably will not surprise those listening to learn that I intend to say a word about that, too. I intend to say a word about it not just because I am deeply interested in it but because the new Government, the Prime Minister and his Ministers do not seem to have said a huge amount about this subject, either in the Prime Minister’s Statement earlier this week or in PMQs.

Policy has swung around a bit. We heard during the Makerfield by-election that the PM wants to rejoin, and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, hopes that that will be the outcome of this rethink one day. Since then, the Government have retreated from it. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House yesterday said:

“We are not going to rerun the argument on Brexit in the near future”.—[Official Report, 2/9/26; col. 180.]


I suppose that leaves open the question of what “in the near future” actually means.

There seems a degree of uncertainty. On the one hand, the Government are claiming, as we just heard, that Brexit caused damage, and the Prime Minister said that too. Yet, at the same time, they are using and talking up the benefits of leaving the EU. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said yesterday, the Government are cutting VAT, which would not have been possible in the European Union, and the new Trade Minister, who gave an excellent maiden speech—I say that even though he is not in his place now—was out earlier this week celebrating accession to the CPTPP as a fantastic new opportunity for British business. Of course, none of that would be happening if we had not left the European Union. So, I am left a bit uncertain, I must admit, as to how the EU really fits into the hierarchy of priorities for the new Government. We have a new Minister in charge of the negotiations. What are we supposed to read into that?

All this uncertainty means it is sometimes a little unclear what is meant by comments on the reset. For example, the PM said this week that the country needs a good deal for farming. What does that mean? I thought there already was a deal for farming—it was announced in the summit last year. Does that mean he is doubtful about this deal? Is he uncertain that some of the protections—the carve-outs—that are needed will be secured in the negotiations? We simply do not know any of this, and that is the problem.

It is well beyond time for the Government to give a proper account of where things stand. The summit was over a year ago now, and each time there is an event or meeting in Brussels, it seems that the Government give away something, whether it is joining the ETS or the single electricity market. We learned this spring that concessions on student fees are in play, the nature of the youth mobility scheme, and so on.

It is not clear what we are getting back from any of this. I can tell you from my experience that the much-vaunted eGate access has not yet been delivered. Perhaps other noble Lords have had the same experience this summer. Arguably, the situation for British travellers is worse than it was a year ago.

The Government need to come clean about where things stand in this rather amateurish, Keystone Cops-style negotiation. We do not need a running commentary, but we do need a Statement on what the Government are trying to achieve. Will the Minister ask his ministerial colleagues to come to this House, or to the other place, and tell us what their approach to this negotiation is? What are they trying to do? Where are they trying to get to? Meanwhile, will the Government stop being pushed around and start standing up for the people and businesses of this country?

Resetting the UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, noble Lords will get an encapsulation of the difficulties that the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, had in chairing our committee. He had a very difficult task, and the disagreements were very strong. As he noted, I could not endorse the report in the end, and I summarised what I felt it ought to have said in Appendix 9, kindly supported by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson.

I said in Appendix 9 that the reset was “somewhat unsatisfactory” and that I did not believe

“that the Government has made the best possible use of its negotiating hand”.

That is the least that one can say—and now that I am not using committee language I think I can say that the outcomes were so poor that even poor negotiating cannot explain the point we have got to; there is more going on.

For one thing, I do not think that the Government are really being honest with us about what they are trying to do. On the one hand, we hear about the red lines on the single market and customs union; on the other hand, the Prime Minister says that we have to keep moving towards a closer relationship. His Ministers muse about joining the customs union, and the Business Secretary said yesterday that being aligned is “where the magic happens”.

The truth is that we know that everybody on the Labour Benches opposite really wants to be back in the EU or in the single market/customs union simulacrum of that. The only thing holding them back is that they won an election on promising not to, and that presents them with a problem. They know that they cannot get back in one go; they know that it will take time and that the solution is to approach it slowly, bit by bit, with one thing leading to another—the Monnet method in a different context. That is what we are seeing.

First, we are joining bits of the single market—on SPS, ETS and electricity—but it is claimed that we are not joining the single market. We have joined bits of customs, such as the CBAM—the carbon border adjustment mechanism—which will expand out of our control. We have started opening migration doors again, with the work experience scheme, and we start paying for it all—Erasmus, the nebulous future Bill on single market access, SAFE and much more. This direction of travel is the only way to understand what otherwise one might think were quite amateur night negotiating tactics.

The truth is that the Government do not care about concessions—they care only about the destination. They just want to get close to the EU, and they are prepared to do so on any terms that are available. How else are we supposed to understand why they have agreed subordination—again—of this Parliament to EU laws as the only way to improve food, agriculture and electricity trading? We know that it did not have to be done that way—they have chosen to do it that way. How else are we to understand the shameful giveaway on fisheries for nothing more than a statement communiqué? How else are we to understand the failure to get anything on matters of interest to Britain in return for these concessions other than the much-vaunted access to e-gates, barely touched on in our committee report, which the EU regards with such contempt that it has not even bothered to deliver it—the one thing that came out of this nine months later?

This approach is dangerous. The truth is that we are not going to succeed as a country if, outside the EU, we just do what the EU does. Yet hitching us to EU policy regimes is going to leave us in that situation. I am sorry to say that the committee’s report does not come close to acknowledging these issues, and that is why I cannot support it. What it should have said is quite simple: this is a dangerous reset; it is being done in a dangerous way; and this country’s independence is not safe in this Government’s hands.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first time I have spoken as a Back-Bencher since I stepped down from the Government in December. I am glad to have the opportunity to do so now and offer my support for the approach that the Government and my noble friend Lord Caine have been taking.

As the Motion put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Jay, sets out—and as the work of his sub-committee has made clear, as he said—politics in Northern Ireland have come under ever greater strain since the start of this year. The tension created by the protocol obviously underlies the current difficulties, which stem ultimately from the destruction of the protocol’s moral basis caused by the EU’s attempt to put a vaccine regulatory border on the island of Ireland in January last year.

As has been said, the political situation is now very troubling. We do not have a First Minister or Deputy First Minister in post, and the Executive are effectively inoperative. The courts are looking at fundamental aspects of the protocol. It is by no means clear that a stable Executive can be established after the elections. In short, it is clear that there is political and societal disruption.

This situation plainly cannot be allowed to continue. There needs to be significant change. The protocol could have worked properly only with very delicate handling. It has not had it, so change must come. When it does, it must be in the direction of re-establishing full UK sovereignty and legal normality in Northern Ireland. That has to be the end goal. Reversion to this norm is the best way to provide long-run stability and properly protect the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.

Much the best way forward, of course, would be to renegotiate the protocol, as the Government have proposed, so that it can be supported across all communities in Northern Ireland and so that it respects all three strands of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. I hope that the EU might yet do that in the new spirit of collaboration that currently exists over our common response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. However, if it does not do so, it will be perfectly reasonable for the Government to use the Article 16 safeguard provisions.

Finally, we must also remember that the protocol is explicitly a temporary arrangement. It disappears in 2024 unless the Assembly wishes it to continue. That consent vote is important. It is entirely legitimate for the UK Government to have a view on it, and I personally think that view should be that it is not in the interests of Northern Ireland for this protocol, in this form, to continue beyond that vote. I will certainly support the Government in any action they take to re-establish stability and to secure Northern Ireland’s place in this United Kingdom.