EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a sad irony that this trading co-operation agreement—so-called—will assuredly result in less trade and reduced co-operation with the European Union. The best thing that can be said about it, and it has been said, is that it is better than no deal, but it is emphatically not better than our previous position. I ask the Minister: when have any Government entered trade negotiations with the expectation—indeed, the express objective—of ending up with arrangements that reduce opportunities and increase impediments to trade relative to the status quo ante? That is precisely what this agreement does.

In trading with the EU, we now face more bureaucracy, as people have pointed out, greater regulatory impediments, weaker mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and a new ambiguity in supply chains, while in a week when we hear that 4,000 City firms are at a heightened risk of failure due to the Covid crisis there is next to nothing on the services sector, which comprises 80% of our trade with the European Union. As my noble friend Lord Blunkett pointed out, there will of course also be less co-operation on security and policing and weaker regulation of data flows. Yet the Prime Minister urges us to rejoice and celebrate this deal as though it were some great victory, another Waterloo. That is the maximum self-delusion. This is not a Waterloo; if anything, it is a Dunkirk. It is a temporary reprieve from a disastrous strategic mistake, and I am sure the future will show us that neither trade nor prosperity are won by evacuations.