UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for his excellent stewardship of this report.

As most speakers in this debate have commented, we seem to be in somewhat calmer waters of UK-EU relations after the welcome agreement on the Windsor Framework regarding the Northern Ireland protocol. Indeed, as in the delightful pun of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, we are “thawing the Frost”. However, a big question is whether this benign scenario will be maintained. I think some of us live in nervous anticipation—due to squabbles inside the Tory party—of some other ruction in the relationship, created for internal party or electoral reasons.

When we debated last week the report from the sub-committee of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, the noble Lord, Lord Frost, objected to what he described as a change in the Government’s stance on the protocol, saying:

“The Johnson Government, of which I was part, always took the view … that the protocol was unsatisfactory and temporary. We always hoped that, ultimately, divergence by GB would produce the collapse of the protocol arrangements”—[Official Report, 11/9/23; col. GC 110.]


Therefore, there is a faction of the Tory party—quite a large one—which does not want or offer stability in our relationship with the EU. Rather, it favours disruption, which seems very unconservative.

The Prime Minister’s disruption today of green targets will surely undermine and embarrass the King, who, on his current state visit to France is set to host a climate mobilisation forum. It certainly angers business. I fear that the perception will be once again that Tories never stick to their promises, which is damaging for them but also, sadly, for our whole country. The chair of Ford UK reacted furiously this morning to being blindsided. She said:

“Our business needs three things from the UK government: ambition, commitment and consistency”.


That is surely what many want from government for our EU relationship.

What we and the EU need now in this relationship is stability, consistency, reliability and a basis for trust; then, we can start to aim for some improvements, modest at first but not insignificant, and, I hope, then growing. Are we going to get this stability? The screeching U-turn on net zero is not reassuring, but I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me.

The Government continue to kick the can down the road on border checks on imports, leading to uncertainty and extra cost to industry, as well as concern about food safety if disease or unsafe food slips into the UK due to laxness.

Of the several specific co-operative initiatives proposed in our April report and previously, two have in fact been achieved; such is the influence of our former chair, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. Those are the association with Horizon Europe and a memorandum of understanding on financial services. The achievement of an SPS agreement would be of great value but unfortunately, the Government say that they will agree one only if there is recognition of regulatory equivalence. That is of course utterly unrealistic, so our farmers and agri-food industry will continue to suffer from red tape and cost burdens.

In some quarters, as I already mentioned, regulatory divergence is seen as a good and an aim in itself, apparently to display our “sovereignty”. I regard that as an empty project, and I am glad to say that I seem to be on the same page as the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, on that point; there is no point in it for its own sake. Of course, keeping in step with EU rules without having a say is second best—to which the solution is of course to rejoin the single market—but our economy and business demand it.

If the UK were to depart from the European Convention on Human Rights, that would throw a huge spanner in the works. We might kiss goodbye to the data adequacy agreement that is so valuable to business and torpedo any chance of, for instance, access to EU crime-fighting instruments such as the Schengen Information System or deeper co-operation on justice and extradition.

Much dismay has been expressed at the stalemate on touring for creative professionals and on student exchanges, school visits and a youth mobility programme. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred to government narrowmindedness on this. Can the Minister dispel the perception that on these projects the Government know the price of everything but the value of nothing?

The body that represents English language schools, a sector worth £1.5 billion a year, laments its difficulties in securing visas, and my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire referred to current policy as incoherent.

Of course, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought the UK and EU together in supplying Ukraine, operating sanctions and planning reconstruction. The Government have taken part in the intergovernmental European Political Community and will host it next year. All this is good, but it is a bit of a jumble without any firm security partnership, either on internal or external security, within which to operate.

The Government have rejected an EU offer of strategic dialogue and do not want co-operation on sanctions encompassed in an MoU. Our committee’s current inquiry on the security and defence relationship heard very interesting evidence yesterday from senior MEPs on the scope they identified for intensifying that relationship, on which they are keen. Nathalie Loiseau, the EU co-chair of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, regretted the departure of the UK from two military operations in particular: Althea in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Atalanta on piracy at sea, which was in fact UK-led.

Can the Minister tell us what scope there is for re-establishing or furthering such co-operation under PESCO or projects with the European Defence Fund and European Defence Agency? Given that the NATO summit expressed a desire for the fullest involvement of non-EU allies in EU defence efforts, the Government surely cannot claim any tension on that score.

The Minister for Europe told us in evidence that he was open to the idea of regular UK-EU summits, but, disappointingly, the responses to our report have not confirmed that. Can the Minister say whether the Government see value in structures and predictable fora over ad hoc informality and claimed flexibility? Does she agree that a rationalisation and merger of the various committees under the withdrawal agreement and the TCA could be a focus for the 2025 review?

In conclusion, I feel reasonably confident that if Labour forms the next Government, we will not experience the ghastly turbulence in the UK’s relationship with the EU that we have experienced for the last seven years. I am glad that the Opposition leader was meeting President Macron yesterday and visited Europol and Eurojust in The Hague last week, sending, I think, signals on security. But the current red lines Labour has adopted—no to the single market, customs union or rejoining—though apparently designed to reassure some parts of the electorate, are, I think, likely to take some battering from voters who are already rather ahead of the Labour leadership in their ambition, and will increasingly become so as young people come of electoral age. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, mentioned that.

There is some excitement about a new report commissioned by the French and German Foreign Ministers which suggests our old friend, concentric circles, with the outer one being associate membership, but even that would mean participating in the single market. I hope and believe that such participation may well happen under a Labour Government, though I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Collins, will decline to assure me of that.