UK Withdrawal from the EU and Potential Withdrawal from the Single Market

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the chance given to the House by the initiative of my noble friend Lady Hayter to debate these hugely important subjects. Like my noble friend, I urge the Government to take the lead by unilaterally guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens currently residing in the UK. It is neither morally nor economically attractive to attempt to use their position as a negotiating ploy; nor is it even a good negotiating tactic. In all circumstances—and particularly when it is the UK that has initiated the change in the relationship with the EU—careful judgment has to be exercised in choosing negotiating positions.

The Prime Minister, on her way to meet President Trump, has, perhaps in preparation, been reading Trump: The Art of the Deal, popularly attributed to the President, even if its co-author and publisher both downplay his contribution. “Use your leverage”, the book advises. Its putative co-author certainly used financial leverage in his business life, and the Prime Minister will find out tomorrow and thereafter how he uses negotiating leverage. But the very inconceivability of not protecting the rights of EU citizens already resident in the UK, as acknowledged by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Davos, makes the issue poor or non-existent negotiating leverage. It only draws attention to what the Minister—perhaps inadvertently—referred to last week as the weaknesses in our negotiating position. I therefore urge the Government again to give clear and unequivocal guarantees to EU citizens resident in the UK.

For the future, we need to restore widespread public confidence in government control of immigration—I recognise that—including from the EU, while at the same time, at the very least, not handicapping our long-term economic prospects. I commend to your Lordships’ House the report prepared for techUK by Frontier Economics and published on Tuesday. If its analysis and recommendations are specifically for the digitally intensive sectors of the economy, the principles and model are widely applicable. It recommends, inter alia, as well as the immediate confirmation of the rights of EU citizens currently resident here, a low-friction, smart immigration unit and recognition of the importance of UK firms being able to locate UK nationals to work in EU member states.

That said, and notwithstanding the intemperate remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, I still believe that a more structured solution, such as the Bruegel think tank’s continental partnership, to which I have previously referred—retaining membership of the single market without being subject to the freedom of movement of people—is both desirable and achievable.

On the same day that the Prime Minister made her Lancaster House speech, Rachel Sylvester wrote in the Times:

“Mrs May is missing the EU’s shift on free movement … Her inflexible negotiating position risks ignoring European politicians’ significant changes of attitude to migration”.


I hope that the Minister and the Prime Minister will reflect on this as they finalise the Government’s White Paper.