European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Baroness Northover Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD) [V]]

I want to pick up a theme from my noble friend Lord Newby’s speech: British global influence. The Prime Minister claimed after the referendum campaign that post Brexit we would become

“a great European power, leading discussions on foreign policy … to make our world safer”,

as if being in the EU hampered rather than helped that or as if we could, for example, do more if we left NATO or the UN. We were the bridge for the United States to the EU; that will now be Germany or France, which is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

As my noble friend Lord Wallace pointed out, the EU agreement has no provision for British involvement in foreign policy. That was not an EU decision but a British one, even though the UK working within the EU meant that we were able to maximise our influence. Thus we led across EU capitals on tackling climate change, helping to secure the agreement in Paris. The EU, working together, helped to bring about the Iran agreement.

The treaty states:

“The Parties shall continue to uphold the shared values and principles of democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights”


and “promote” these “in international forums”. How exactly will we do that? In advance of key UN votes, we will not be in the meetings that decide the EU position. Take the example of Hong Kong. When China enacted its national security law, we had newly threadbare support at the UN. What of Gibraltar? As the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, has just said, the Government said they would not agree a deal without including Gibraltar; they have done just that. Can the Minister explain exactly how and when the Government will resolve Gibraltar’s position, and why they failed to finalise it as we rushed towards their self-imposed deadline of 31 December?

Those who urged Britons to vote for Brexit pointed to sunlit uplands. Now, those claims are rarely made; the Government do not even dare to commission an impact assessment. What do we hear? The circular argument: “The British people voted for Brexit, and this is what we have delivered for them”—nothing about how they sold this to the British people: the cake and eating it, to which the noble Lord, Lord Maude, referred. The Minister spoke of asserting global Britain and said that now we could play a leading role on the world stage. However, we are already seeing in foreign affairs that we have, in fact, made it more difficult, not easier, to play that global role.