Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Mountevans Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mountevans (CB)]

My Lords, in this high-calibre and important debate, I have heard most of the speeches and listened with great care and interest. I missed a few speeches but, so far, I have heard little on the views, needs and hopes of business, though there has been more today. With respect, without business and trade we have nothing. They provide employment, taxes, national insurance and, by extension, health, social security, education, defence and pretty much everything.

Business is critical, and I say this on a day when Prime Minister Abe arrives in London. I remember vividly how, when I was Lord Mayor in 2016, shortly after the referendum, I was visited in Mansion House by the then Japanese ambassador. He was the representative of a friendly country and a large and welcome investor in this country, a good employer and provider of, I think at the time, more than 120,000 valuable jobs. He was stunned at the outcome. Much of the investment assumed easy access to the EU.

I am sure that we all agree that the views of business, and not least those of our international investors and partners, are tremendously important, so I want to broaden the lens to try to capture a view from a business I know well—maritime. Many noble Lords, including our Convenor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, have noted the unhappy predicament in which we find ourselves. In a debate of the highest standards such as this, with views being well articulated, we can confound ourselves with all the considerations. I want to try to inject a positive and more optimistic note.

Here I declare my interests as recorded in the register as chairman of Maritime London and as a council member and former chairman of Maritime UK, which works with the Government to promote the sector both nationally and internationally.

Maritime is one of the UK’s biggest industries. The latest data commissioned by Maritime UK from the leading economic consultancy CEBR at the end of 2017 estimated that the sector directly supported just over £40 billion in business turnover, £14.5 billion in GVA and nearly 186,000 UK employees in 2015. The substantial direct economic contribution of the maritime sector exceeds that of other comparable industries such as aerospace by some margin. Average productivity in the maritime sector exceeds the national average, and this is also true of each subsector of the industry.

This is an important and efficient sector, but it is more than those figures and statistics. We are an island nation, and we must always remember that 95% of our exports and imports are effected by sea. Our highly efficient ports are at the centre of this, investing more than £600 million of their own funds annually to maintain and enhance their efficient and rapid service. They are looking to increase that if they get certainty in the business outlook.

For the first time in decades, the importance of this nation remaining a great trading nation comes to the fore. The maritime industries are the enabler and the facilitator. The British Government have estimated that by 2030 the blue or ocean economy, comprising the wider maritime industries including aquaculture, undersea mapping, subsea mining and so on, will exceed $3 trillion a year. This is a time of great opportunity for the UK. We are fortunate that the UK remains perhaps the world’s leading maritime centre, blessed by close co-operation with government. However, we are under intense pressure from competitor maritime centres around the world—the Far East, Scandinavia and the Gulf to name a few.

As we leave the EU, the maritime sector is key to positioning the UK as an outward-looking and global trading nation. There is a great potential for substantial growth in the industry, playing a major part in growing our nation’s exports, driving innovation and, importantly, bringing growth and opportunity to our disadvantaged coastal areas.

That is why this sector also cannot support a hard Brexit. We have had far too much uncertainty for the past three years. It has already been said repeatedly in the House that a hard Brexit where Britain crashes out is surely not the way the United Kingdom, a world leader in many things, not least the rules-based international order, should conduct itself. This is not theoretical gameplay. Let us be clear: the EU will remain our most important market, so surely this is not the way to build a solid future relationship with our neighbours.

For these reasons, and accepting that this is not a perfect deal, the maritime sector supports the proposed agreement. In this, we share the views of the vast majority of business organisations. We are living in rapidly moving times and I am sure that the days ahead will throw up many developments. We are hearing a good number of calls in the debate for a people’s vote. As a remainer myself, I see the attraction in that, but there is a significant risk that a vote to remain would be a gift to populists and populism. Any move in that direction therefore has to be very clear on how it is going to be sold to the large number of people who voted to go and for whom it was a protest vote. We should remember that many of us in the Chamber today are really in the south-east bubble. In the absence of some great confidence that we can sell the people’s vote to everyone and get acceptance, we should work to take this deal across the line so that we can concentrate on future relations and give ourselves two years to prepare and to gear up in order to meet the great opportunities that we must now grasp.

This is a time for cool heads. We need to work on the next stage and use the time to gear up, refine our strategies, enhance our export promotion organisations, identify how to ensure that Britain is a still-greater place to do business and seize the opportunities. In such a case, we should approve the withdrawal agreement and accelerate work in realising this potential. There is no time to waste.