EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Wei Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Wharton of Yarm on an excellent maiden and declare my interests in the register. In view of the time, I will focus on what we now need to do given that the PM has kept his promise to leave and has agreed a deal.

Brexit and many other cataclysmic events in recent times, including Covid, have highlighted several things. First, the biggest challenge we face in the world today, even with Covid causing untold havoc, is how to share power peacefully, whether you are a President, the head of an institution or an organisation, or a citizen or voter.

Secondly, the internet, for all its faults, is a gift to help us mobilise beyond government or any given establishment to gather the wisdom of people and to enable them to shape their lives if we share with them the tools to do so, to work with us to create a country that is more resilient and in which freedom, especially to think and express ourselves how we want to while honouring those we disagree with, is respected. Indeed, any time that freedom is curtailed or misunderstood, here and abroad, we will see trouble. The referendum and the subsequent turmoil and schisms illustrates that, as does the rise of the uglier end of populism when we fail to understand how frustrated people feel in an age of superfast smartphones yet in which institutions, particularly but not limited to larger ones, such as government, feel ponderous and bureaucratic.

Let us use this freedom that Brexit now provides to make a better, more affordable, less stifled, more levelled-up life for our people, but let them have a say and a hand in it. To do this, we need to create looser, more agile, more relatable institutions, using technology and ancient wisdom to bring power and decision-making closer to homes, cities and regions, in health and education, in rural and coastal affairs and in many other areas, so that we can better weather future pandemics and future shocks, and so that we can heal.

In this sense, Brexit is not over. The time to rebuild Britain and to address Brexit’s causes resiliently has only just begun. I am curious to know what the Minister has to say on this matter.

EU: Future Relationship

Lord Wei Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Wei (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I want to say thanks to many of those who have contributed to this debate. I declare my interest as in the register.

There have been many speakers already, so I hope I do not have to take up all my time. I definitely do not want to repeat many of the excellent statements and comments that have been made so far. I am probably in a minority in this debate by wanting to actually congratulate the Government on the negotiations in a very tough situation, not least with Covid, the lockdown and all that is going on in the world, especially given all the activity of the last few years and the difficulties that we have had.

Ultimately, as other speakers and my noble friend the Minister have said, we have to negotiate from a position of safeguarding Britain’s sovereignty. That is the reason we are leaving the European Union. There has been a perception and perhaps a reality—sometimes it is both—that we have not always had full sovereignty over our own affairs. If you look at it through that lens rather than just requiring stability at all costs as we move into the next year, whether politically in terms of Northern Ireland or for economic reasons for our businesses and so on, we can see that there are many people in this country who voted to leave and who are willing to accept whatever pain may take place as we exit. That is because the issue of sovereignty is important.

I wish that I did not have to say this, but having listened to some of the remarks from other Peers, I thought that as a Parliament, we have made a vow to the Queen and to this country. I am therefore disappointed, quite frankly. Sometimes I feel like we are listening to opinions that sound so pro-European that they ought to be coming from the other side of the negotiating table rather than thinking about what we as a country really need. I accept that we need to have positive relations with Europe, but I feel that the Government have been doing their best against a very belligerent negotiating partner who, in my view, has not always played fairly.

Some have argued, and I would not disagree with them, that we have grounds to say that the withdrawal agreement has been violated even because of the way that we have sequenced the negotiations in Europe’s favour over the past few years. The discussion about fisheries has been made more important than other matters that are critical to the future of our relations with Europe. Again, in my view, that shows a high degree of bad faith, so I do not agree that the Government are necessarily the villain here. I do not think that that is generally the case because there is much to say about Europe’s behaviour.

On that note, I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister whether, when it comes to the negotiations, we are looking at other alternatives to just hoping that we are going to get a reasonable agreement or no deal. As we look forward to the future relationship with Europe, is it better, as other Ministers have mentioned, to work on other agreements, even in an Australian scenario such as the CPTPP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, so that at some point we can come back to these negotiations as a more equal partner with a sizeable bloc to negotiate with rather than being treated like a minor counterpart?

I have another question, having observed the behaviour of the European negotiators. Do we need to build an economy that is more resilient because there is no guarantee that, at a future date, Europe might not seek to place demands on us that might affect our sovereignty again? For example, as a country we are strong in areas such as intellectual property, licensing and so on. These are things that are less impacted by tariffs and perhaps by certain regulations. If we can build a set of industries in the future that are all about spreading our knowledge with partners in other countries, maybe we will be less impacted by the rising protectionism that we are seeing both in Europe and around the world. Even our exporting expertise has value across the world in terms of raising the knowledge base in other countries. Could Britain be not just global but also a source of knowledge by building an even greater knowledge economy in the future?

Finally, I want to ask the Minister about what we are doing in terms of taking this opportunity. Sometimes, when you are up against a wall, whether in terms of these negotiations and we could say the same about the Covid situation, that can drive innovation. You can say, “We have these limitations.” Northern Ireland is the classic example. We have to try to fit the regulations of multiple jurisdictions.

We have talked before about the power of technology, and blockchain especially, to rewire our supply chains, so that with free ports and more generally in our relationships—not only with Europe but with multiple FTA partners—we can find ways in which to actually thrive in this world and benefit from being able to sit between different jurisdictions, rather than being dictated to, whether by the US, China or Europe, in what we do. It is about trying to find a way to work with multiple systems, to be what we have always been: a trading nation that has a powerful and seemingly neutral legal and regulatory framework that allows us to work with the best of those who want to work with us around the world.

What thinking has been done on this? From what I can see, as much as I and others would hope that we can get a deal—and the chances of going into an Australian WTO situation are high—what are we going to do as we come out of that? Negotiation with Europe will not stop there: we still have this set of partners that we have to work with. If they continue to show bad faith, even in that situation, do we need to build a set of negotiating positions—in our economy, our regulations and our technology—in such a way that we can be in a strong position to be an equal partner in future negotiations?

Finance Bill

Lord Wei Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I refer Members to my interests, as well as to an article I wrote recently in “ConservativeHome” which expands in greater detail on some of the topics I want to cover today.

I welcome the Bill and the measures that the Government have taken over the last months to deal with this unprecedented crisis. There is much to applaud within policies such as furloughing and tax breaks—ensuring that cash can get to as many of those affected as possible so they can survive the coming months.

Of course, we are now starting to turn and look up a little further out to the coming months and rebooting our economy—bouncing back, as it has been called. I am a bit concerned that, with all the talk of bouncing back in a greener way, which is important, and levelling up, which remains rightly a priority across the country, there is an assumption in so much of our thinking at the moment, and certainly in the Bill, around normal returning. If I am wrong and what I am about to say will not happen, what a relief. However, I fear that we are entering a phase in our nation’s and the world’s history of much greater volatility. Some of that is climate driven and is obviously geopolitical. Again, with this issue of viruses, it is now cheap and becoming cheaper to manufacture viruses. I am fearful that this may not be the only one. Perhaps we will deal with this one, and perhaps there will be a lockdown in winter, or not.

My question—which I mentioned in my article—is: do we need now to have another lens, which is to look at resilience? We have had our Dunkirk and we scraped through. Millions were affected and there were huge losses, personally, in human terms, and financially. However, what will we do to make sure that this never happens again? Even if there are lockdowns in future, why will we still allow millions of people to be reliant only on work that can be done physically? I therefore welcome, for example, the Government’s policies around boosting apprenticeships; how can that be done in a way to give people resilience? How can we have less centralised healthcare so that the huge machines in hospitals can be shrunk down with better technology so that they can be closer to people’s homes or even in their homes? There is also education, supply chains and agriculture—I do not have time to go through them all. There is an opportunity potentially for this nation to become a leader in redesigning our systems so that they can work even in volatile emergency situations like this. In fact, the internet was invented to deal with emergencies like this.

How can we move our entire country forward in a way that makes something of an opportunity to help other countries deal with future crises like this? Perhaps in so doing, we may not quite end up with some of the tax issues, the debt burden and some of the productivity issues. Instead, we can become a leader in being a resilient country to ensure that those who have fewer resources than us will be better able to weather the next pandemic or crisis that hits us.