EU: Trade in Goods (European Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I also start by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, and thank her for her wonderful valedictory speech. I know that my father admired her greatly; he came in as a new MP in 1979, when she was beginning her ministerial career, and I continue in that admiration as well. I am fascinated by her reason for departing at this particular moment. My noble kinsman Lady Stocks, Mary Stocks, said of this House in her autobiography—they did not have valedictory speeches in those days—“I do not want this place to become my eventide home”, and I suspect that the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, would have some sympathy with that. My father and I both came from a showbusiness background, so I think the other way we would put it is to leave the stage while people are still applauding. If there is one thing that the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, should hear from across this House today, it is that we continue to applaud her for her contribution.

The report from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and his committee is a significant contribution, providing evidence of the difficulties we have faced in trade in goods since we left the EU three years ago this week. It is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, whose attitude that we must make the best of where we are is echoed by myself and my colleagues—but with a fervent hope that we will rejoin one day. I realise that there are those for whom that would not be the desire, but I also believe that there is now evidence showing that some of the concerns we had prior to the referendum are unfortunately there. The question is whether this country will be able to deal with them, and I am perhaps less convinced than the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, that that is true. It was interesting that he quoted Guy Verhofstadt, but the actual quote is slightly longer and helps to understand why he said it. He said of the Ukraine war:

“It’s really an attempt by Putin to restore the old Soviet Union … I think without Brexit maybe there was no invasion. I don’t know, I guess that he would see a far stronger and united Europe on the other side”.


That is the issue for us: the role of Britain, and the UK. I echo his comments and those of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that the UK’s involvement across Europe in the context of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has started to build those ties and relationships again. That is important after Brexit.

There are three statistics that stand out to me about the UK-EU trade figures and statistics over the last couple of years. First, the UK’s exports to the EU fell by 13% in 2021. Secondly, EU-UK trade is currently 20% lower than if Brexit had not happened. Thirdly, the value of customs duties for UK businesses went up by 64% in 2021. For my brief contribution, I want to look at one area: chemicals. As at September 2022, the UK exported 2.8 billion goods from the chemical sector into the EU, and imported 4 billion—so we are already seeing a continued difference between exports and imports.

I want to focus not on customs duties and other delays and barriers, as others noble Lords have already done, but on the so-called freedoms that this Government have referred to—our ability to create our own rules and regulations and not, to quote many Ministers, blindly follow the EU. The consequences of this policy in relation to chemicals are evident, particularly in how the UK manages the retained EU law and the proposed sunset of all EU laws by the end of this year.

On 21 November, in Grand Committee, we considered the Biocidal Products (Health and Safety) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 and the changes to the certification process following our departure from the EU. It is the first time I have seen, up close, the practical problems that businesses, government and government agencies have faced with having to manage things. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee noted in advance:

“These Regulations propose to extend the transitional period by five years because HSE has been unable to process the large number of applications for re-authorisation, in particular because much of the data … is stored on databases to which Great Britain no longer has access.”


The committee was concerned about the progress that was being made by the HSE more recently.

I raised this issue with the very helpful Minister at that time, the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, in Grand Committee, and I asked her two questions. The first was how the department and the agencies that report to her—specifically, in this case, the Health and Safety Executive—could be protected from the proposed cuts to the Civil Service and other public bodies in order to deliver the extended timescale for an agency that is clearly struggling to manage the new arrangements, where there has to be dual certification, once for the UK under our own system and again for any company exporting to the EU. I also asked her about how much this extra certification was going to cost the Health and Safety Executive, and eventually businesses, because everything is done on a cost recovery system.

The Minister’s responded, on the first issue, that there were some commitments

“to ensuring that health and safety legislation continues to be fit for purpose”,

but she could not give me any more details about the cost more generally. However, on resources specifically for the chemicals division, she told me—and I have to say I was astonished:

“The total budget for the HSE’s chemical regulation division has grown by 39%, from £22.4 million to £31.2 million between 2018-19 and 2022-23, reflecting the HSE’s need for increased resources for its post-EU exit responsibilities.”—[Official Report, 21/11/22; col. GC 239.]


That is an extreme increase in a budget, at a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer is saying we must cut all public services.

I have three questions for the Minister. He will be relieved, I think, to know that I am not going to ask him about biocidal regulation. First, are government conducting a formal review of capacity relating to all bodies—whether government bodies or arm’s-length bodies—in charge of any retained law being changed that has already diverged, such as this particular biocidal product? We should now have some idea of what extra costs there are likely to be. Secondly, is an assessment being made for all future retained law that is going to diverge in the future and how much it will cost? Thirdly, what prospect remains for cuts to the Civil Service and the arm’s-length bodies in light of this information? It seems to me that the one message we can take from this excellent committee report is that, if this Government want to make the new arrangements work, it is clear that current arrangements are not working in the Health and Safety Executive in an absolutely vital safety area both for biocidal products in the UK and for any we may export to the EU.

I appreciate that some of that might be quite technical, and if the Minister cannot reply today, I hope he will be able to write to me. However, it raises a more general issue about whether this country is prepared to understand the realistic cost of Brexit and how doing things our own way will not be just a wonderful theory. In practice, it will cost money, which means costing our businesses money.