EU Ambassador to the UK: Diplomatic Status
Lord Liddle Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
Let me assure the noble Lord, who speaks with great insight and experience, that we are doing exactly that. We want to focus on the G7 summit and on the other important priorities that lie in front of us, including dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and the rollout of the vaccines, and, equally importantly, our planning for the COP 26 in November in Glasgow.
Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I have the greatest respect for the Minister, but does he understand that he is completely failing to convince the House of the need for any discussions about the status of the EU ambassador in Britain? Should he not be communicating this to the Foreign Secretary—who, although we have been urged many times by the Front Bench to move on from the Brexit debates and arguments, seems incapable of doing so in his search for cheap points that will go down well with his Brexiteer Back-Benchers?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I work closely with my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, and, as I said in response to an earlier question, of course I will feed back the sentiments of your Lordships’ House. However, I can speak for my right honourable friend. Over the past year or so I have seen the importance he attaches to our colleagues across the EU and the close working partnerships and friendships he has formed, so I disagree with the noble Lord in both the final element and the premise of his question: that is not the case. We work very closely with the EU collectively, but also with key partners within the EU, most notably Germany and France. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has an important role in leading on those relationships.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Liddle Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, it is difficult to follow such a brilliant speech from the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, but it has brought home to me what a privilege it is to be a Member of this House and I thank him for it. Boris Johnson’s Queen’s Speech, because that is what it is, is important because it marks a fundamental change in the national strategy of this country. Unlike his predecessor Mrs May, he really has bought into the notion of global Britain and it is that which I would like to explore in my speech.
The idea of a national strategy was first advanced by Alan Milward in his history of how Britain came to accept EU membership in the early 1960s. He described how the post-war national strategy was seen to be failing after Suez. Macmillan then developed a strategy based on joining the European Community for two main reasons. The first was that a close attachment to Europe’s markets and being part of what eventually became the single market would provide a very competitive framework for business and a sound basis for investment by the rest of the world. Secondly, if we were to maintain the pretensions of being the closest ally of the United States, politically the key to British influence was that we would have to be at the same time part of the developing European unity, because without it Washington would not take London seriously. That national strategy, which has worked until now with some ups and downs, has delivered for the United Kingdom. The 2016 referendum result was therefore—as I remember the noble Lord, Lord Butler, describing it in the first debate we had after the referendum—a dagger to the heart of everything we thought we had been doing in this country for the previous half-century.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, that Mrs May had an opportunity to build a national consensus immediately after the referendum by taking us out of the European Union but keeping us in the Common Market. That could have been done, and would have won a lot of support and kept us in a very close relationship with our European friends. But that opportunity was not taken, and in the first year of her premiership we heard a lot of jargon. We had the Lancaster House speech and this constant reiteration that “Brexit means Brexit”, without explaining what Brexit meant.
However, I think that Mrs May, as she went deeper and deeper and got more experienced in European questions, basically wanted to save what she could from our membership of the European Union. Economically, she sought the closest possible alignment with the European single market, as long as we could escape from free movement. Politically, she emphasised a continuing wish to work closely with our EU partners on questions such as Russia, Iran, the Middle East and China.
Mr Johnson has opted for something quite different: a different concept of how Britain succeeds and a fundamentally different vision of Britain’s place in the world. I do not think this “global Britain” idea is based just on imperial nostalgia. In fact, I recommend to all your Lordships a brilliant article in this week’s New Statesman by Robert Saunders, a Queen Mary historian, titled “Myths from a Small Island”. He thinks that the Brexiteers, including Mr Johnson, have taken on board the myth of the Britain with the buccaneering spirit, the free-trading nation that can conquer the world, and that this lies behind so many of the statements of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liam Fox and the Prime Minister himself. Quoting Liam Fox, he summed this up perfectly:
“A ‘small island perched on the edge of Europe’ had become ‘the world’s largest and most powerful trading nation’, not through its military or naval power, but through ‘a history steeped in innovation and endeavour’”.
This is what Dr Fox sees as our global future, as does Mr Johnson.
Dr Saunders points out how fatally flawed this vision is. First, when Britain dominated the world economically, it was because there were structural conditions that favoured it. We were the workshop of the world and generated enormous wealth that enabled us to have a Royal Navy that ruled the waves. That does not apply today. Secondly, it is very dangerous to perpetuate the myth that, by standing alone, Britain achieves its historical purpose and is at its best. We all buy too much into the Dunkirk myth. The truth is that what won the Second World War was the grand alliance with the United States and the power of the Red Army. Thirdly, Mr Johnson’s vision of the world relies so much on what we might describe as the power of positive thinking—the ability to brush aside the harsh realities—
Lord Framlingham (Con)
What part does the noble Lord think the Battle of Britain played in the Second World War?
Lord Liddle
The Battle of Britain was clearly important in keeping Britain in the war and keeping the flame of democracy alive. But I said that what won the war was not the Battle of Britain but the alliance with the United States and the power of the Red Army, and I think that that is true.
The power of positive thinking is very important to Mr Johnson and it leads to a kind of hubris that will inevitably lead to nemesis. We see that in the Queen’s Speech because three elements of the government strategy do not add up. The first is that we will transform Britain’s economic performance through a programme of deregulation, as my noble friend Lady Hayter put it. He says that we will tear away the bureaucratic red tape and release talent, innovation and chutzpah. Let us hear more about how that will be done. The fact is that the most innovative parts of our economy—the digital economy and the pharmaceutical companies—are desperate to stay in the framework of the single market. They do not want to be liberated from it: they want to be part of a common regulatory zone. The more that the Government present this unappealing vision to our European partners of a Singapore on the Thames, the more difficult it will be to secure preferential access to the single market. We can already see that in the negotiations presently taking place in Brussels.
The second contradiction is that Mr Johnson believes that he can sustain political support for this programme of deregulation through what he calls one-nation policies—addressing the people’s priorities of health, education, social care, crime and so forth. He will have great difficulty in doing that because, as the IFS pointed out this week, the forecast for the public sector deficit this year is already some £50 billion. Such policies might be achieved by combining them with increases in taxation, but Mr Johnson wants to slash taxes as well. The one-nation approach that he puts forward is not at all sustainable or likely to last.
The third contradiction is that the Prime Minister strongly believes that Britain can play this world role as a soft superpower, detached from the European Union. But if we are to do that, we need to recognise the Brexit headwinds that we will face. Every serious piece of economic analysis has shown that the kind of deal that Mr Johnson envisages will result in a loss of potential of something of the order of 7.5% of GDP. On that basis, you cannot build many of my noble friend Lord West’s frigates or play a leading role in world institutions, and we will find that we cannot pursue a strong foreign policy. If we go down this “global Britain” road, we face a future of great insecurity and uncertainty, and I hope that we can stop this madness before we are locked into it.
United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United States: Leaked Messages
Lord Liddle Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I applaud my noble friend Lady Quin for bringing this Motion to the House. I shall focus on what the leak means for relations between Ministers, officials and special advisers. For 15 years of my life I worked closely in that capacity with officials, eight of which were spent working with the Foreign Office and its diplomats. I have spent many hours enjoyably and informatively reading diplomatic telegrams—it was one of the delights of being an insider.
I have great concern about what this episode means for the relationship between politicians, officials and diplomats. It seems to me that the new Government are going to test this relationship to the limits. In politics, you always get leaks where there are disagreements and people want to put forward their own point of view, to position themselves more favourably vis-à-vis someone else. We have always had Cabinets which are, essentially, a team of rivals. It seems that the new Cabinet is a team of sycophants and to be a member of it you have to have the essential quality of faith, as the old evangelical preachers wanted you to have: if only you had faith and you believed something strongly enough, then you could make it true. That is the sycophancy that is at the heart of our new Prime Minister. How is that going to work with officials? I think it will work very badly and that is why the Darroch leak is so serious. I pay my own tribute to Sir Kim, with whom I worked closely over many years.
It seems plausible that the leak occurred as a result of an intervention, as my noble friend Lord Adonis said, with a political, Brexiteer purpose in mind. Sir Kim’s offence in their eyes was that he provided honest analysis of the confusions and contradictions at the heart of the Trump Administration, with whom the Brexiteers want to establish a close relationship while ditching our relationship with Europe. The essence of civil servants is that they must be able, in confidence, to speak truth to power. My fear is that the Johnson Government will not want to be told that their prejudices are wrong; they have no real time for the facts and all that matters to them is the power of the will. This House could play a considerable role in the next few months in trying to launch an inquiry into the relationships between the Civil Service and Ministers. As constitutional guardians, that would be an appropriate role for us, as well as trying to hold the new Government to account. We need to ensure that one of the things that we very much value about this country—the principle that civil servants and diplomats are prepared to give, in confidence, their honest advice—is maintained.
Gibraltar
Lord Liddle Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I am pleased to say that my right honourable friend David Davis is in Madrid today, and he has made it clear to Spain that our position is entirely in line with the answer that I have given to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. The noble Lord, as always, raises significant questions and is right that we have to be aware that, in any negotiation, other members of the European Union may raise issues which are of specific importance to them. That is what negotiations are about.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
While I accept the noble Baroness’s sincerity in saying that there is no change in Gibraltar’s position, surely the fact that we are leaving the European Union disadvantages Gibraltar an awful lot. When Spain has interfered improperly with the border in the past, we have had the strong support of the European Commission because this was in breach of the freedom of movement rules of the treaty. Does the noble Baroness accept that, now that we can no longer rely on those rules, Gibraltar’s position is bound to be considerably worse?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
No, my Lords, because we intend to ensure that the rights of Gibraltar are maintained throughout the negotiations. The border is an important issue; it will continue to be so, and it is a matter that we will resolve. Of course, at this stage, I am not able to provide the exact details of what agreements will be reached. After all, the leaked document to which noble Lords referred is a draft document; it is not even a final document produced by the Commission.
Brexit: UK-EU Relationship
Lord Liddle Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Liddle
That this House takes note of the best options for the United Kingdom’s future relationship with the European Union following the referendum vote to leave.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interests as co-chair of Policy Network, a member of Cumbria County Council and Pro Chancellor of Lancaster University, all of which stand to lose as a result of Brexit.
In opening this debate, I am aware that in your Lordships’ House I have somewhat predictable form on Europe. I do not resile from the judgment I made earlier that Brexit will be the worst disaster for the United Kingdom since appeasement. But my focus for today’s debate is forward looking: given where we are, what would be Britain’s best possible relationship with the EU in future?
It is a particular pleasure to have the benefit of the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, today. When I was in No. 10, it was a great privilege to work with Foreign Office officials of Peter Ricketts’ calibre. He joins a long and distinguished line of former diplomats who in their candour make a remarkable contribution to the work of this House. I look forward to his maiden speech today.
On the substance, I hope the House will allow me to be specific, clear and at times blunt. For the economy, there is no better solution in the national interest than Britain’s continued full participation in the single market. With Brexit we can no longer be members with voting rights—but forget the vague waffle about access. What matters is: first, that we stick to the EU rules and standards and update them as new rules are made; secondly, that we continue to make payments to the EU budget—forget that £350 million a week for the NHS; if Brexit goes bad, we will be cutting the NHS—and thirdly, that we accept directly, or, if the Prime Minister insists, indirectly, the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice as EFTA members largely do through their separate EFTA court.
Such a course is overwhelmingly in the interests of jobs and living standards in the UK. Remaining a member of the customs union would be very much second best. While the customs union secures tariff-free access for manufacturing and food exports and avoids the complex bureaucracy of rules of origin, it leaves out services. In other words, it secures free trade in goods, where we have the largest balance of payments deficit, and fails in that objective in services, where we have our largest surplus. The future of the services sector would then depend on negotiating a comprehensive free trade deal with the EU, which would have to be far broader in scope than either Canada or Switzerland have been able to achieve.
I say to my Labour friends: when talking about services, do not imagine that this is just about protecting the interests of bankers—and when you talk about bankers, remember that they produce a lot of tax revenues that go towards the NHS and the welfare state. Services, where we excel, are much bigger than the City. Brexit threatens our position as a centre of TV and film distribution, our lawyers’ rights to represent clients in European courts, and the commercial strength of a whole range of services where free movement and the mutual recognition of qualifications are huge benefits to Britain—especially the ability to send highly qualified people on client assignments anywhere in the EU.
Free movement may be politically poisonous within the UK but it is the rock on which the business models of many of our most successful and advanced companies in digital, creative and professional services are built. Ending up as a member of the customs union would therefore be very much second best. Yet even that is threatened by the vanities of Dr Liam Fox, because being members of the customs union would greatly restrict our ability to cut new trade deals with the rest of the world. Dr Fox has convinced himself of this strange logic: it is in the national interest to forgo membership of the single market, which secures free trade for nearly half our exports, in return for the highly uncertain prospect of negotiating new British trade deals with the rest of the world, with all the complexities and political constraints that come with them. In my view, the so-called opportunities of Brexit are largely delusional vistas.
Similarly, we must stop talking nonsense about becoming an offshore Singapore, or a haven of social dumping, as many on the continent believe that the Government plan. Full participation in the single market on fair rules should be the aim. Corporate tax policy will be the big test. There is no way the EU will agree to our full participation in the single market if Great Britain, the second-largest market presently in the EU, sees itself as a Cyprus, an Ireland or a Luxembourg. Rather, we should be offering full co-operation with the EU to fight corporate tax avoidance.
People did not vote for these outcomes on 23 June. There is no mandate for making these choices. The leavers say that in the referendum they always made clear that Britain would be leaving the single market. Yes, they did say that—but at the same time they assured voters that Britain could have its cake and eat it and enjoy unrestricted free trade with the rest of Europe. The reason leave won on 23 June was that not enough people were convinced that there would be a real economic downside to leaving the EU. Therefore, they voted to “take back control” because they believed that it would be largely cost free.
However, we can see the downsides emerging already: a sharp sterling devaluation that will cut living standards in every year of this Parliament; widespread investment uncertainty; and a grave loss of tax revenues forecast by the OBR. For all those reasons, full participation in the single market must be the top national priority, and it is the job of the Prime Minister to show leadership in the national interest and spell out the realities to the Redwoods and Foxes on her own side. That message would echo positively around Europe and completely change the atmosphere for the Brexit negotiations, which I fear on the continent is rapidly becoming poisonous.
Many people on our Benches, here and in the other place, will say, “What about free movement? What about immigration? Haven’t the British people given a clear instruction to the political class—most of all to the Labour Party, with its claim to represent working people—that something must be done?”. I take that point with two crucial qualifications. First, any new policy must be based on clear evidence, not simple prejudice. As Hugh Gaitskell once famously wrote of Evan Durbin, the nature of social democratic politics is,
“the pursuit of truth to the bitter end”.
Secondly, we must never ever stigmatise migrants in the way that some leavers did. The rise in hate crime and social media abuse and the fact that many people feel they are no longer welcome in our country since 23 June is appalling and offends our basic values of equality and humanity. This is the slippery slope that leads to the end of tolerance and the end of an open society. But, yes, migration, both internal and external in the EU, must be better managed.
Free movement is not a uniquely British problem. Several member states accept the need for reform, including eastern Europeans, as long as we are prepared to continue to assist them financially with their economic development. Britain should have taken a lead on these questions in 2012, but that would have involved as a quid pro quo a greater willingness than the present Government were prepared to show to share the burdens of the refugee crisis. Regrettably, we did not take that lead and it may now be too late. However, the UK should still put its weight behind arguing for a Europe-wide rethink, not just British exceptionalism—although the EU’s current negotiations with the Swiss on free movement may give us a peg on which to hang our coat.
Nationally, we could do much more to manage migration better. Our national approach to it has fallen victim to the besetting British preference for laissez-faire. So let us have a bigger migration impact fund that acts quickly, and let us bring in proper enforcement of minimum wages and labour standards. However, I believe that the core of the problem in Britain lies in our highly flexible labour market, with too many businesses locked into a dependence on low-skilled migrant labour. Let us explore how we might reregulate our labour market, particularly where the problems are worst—in agriculture, food processing, hospitality and social care. We should consider setting up statutory tripartite bodies, on the models of the wages councils and training boards, with responsibility for raising skills, productivity and wages in those sectors. And why not give such bodies a mandate to recruit young trainees from parts of our country where decent training places and job opportunities are in short supply? Employer reliance on migrant low-skilled labour needs to be cut—but, in my view, it will take a dose of market interventionism to achieve it.
Finally, we must present ourselves as sincere, committed partners of our friends and allies across the Channel. Britain has so much to give on security and defence. I accept that the Government stress their commitment to NATO, and NATO remains crucial—but NATO is not enough. In today’s circumstances, of all circumstances, we cannot give the impression that we will prioritise the United States over our allies and friends in Europe. I want to believe President Obama’s assurances about President-elect Trump, but I fear that, for once, Obama’s fundamental decency and respect for the office he holds are obscuring his real fears. I really want to be proved wrong—but to be seen to kow-tow to a maverick Trump will only isolate Britain further in Europe.
The common security challenges that Britain and Europe face are broader than defence in the classic NATO sense: failed states, religious extremism, terrorism, climate change, the social and economic consequences of desertification in Africa, and structural pressures from tens of millions of young unemployed people in the emerging world searching for a better life in Europe. We need a common partnership with our European friends to address these questions. Outside the EU, that will be far more difficult.
Does Brexit then require a fundamental rethinking of the European security architecture? Perhaps it does. How about a revival of a western European union, with decision-making executives consisting of Britain, the big EU member states and the highest-level representation of NATO and the EU institutions? I do not have a clear answer—but, my goodness, I wish we had an Ernie Bevin at the Foreign Office and not a Boris Johnson.
We have to ask ourselves where we want to end up as a result of Brexit. Today, Britain is a European power with some considerable global reach. By all means, let us be global, but let us not delude ourselves. This nation has never for long been able to cut itself off from the continent—and when it has tried, the results have been disastrous, as with the two world wars in the last century. The best option for Brexit Britain is that we remain a European nation with the closest possible economic and security ties with our European friends and neighbours. That is the reality of Britain’s position in the world. With Brexit—and despite Brexit—let it remain our patriotic destiny as well.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply and for her characteristic graciousness in giving me the time to respond to the debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, on his maiden speech. We are looking forward to many more of them as he educates us about our future security and foreign policy relationships with the European Union. As always in these debates, as the opening speaker one puts a lot of effort into one’s speech, thinks that one has a clear position that one is advocating and then hears all kinds of wonderful contributions that mean that one has to think again. There is a lot to ponder in what people have said here.
Perhaps I could say a couple of things briefly. On my side of the House, several of my noble friends have talked about the possibility of a second referendum. Personally, I do not rule that out, but it is far too early in the process to see whether it is a runner; if the Government achieve the success that they promise, it may well not be. I tabled this debate in an honest wish that the Brexit negotiations go well for Britain. I put a lot of emphasis on economic questions because whether or not we have a successful economy—the single market is vitally tied up with that—will be crucial to whether we are an outward-looking nation. My fear is that if we have the quick, hard Brexit which my noble friend Lord Desai appears to favour, we would suffer a major economic shock that would make the problems of populism and being inward-looking even more problematic in our country than they are now. If we want to be confident, we therefore have to get the economics right. That is a key facilitator in us playing the strong security, foreign policy and defence role in the world that I believe Britain should play.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Chandos that the continental partnership report is a very interesting proposition, which I would like to see taken seriously by government, here and on the continent. The problem—this is certainly not a reference to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay—is the way in which the Government are presently charging around Europe, making statements about how we are going to have our cake and eat it, treating the whole process with disrespect and demonstrating a lack of sensitivity to the fact that we are the people walking away from our partners of 40 years and causing very big problems for them. Unless the Government show more sensitivity in their approach to these negotiations, we will end up in a very difficult situation and with a hard Brexit—and we will not end up with a happy Britain. On that note, I commend the Motion that I tabled.
European Union Referendum Bill
Lord Liddle Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Liddle (Lab)
I will make two quick points in support of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was rhetorically brilliant, as his contributions in this House so often are. However, his brilliance displayed a weakness on the part of those who want to leave the EU: they are frightened of the argument about what the alternatives to membership really are. That is why he is so reluctant to support the amendment.
There are two points which have not been made in this debate about the wrong assumption, made by many people who favour leaving the EU, that the UK would be able to retain most of the advantages of EU membership without actually being a member of it. That is what one hears from UKIP and the leave campaign. I question this on two grounds. The first ground is the politics of us voting to leave. In the Prime Minister’s renegotiation, which I want to succeed, many member states will make concessions to Britain that they do not actually want but make because they want to keep Britain in the EU. The politics of this is that there will be a great deal of bitterness if they have gone a mile to help the UK and we then vote to leave.
What is more, there is a significant—20% to 30%—anti-European element in the politics of many EU countries today. The last thing in the world that the leaders of other EU countries are going to want to see is Britain able to negotiate a good deal from being out, because that will just strengthen the voices of the right and left populists in their own countries who are arguing to get out of the EU. So the politics will be extremely difficult for us if we vote to leave.
My second point is about free trade. I agree with all the arguments that our bargaining position is not as strong as is often claimed. However, a lot of this debate ignores the modern facts of free trade. It is not about tariffs and access, as it used to be. It is about sharing the same rules as the people with whom you are trading. That is why most banks in the City of London want to remain in the EU: if they do not share the rulebook with people on the continent, they will not be able to trade in euro business. I do not know how big an element of their business that is, but it is certainly substantial. A friend of mine in Brussels told me what happened in the recent fracas about Volkswagen. The initial proposals to deal with the problem of diesel engines, which the French and Germans had cooked up together, would actually have meant that half of Ford engines could not have been exported to the continent because the British methods of production would not have been compliant. It was only because we were in the room and making the arguments that we could do a deal with our partners to make sure that the rules would not disadvantage British-based manufacturing.
So it is about rules and, if we want to trade with the EU, either we have got to stick with their rules and all the talk about repealing regulations is complete nonsense, or we abandon the rules and we do not get the trade. That fundamental point is why the British public need to have it objectively explained what the consequences of leaving the EU would be, and what the nature of our future relationship with the EU would be.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
I pick up the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for saying that to export to the EU we would have to meet the rules it imposed. Of course we would. It is the same position as America, India, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil or any other country that is not in the EU—or, for that matter, Switzerland, which manages to export more per head to the EU than we do and it is not in the EU. It is not a convincing argument at all. We already meet the rules now with our motor car exports. Why should that change? If change is required we will, of course, have to change—and so will other manufacturers who are outside the EU.
Lord Liddle
I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, defines British sovereignty as simply having to accept whatever changes in the rules the EU makes without our participation.
Lord Tugendhat (Con)
My Lords, I do not normally find myself in close agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, but on this occasion what he said was absolutely correct. If the British people speak in a referendum, Parliament must follow and the United Kingdom will inevitably, in the circumstances which he envisaged, be leaving the European Union. I would very much regret that: it would be contrary to the interests of this country. However, were the electorate to make that decision I would hope, as would others who campaign for Britain to stay in, that we would negotiate the most favourable deal possible with the European Union. Our loyalty to this country would be unaffected by the result and would remain a primary consideration.
However, it is absurd to suppose that we will not enter into a period of very considerable uncertainty. Anybody who knows anything at all—and noble Lords know a great deal—knows that the worst possible thing for an economy and investment is uncertainty. It may be that we would negotiate a favourable agreement in the end, but there would be a period when a great deal would be unknown and people would be very reluctant to invest. I hesitate to talk about the Scottish referendum in the presence of my noble friend Lord Forsyth, but there was evidence in Scotland, as there was in Canada on an earlier occasion, that a referendum casts a shadow ahead of it which deters investment. If there was a period of considerable uncertainty at the end of the referendum before the outcome was known, the economy would suffer, even if one was optimistic about the outcome.
European Union Referendum Bill
Lord Liddle Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Hamilton of Epsom
At the end of the day, the EU thinks that it is free to issue information. Information can take many different forms, and I do not see that there is anything that can be done. The Minister has already said that we cannot actually stop the EU financing activities because they are all done in the name of information—and what is the difference between information and propaganda?
Lord Liddle (Lab)
Is the noble Lord a regular reader of the Daily Express and the Daily Mail? Does he think that they provide objective, truthful information about the European Union?
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
I have to say that that is an entirely different issue.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
The noble Lord has intervened so let me answer his question. I think that the Daily Mail and the Daily Express have their own views, as do the Guardian and the Independent. We have a free press; it is up to them what they do. We are talking here about what the EU does to finance activities during this referendum.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, does the noble Lord believe it is wrong for the EU to provide factual information about what it does when in large sections of our press, which are foreign owned, lies are printed about the EU virtually every day?
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, will know well, factual information from the EU amounts to it advertising that it is spending inordinate amounts of money on different interest groups of one sort or another around the UK, as if this were all manna from heaven: “Gosh, you’re lucky, the EU has decided to spend some money on you”. What it does not bother to tell people is that it is their own money.
The great problem that Lord Joseph had when he was in the Thatcher Government was to persuade Ministers to talk not about “public money” that they were being so generous with, but about “taxpayers’ money”. He managed to hold that line for a time with the Conservative Cabinet, but quite quickly it drifted off and we got back to Ministers constantly talking about how incredibly generous they were being with “government money”, as if all this stuff came from heaven. Of course, half the government money that we have now is borrowed anyway. It is an absurd mentality to think that people can be generous with other people’s money and get credit for it. Why should they, when it is actually the money that they have taken off the people of this country? We must live in the real world.
Amendment 18 is about purdah. The problem with purdah, as we all know, is that the Government are arguing that they have to allow the normal functions of government to continue. Obviously that is quite justifiable, but the point of my amendment is to restrict what can be done with regard to purdah. To return once more to my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s argument that this has to be seen to be a fair referendum, our worry is that we should not, as we did in the Scottish referendum on independence, suddenly have an enormous initiative from the Government to try to swing the vote because the polls are going the wrong way. We do not want some great initiative from the EU saying how incredibly generous or wonderful it has been in order to try to swing the vote here.
Lord Liddle
I moved an amendment on this in Committee, partly in jest. If the noble Lord wants a fair referendum, why does he not persuade his friends in the Conservative newspapers to give equal space to people who are in favour of our membership and people who are against?
European Union Referendum Bill
Lord Liddle Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Smith of Newnham
I thank the noble Lord for his comment. It would indeed be perfectly possible to negotiate a whole range of things associated with access to the internal market, the European arrest warrant and many other aspects of the relationship that the UK currently has with our European partners. However, we would need to consider, and the Government would need to be able to explain, in what areas they would envisage having relationships with the EU.
The idea that things could just carry on as before, as was suggested in a previous group of amendments, is rather complacent. Legislation that the UK has on its statute books would certainly persist, and on day one it might look very similar, but with regard to access to markets there is no reason whatever to assume that the EU 27—particularly acting by unanimity on Article 50, which the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has just referred to—would simply say, “The United Kingdom is so important to us that we will give it free access to our markets”. There would have to be negotiations, and there is no reason to assume that our current colleagues in the EU would open up the markets without extracting some sort of quid pro quo with some sort of agreement. I know it is not palatable to everyone to hear yet again about the European Economic Area, but looking at those relationships reveals that the member states of the EEA have effectively signed up to a huge amount of the EU’s acquis but without a seat at the table. They have to accept what the EU agrees.
The United Kingdom may be out-voted while we are a member of the European Union but if we play our cards right as a member we can negotiate, we can work with partners and we can amend legislation. On the outside we would be policy-takers and we would be doing what the European Union asked us to do. If we felt it was in our interests we might sign up to it but the costs are likely to be significant. If we engaged in a relationship that looked like a Norwegian model, we would end up paying into the Union budget, taking policy and having even less influence than now.
Noble Lords may say that I say that only because I want Britain to remain in. I am simply suggesting that it is important for citizens of the United Kingdom to understand the implications and that the Government should make clear what the implications of leaving would be and how they envisage the relationship of the United Kingdom with the rest of the European Union.
On Amendment 32A, could the Minister bring back to the Committee some thoughts on how the Government envisage the relationship with the Republic of Ireland if there were a vote to leave the European Union? That relationship is sui generis. The relationship between the Republic and Northern Ireland and the fact that there is currently no land border would be fundamentally changed. Withdrawal has implications for the United Kingdom and this one particular close neighbour in the European Union. I ask the Government to look again at that relationship.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 26, in my name, is of similar import to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. Mine, of course, is a political adviser’s amendment. It is sloppily drafted and not the expert amendment that you would expect of a senior Eurocrat; therefore, I am happy not to move my amendment in favour of that moved by the noble Lord. In my view if we wanted to educate the public about alternatives to EU membership we could do a lot worse than to ask the Government to send a printed copy, suitably amended, of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, to every household in the country—I thought it was brilliantly argued. We are going to hear a lot of these arguments in the coming year, and I shall not reiterate them now.
I want to make a couple of observations which I think are relevant. First, on the arguments about Britain’s strength to negotiate its own arrangements, I used to think in the same way as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. When I was a young man I am afraid I rather bought into the line of the German Social Democrat leader of the time, who described the Common Market as a conservative, cartelist, capitalist, clerical conspiracy. I was rather of that view but when I learned about it and read its history I realised that the Macmillan Government tried very hard in the 1950s to negotiate the kind of free trade agreement which the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, thinks is the solution to all our problems, but they came to the conclusion that it could not be done. The only possible alternative for Britain was to become a full member alongside the original six. I think that that judgment, which was made around 1959-60, is still sound, even though the European Union has transformed itself. So, too, has our economy. When I listen to some of the arguments of the anti-Europeans here, I think they still think in terms of British companies exporting to Europe.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I am not aware that there are any anti-Europeans here. There may be people who are anti the European Union; these are not the same things.
Lord Liddle
I take the point. The noble Lord has thrown me off my path. I was saying that the nature of our economy has changed and that sometimes when I listen to these debates I do not get an appreciation of that. The fact is that Britain has benefited more from European Union membership than virtually any other member, and has done so through attracting inward investment to the United Kingdom from all parts of the world. This has been a tremendous boost; it has been the only successful industrial policy we have had since the era of Margaret Thatcher; she was the one who first started it, and it has worked. That has meant that many British businesses are part of European and global supply chains, and we as a country benefit from hosting many foreign companies here. I often think, when I listen to the arguments, that people just do not appreciate that. Yet, that is clearly the major economic issue in the debate on membership. If that inward investment, that ability to organise your supply chains across Europe, were to be interrupted as a result of withdrawal and badly damaged, that could seriously deter future inward investment in the UK.
Most of us in this Chamber are pretty passionate in our views about the European Union, for and against. However, we also have to remember that most of the great British public are not very passionate about it; in fact, the great majority do not regard it as the most important issue in the world at all. Most opinion polling suggests that only about 10% of the voters are worked up about our membership of the European Union. That does not mean that they are pro—I am not trying to argue that. They are genuinely sceptic about the whole issue in a way in which a lot of the people who are anti-European Union in this Chamber, who claim to be sceptics, are not—they are passionate ideologues. However, most of the voters are sceptics, who want to weigh the evidence and be convinced one way or another by the argument.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
I totally accept the noble Lord’s thesis that this is not a high priority for the British public at the moment. On the other hand, however, he will recollect the time when the Tory party was tearing itself apart over the issue of Europe, and it was certainly a very much higher priority at that time. Does he not feel that as we approach the referendum and the debate rages it will move up in people’s priorities, and that they will take more interest in it?
Lord Liddle
The noble Lord is right about that, but it is the result of dissent in an elite and a particular part of the British political elite. People will get worked up about this because of a vigorous argument on one side of the political spectrum; it is not as a result of massive popular demand from below. However, that is not my point, which is that a lot of people are genuinely sceptic and probably dislike the Brussels bureaucracy a great deal but worry about our future outside the EU. That is where I think that the need for objectivity is very important. Clearly, I am not the right person to make an objective case about the European Union but I still believe that we have a public service in Britain which is independent and can be objective and which can help to frame a rational debate about our membership. That is why I think that the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, is so important.
I hope that the Minister, for whom I have the greatest respect, and the Government will look favourably on the argument regarding the need for objectivity in this debate and on the argument that the public service can help to bring that to the debate. That is what the public are looking for. I would hate to think that our politics had got to the state of that of the United States, where everything is so polarised that it is impossible to have any kind of meeting of minds or objectivity and rationality in discussions. I think that the senior members of the Government are coming round to a certain view about Britain’s future which I favour, so I hope that they will be prepared to support this call for independent, objective analysis, which is so important for the quality of our politics.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I was tempted to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. As I listened to his speech, he said, “The Commission is there to maintain the EU decision-making autonomy”. What a ghastly phrase. It suggests that an unelected body has autonomy. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said that the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, should be circulated as part of the campaign. I agree with that because in summary he said, “Look, we’re stuck with this organisation. They’re in charge. If you try to do anything about it, they’ll all gang up against you and throw your people out of work”. If that is the best argument that we can come up with for staying in this organisation, I despair. If that is the position, the sooner we get out the better, because we are being told that we are part of an EU decision-making autonomy.
European Union Referendum Bill
Lord Liddle Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, your Lordships will be aware that I am not a natural supporter of this piece of legislation. I still regard the Government’s renegotiation and referendum strategy as a reckless gamble, not just with our position in Europe but with the future of the United Kingdom itself. I think that has to be said. But now that a referendum is inevitable, I will be campaigning wholeheartedly for us to remain. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that at the Labour Party conference, which I had the fortune—or misfortune —to attend a fortnight or so ago, a resolution was carried saying that whatever the outcome of Mr Cameron’s negotiation, Labour will be campaigning to remain in the EU, and there was not a single voice in opposition.
I also think that this is a cross-party question and I want the Prime Minister to succeed in his renegotiation efforts. I do not think that we will succeed in the referendum without a positive lead from him. I want to make just a few remarks about how I think he can succeed. First, he should listen to what this House has to say about this piece of legislation. Surely on an issue of historic significance which will matter for generations to come, we should legislate to have both the widest possible franchise and the widest range of objective analysis available to citizens about the issues at stake—not just a narrow calculus of the costs and benefits of membership but a thorough examination of the alternatives to membership and a more geopolitical argument about how we see Britain’s place in the world. This objective analysis is essential. We cannot let this issue be decided by the pockets of the hedge fund managers who will finance the anti campaign.
The second advice to the Prime Minister is that he must beware those pressing for delay to get, as they claim, the best possible deal. Of course, within the EU the Prime Minister must make his case robustly for the changes that he wants. However, the view seems prevalent among some people that if only the Prime Minister goes into that European Council room and bangs the table again and again, he will get whatever he wants. That is not the way the European Union works. It completely misunderstands the nature of the EU, which is a complex system of law and due process built up over decades precisely to try to stop countries behaving in that kind of arbitrary way.
Yet the people who say that the Prime Minister should up his demands do not do so because they think he will get his demands but because they want out. Noble Lords in this House who argue that, yes, they would be prepared to stay in Europe if we got comprehensive treaty change, a cut in the EU budget, a fundamental rewriting of the rules on free movement and the right for the House of Commons to veto EU laws must know that those are impossible demands. They make them only to justify a campaign to leave. We have a lot of experience of that in this party. Some of us fought Trotskyist infiltration in the past—and might have to do so again. I urge my friends opposite to avoid being taken in by what are called transitional demands.
Thirdly, the Prime Minister cannot solve everything in his renegotiation. He should look upon it as a pointer to the Europe that he wants to see with Britain at its heart. There is a tremendous opportunity to achieve reform in Europe. The new European Commission set out a very British agenda about deepening the single market, reforming the way Europe regulates and having trade deals with the rest of the world. I would also like to see a strong social dimension in that—others, such as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, might disagree. The agenda is now one of reform and our Prime Minister, if he wanted, could lead that. As the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said, there is also an opportunity for our Prime Minister to take a much stronger role in using the EU to demonstrate that Britain can still have an influence in the world. With French and German elections coming up, and with the end of the Obama presidency, there is a tremendous opportunity now for the Prime Minister to demonstrate that leadership using our membership of the European Union. I hope that he does so.
Finally, the referendum is basically an asymmetric choice. A vote to come out will be final. If we voted to come out, we would invoke Article 50 of the treaty and in practice exclude ourselves from the EU Council chamber and any of the debate about what Britain’s future role with the EU would be. We would be on our own and there would be no way back. One dangerous thing that we have to avoid is people on the other side somehow thinking that a vote to leave is actually a vote for better terms. It is not, and it never can be; it is a vote out. On the other side, a vote to remain is not a vote for the EU status quo. It is a vote for a strong Britain to argue for reform in Europe in the way that Britain wants to see. Therefore, I say to the Prime Minister, “Don’t mess about. Get on with it. Take courage in your hands and let’s go for this referendum quickly”.
EU: UK Membership
Lord Liddle Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Liddle
That this House takes note of the case for the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, it is high time that pro-Europeans made a stronger and more forceful case for Britain’s membership of the European Union, for, as matters now stand, Britain is sleepwalking towards exit. The blame for this situation, in my view —and I say this in no partisan spirit and with great regret—rests fairly and squarely on the shoulders of our Prime Minister. I have come to the sad and rather depressing conclusion that our membership of the European Union is no longer safe in David Cameron's hands.
I admired his Bloomberg speech of January 2013. It presented a well argued case for reform of the European Union that had wide resonance on the continent. While I thought that the commitment to an “in or out” referendum was a mistake, it seemed then that Mr Cameron was committed to a positive result. I remind your Lordships of what he said then:
“And when the referendum comes let me say now that if we can negotiate such an arrangement, I will campaign for it with all my heart and soul. Because I believe something very deeply. That Britain’s national interest is best served in a flexible, adaptable and open European Union and that such a European Union is best with Britain in it. Over the coming weeks, months and years, I will not rest until this debate is won”.
Yet, since the summer, the Government's European policy has hardened beyond recognition. In a “Today” programme interview in September, Mr Cameron proclaimed that he cared,
“a thousand times more strongly”,
about the break-up of the United Kingdom, had the Scots voted yes, than about Britain's membership of the European Union. I can give him five times, or maybe 10 times, but a thousand times? There is not much room left there for heart and soul commitment.
In his recent conference speech, the man who at Bloomberg had talked with great emotion about an open Europe looked straight into the television camera and declared that limiting immigration would be at the heart of his renegotiation strategy. Let us remind ourselves that in the Bloomberg speech the Prime Minister’s only reference to migration was to warn of the loss of freedom of movement rights for the over 2.2 million British citizens who live on the continent. That comes from a Written Answer from the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, earlier this year, so 2.2 million is the figure. Now, in the stampede to sound ever tougher on EU migrants, the consequences for our fellow citizens living on the continent are frankly forgotten and never get a mention.
No. 10 has licensed no less a person than the Foreign Secretary, as well as other Ministers, to talk up the possibility that the Government might recommend a no vote if their renegotiation objectives are not met. The whole focus of the Government’s European policy has become not persuading our partners of a credible reform agenda that would receive general backing in Europe but chasing after potential defectors to UKIP. The whole exercise is so pointless, for as your Lordships know there is no way you can “outkip” UKIP.
If we end up leaving, it is not as though there is a great public wave of indignation about our membership of the European Union. The latest Ipsos-MORI poll showed 56% opting in a referendum to stay in and 36% to come out. It is worth underlining that in a poll that YouGov took after the Rochester by-election, only 22% of UKIP supporters actually think that Europe is one of the main issues facing the country. Yet what we have now is a Prime Minister so desperate to win the next general election that he will say anything to win over UKIP votes and prevent further defections by Conservative MPs, and in the process will set renegotiation objectives that are incapable of being achieved. In the next Parliament, if he remains Prime Minister, he will find himself cornered by his own anti-Europeans in the Conservative ranks to recommend a vote to leave Europe because of the consequences of what I can only describe as recklessness and opportunism.
The sleepwalking nightmare will be upon us, and the nation will realise what a disaster its craven leaders have allowed to happen only when it is far, far too late. That is why we need to make a stronger case now to try to prevent the slide to populism, which ends up with parties making promises they will never be able to keep. Of course, as a Labour man, I want to see a Labour Government. As a pro-European, I commend my leader Ed Miliband for resisting the enormous pressure to concede a referendum. However, even if there is a Labour-led Government in the next Parliament, there may be in a hung House of Commons a majority for an EU referendum, so we have to start making the case now—and a better case than we have made so far.
The traditional British case for Europe is about growth and jobs. It is a strong one: 3 million jobs dependent on the single market, inward investment coming to Britain because of unimpeded access to that single market, and international companies relying on the scale of Europe’s home market that is the EU single market to win new global markets overseas. But I think we have failed as pro-Europeans to get across to the public the complex nature and full economic significance of the single market.
Many people I meet think, “Why can’t we rid ourselves of the encumbrance of all the EU regulation and cost, and trade freely with our EU partners?”. Pro-Europeans have to start challenging the pullers out—because that is what they are—with hard and difficult questions about their alternatives to our EU membership and the consequences of those alternatives.
Broadly, there are two. The first is to be a Norway: in other words, be outside the EU but accept all its rules, pay up to finance its budget and continue to allow the free movement of people that EU laws require. That Norwegian option gets us out of the EU but denies Britain any say whatever over the key rules that shape our economic future, so that is not much of an option, is it?
The second option is to abandon those EU rules and to say, “We’ll make our own way without them”. What will happen then? We will find that our products and services are discriminated against in EU markets because they do not meet EU approval standards. We will see the flight of foreign banks in the City to Amsterdam or Paris to avoid that discrimination and to be in the single financial area. In the case of the car industry, the most successful manufacturing renaissance that this country has seen, British producers will face a 10% tariff in order to enter the European market, with untold consequences for vital jobs in many of the deprived regions of our country. That option—that dash for the restoration of national economic sovereignty —would inflict an economic wound of massive proportions. We have to spell that out.
Of course we should fight within the EU for EU rules to be proportionate and to see unnecessary regulation abandoned. But again we should always challenge the pullers out who complain about EU regulation. What do they actually want to get out of? Do they want, for example, to get out of and have no UK equivalent of the working time directive, which guarantees British workers four weeks’ paid holiday a year? Do they want out of it or not? Similarly, on environmental laws, do they want out of the regulations that require clean rivers and beaches and not have them in Britain? Or on consumer laws, do they want to end the regulations that provide for cheap air flights and that end rip-offs in mobile roaming charges? Is that what the anti-Europeans want? If they do not want that they are going to have to comply with EU laws and regulations. Pressing the pullers out on their alternatives to EU membership will be the equivalent of the currency question in the Scottish referendum, which the nationalists could never satisfactorily answer.
Beyond these questions of national self-interest, I believe that pro-Europeans have to make an emotional argument—to use another Scottish parallel—that we are better together. Harold Wilson once dismissed the sovereignty argument against Europe with the quip that he regarded the gradual pooling of sovereignty as part of the advance of human civilisation, and he was right. In a world of interdependence, if we want to tackle problems that reach beyond national borders, we need international co-operation that is effective. For all its many problems and frustrations, there is no better example of this in the world than the EU.
Think of the world that we are now in, with China, the world’s largest economy, pursuing a national strategy of aggressive state capitalism, with the return of nationalism in Russia, barbarism and fanaticism in the Middle East, and chaos and heart-rending human tragedy in north Africa. We in Europe are surrounded by these multiple threats to our contentment and civilisation, and either we hang together in addressing them or we hang separately. Without the co-operative framework of the European Union, we cannot begin to tackle the problems of climate change, energy, migration, disease that crosses borders, terrorism and threats to peace.
But the antis now say that none of this counts for anything, because they are managing to successfully define the greatest challenge of our age as immigration. They are making the claim that as long as we remain EU members we cannot control our borders. I believe profoundly that it is the responsibility of political leaders to lead on this issue. The facts are clear: EU migration has been a huge economic benefit to Britain. The populists blame migration for overcrowded schools, for long waits for GP appointments, for housing shortages. Of course there are areas of stress, and I think that what Labour is putting forward—that there be a migration fund as part of the social and structural funds—is a good idea. But the fact is that without the tax revenues that EU migrants bring to the Exchequer, we would find it much more difficult to tackle these problems and to find the spending to address these stresses than otherwise.
Yes, I agree that exploitation in labour markets has to be tackled and that benefit abuses have to be stopped, but free movement is a fundamental founding principle of the European Union, which successive Governments have solemnly signed up to since we first thought about entry in the 1960s, and from which millions —2.2 million, to be precise—of our citizens benefit. We cannot, with our integrity intact, cross the line into quotas and blatantly discriminatory policies.
Some 16 years ago I attended the ceremony when Helmut Kohl got his freedom of the City of London. At the end of his speech he talked about his boyhood days in Ludwigshafen, when he used to need a pass to go from one zone of the town to another because they were in different zones of Germany. He contrasted that with when he went on summer evenings to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Spanish Steps in Rome and our own Trafalgar Square, where he met so many young people of different European and other nationalities, mixing together enjoyably and at peace with each other. The miracle of the European Union has contributed to that to a very considerable degree. It underpins our prosperity and contentment. As we remember this centenary, the horrors of the First World War and what came after, we cannot cavalierly throw away one of the greatest historic achievements of European civilisation.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her very comprehensive, robust and intelligent response. She might be surprised by how much I agree with what she said. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her excellent maiden speech. I am sure that we shall have many debates on this key issue of our times and that she will make a notable contribution to them.
I also emphasise that my passion for making the case for Europe and for remaining a member of the EU, which I think is shared by many Members on this side of the House—not all, but many—does not blind me to the need for reform. There are fundamental problems of divergence, of legitimacy and of economic performance—mind you, we have some of those same problems in our country as well. It is as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said: there is a crisis in politics. That is not just about the EU, but it affects many EU member states. There are profound structural reasons for it that we do not properly understand. We have to debate all these things.
I will make two points of substance. First, I do not believe that the way we get reform in the EU is by making threats. That is where I think the whole UKIP approach is completely wrong. Secondly, the Government would do well to listen to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank. The best thing the Prime Minister could do, if he wants to have influence in the EU, is to make it clear that he thinks that we must remain a member, even though reforms are necessary. He could do a lot worse than repeat the words of Sir John Major: although lots of reforms are needed and there are lots of problems and frustrations with the EU, it is in Britain’s national interest that we remain a member.