Resetting the UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, as the 29th speaker, I fear that many of my original points have disappeared, but the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in particular, has inspired me to make a few more. I join others in commending the noble Lord who chaired this committee, and the committee itself, on getting over the refighting of the Brexit campaigns, which we have seen a bit of again today, to produce a report that at least has some signposts for the future.

I tried to insert some linguistic points here, to take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. “Reset” in English means two different things. If you reset your telly, it means you are either putting it back to its original setting or resetting it to a new one. The title of this debate and report, Unfinished Business, suggests there is a finish, but there is no finish. We are actually going to go on developing a new relationship with Europe, which will not have a fixed terminal point. Therefore, resetting—continuing to reset and to positively engage with Europe—is what we need to focus on.

In that context, beyond the linguistic point, there is the need that the noble Lords, Lord Inglewood and Lord Wallace, underlined for us to engage, and not just with the institutions of the EU and the representatives of those institutions. As a committee we found ourselves very well received by those institutions in Brussels—but we also need a much more effective engagement with the member states. We thought we had already made a significant move forward with the proposals on the security and defence side, but the costs attachment that has now become evident—emanating, most people assume, from the French Government—indicates to us that we have to operate at the member state level effectively, as well as keeping doors open to Europe at the EU level. This Government have made a start on that, but we need to reinforce it. Although we supported the changes in the Whitehall structures for dealing with the EU and EU-related issues, they still need some significant strengthening.

My other point is that during this debate and the whole discussion, one important issue has hardly been mentioned at all—except negatively by the noble Lord, Lord Redwood. It relates to a need for Europe as a whole to address the issue of climate change and environmental change, particularly now that the Americans have effectively abdicated from that stage and nobody has clearly taken up the reins. Unless Europe, the UK and other positive states recommit to tackling climate change, all the stuff that we are negotiating today and all the structures in the world will be overwhelmed by a dramatic change to our climate and to how our industry and trade operate; it will become the major issue confronting Governments. That will happen not next year or the year after but within the next decade, and I believe that part of our re-engagement with Europe has to focus on starting again on the initiatives that were so well started in the Paris Agreement and on ensuring that we both make a contribution to tackling climate change and achieving something like net zero.