European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McDonagh (Lab)]

I am prepared to lock horns with the noble Lord on Amendment 206, which I support. I have some quotes of my own.

In October last year, the Secretary of State for International Trade said,

“believe me we’ll have up to 40”,

free trade agreements,

“ready for one second after midnight in March 2019”.

In July 2016, the now Secretary of State for Exiting the EU wrote:

“I would expect the new Prime Minister on September 9th to immediately trigger a large round of global trade deals with all our most favoured trade partners … So within two years … we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU”.


He goes on to say that,

“the new trade agreements will come into force at the point of exit from the EU, but they will be fully negotiated and therefore understood in detail well before then”.

Does the Minister agree with his Secretaries of State? Can he tell us how many trade deals the Government expect to be in place one second after midnight on 29 March 2019? Does he understand that the reality of what is happening, and the lack of progress, is driving an increasing number of voices to want to remain in the customs union—particularly those who voted to come out of the EU?

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 6, 7, 162, 197 and others, regarding protecting our position in the single market, customs union and European Economic Area, on the free and frictionless trade for goods and services with our closest partners, and on the integrated supply chains and free trade agreements with 60 other countries, which make up 70% of our trade. I echo the brilliant and inspiring contributions from my noble friends Lord Carlile and Lord Hailsham, the remarks from the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Bilimoria, and the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, with respect to Amendment 89.

The idea of losing our current free and frictionless trade and free trade agreements with other countries seems like industrial vandalism. That is not what the British people voted for. My noble friend Lord True and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, talked about the instructions of the referendum result. We have listened to and respected the result by triggering Article 50. That was the decision made by the British people. However, we are not saying tonight that the British people got it wrong. The leave campaign got it wrong, and those pressing to leave the single market, customs union or European Economic Area got it wrong. They seemed to believe that we could have our cake and eat it. That is what people voted for; but now, in trying to find a way forward after triggering Article 50, we are discovering that far from eating cake, or having it, we may have to settle for bread—and not a loaf, but a slice. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and support Amendment 197, which calls for the same rights, freedoms and access as now. Surely that is the least that British people who voted to leave would have expected. Leaving the single market, customs union or European Economic Area was not on the ballot paper. The leave campaign specifically ruled out leaving the single market on many occasions. It was the remain campaign that talked about it, and clearly those who voted leave did not take the remain campaign’s warnings seriously.

What did leave voters vote for? The leave campaign promised them wonderful new trade deals in addition to existing ones. We are about to lose the deals that we currently have outside the EU. The very best we can get from those is the same terms we currently have. Already some of those countries are saying that they will give us worse terms if we try to negotiate separately, as we must do. Leave voters wanted and were promised much more money for the NHS. The OBR has already estimated that, far from having £350 million a week more for the NHS, we will have about £300 million less per week. We are losing money.

The campaign promised no change to the border in Northern Ireland, yet we hear about possible changes to the Good Friday agreement. This cannot happen. We must stay in the single market, the customs union and the EEA to preserve UK jobs. My noble friend Lord Robathan talked about misleading the British people. It is the leave campaign that is misleading the British people.

[Lord Robathan]

I am awfully sorry, but I hope my noble friend has read the Conservative manifesto, which, in only June last year, received a staggering number of votes.

[Lord Robathan]

Not enough, but a staggering number.

[Baroness Altmann]

My noble friend Lord Lamont and others have said that other countries manage without being in the EU, but their economies have not spent 40 years integrating and intertwining their industries and economies with the EU. The only country trading on WTO terms is Mauritania.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Could my noble friend tell me which country is more integrated with the EU: Switzerland or Britain?

[Baroness Altmann]

The industrial success of the British economy is based on the integrated supply chains. The jobs in Sunderland and across the automobile industry, as an example, and the biotech industry and pharma industry depend upon those integrations. The foreign companies that own those operations will be unable to compete if we do not have the same kind of access that we have now.

The Government’s evidence, which is being hidden from the public, shows that Brexit will be a huge cost, the size of which depends on the hardness of the Brexit. I urge colleagues on these Benches and across the House to wake up to the reality that we face and to at least support these amendments to stay in the customs union, the single market, the EEA or equivalent.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group, Amendments 4, 152 and 225, but I broadly support all the other amendments that have been discussed.

The most disturbing and alarming thing that has happened in respect of the Brexit process in the recent past has been the collapse of the power-sharing talks in Northern Ireland last week and the response of the DUP leadership and some prominent members of the Conservative Party, including a Conservative former Northern Ireland Secretary, since that collapse, who have said that they believe that the time may have come to end the Northern Ireland agreement, including a tweet from the said former Northern Ireland Secretary, Owen Paterson, saying that he thought that the Northern Ireland agreement had now served its purpose. I do not think I have heard more irresponsible words from a former Cabinet Minister in the recent past than those. As the noble Lord, Lord Patten, said, I do not think it is a coincidence that the people who are calling for an end to the Northern Ireland agreements, with all the potentially calamitous consequences for the people of Northern Ireland as well as the rest of us in the United Kingdom, are also almost to a man and woman ardent Brexiteers.

I know that the Prime Minister shares our concern, because in the Florence speech she said that,

“we and the EU have committed to protecting the Belfast Agreement and the Common Travel Area and, looking ahead, we have both stated explicitly that we will not accept any … infrastructure at the border. We owe it to the people of Northern Ireland—and indeed to everyone on the island of Ireland—to see through these commitments”.

I believe that we too in this House owe it to the people of Northern Ireland to see through those commitments. When I heard Mr Daniel Hannan say that he believed that the Good Friday agreement was a consequence and not a cause of peace in Northern Ireland, I could not think of any statement that is playing with fire more dangerously from a responsible official. He is a Member of the European Parliament.