Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the features of this provision is that it does not mention the exact question of finance. Clearly, we are working on some large and expensive programmes, particularly on fusion. In replying, will the Minister comment on whether new budgets will have to be created for the new arrangements, or will they fit within the existing budgets?

[Lord Inglewood (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest that I share with my noble friend the Minister: we are both Cumbrians. Obviously, Cumbria is deeply affected by the nuclear sector, which is potentially very hazardous both to those who are engaged with it and to those living close to it. Therefore, having the strongest possible safeguards in place, which I believe that this amendment will help to bring about, is a great reassurance to those who would be affected should anything go wrong.

Just as my noble friend the Minister is absolutely certain that his house is not going to burn down, I am sure that that has not stopped him taking out an insurance policy. Equally, the Government, who are convinced that Brexit will take place, should recognise nevertheless that there is a possibility that, for various reasons, something may not happen as they hope. Having the strongest form of reassurance in the Bill in this regard is important because it is something to which those who might be affected were something to go wrong will be able to turn.

Brexit: Competition and State Aid (EUC Report)

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Con)]

My Lords, I was not a member of the committee but despite—or because of—that, I congratulate the committee and the chairman because this is a very important and complicated topic and the report is important, albeit, as I shall suggest, we are still talking about unfinished business.

Competition and state aid policies form one of the unsung but crucial parts of the contemporary marketplace which is our economy. After all, we need a free, regulated and fair marketplace which is necessary and appropriate for a 21st-century society and contributes to stability, prosperity and personal freedom. The origins of this in this country go back deep into the 20th century, as the report points out, and were integral to the European Economic Community, as it then was, right from the beginning; I refer, for example, to Articles 85 and 89 of the treaty. As people have said, it is hard enough to do this within a single jurisdiction but it is much more complicated to do it across jurisdictional boundaries, which in turn need common institutions to administer and enforce what is in place.

I am one of those unfashionable and eccentric people who consider that the European Union single market was one of the extraordinary legal, diplomatic and political triumphs of the 20th century, albeit it has not yet even been completed. In some quarters I may well be considered a dinosaur—possibly even one clad in ermine—but so be it.

If a country leaves the EU, it leaves all this behind it, but no man is an island, least of all a global trading nation, and these things cannot be looked at introspectively. Domestically, as we have already heard, the consequences of leaving are systemically reasonably straightforward and align with the processes we are considering in the context of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. Internationally, however, it becomes rather more complicated because the reality, as is recognised in the much looser WTO rules, is that at least some framework dealing with a number of these topics is both appropriate and necessary. In the case of arrangements going beyond that, the requirements, such as those in the context of the European Union, are likely to be more stringent. If this country is looking for comprehensive, frictionless trade into the EU post Brexit, it is more or less completely wishful thinking not to suppose that something giving effect to the vast generality of existing EU rules will be required. This is a proposition with which the Government seem to concur.

However, it is not simply a matter of the rules. There is also the question of enforcement. Currently, as we know, Brexit is defined by the Government as leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, so how can we achieve that? It is true that the EFTA and EEA mechanisms exist but I am not sure whether like is really being compared with like. After all, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland’s economies are not comparable with our own and they have an entirely different relationship with the economy of the European Union.

When I was working on the detail of the single market, quite some years ago now, one perennial problem was the difficulties thrown up by non-tariff barriers and creative, partial and partisan legal interpretations. Just as those difficulties were an issue then, I expect that similar things may turn out to be an issue in this context in the future. An additional problem that I anticipate could be that if we secure trade agreements of some kind of superior character with other nations around the world, they may well want to reciprocate arrangements covering such things with us. While those agreements may be compatible with WTO rules, how will they lock into whatever arrangement we may put in place with the European Union? Before we know where we are, we would be in the world of having to deal with the kind of problems that used to arise across Europe with the question of parallel imports.

In the whole debate in this country about these topics, we spend far too much time talking to ourselves about what we want and insufficient time thinking about what the counterparties with whom we will be—and are—negotiating would like to have. In the case of the EU, I dare say that the counterparties are a trifle disgruntled with us but, to secure a deal, it has to be agreed by both sides. We have to find ways of meeting both sides’ aspirations.

As we know, the current plan is that we are jettisoning membership of the European Union on 29 March next year but, as yet, we really have no idea what is to follow it. As I understand it, it increasingly looks as if the Government are going to say to us, “Well, we don’t know what’s coming next—but trust us”. That looks to be close to signing a blank cheque and, when I was brought up, I was told that was a very foolish thing to do. It is a view that I subscribe to still. It is now all about not leaving the European Union but what we are going to get next.

The point is that we currently do not know and the crucial moment will be the withdrawal agreement. That agreement seems rather akin to getting on a train at the station—but when you get on one, you need to know your destination. You otherwise risk being like the heroine who was sung about by Marie Lloyd on the music-hall stage:

“Oh! Mister Porter, what shall I do?


I want to go to Birmingham

And they’re taking me on to Crewe”.

We need to know when we board that train what the destination will be. As far as competition and the other policies we are discussing are concerned, we need to know what that framework is going to be, and currently we do not.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Con)]

My Lords, I speak briefly in the gap as some months ago I advocated, rather along the lines of some of the speeches we have heard this afternoon, that we ought to remain in Euratom. The response I received then is consistent with the introduction of the Bill we are discussing. Therefore, the most sensible course of action is to implement a seamless transition from the Euratom regime to a national regime. If I have understood my noble friend the Minister correctly, the national regime will be at least as rigorous as the Euratom arrangements now in place. That would be satisfactory to not merely Cumbrians like myself, a number of whom are in the Chamber, but to the rest of the country.

Noble Lords will remember that last week we discussed the withdrawal Bill. On that occasion a large number of strictures, based on the work of the Constitution Committee, were made about the way in which that process was being taken forward. I would like to incorporate by reference—I think that was the term used when I read law—those strictures into this debate as they are as relevant to this matter as they were on that occasion.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Con)]

My Lords, I begin my remarks with congratulations to: my noble friend Lord Callanan, whom I served in the European Parliament, on his ministerial appointment; to the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, with whom I was at university, on his maiden speech; and, if I may anticipate, to my noble friend Lord Colgrain, with whom I was also at university. I must also declare some interests that are in the register, some of which relate to me in a personal capacity and some to the activities that I am engaged in. I hope my noble friend Lord Callanan will not be too disappointed if I do not talk about space but keep my feet on the ground and talk about agriculture. If you are going to leave the CAP, it seems a good moment to review agriculture, agricultural policy and rural policy, because they all go hand in hand.

Clearly, as we all know, the CAP was not designed for this country, but, equally, it was not designed specifically for any other country either. It has a number of very foolish aspects to it, although of course you do not have to cross the channel to find idiotic aspects to government. It is also a mistake to parody it, as some newspapers have done, not least because in so doing they seem to parody responsible journalism. The CAP, like much else, has moved on. Especially since the MacSharry reforms, there are plenty of things we can take as good examples from the workings of the CAP. It is a pity that it played too big a part in the EU budget, but it may not have necessarily played too big a part in total levels of public expenditure. It is understandable, but a pity, that it also played such a big part in EU politics.

It is my contention that there is a serious market failure in agricultural, rural and environmental policy, which in turn is morphing from traditional agriculture much more towards traditional rural estate management. This market failure is part of the serious problem of rural and agricultural poverty. Last weekend, we were in Dorset. For a Cumbrian like me, it looks like the land of milk and honey, but underneath that thick veneer of prosperity there is rural poverty and deprivation, and it seems to be most closely associated with those who directly work on or close to the land—those who, on the continent, are called peasants. I have been called a peasant on the continent, and I am proud of it. That is a correlation that we need to think about.

What is agriculture doing in the contemporary world? First, it produces commodities, be they food or timber. Given the role that world prices have played in the CAP since the MacSharry reforms, I believe it is pretty much wishful thinking to suppose, as I have heard government Ministers suggest, that leaving the European Union will put the price of commodities up. It seems to be most improbable. Nor have I heard much consideration of the problems of the balance of payments, of the need for security of food in this country or of the costs of food, bearing in mind that it is a significant part of many families’ budgets.

Above and beyond this, tourism, leisure and general well-being are provided from what you might describe as the assets in the nation’s rural estate. In my home county of Cumbria, tourism is far more important locally than agriculture, yet tourism does not directly pay anything towards it. Then there are ecosystem services: carbon capture, flood mitigation, clean air and other things. Again, there are no direct cash transfers here specifically in respect of those. Then there is the environment more generally. It is my view that dereliction has probably caused more damage to the urban fabric of this country than the Luftwaffe did. If you do not look after things, as we have discovered in the Palace of Westminster, the end bill is a great deal bigger than it otherwise need have been.

Finally, the countryside should be a location for businesses. It is a great pity of the way the town and country planning system developed in the immediate post-war period that that has been stamped on to the extent it has. But the other side of the coin is that developing in the countryside in general is more expensive than doing it within the wider urban envelope. It seems to me that the tax system should recognise that. Then we have things such as the problems with broadband and other forms of infrastructure, which have been well rehearsed. On the basis that people should be paid for what they do, it looks to me as if a lot of urban Britain is freeloading on the back of the countryside, which is an example of the biblical maxim that to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away.

What, if anything, can be done about it? A particular suggestion that I would like to make is that the scheduler structure of income tax legislation should be looked at, because it discourages much sensible rural diversification and part-time farming. It is a gloomy state of affairs when the current framework around agriculture is conducted by the Rural Payments Agency and a lot of the planning authorities, which are not at all efficient or competent, taken as a whole. As a Cumbrian farmer said to me rather sadly, “Voting Brexit is, for farmers, the shortest suicide note in history”. I have no doubt that the Minister will not agree with that, but I would be grateful if he could explain in general but concrete terms their approach to these matters. I request that he please not repeat the meaningless mantra about generalised opportunities becoming available. To my own surprise and my friends’ amazement, I chaired a northern manufacturing company for several years, and the business was successful. The one thing that became clear to me was that entrepreneurs are successful through their own initiative and do not respond to government instruction.

Whether we like it or not, agriculture has always operated, and at least to some extent will continue to operate, within a state-regulated framework, and having an understanding of the Government’s aspirations and basic policy, so long as they are realistic, is a necessary condition of our country’s success.

Nissan: Sunderland

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I have already made it clear that there is no compensation package. Indeed, Nissan has itself said that there is no special deal and nothing for it that the rest of the industry would not be able to have access to. I commend the noble Lord for the work that he has done in the north-east. It is very important that we continue to invest in these areas with things like the Sunderland and South Tyneside City Deal for new advanced manufacturing. The noble Lord asked about other companies: it is important to bear in mind that the nature of the deal is available to other companies as well, because we are investing in competitiveness right across the board. I already said in my opening remarks that we have invested £400 million since 2010. Companies can apply for support but, rightly, those applications have to underpinned by strong business cases. They have to be approved by the independent industrial advisory body. While we are in the EU, they have to respect state aid rules and even if we ended up in a WTO situation—which I am not forecasting—they would have to respect the rules there. All that is very important.

[Lord Inglewood (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of a training company elsewhere in the north of England. Can the Minister confirm that Nissan will be treated like all other businesses in respect of the proposed apprenticeship levy and is not going to have some sort of exceptional status?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I am certainly not aware of any special arrangements for the apprenticeship levy. As I made clear, the sort of arrangements which I outlined in relation to training, skills and innovation are an across-the-board approach which Nissan is obviously welcoming. I know my noble friend’s interest in the north-west and how important it is to him that we ensure investment in Cumbria, not only in nuclear but in manufacturing and other areas.