UK–EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement: Meetings of Bodies

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I share my noble friend’s distaste for bureaucracy in all its forms, even though I have spent most of my life working in one. It is, unfortunately, a characteristic of international relations nowadays that there is a substantial bureaucratic component, and we have to work with that. I hope that the various committees that have been created will help us to resolve problems. I can reassure my noble friends that the bureaucracy is, at least, much less than when we were a member of the European Union.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, is it the Government’s objective, nevertheless, to get the full panoply of relations and committees working well, as we have to manage a very wide agenda of continuing close relations with the European Union? Do the Government have it in mind that they could take the Swiss option, as it were, and break the series of complex negotiations and treaties that they have with the EU—which, as he will know, the Swiss have just done?