Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Border Controls

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am not going to follow the noble Lord in a litany of “what ifs”. We should address “what now”, and the EU has a responsibility to help to address that.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the red tape of the protocol has made much business between GB and Northern Ireland uneconomic. EU spokespersons have publicly advised that the way in which to avoid the cost of the checks is to source more goods, particularly food, from the south. Is not the risk that the Northern Ireland economy will gradually drift away from the UK single market and east-west trade will be increasingly replaced by north-south trade? That will have potentially profound political implications. Is it not that which is alarming people? I ask my noble friend to confirm that, if these matters cannot be sorted out through the joint committee, the Government will not rule out unilateral action.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the position of businesses and the impact on them are obviously something that the Government monitor and watch with concern. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has told Vice-President Šefčovič that our focus must be on making the protocol work in the interests of people and businesses in Northern Ireland. As to the last part of my noble friend’s question, I do not resile from, indeed I support strongly, what the Prime Minister said in the other place yesterday.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con) [V]]

My Lords, by this time everything that could be said has been said, but not by everybody, so perhaps I can be forgiven if I repeat two things: first, to congratulate my noble friend Lord Cavendish on his valedictory speech and say how much he will be missed—I view his departure with great sadness; secondly, to repeat the congratulations to the Prime Minister, Oliver Lewis, my noble friend Lord Frost and the negotiating team. It has been an amazing achievement. We were told by five former Prime Ministers no less that there could not be an agreement in the time available, but now we have an agreement that goes further than that of Canada. We now have the Common Market many of us originally voted for in the 1970s. Credit also belongs to the EU. It is welcome that the talks were concluded amicably. While I never thought no deal was unthinkable, it would undoubtedly have produced some lasting acrimony.

Historians may conclude that British membership of the EU was always doomed from the start because the British view of the political destination of Europe was always different—although our establishment always tried to conceal this from the British public, particularly in the 1975 referendum. Nevertheless, the story of our membership has been one of endless arguments about further integration. From now on, there will be no more British vetoes, opt-outs or triple locks. Now we can have a more harmonious relationship between two sovereign equals. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that we do not want to forget about Europe; we want people such as him to help us build on that relationship.

For years to come, historians will argue about the outcome of the referendum. But despite the Herculean efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, we will never be able to prove definitively whether Project Fear was all hallucination or only partially so. But let us leave it to the historians. Politics will be sterile indeed if every event over the next 10 years has to be judged against some measure of whether it would have been better or worse outside Brexit, or if every time there is a minor stumble it is greeted by past Brexit opponents with glee as evidence of its folly. Those who pursue that tactic, of running down their own country, will find that it does not go down any better with ordinary voters than it did during the referendum.

It is far better to put the effort into addressing the international challenges that face us and the domestic issues that caused so many of our fellow citizens to feel alienated and disillusioned, which is why they voted for Brexit at all. It is time to let the grass grow over the Brexit battlefield. Let us all work to make this new partnership the success it ought to be.

Finance Bill

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his observations and applaud the bold measures taken by the Chancellor and the announcement last week. Taking the measures as a whole, the UK is, proportionately, giving a larger amount of fiscal support than Germany or Japan and about the same as America. The latest measures, including the furlough bonus scheme, may partially postpone the cliff edge back to January, but it is difficult to believe that we will avoid a tsunami of job losses.

The hard truth is this: no Finance Bill, no fiscal stimulus, no monetary stimulus can entirely compensate for the effects of restrictions such as lockdown and social distancing. Last week, for example, the Government announced a £1.75 billion package of assistance for the arts. It was well received—as well it might be, because it was extremely generous—but I doubt if it will result in theatres or concert venues putting on a single extra performance. Most of the money will go on mothballing facilities, because theatres would need to sell some three out of four seats. In the meantime, in South Korea, “Phantom of the Opera” is selling to packed houses because social distancing does not exist in theatres.

What is true for culture is true for the commercial sector in spades. Financial support is fine; lifting the restrictions is better and should be the goal, when health considerations of course allow. It would be good if Ministers could emphasise this more. Instead, some Ministers talk about social distancing being here to stay, or face masks being here for the foreseeable future. For an economy like ours, largely service-based, in which services depend partly on human proximity, social distancing is not easily compatible with them.

Sir Patrick Vallance has said that there is no reason why people should not work at home, but we have to consider the economic effects on our offices, on the City of London and on the hospitality sector. There is much debate about the cost of the Chancellor’s measures, which he has promised to address in the autumn. He does not need to act then, but he does need to set out a timetable to which he will consider acting in order to show that, long term, the finances will be sustainable.

There is, however, another cloud approaching: private and corporate indebtedness. The longer restrictions go on, the greater this becomes. Already in the US, some banks have made huge provisions. The new head of the OBR has warned of the possible need for a massive write-off of toxic Covid debt in order to stop the economy stagnating. The Chancellor has already rejected this, but I fear he may find, as politicians so often do, that words are for eating. He has been bold and I applaud it, but the difficult part is yet to come.

Covid-19: Economy

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure that the public are prepared for what we are about to face. Today’s headlines are about deaths and infections. In five months’ time they will all be about soaring unemployment, a shrunken economy and sky-scraping debt. This is not a typical recession caused by overheating, a rise in interest rates or the economic cycle. It is caused by the correct response of the Government to a pandemic which has led them to an administered freezing-down of parts of the economy. However, you cannot just put firms, which have overheads and costs, into deep freeze and expect them to emerge healthily later. When the restrictions are lifted, some companies will have been bankrupted, others will have become more indebted, and there will be less confidence and consumer spending.

I accept that deficits and a higher debt-to-GDP ratio will have to be accommodated for a period. We are fortunate that interest rates are low and in some cases negative, but this is not without risks. There could be a rise in real interest or a period of deflation, making debt more expensive. When politicians plead to support the economy, too often they mean only spending money. Spending money will happen, but it is not the only solution. Imposing restrictions has caused part of the economic challenge we face. Lifting those restrictions ought to be part of the solution as well.

To my mind, the single most important measure could be to take the two-metre rule down to 1.5 metres and look to abolish it in the longer term. I do not suggest going against the scientific advice, but the scientists should explain to us why we are different from other countries. The hospitality industry employs 3.2 million people. If we could get only some relief for it, that would save many jobs from going under. This is one simple thing that could be done to help the situation improve before it gets worse. It is an agonisingly difficult situation, but the sooner it is faced up to, the better.

Budget Statement

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, and I intend to agree with much of what he said.

As the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said in his excellent speech, the Budget on 11 March now seems an eternity away. It was a challenge for anyone to deliver a Budget in those circumstances, but to do it when you have only been in office for a very few weeks was very challenging indeed. I strongly commend the boldness of the Chancellor’s measures.

To many people, the world economy must resemble a slow-motion apocalypse. As the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, said, we have simultaneously both a supply and a demand shock. This was originally a health crisis, but the measures that Governments worldwide are forced to take to combat it add to the economic problems and to the crisis. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that we will get through this. Of course we will, but there could be long-term damage to the world economy. In the last quarter of last year, the world economy was already teetering on the verge of recession; figures for Germany, Italy, Japan, China and the UK indicate that. A longer-term consequence might be a degree of de-globalisation, which I would regret. There are products that might have been launched that may never be. As a result of the measures yesterday, there will be loans to be repaid, which will be a big burden on the corporate sector, which in many countries in the world was already highly leveraged.

The world is not necessarily going to go back to exactly where it was before. People talk about a V-shaped recovery but it could be a U-shaped one or indeed L-shaped. People’s behaviour is going to change from what it was before. It may be that younger people will go back to how they behaved before but older people will behave differently.

The Chancellor was quite right to take advantage of low interest rates to invest in infrastructure, and for the package generally. The UK can now borrow for 30 years at less than 1%, so in real terms lenders are actually paying the borrowers for the privilege of lending. Of course people are sometimes inclined to argue that that is not without risk—for example, if we move into a period of deflation.

Since the Budget, markets have collapsed further, confidence has fallen further and businesses have begun to realise that the isolation of customers has huge consequences for them. The combined efforts of the Federal Reserve, the ECB and the Bank of England have had little effect. This is not surprising. A rate cut cannot stop the spread of a virus. This is not the sort of crisis that monetary policy can do a huge amount to ameliorate; it requires a fiscal response. It was therefore right that the Chancellor deployed his big bazooka with £350 billion-worth of guarantees, a business rates holiday and the business interruption scheme. Confidence is not going to return quickly—indeed, it probably will not return until progress is made in combating the virus—but the measures will be a bridge to that confidence.

I have two concerns about the Chancellor’s package so far. The first is what has been referred to by a number of noble Lords—the package as it refers to the self-employed and the gig economy. Self-employed people make up 15% of the labour force. I appreciate the measures on statutory sick pay that have been announced, but I question whether they really are going to be enough. We do not want people to have to choose between continuing to work when they are sick or staying at home with no money; we do not want sick people to be forced to work. Moreover, I am not convinced that universal credit or the employment support allowance will be wholly effective in the ways they need to be now, as we speak. We need to find a mechanism—although I appreciate that that is extremely difficult—to get money to those people who do not have any savings in reserve. If we cannot find such a mechanism, as the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, suggested, it will be necessary to send a cheque or to do what President Trump seems to be thinking of doing: resorting to helicopter money. I too have had misgivings about this in the past, but I am convinced that it now needs to be considered.

My second concern is that the business take-up of loans will not go through to employees—that employers will not necessarily pay their workers. I do not mean to cast aspersions on employers, because of course most of them are concerned about their workers, their business and their other stakeholders. But they will be worried about the burden of the debt, and above all they will be concerned about whether their business will survive. Could we consider for the future perhaps making the loans conditional on guarantees about employment in individual firms? Can we take further action which the Chancellor has said there will be on employment support by making loans of this sort conditional?

I commend the Chancellor’s measures. They have been described as unprecedented in modern times and they may be unprecedented in the whole history of this country. The Government have not had much time to prepare for this emergency and we cannot expect to solve all these problems in just one day. Will more be required? Almost certainly, yes. The Chancellor has said that he is open-minded and prepared to do whatever it takes. That is the right approach and it is very welcome.

European Union: Negotiations (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I bow to the noble Lord’s experience in financial matters. I usually find the usual channels as baffling as the Sibyl of Cumae, but on this occasion we have to congratulate them on arranging such a prompt debate on the Select Committee report. We must also congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, on producing such an excellent, analytical, factual report—a good trigger for the first test of what we mean by Section 29 of the Withdrawal Act. I declare an interest: I sit on his committee, which is why I suck up to him.

As he spelled out, the report brings out the striking contrast between the detailed negotiating mandate put forward by the 27 and the terse assertions of the Government’s White Paper. Of course, these are only opening positions but the gap is quite wide, particularly in the four areas where it seems to have arisen because our Government’s position has changed.

On architecture, we no longer believe in an overriding institutional framework, which is what we agreed to in the joint political declaration of 19 October. Instead, we now want only a free trade agreement

“supported by a range of other international agreements, all with their own appropriate and precedented governance arrangements”—

all, presumably, with different governance arrangements.

The EU mandate sticks with what the political declaration said, and still wants “an overarching institutional framework”. I suspect that this reflects the EU’s unhappy experience with Switzerland and the unsatisfactory multiplicity of separate EU-Swiss agreements. We were one of many member states to agree that the Swiss experiment should never be repeated. I expect the others still feel the same.

Secondly, on the level playing field, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, reminded us, we agreed in October that:

“Given the Union and the UK’s geographic proximity and economic interdependence, the future relationship must ensure open and fair competition, encompassing robust commitment to a level playing field”.


That is still in the EU mandate, but it seems that we have changed our minds on that too. We now say that we will not agree to any obligations for our laws to be aligned with the EU’s. That could have consequences. In October, we agreed that the “precise nature of” level playing field

“commitments should be commensurate with the scope and depth of the future relationship”.

That works both ways. If we will not provide convincing assurances on competition and the other topics, any free trade agreement is likely to be rather shallow and narrow in scope.

Thirdly, in October we wanted “ambitious, close and lasting co-operation” on foreign policy, sanctions, security and defence. The EU mandate now covers the same ground in broadly the same terms, but our White Paper is completely silent on the subject. I note that, according to the press, we have rejected the Commission’s idea that one of the negotiating groups working to Mr Frost and Monsieur Barnier should cover external relations topics. I am not clear why our position has changed. Perhaps the Minister could tell us.

Finally, the White Paper robustly rejects the idea of any role for the Court of Justice. Mr Gove, giving evidence last Wednesday to Mr Benn’s committee in the other place, spelled out that this extended to any organisation—say, REACH, the chemicals regulator or the European arrest warrant—that was under CJEU jurisdiction. This, too, would seem to indicate a preference for narrowing the scope of any eventual agreement.

I draw two observations from those four facts. First, I am not sure that our continental friends will fully understand that the election has changed everything, as the Prime Minister, Mr Gove and Mr Frost have maintained in their recent speeches. October’s joint political declaration is not, of course, a legally binding text, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, reminded us—I was delighted to hear something I could agree with—but it is an international agreement. It is not legally binding—it is not part of the treaty—but it was an agreement that emerged from a negotiation involving mutual compromise.

I do not think it follows from Mr Johnson’s election victory that his 27 colleagues will accept that the balance of the declaration can now somehow be changed, with the UK cherry-picking the bits we like best and dropping the other bits, and their having to acquiesce. The thesis seems to be that the political situation in the UK is now different, so we can just pick and choose the bits we like. Perhaps the foreigners may accept that; I am not sure.

Secondly, on the other hand, it must be true that by aiming low and going for a narrow agreement and a more distant relationship with continental Europe, we increase the chances of getting something agreed by the end of the year. If it does not extend beyond trade in goods, as seems plausible on the basis of the opening position, it probably will not need national ratification in 27 capitals with the delays that inevitably entails. I thought it rash of Mr Johnson to rule out any extension to the negotiation period—perhaps coronavirus will now change his mind—but I am not one of the those who argue that it is impossible to secure a deal by December. I am certain that, if the Prime Minister sticks to his timetable and to the brusque autarkic assertions of his White Paper, the best we can get will be a narrow deal, a shallow deal and a very bad deal—but if that is what we want, I think it is possible.

However, there is a wild card and I turn to it now. It is Northern Ireland and the 131 pages of the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland in the withdrawal treaty, which has been in force since 31 January. In Brussels and among the 27, one today detects a growing suspicion that we are not terribly keen to implement the protocol. In Brussels, that is understandably taken rather seriously. The protocol is part of the treaty, and it is legally binding. Were we seen to be resiling from it, the consequences would be grave. I would certainly expect the EU to break off negotiations on the further treaty. I would assume that the nightmare of a hard border in Ireland would be back and the Good Friday agreement in grave danger. The noble Lord, Lord Hain, has drawn attention to the United States repercussions of that.

Of course, it seems wild and outlandish to suggest that this country would ever resile from a treaty obligation, an obligation we have only just taken on, on the last day of January. I hope that the suspicions of Brussels are misplaced, but we are currently not trusted over there, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, explained. The Minister has made clear more than once in the House that he believes that the Government will fulfil their legal obligations, and I believe him, but there is a new Attorney-General, who may be more malleable than the previous one.

Why is trust evaporating in Brussels? The issue is the frontier in the Irish Sea and the suspicions spring from what the Government say and from what they do or do not do. First, let us look at the words. Mr Johnson and his new Secretary of State still seem in denial about what the protocol means for trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Under Article 5 of the protocol from 1 January, we will be obliged to collect on the EU’s behalf EU customs duties on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, except for those goods on which the UK and EU agree there is no risk of them moving into the Republic. We agreed that; that is what the treaty says. In Article 6 of the protocol we also agreed that the EU customs code and hence EU export checks will apply to goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain, although with controls at ports and airports minimised to the extent possible. We agreed that; that is what the treaty says. In Article 12 we agreed to give the EU the right to monitor and supervise these two-way frontier arrangements. We agreed that. It is in the treaty.

As long ago as 21 October, the then Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, Mr Barclay, confirmed to the Select Committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Kinnoull that there would be two-way checks, but the Prime Minister continues to deny it and, unlike his predecessor, Mr Smith, so now does Mr Brandon Lewis, the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. In this context, the White Paper’s flat rejection of any role for CJEU jurisdiction in this country starts to look, in Brussels’ eyes, very sinister. Seventy-five pages of the protocol consist of long lists of single market laws that will apply in Northern Ireland and will be under CJEU jurisdiction.

Did the drafters of the White Paper just forget about Northern Ireland? Or, as some in Brussels fear, are the Government hoping to forget about the protocol? Giving evidence to Mr Benn’s committee in the other place last week, Mr Gove refused to confirm the description of the Irish Sea frontier, which the Government themselves set out in their explanatory document on the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, published on 21 October. He brushed questions aside, saying that they were a matter for the Joint Committee set up under the protocol, which will, I understand, finally meet at the end of this month. But the Joint Committee’s task, as spelled out in the treaty, is to agree how to implement the provisions of the protocol. It cannot change them—and we have signed up to them.

So much for the words—it is the deeds that worry me most. The Select Committee, visiting Belfast on 25 February, could find no evidence of any central or devolved government action to prepare to implement the protocol. The business community was equally unsighted, and suggested that with five months gone and only eight to go, it would be a “herculean” task to get workable frontier arrangements up and running. I think “herculean” is Hibernian for “impossible”.

We were told that no one from HMRC, which will be responsible for the two-way customs border in the Irish Sea, had, as of 25 February, given the business community of Northern Ireland any indication of what to expect or how best to prepare for it. We were told that 2,500 trucks cross the Irish Sea within the UK every day—850,000 a year—and that for GB-NI movements, 45 questions would probably have to be asked about every consignment. We were told that for NI-GB movements there might be 31 questions, if the precedent of the EU’s Ukrainian-Polish frontier were followed.

I find all this acutely disturbing—indeed, shocking. I can think of few greater infringements of national sovereignty than a foreign-supervised frontier inside our United Kingdom. I am not surprised that Mrs May—and Mr Johnson, before he got to No. 10—ruled it out as something no UK Prime Minister could possibly accept. But he did accept it: it is in an international treaty, and we do not break treaties.

The Government in Dublin are well aware that we are dragging our feet. So, too, is the Commission, whose members have been in Belfast to find out. No wonder there are suspicions in Brussels. If we walk away from the treaty we signed, there will not be another to sign. The worst of all possible worlds would be to leave the people of Northern Ireland in limbo and in the dark, puzzled by the words being uttered and totally unbriefed on the necessary deeds.

I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that it is not our Government’s intention to seek to reopen or reinterpret Articles 5, 6 and 12 of the Irish protocol, and tell us when the people of Northern Ireland will be informed—ideally, consulted—about the preparations they should make for their resultant new trade frontier with the rest of this kingdom.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

I do not disagree with everything the noble Lord has said in his formidable speech, but is there not one scenario that he has not covered? If there is a free trade agreement, will not a large part of the protocol fade into it?

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

Yes, I think that is true. The checks would then become much less onerous—but they would still be required. The EU would still be required to collect data on its exports, which means that there would still be checks on Northern Ireland-GB trade, and in the other direction there would still have to be VAT checks, phytosanitary checks and rules of origin checks, even if the customs checks were reduced to near zero.

The noble Lord is right: it is perfectly true that, if there is a comprehensive free trade agreement, checks will be less onerous, but they will still have to happen in both directions. I support both the Motions on the Order Paper. I also support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. The Minister will note how supportive I am being today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, the narrow nationalism of this Government has been deeply depressing for a long time. But the fanatical, pedantic ideology that the Government have displayed in the last few weeks is quite unspeakable. The Government have withdrawn from the European Aviation Safety Agency and from Euratom. They have withdrawn from the EMA, the European Medicines Agency, in the middle of a pandemic, without any idea of what they are going to put in its place.

We had a debate a few weeks ago in which I asked the Minister a series of questions about what might happen and the various possibilities for replacing the EMA. It is obvious that the Government did not have the faintest clue what they were going to do. You cannot build up a new EMA—or FDA, to use the American term—in just a few months, let alone in nine months. We literally have the prospect that any new compound coming from the world’s pharmaceutical industry—and that could well be a vaccine for the coronavirus—will not be registrable in this country, will not be registered, cannot be licensed and will not be available to British patients. This seems fantastic but is actually the case.

What does one do in these circumstances? Until that debate, which left me with a profound sense of concern and anxiety, I took the view that these negotiations were going to be very difficult, take a long time and that there would be a lot of posing, rhetoric and so forth but that, at the end of the day, between rational, reasonable people, and given the importance of trade, there would be some compromise. Indeed, I worked out what I thought could be a viable compromise in the area of the regulation of traded goods, or what is now known as the level playing field.

I do not mind telling the House what I worked out; it will not have any relevance and, for reasons I shall come on to, it will never be implemented. I had in mind that we would start off with regulatory alignment, and we would then have an understanding, or a rule, that any party wishing to introduce a new regulation or change an existing one would have to give three months’ notice to the other. This would provide time and opportunity for negotiation and possibly compromise. But if the party insisted on having his or her way, at the end of the three months, he or she could withdraw from the whole arrangement. It would be so unlikely that anyone would want to withdraw from an arrangement affecting the exchange of tens of billions of pounds or euros of goods every year that it would be very unlikely that it would ever occur.

But I then realised, particularly after the debate that I have referred to, that I had really got it quite wrong. It was a great mistake to look at this from the point of view of rational analysis. We are dealing with much more powerful emotions than that. If you ask—and I have done this—the members of the ERG, who are supposed to be dominating the Government, what regulations they would like to introduce, if they are going to introduce new British regulations, or about the regulations we currently have that they would like to get rid of, they have no idea. This is not about regulations at all; it is about something much more profound and deeply emotional—something which goes to the heart of the Government’s ability to continue with its nationalist and populist campaign and which has brought it such electoral success recently. It is all about sovereignty.

On the continental side, there are equally strong emotions. In my view, what drives the continentals is more important than pounds, shillings and pence—or euros—or the productivity gains that you can certainly achieve from international trade, or the wealth creation or employment creation. Those things are very important. They are very attached to them. However, even more important to them is the survival of the European Union and the protection of that great sense of solidarity that has been built up over the past 50 years: the cultural changes, the exchanges and the bringing down of barriers; the educational and scientific research programmes; the enhancement of security through things such as the common arrest warrant and Europol; and the economic benefits of the single market—very much so. Above all is the assurance that Europe would not go back to the international system of 1914 or 1939, in which we had a bunch of highly competitive, nationalism-driven states quarrelling from time to time about economic, ethnic and territorial disputes. We know very well to what appalling tragedies that led. These matters are far more important than they appear. I am afraid that I can draw the conclusion only that it is most unlikely that there will be any agreement on them in present circumstances.

I will take another example, which is that of equivalence in financial services—I only have time for two examples, but they are perhaps the big two potential deal breakers in this whole negotiation. Equivalence is not quite the same as the example that I have given about the level playing field, because the proposals on equivalence do not involve giving privileges not available to members of the union to someone who has been a member of the union but has left. That seems absurd and unjust—it is, of course—and would be a permanent source of resentment, bitterness and recrimination within the union. If we came to an arrangement similar to the one that I just proposed theoretically for the level playing field, I do not doubt that, within a day or two, Mr Viktor Orbán would come up with a demand for 200 more regulations to be imposed or removed, so as to show how absurd and unjust the whole thing was.

Equivalence is not quite in the same category because it is not having something better than what members of the union have: it would not be as good as what they have, because they have stability and confidence that the regime will continue in the future. Equivalence means that you are considered equivalent as of today. However, banking regulations change the whole time: you might not be equivalent after six months, most unlikely to be after two years and certainly would not be after five years. You will have no guarantee of it being renewed and do not know what new regulations might come in. You are not in a better position, although it is still a much better position than not having the right to deal in the markets concerned without setting up separate subsidiaries and fragmenting your capital base, which no bank wants to do.

Equivalence is valuable and important but not likely to be granted. There are perhaps three reasons for that. The first is very understandable, and I do not think that anybody should be shocked by it, because I do not doubt that we would be behaving in exactly the same way if the boot were on the other foot. The continentals have noticed that London has attracted an enormous amount of the wholesale banking business that can be so profitable in normal circumstances. Since you need only one capitalised entity in the EU to trade throughout it under present EU arrangements, most of those entities have been placed in London. I doubt that there is a general desire on the part of our continental former partners to ensure that our commercial advantage continues indefinitely; they may well feel that there should be a level playing field there too, and that they should put themselves in a position where they can attract that sort of business to their own financial markets. There will be an element of that, which you can call protectionism, but it is natural—it is human nature, really. As I said, I do not think that we should be particularly shocked about it. We should just accept it. It is a strong argument and there is no answer to it.

The second thing is precedent. All Governments are very concerned about precedents when they give a favour to anybody—we are talking here about a major favour. As has already been said, there has been a considerable extension of the idea of equivalence far beyond what was originally envisaged as a purely EU-US arrangement. The EU is currently locked in difficult negotiations with the Swiss on precisely that point. No doubt the Chinese, the Indians or all sorts of people would like to have equivalence, and they are people whom it is very difficult to refuse, but in this context it would have to be refused because they do not have the effective banking supervision and regulatory systems that would be required. The creation of yet one more precedent would be something that a lot of people in the European Union would want to resist.

Thirdly, there is a point that possibly will not be spoken about very frankly, but it plays a big part in this, and that is the attitude of the central bank, the ECB. All central bankers, before they go to sleep at night and when they wake up in the morning, have two great concerns: one is whether there will be a financial crisis; the other is, if there is a financial crisis, whether they have the instruments to deal with it satisfactorily. If you have a financial crisis, you have to give orders to the banking system—like the orders we gave to banks after the Lehman collapse to stop buying CDOs—and those orders have to be obeyed immediately. You cannot really have a situation in which somebody says, “But I’m British and I’ve got a special protocol. I don’t have to obey you. I want to go to arbitration and do this, that and the other and call in lawyers.” It does not work that way. Equally, central banks depend upon a situation in which the major bankers in their jurisdiction are very beholden to them. I speak as a former investment banker for 14 or 15 years. Latterly, I was a main board member and head of European corporate finance in a large investment bank. Anybody who has ambitions in the City in that field has to make sure that they do not cross the Old Lady—that they do not upset the Bank of England. It is not a question of breaking some specific rule, but you want be regarded as responsible and helpful, particularly in a crisis when it is necessary.

Christine Lagarde and her colleagues will almost certainly be asked by Monsieur Barnier about their views on equivalence—no doubt it has already happened. I doubt very much that they have said that it would be a great idea to have more people in this market based outside the European Union with the privilege of operating under the equivalence regime. I very much doubt they will be saying that. I think they will be saying that it is something they would be reluctant to see. There are serious reasons why in both these cases—and I described them both as potential deal breakers—we will not get what we want.

The Government are very optimistic. They are trying to up the ante the whole time—saying that the continentals have got to agree everything by the end of the year and they have to make substantial progress by May or June otherwise we will drop the whole thing et cetera. They have even, as has come out very clearly from this debate, broken the terms of the agreement that they made on Ireland, which will make it very difficult for a negotiation to succeed. I think they are doing this because they are extremely confident. They have always said that the continentals are much more dependent on us than we are on them because they sell much more to us than we sell to them. It is a wonderfully quaint, mercantilist idea from the 17th century. Most people dropped that idea with Ricardo in the early 19th century. We now believe that the benefit of international trade is the opportunity gains through the international division of labour, and the benefit is computed in terms of gross domestic product, not in bullion accumulated in the central bank as mercantilists believed, or perhaps still do believe.

Nevertheless, if we look at it from the point of view of GDP, it is quite instructive. We find that the reverse is true. Their dependence on us is much less than our dependence on them. Some 14% of British GDP is exports to the European Union. In no European Union country, with the exception of the Republic of Ireland—and the Netherlands, where there is quite a lot of entrepot trade through Rotterdam which perhaps falsifies the figures—is the figure for exports to this country greater than 4% of GDP.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Is that not a very mercantilist view?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

No, indeed it is not. I am not saying that the benefit we get is accumulating bullion, because we have a balance of payments surplus. That is the mercantilist idea, and I can only describe it as quaint; it is curious that people still believe in it. Yet the Government evidently do—because that is what it means when people say, “We’re in a better position, because they sell more to us than we sell to them, so they’re more dependent on us.” In fact, the GDP figures show the reverse.

To complete what I was saying about the figures, no EU country, apart from the two I mentioned, has exports to this country greater than 4% of GDP. That means that, if there were a 10% reduction in our trade because we went over to a WTO basis after the end of the transition period, the continentals would lose 0.4%, which is within the annual fluctuations of national accounts, whereas we would lose a much more important 1.4%. If there were a 20% reduction, they would lose 0.8% of their GDP—still manageable, although it would be a difficult blow—whereas we would lose 2.8%, which would be cataclysmic.

For those who do not like elementary economics, I should add that one could ask a 12 year-old, “Who has the greatest leverage and influence: someone who speaks for a market of 500 million people or someone who speaks for a market of 60 million people?”, and that 12 year-old would give you the right answer. The Government have the wrong answer. The first step in wisdom is self-knowledge, and the Government should take that step before they get involved any further in these negotiations.

Brexit: Civil Service Impartiality

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree with what the noble Baroness has just said and I am grateful for her tribute to Sir Jeremy. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has best summed up the merits of our Civil Service, speaking of its,

“core values of integrity, propriety, objectivity and appointment on merit, able to transfer its loyalty and expertise from one elected government to the next”.

I agree with the noble Baroness’s final point that, whatever one’s politics, one should play the ball and not the man. Ministers bear responsibility for any difficulties in negotiations, not civil servants.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, as someone who strongly supports Brexit, may I say how much I support and agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Luce, has said? I deplore all the attacks made on civil servants. I particularly deplore—and have said this to several people—attacks on Sir Jeremy Heywood. He was my Private Secretary in three separate jobs and is an outstanding civil servant, devoted to giving impartial advice. I am deeply sorry to hear about his illness and wish him all the best.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to my noble friend. Like him, I worked with Sir Jeremy. I sat round the Cabinet table for a number of years with him and worked with him when I was Chief Whip and Leader of the House. One of his successes was building on the work of his predecessors and creating a more open, diverse, plural Civil Service that was also more professional but never lost sight of the basic principles of the Civil Service: honesty, openness, impartiality and integrity.

Infrastructure and Projects Authority

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Baroness raises a very important issue. If she looks at the annual report of the IPA, she will see the action it is taking in order to make sure that the Civil Service has exactly the skills and resources it needs. There is a fast-stream process and it is recruiting graduates and providing leadership programmes in order to ensure that the Civil Service does indeed have the capacity to manage these very large and costly projects.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

If my noble friend’s reply to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is that this signalling system, whatever it is called, is for the project managers, then the question perhaps ought to be reformulated: what have the project managers been doing while the lights have been flashing?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The project managers are frequently asked to appear before the PAC or the NAO in order to answer precisely those questions. If my noble friend looks at the relevant recent reports of the PAC and the NAO, he will see that they,

“recognise the steps it has taken to strengthen project assurance, improve transparency and introduce project leadership training”.

More recently, in a recent report on property acquisitions by the Department for Transport in relation to HS2, the NAO noted that positive steps have been taken,

“to develop capability and provide greater assurance on improving project delivery”.

No one would be happier than me if civil servants were to answer this question rather than Ministers.

EUC Report: EU External Action Service

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson not just for the way in which he chaired our inquiry into the European External Action Service but for all the work that he has done for the committee. He has been a very open-minded but firm chairman, and we had some extremely interesting sessions thanks to his very firm leadership.

I also thank our clerk, Kathryn Colvin, and researchers, Roshani Palamakumbura and Edward Bolton, for all their hard work.

I was a little confused about who would reply for the Government in this debate. I read in the newspaper that my noble friend Lady Warsi had escaped from the entertainment in the Chamber and so I was not surprised to find her name on the list here, but now she seems to have been replaced, not just in the Chamber but in this Room, by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. If what I read in the newspapers was correct, the noble Lord had some nostalgic recollections over the weekend, as I think he sang at the Queen’s coronation over the road. Anyway, we are delighted that he is answering on behalf of the Government today.

I am not sure that it is appropriate that I should be the first representative of the committee to speak after the chairman. Mind you, not many members of the committee are present at this moment. I was hesitant about being the first because, although I think I was the first person to suggest an inquiry into this subject, I do not think that my views in the committee were representative of the committee as a whole. I was certainly sceptical about the EAS at the beginning of the inquiry, and I have to say that after all the discussions and all the evidence that we had I remain very sceptical about it.

I say that without in any way implying any criticism of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, who I think has been in a difficult situation and has done a very good job. Nor do I imply any criticism or make any attempt to diminish the importance of the aid work that goes on through the legations and the embassies. The focus of my scepticism and criticism is much more on the network of offices and embassies throughout the world. It seems to me to be a bureaucracy that has been brought into being before anyone has decided precisely what it is meant to do.

An awful lot of the evidence that appeared before the committee seemed to be self-justification. I should not speak for other members of the committee, but listening to some of their questions I got the impression that some of them could not work out what the EAS was meant to be doing either. That, I think, is reflected in our conclusion on page 1 of the report, that,

“the EEAS encountered uncertainties about what the Member States wanted it to do”.

On page 2, the report states:

“Member States should clarify what they want the EEAS to do”.

I suggest that it would have been rather better, before we decided to spend around €500 million a year, to have decided what we wanted it to do. As I say, a number of witnesses who appeared before the committee out of choice seemed astonishingly unable to define what the EAS was for or what it was meant to do.

The basic problem, of course, is that there is no single foreign policy of the EU as such. On Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, Kosovo, and trade and energy issues with Russia, despite the achievements of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, in recent weeks, there is no agreed line. One or two witnesses attempted to imply that Europe had been a major actor in what had happened in Egypt. Well, it spent a lot of money in Egypt and made a number of representations, but I have met no one from Egypt who believes that the European Union has had a big impact there. I also followed up on claims that were made for the extraordinary influence of the EAS in the Yemen by asking various Yemeni people I met whether they were aware of it. I found little awareness, if any. Where in European foreign policy there is an agreed line, I cannot see why that cannot be communicated diplomatically, if it needs to be, through the embassies of Germany, France, Italy and other countries. I cannot see what the European embassies can do on the ground that cannot be done by the national embassies, certainly of the major countries.

In a previous EU committee session, we had evidence from the prospective EU ambassador to China. I asked him what he thought he could do that could not be done by the German embassy, the French embassy or the Italian embassy. He said, “We, much more than them, are going to major on human rights and place all the emphasis on those rights”. I do not think that will get him a long way in raising the profile of the EU in China.

Under the Lisbon treaty, foreign policy remains largely under the control of member states. Having looked at this, and presumably thought about it, the committee’s recommendation, on page 10, was that it should remain so. Also on page 10, the report states:

“The EEAS should not … seek to project its own foreign policy”.

In that sense, the question “What is the telephone number for Europe?” is not the right one. There are telephone numbers for the different major actors, and it is unreal to think that there should be a single telephone number on all questions for Europe.

On page 31, following the logic that foreign policy is the prerogative of member states, the report states:

“The scrutiny role of the European Parliament should not go beyond its current level”.

Members of the committee who went on the visit to the European Parliament and heard Elmar Brok speaking on this subject there have no doubt that it is the ambition of Mr Brok and other members of the European Parliament that it should play a major role in directing European foreign policy.

There are 141 delegations around the world. At the time of our report there were 1,922 EAS staff plus 3,514 commission staff, making a total of 5,436 people around the world. There is quite generous staffing in places. There are 44 people in Barbados, 32 in Mozambique and 30 in Uruguay. The EU is represented in 11 Pacific island countries, including the Cook Islands, Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and lots of others. A point made very clearly in the report and echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in his speech was that the location of offices ought to be determined not by history but by what is in the best interests of the European Union and what is likely to contribute most to the solution of real problems. What the noble Lord and the report say about reviewing the offices and their location makes a lot of sense.

The report was, if anything, rather lenient on the failure of the EAS to achieve budget neutrality. It is not an excuse to say that it is a young organisation. It was set up on the strict condition that there should be budget neutrality—you take money from one pot, and you put it in another—but we have had a litany of all the familiar excuses, which will be familiar to anyone who has ever been in the Treasury, about what had been inherited and the difficulty of the current climate. In the current climate, in which austerity and budget cuts have been in place all over the EU, it is very regrettable that there was a failure to achieve budget neutrality, and I strongly endorse the report’s conclusion that there should be zero real increases in expenditure in future.

It was unfortunate that the report did not go further into salaries. We had a firm statement from Mr Shorter of the office of the Minister for Europe that salaries are very high by national standards. Another witness described them as outrageous profligacy, and another as a ridiculous amount of money. Certainly, they seem to be higher than national salaries. In the report, the argument was made that it is difficult to make precise comparisons, but it would have been better had we looked at this rather earlier in our inquiry and gone somewhat deeper.

Particularly singled out for criticism were the salaries of the 11 special representatives dealing with certain crisis areas and certain geographical areas of crisis. It was said to us that several of those special representatives have salaries higher than that of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It was argued that high salaries were necessary in order to get figures of genuine international standing, but I think that only three out of the 11 special representatives have actually gone to people who were not former officials. Only three have gone to people who are former Ministers, for example. We have a lot of distinguished people here. Perhaps they could be considered for some of the special representatives in future.

Again, I emphasise that my criticism is largely directed at the physical network. We heard several witnesses, and one extremely senior one in private, say that the delegations in Brazil and in India, the so-called strategic partners, have had no impact on that relationship or on changing it. The lady witness from the WTO said that the EAS had no noticeable impact on trade negotiations and that the cards and the brass plates on the tables had changed but the method of working and the negotiations methods had not changed at all.

One justification that was put forward for the network of offices was that one needed to see trade in a political context. I remain sceptical about that. Of course one needs to know the political motivation and the local context in which people have a particular view on a particular trade issue. However, that is easily ascertainable through national embassies, or indeed through reading newspapers. One has to distinguish between trade policy and trade promotion. Sometimes in the arguments that were put forward, trade promotion was confused with trade policy. In trade policy, the EU definitely has a valuable role: in trade promotion, I would say hardly at all, although I do not think that that was clear in all the statements that were made before the committee.

The EAS exists, and we have to make the best of it. I agree with the points that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, made about training and secondment. I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed by the Government’s reply to the report, and I wonder whether it really said what the people in the Foreign Office actually say in their heart of hearts about the EAS. It does not explain away the number of ambassadors—I shall not name them—who, late at night over a glass of whisky, have asked me “What does this thing actually do? What is its purpose? What is it for?”. It seems to me that the logic that we are going with is that we should actually start considering closing down some British embassies just as we start expanding the EAS network, but of course the Foreign Office would never dream of agreeing to that.

House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill [HL]

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Friday 29th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am tempted to say that I would like to give the House an absolute assurance that I will speak severely to the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, immediately after the end of this debate. It would give me immense pleasure so to do. I will make sure that in his next speech he refers to the immense experience and expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

If I understand what the Minister said, under the Government’s proposals Members of this House will be paid according to attendance. He has also said that they will not have to do constituency work. Does not this fall into exactly the phrase that the Deputy Prime Minister used as a criticism—that people are being paid just for turning up?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, again, we do not wish to go too far into the other Bill. We are all conscious, if we are critical, that of those of us who turn up regularly, many of us work extremely hard but not all of us work as hard as the others. That will very likely be the same in an elected House, but we hope that the level of hard work will be even broader than now.