Brexit: Economic Effect

Debate between Lord Inglewood and Lord Bates

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

There has been a referendum, which was endorsed by the votes cast in the general election that took place just last year—over 580 Members of the other place out of 650 stood on a manifesto to implement the decision taken in the referendum. We are now in the position of seeking to implement the decision that was taken in the referendum and endorsed in the general election.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership. We are now being asked regularly by businesses large and small about what the Government think the impact of Brexit will be on Cumbria. They want to know this to start planning for the post-Brexit era. It seems both ignoble from the Government’s perspective and very unhelpful from the perspective of businesses, which will be so important in the future, to have so little to say and to say it so vaguely.

[Lord Bates]

I do not accept my noble friend’s view that we have had little to say. I was in the Chamber earlier this week when the Leader of the House repeated the Prime Minister’s Statement and some people suggested we had too much too say. Some 106 technical notes have been put out, and we have had significant debates. The crucial thing is that businesses have known since the referendum took place, and certainly since the general election, what the outcome of the referendum was and the Government’s intention in implementing the outcome of that referendum. As a result, they have done incredible work in boosting their exports around the world. We are seeing that export growth is at record levels in terms of goods and that the fastest growth for those markets is in countries outside the European Union, such as India and China.