EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, we finally have an agreement with Europe, which can only be recommended because it exists at all; it could not have been held up to the light of Parliament because it would have been ripped to shreds on all sides. It is an agreement made by a Government who stooped to the threat of breaking international treaties as a negotiating strategy and who have yet been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Europe itself.

It is an agreement that overturns the basic claims that were made for leaving Europe. Will there be less red tape? No—an army of people are now required to police our future. Will the economy be stronger? No—the economic consensus is that value-added exports will fall by nearly 5.5% and GDP by 4.4%. Will there be independence from Europe? No—if we diverge on standards or subsidies, we have agreed that the rule-makers in the Commission and member states can punish us with rebalancing tariffs. Will there be a stronger union? No—we have a more divided country, provoked into further and perhaps final divisions by a Government who ignore the realities of devolution. Will we have a more sovereign place in the world? Hardly, not with our reputation for probity and pragmatism trashed as it has been.

Will we have freedom to do as we want? Yes, if it means reconstructing hundreds of agencies that we had ourselves been responsible for establishing and running. Will we have a stronger democracy? Sadly, no; in their short career, the Government have shown a unique contempt for Parliament. Will there be a brighter future? Not for young people excluded from Erasmus, not for our musicians shut out from Europe at the last minute, not for our universities or for building knowledge, not for our health and social care services—dependent on European medics—not for our farmers or fishermen and not for our financial services, for which passporting is now a distant dream and which still do not know whether they will be granted full equivalence. This is the brilliant agreement, described as such by those who have to believe that it is. We started in the tragedy of a national act of self-harm, and we end in farce.