Brexit: UK-EU Relationship

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am the product of a particular European union, as the daughter of a Scottish father and a Danish mother who met in Hamburg and married in 1948. My mother recalled vividly how she lived in Copenhagen under German occupation, so I have long taken a close personal interest in the European Union—but this is the first occasion on which I have spoken in this place on the subject.

I have always considered Europe to be a continent of opportunities: to study, to trade, to work, to set up business or a profession, and to export. However, as a democrat and a patriot, I accept the result of the referendum. As one chapter ends and another begins, what might the next chapter look like? As recently as yesterday, during Prime Minister’s Questions, Theresa May in the other place said,

“specifically about the single market and trading with the European Union … we are ambitious in getting the best possible deal for trading with and operating within the single European market”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/11/16; col. 1511.]

So I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, on calling this debate at this time. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, for making the first of what I am sure will be many excellent contributions to this House.

I would like to rehearse some of the pitfalls that lie before us on this rocky path ahead. The options appear to be remaining in the single market, remaining part of the customs union, being part of a free trade area and possibly a member of the European Economic Area, or reverting to World Trade Organization rules. I do not think that we begin to understand the complexity of what even the basics of World Trade Organization rules or free trade would be. We forget that we have been part of a single market, which was very much a Conservative concept pressed home by the late former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and her commissioner at the time, Lord Cockfield. However, we have been part of that only since 1992. As an MEP at the time for parts of Essex and what is now South Suffolk, I remember receiving panicked phone calls from local businesses whose goods were impounded by Customs at the borders asking what on earth I was going to do to release them. It is not just the tariffs but, as I said, the non-tariff barriers, and even trying to agree the nomenclature for every product, whether it is agricultural or non-agricultural.

We also have to have regard to the incoming US President, who, as has been said previously today, has tendencies that are even more protectionist than what we have seen in the past. That may lead to fewer opportunities for free trade for this country and aggravate already slowing free trade in the world economy, hitting the UK economy hardest because we are a more open trading nation than many others.

I would like to say a word of caution about the great repeal Bill. Most EU law has already been transposed into UK law. Environmental directives have been transposed through statutory instruments. It is regulations that are directly applicable that we have yet to identify and decide which we wish to keep. As regards the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, there may be some cases on which we would wish to follow its rulings. The early rulings of Costa v ENEL or Cassis de Dijon related to the free movement of goods and services, meaning that exports from this country would still be freely available in the European Union. No one has yet explained what this concept of equivalence would be. I remind the House that for architects, it took up to 21 years to achieve mutual recognition.

It is also worth remembering that when the former Soviet satellite states threw off the shackles of the iron curtain, they looked to the European Union, and still do, to give a blanket of security. We need an assurance that the European Union initiatives on co-operation in the security field will continue. Hearing that Russia is placing missiles on the borders of Poland and the Baltic states brings with it more than a hint of the pre-war years of the 1930s. Although it is clear that the UK may be leaving the European Union, we need to send a clear message that we remain within the broader bosom of the European family.