European Union: Schengen Agreement

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend, whom I greatly respect, like to correct his Answer to my noble friend Lord Forsyth—

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

I was making the point that our borders are controlled in the sense that the ability to travel freely across borders in the European Union by the production of an ID card does not apply to us. In Schengen, we retain our full checks on people who are coming into this country and, since April this year, on people leaving this country as well. I believe that that means we have control of our borders.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, given that Schengen and the euro have proved such painful failures, what do Her Majesty’s Government see as the point of the European Union itself? Would we miss it if it collapsed and we went back to friendly collaboration and free trade between the democracies of Europe? Has the EU not become just a very expensive emperor without clothes?

[Lord Bates]

The benefits to this country will be determined by the people in a referendum in due course, but in this respect they are self-evident: we cannot deal with the migrant crisis that is coming into our country without working very closely with our EU partners and, given that seven out of 10 of our principal trading partners are within the EU, we need to be able to exchange goods and services in an efficient way. With regard to the type of model that the noble Lord is perhaps advocating, he should perhaps be aware that while we are not in the Schengen area, Norway, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Iceland, in the European Economic Area, are part of Schengen, and therefore there is free movement.