UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an admirable report and I agree with virtually all its recommendations. It is a fine swansong for the period of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, as chair of the committee. It is wonderful, in a way, that we were able to reach agreement on the report’s important recommendations. It was a great pleasure to work with the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, on the committee; although I do not agree with everything he said in his speech, I agree with quite a lot.

Now that we are outside the European Union, we should be striving for consensus on how we can improve the relationship. Consensus does not mean that everyone should agree—for example, I do not think we should allow the populist right a veto over how we try to improve our relationship—but it means that when we talk to Brussels, whether through the present Government or an incoming Labour Government, it should feel that there is some kind of political willingness on Britain’s part to have a constructive relationship.

The big gap in our report, and this was done deliberately, is economics. It is a gap, as the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, referred to, that Keir Starmer was trying to fill when he announced that he was determined to improve the TCA. Obviously there is some scepticism about that, even among the European academic bubble—yesterday I read a report by the UK in a Changing Europe group that was rather sceptical about what it might achieve—but I think change is achievable in the trading relationship.

A big problem that we have had since Brexit is the lack of trust between the EU and the UK. A lot of that is due to the way in which the present Government threatened to breach their treaty obligations on the Northern Ireland protocol. The present Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, deserves praise for negotiating and agreeing the Windsor Framework, but there is still hesitancy about taking the relationship forward. For example, I do not know how the present Home Secretary thinks that threatening a potential British withdrawal from the EHRC is going to help our efforts to control illegal migration. That would mean a crisis in our relations with the EU and a great interruption in police and justice co-operation. The fact is that we would be less able than we are now to work with our partners in tackling the criminal gangs of people smugglers.

We should stop trying to threaten these things, however sotto voce, and try to build a relationship of trust. Labour can do that. Labour can work strongly with our European partners in the defence of democracy, which is fundamentally what is at stake in Ukraine. If we have a change in the presidency of the United States next year, that will be an existential crisis for whether Europe can work together to defeat the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Secondly, there is common agreement on large parts of the climate change agenda, although I am sorry to see the Government backing off it today.

Thirdly, there is a lot of scope for industrial co-operation on the new technologies. In the 1970s we had the great Airbus project. Let us think about how to work together on new technologies so that European efforts can match the challenge of China and the dominance of the US tech giants.

We can build an atmosphere in which change in the trading relationship is possible. We cannot be stuck with David Frost—the noble Lord, Lord Frost—for ever. That, it seems to me, would be fatal to Britain’s economic growth prospects. It is therefore worth working hard at trying to build a more constructive relationship with our partners and friends.

Public Services: Workforce (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, on this excellent report—indeed, on a series of reports that have added a lot to my knowledge of the challenges facing public services. It was an excellent idea of whoever decides these things in this place to set up a Public Services Committee, and I think that it has proved its value. I have learned a lot.

I have a few remarks to make, which may be politically sharp but which are none the less deserved. First, we will never solve the problem of the public sector workforce if the Government continue to take the view that they intend to use holding down public sector pay as a battering ram for bringing down inflation. If that is the approach, it will result in a disaster for public services. It is not just a matter of what happens this winter—it is going to be a long-term challenge to get inflation down, but we cannot do it by basically sacrificing public services. At the moment, private sector pay is going up by around 6% while public sector pay is at 2% to 3%: that is not sustainable. The Government must know that; we are losing people from the public services to the private sector, and something must be done about it.

My second point is that the Government must recognise the need for investment if we are going to save money. The willingness to put money into public services that would in fact save money is absolutely vital. The most obvious case of this is social care reform where, clearly, a lot of the problems of the NHS would be a lot less if we had a properly functioning social care system, and we are not going to have that unless we have a comprehensive reform of pay and conditions and how the whole thing is managed.

A similar example of investor-save is in the hugely escalating costs of children in care. I know this as a Cumbria county councillor—I apologise; I should have already declared that interest. The hugely escalating costs of children in care are a real problem. Josh MacAlister’s review points to a way of tackling this. It was debated in the House last week but, unfortunately, I could not be present. It is, again, an example of where you have to put some money up front if you are going to save money in the long run.

Thirdly, we need active labour market policies for the public sector. We are in a situation where workforce participation is in fact declining. This is a very serious situation for the country, and we need a strategy to get it up again. I was talking to some Swedes yesterday at a seminar. The Swedish model has always put high employee participation as a top priority. If you get high employee participation, you get the tax revenues that enable you to improve public services. So we really need a strategy for filling all these jobs—getting older workers, perhaps on a part-time basis, back into services. We need a comprehensive strategy.

My final point is that we must have radical reform. We have to be prepared to upset people—like the professional institutes. If we are going to have an expansion of the apprentice route in public services, that will upset a lot of people who think that only graduates can do the job. We have to be prepared to be tough on that. The old new Labour mantra of “investment and reform” is what public services need today more than anything else, and I would like to know what plans the Government have for both investment and reform.

Economy: The Growth Plan 2022

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Fine, I will give way.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

How does the noble Lord explain away the fact that the Government introduced the largest set of tax cuts and the biggest increase in the budget deficit since the time of Anthony Barber in 1972?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

How does the noble Lord explain away the fact that his Front Bench supported all of it, including the reductions in national insurance and the basic rate of income tax? They did not support the corporation tax cut but that is presumably because they do not recognise the importance of having investment in our country. Where does investment come from? It comes from retained profits after tax; that is how I would explain it. It is actually to the credit of the Opposition that they supported the populist things. But they concentrated on the cut to the top rate of tax, which the Government have since decided not to go ahead with.

Inflation is the enemy. Jim Callaghan, a great Labour Prime Minister, warned us that

“inflation is the father and mother of unemployment”.

That is why the Government are determined to try to get growth, and why we need to recognise that continuing with QE on the present scale will result in inflation and a disaster for both unemployment and our country’s prosperity. The era of free money is over. We need to concentrate on wealth creation, not wealth consumption. We need to save every penny; we could start with our own front door in this place, which is costing £2.5 million. Use the candle ends. Look at programmes and decide on priorities. Personally, I think that increasing universal credit should be a priority. However, if that is to be funded, people must recognise that it will mean cuts elsewhere.

So I say this: all support to the Prime Minister. Stop the personal attacks and look at the reality, because if we get this wrong people’s mortgages and costs will go through the roof—and they will not be able to blame the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I join the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, in welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, back to the ministerial Bench. There is much in the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, with which I agree. We all want growth, and it is a realistic ambition to try to turn Britain back to the 2.5% growth figure that we enjoyed until the financial crisis. The question is how to do it in a way—I think this is an important point—where the whole of society benefits. The fact is that the growth we have seen since the financial crisis has not trickled down. People on median wages and below have not seen any increase in their standard of living. This is an important thing that future government policy has to address.

As for the details of the plan for growth, there are some things in it with which I agree, but it is limited in its vision. If the Government had paid attention to business, business would have put skills at the top of the list and said that what is needed is more apprenticeships and more people with higher technical qualifications. On pages 19 and 20, which talk about getting more people into work with the right skills, there is not a single mention of that agenda and what the Government are prepared to do about it.

On housing, there is the cut in stamp duty but no clarity on how planning law is to be changed. We know that Conservative MPs in the Commons hate this. There is no mention of any need for social housing.

On infrastructure, there is a sort of half-acknowledgement of guilt that it was the Conservative Back-Benchers, again, who stopped onshore wind—one of the most positive things we could have done to cut energy bills. Let us see whether the objections to onshore wind can now be overcome.

Things such as Northern Powerhouse Rail, which we have been talking about for a decade or more, are on the list of things that the Government might do, but what credibility is there that they will actually do them? Investment zones are an interesting idea, but I have read the academic evidence and it is not very positive on whether they produce results.

There is a point that I think is original. A lot of the Johnson levelling-up agenda was about how we reinvigorated our town centres. Lots of government money is being funnelled into that. These investment zones will be on brownfield sites outside town centres; this seems to be a fundamental contradiction. If I were to encourage investment in my home town of Carlisle, I would want to see it in the centre and on the fringes of the centre, not on some site outside.

The fundamental thing about this Government’s policy is that they have lost the reputation for macroeconomic stability that is fundamental to encouraging business to invest. It was the most irresponsible and reckless Budget since Barber’s in 1972. It caused turmoil in the markets, which threatened the future of people’s pensions. It will lead to spiralling mortgage costs. As the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, pointed out, there are risks here of a contradiction with monetary policy.

On the fiscal plan that the Government are committed to coming up with, I do not believe the numbers can be made to add up by public spending cuts, which would be both counterproductive in their impact on growth and politically undeliverable. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, that some of the announced tax cuts should be cancelled.

This is not a plan for growth. It is an economic disaster.

Elections Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I should confess to having been a supporter of electoral reform for many years—since the 1970s, when I was working for the Labour Government. The reason I became a supporter of electoral reform was that I felt our society was becoming very dysfunctional, our way of government was very dysfunction, and the Labour party was essentially two parties forced together into one and was not really working in the best interests of the country.

The essay question I would love to debate with the noble Lord, Lord Moore, and that has to be addressed, is this: in the post-war period, particularly given the troubles we have been through in the last 10 years, has Britain had a more satisfactory system of governance than Germany? Germany has been so successful, with its proportional representation and federal system—a system, incidentally, in which British advisers and British politicians played a very important part in ensuring in the democratic part of Germany after 1945. For me, that is the big essay question. I know what I think about it, but it would be worthy of debate.

However, we are not debating that general question this evening; we are debating the specifics of whether the supplementary vote system should be changed. I have been sitting for an hour and 43 minutes through this debate, and I should think that less than a third of it has addressed that specific point, and so I do not want to detain the Committee for long. I accept all the arguments that have been made about the undesirability of this proposal emerging at a very late stage in this Bill. I do not think changes in electoral systems should be introduced in an arbitrary way, or as my noble friend Lord Lipsey said, as Tony Crosland would have said, in a frivolous way; they ought to be seriously considered.

It is possible to have different electoral systems for different purposes; we do not have to have the same electoral system for everything. We now have a great variety of electoral systems. I am quite interested to know why the noble Lord, Lord True, thinks it is desirable to go back to first past the post for the Mayor of London elections but to retain the proportionally elected London Assembly. It seems to me that if, as a result of that action, the mayor’s political base is significantly lower than it is under the present system, then there is the possibility of real dysfunctional government when agreeing budgets and other questions where the London Assembly has a say. That is a very serious point.

I think that devolution has been a success, certainly in Scotland and Wales. I even think that what the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, said about Northern Ireland was very interesting. The success of devolution has depended on a proportional system, and on the additional member system in Scotland and Wales. Look at how support for devolution has grown, particularly in Wales, since it came about in the late 1990s. It would be difficult for the Government—even this Government—to try to abolish Welsh and Scottish devolution. One of the reasons it has such strong support is because it is seen to be very representative across the community. There is an understanding between Plaid Cymru and the Labour Party in Wales. Similarly, despite disliking the thought of an SNP Government, they do show that a proportional system enables change to happen. Labour showed great foresight in devolution, in agreeing to a proportional system. For that purpose, it has been very successful.

On the question of the supplementary vote, particularly for mayors, one of the arguments—as I remember it from when I was in No. 10—for introducing this arrangement was that we wanted to encourage the possibility of diverse and independent candidates coming forward who might challenge the established parties. That is quite a good argument.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My noble friend did not say that at the time.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

It was said in the councils of which I was part that it would be a good idea to shake up conventional politics at the local level. That was the argument.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I do not normally draw attention to this but my noble friend and I were both working in No. 10 at the same time. I would say two things: first, if that was ever discussed, I never heard it; and, secondly, if I had heard it, I would have been ferociously opposed to it.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I have no doubt about that; that is why we would not have mentioned it to my noble friend. I am trying to make the point that there is an argument for something that opens up politics a bit more.

In the case of mayors, it is not like voting for an MP, where you are basically voting for who you want to be Prime Minister or which political party you support. It is very much about who you want to govern your local area, and they should have the widest possible base of support.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure always to follow my noble friend Lord Liddle, even though I would not agree with an awful lot of what he said; it is a great pleasure to follow him, nevertheless.

I absolutely think that there is no case at the moment for changing the electoral system for police commissioners. We have no directly elected mayors in Wales but we have police commissioners. There is a very strong case for trying to increase the turnout and the interest in elections for police commissioners. I am reminded of the fact that, in the very first election for police commissioners in Gwent, my own county, there was one notorious ward in the city of Newport where not a single person turned up to vote—no one at all. We are deluded if we think that changing the electoral system will improve interest. We look forward with great interest to the Minister telling us why we need to change the system.

I refer now to Amendment 136, and the very interesting debate we have had on first past the post versus proportional representation. This is not a wide debate—it would take days, weeks and months to do that—but rather one on the nature of the amendment we have been asked to consider. The amendment says that the House of Commons should be elected by PR, full stop. My noble friend Lord Grocott, in a fine speech, referred to the fact that these things cannot be changed unless there is a referendum on them. It is a rather unusual argument to suggest that because we had one in 2011 it is no longer relevant. Of course it is relevant, in the sense that we should have another referendum if that is required and should not change things unless the people are asked.

In my political lifetime, I have fought 11 elections. I served as an elected representative for 49 years, 28 of them in the other place. The great advantage of our system is that there is a marvellous link between the elected representative and the people whom he or she represents. It is unique. I was always referred to as “my MP” or “our MP” in the possessive case because they thought that. The contrast, for example, with the change that took place when we altered our electoral system for the European Parliament was immense.

Of course, the constituencies for Europe were very large—grotesquely large in some senses—but I bet your bottom dollar that people knew who their Member of the European Parliament was. I bet your bottom dollar, too, that they did not when the new system came in. I did not know who mine was, and I was an MP for the area towards the end of that system. We completely lost that link between the elected representatives and the people whom they represented. That is the greatest aspect of our system, which we must not do away with.

Of course, we have different systems in different parts of the United Kingdom. I was partly instrumental in bringing about the system in Northern Ireland. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, was right. He was very advanced and forward-looking when he made that change all those years ago. The only way that the partisanship in Northern Ireland could be destroyed was to have that system changed. It is very different there from the rest of the United Kingdom. It is not the same as Wales or Scotland or England because, by voting the way they do in Northern Ireland, they express a very different view from that expressed by the rest of the United Kingdom. That was a very significant change indeed. The Assembly is elected by STV; local government is elected by STV, but, of course, the MPs in the United Kingdom Parliament are elected by first past the post.

Scotland and Wales are different. They have top- up systems, known as AMSs. They are entirely incomprehensible to the voter. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moore, that if the voter cannot understand what they are voting for, it is a very poor system. Indeed, in Wales, a commission has been set up to investigate changing to a different system, although I do not think they will change completely to first past the post. There is some merit in having different systems in different parts of the country—in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland for their own assemblies—but they have to be comprehensible to the voters who use them. At the moment, that is not the case.

The biggest flaw, of course, in this amendment is that it does not seek proper legitimacy for the change. It is not just the 2011 referendum, but in every case—in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland—referendums were held for the new systems of government, and that included the way those Governments and Assemblies were elected in every single case. In Wales, of course, when they wanted extra powers some years ago, they went for another referendum to get that legitimacy which lies behind every change. So, for me, the great weakness of this amendment is not just that I do not agree with PR, but rather my belief that the way in which the change would be introduced has to be done by asking the people. If you ask the people, you must also say to them: “Do you understand what it is you are voting for?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord says let us have a look at 2016. The noble Lord also said not to pay any attention to the 2017 Conservative Party manifesto which is explicit on this point before the Committee. He wants to go back to 2016 for one thing and not back to 2017 for another. I think the noble Lord is rather picking and choosing his arguments. I wish to make progress—

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

The Minister made an important point in his argument about the 2011 referendum. That was on first past the post for Westminster elections. Is the Government’s contention that they want to see first past the post for all elections in the UK, including the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments and the London Assembly? If that is so, why have they not introduced that in this Bill? Why pick on this particular electoral choice?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am speaking to what is before the Committee at the moment. As far as the Scottish and Welsh elections are concerned, the noble Lord knows very well that there is devolution, which this Government respect.

I will respond to what the noble Lord said about the London Assembly. It involves rather more complex issues in terms of the Assembly’s potential make-up. We will be considering further how these principles could be applied to the London Assembly and perhaps promoting the use of first past the post, but we are open to representations on how that could be implemented. For the moment, the proposition is on these specific elections, against the background I have described: the Government committed to first past the post, the Elections Bill and the evidence of problems in 2021.

I turn to the broader amendments—which I must because they are before the Committee—from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. It is always the less popular parties which clamour for PR. They want to introduce a new clause abolishing the use of first past the post at parliamentary general elections held more than six months after the passage of the Bill. For the reasons I have already discussed, we cannot accept that. First past the post ensures a clear link between elected representatives and constituents in a manner that other voting systems do not. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy, was compelling on that point.

The new clause proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is not clear even on what sort of electoral system he wants to introduce—that is the most bizarre thing about the amendment that he is asking your Lordships to agree with. He wants to get rid of the present system within two years, but he does not say what would happen if an election came along before that or in the period where there was uncertainty because a new system would require further primary legislation to enact it. There is a real risk, if we went down the road proposed by the noble Lord, that we might not have an established legal method as to how Members of the other place were elected. To be confronted with this question mark of an amendment when the Government are charged with being frivolous—I think the proponents of this amendment are frivolous. All we know from the noble Lord’s amendment is that he wants a system that would have had, over the past five parliamentary general elections, a mean average Gallagher proportionality index of less than 10—that will get them jumping around in the pubs in Saltaire and Moulsecoomb, I am sure.

Legislation: Skeleton Bills and Delegated Powers

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, on introducing this debate and on the way that she shows originality and independence, as she does in her FT column. We are very grateful to her.

I have been on a steep learning curve on these issues, having spent a lot of my life in the shadows, as an adviser to senior politicians and Ministers. Recently, in the last 10 years, I have learned quite a bit about the importance of Parliament, which I had not quite appreciated before. I had the luck briefly to be a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Under the tutelage of its excellent clerk, her advisers and its excellent chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, as well as other distinguished members, such as the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, I learned an awful lot. Like the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Janvrin, I have come to the view that it is time that we showed a bit of muscle on these questions.

There is a way through this that does not, as it were, throw the whole question of secondary legislation up in the air. It is there in the reports that have been the background to this debate. First, we need a process for the certification of skeleton Bills. One suggestion that struck me as a good one was that this would be done by the Speakers of this House and of the Commons, rather like the way that money Bills are certified. So skeleton Bills would undergo a process of certification, and, when a Bill or part of it was so certified, we as a House would take additional powers over the statutory instruments that flowed from the use of those skeleton Bills.

We should look at the power to make references back from the SLSC to the department on draft SIs before us. We should be able to propose amendments. Ultimately, the whole House, in extremis, should have the power to reject the statutory instruments that we regard as an abuse of delegated powers. I think this would lead, albeit in a small set of cases, to a transformation of departmental practice and the change in culture on the part of the Executive that a lot of us are looking for.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Court of Justice of the European Union

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot believe that I have really baffled the noble Lord, with his deep knowledge of EU affairs that is much greater than mine. The Government will set out the basis on which we would use Article 16 if and when that eventuality arises. We hope that it will not, but obviously we will be clear when and if we reach that point. Of course, it is well understood that the court has a role as the final arbiter of EU law. We do not seek to change or challenge that. What is not working is the role of the court as the arbiter of disputes between the two parties, which is unusual.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I am trying to follow the Minister’s answers as well, and with some difficulty. In answer to the question on the Northern Ireland protocol, he spoke about changing the arrangements. Does this mean that he is no longer arguing for removal of the court of justice’s jurisdiction over the European single market, which, if we are to keep no border in Ireland, must still apply in Northern Ireland? If we keep the border open, does he agree that he must accept some role for the court of justice?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot add very much to what I said earlier, which is that the EU defines the court of justice as the final arbiter of what EU law means. We do not challenge that and cannot do anything about it. For as long as EU laws apply in Northern Ireland, no doubt the court will continue to assert that right, but that is not the same as saying that it is reasonable for disputes to be settled in the court or for infraction processes to be launched by the Commission, as they already have been in this context. It is the settlement of disputes that is the difficulty.

EU Relations

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think that I said that I was planning to present my own figures in this respect, merely that I was sceptical about the many judgments that had been made officially about the state of the economy in 2030—which I think is the 4% judgment—which is a long way out, and many things can happen, including policy changes that we will make to ensure that that situation does not develop. That is the way that I look at this problem.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that we are not here debating Brexit; we are debating his threat to detonate the Northern Ireland protocol in an agreement that he negotiated and signed? This has nothing to do—as the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, claims—with Brexit itself. Does he also recognise that while unionist sensibilities of course have to be recognised, we are dealing here with the long and painful history of the Irish question? There was not a single mention in his Statement of relations with the Irish Republic and how many people in the Irish Republic believe that this is a threat to the Irish Republic’s place in the single market and an attempt to force it out of it. What is his reaction to that? I urge him to stop posturing and get on with negotiating. The EU has moved a long way; how much has he moved?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his advice; I am certainly taking it, in that we should carry on negotiating—that is what we are trying to do, including this week and, I hope, beyond it. I repeat that Article 16 is a legitimate provision within the protocol. It has already been exercised once, and we cannot be in a position where it is not possible to exercise a legitimate provision in the protocol. That is simply not a reasonable position to take.

On the question of Ireland, we have made clear—I have said in this House on a number of occasions—that we do not wish in any way to threaten Ireland’s place in the single market. Nothing that we have proposed would do that. We have proposed measures that would protect the single market while allowing trade to flow freely throughout the United Kingdom. We have no wish to do that and nothing in what we have proposed can be interpreted as such; I want to be absolutely clear on that point.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Impact on Trade

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the thrust of the question asked by my noble friend. We made very clear in the Command Paper that we published in July that the European Court of Justice and the system of law of which it is at the apex are a big part of the political difficulty that has arisen in Northern Ireland, and we need to find more balanced ways of resolving disputes in future.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, in the Minister’s recent speech, which he made in Lisbon, not in this House, he said that

“the Protocol represents a moment of EU overreach when the UK’s negotiating hand was tied”.

But are the facts not somewhat different? Is it not the case that the Johnson Government, on the Minister’s recommendation, accepted an arrangement that Theresa May said no British Prime Minister would ever accept; that the Johnson Government, presumably on the Minister’s recommendation, decided to prioritise a hard Brexit over the sustainability of the Good Friday agreement and peace and security in Northern Ireland; and that the Johnson Government, perhaps on the Minister’s recommendation, signed a treaty in the full knowledge that they had no intention of implementing its full provisions? Is it not about time that the Minister accepted some personal responsibility for the mess we are in in Ireland?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

So, my Lords, I reject the implication of the question that there is any contradiction between a so-called hard Brexit, which is the only real Brexit and the only form of Brexit that allows this country the freedom it needs, and peace and security in Northern Ireland. Those two objectives are perfectly and absolutely compatible. We agreed a protocol that we hoped would do the job; it needed sensitive handling; it was highly uncertain in some of its mechanisms; and unfortunately it has not had the sensitive handling it needed. Therefore, we need to come back to the question. That is a pity, but unfortunately it is the reality.

Brexit Opportunities

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think it has been bought at any cost. I make no apology for standing up for freedom—free enterprise and freedom to think and debate—and that is what we did not have very much of in the final years of our EU membership until the referendum. It is axiomatic, in my view, that free debate, free enterprise, free economies and the ability to change your Government will always benefit the countries that have those things. There is a lot of empirical evidence around the world that that proposition is correct.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister’s predecessors in his position—the noble Lord, Lord True, who is sitting next to him, and the noble Lord, Lord Callanan—gave us repeated promises during the passage of the Brexit Bills through Parliament that the Government had no intention to weaken in any way the social, environmental and consumer protections that were involved EU law. Will he repeat that commitment today? Moreover, if he is not prepared to repeat it in full, will he give us a guarantee, following on from the question of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that these issues will not be dealt with by some tailored mechanism to speed up legislative passage but will be put before this House for full debate?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we are a high-standards country. The manifesto on which we won the election in 2019 was very clear about our intention to maintain high standards in all those areas. That does not mean that we do not intend to change them. The world moves on; high standards need to reflect the context in which we are operating. I am sure there will be change, but I do not believe that those changes will result in regression of standards.

On the noble Lord’s second point, I come back to the point I made earlier: many of these laws were not subject to any form of meaningful scrutiny in this Parliament and may have been imposed against the will of the Government. The way we progress on them needs to reflect that fundamental reality.

Imports from EU to UK: Grace Period

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, as I frequently note, there are obviously many things going on in the global economy and in global supply chains, including the pandemic, increased costs and so on, and it is very difficult to draw firm conclusions from trade figures. It is true that July’s figures show a small dip in exports to the EU but, nevertheless, since January, exports to the EU have been rising consistently. In June, they were higher than the pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit figures. We are confident that British business is rising to the challenge and will continue to do so.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that what he describes as a “pragmatic” policy is in fact a measure of discrimination by the British Government against non-EU imports at our borders, because they face controls in a way that EU imports do not? Does he accept that, as a result of that, we are potentially in breach of our WTO legal obligations as discriminating against different categories of people? Does he further accept that Covid is no excuse for these “pragmatic” delays? After all, the EU was able to impose its proper border controls in January 2021. Is this not yet a further example, of the many, of this Government’s incompetence in managing a very botched Brexit?