Brexit: Options for Trade (EUC Report)

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, let me thank the chairs of both committees, the staff who have produced this excellent report with us and, indeed, the witnesses who prepared so carefully for evidence sessions. This has been an excellent debate. I have found myself in agreement with almost everything that has been said so eloquently on all sides of the House. This whole process of preparing for Brexit I find infinitely depressing. Thursday mornings are a very depressing part of the week, despite the excellent company of my fellow committee members, because one witness after another—experts, practitioners, trade bodies and so on—parade before us the complexities of the situation we are in. Such warnings are all around us. Last night the president of the CBI talked about his fears for the whole process, calling it a rollercoaster, and warning that no deal with the EU would hit 90% of our exports to the EU, either in tariffs or non-tariff barriers.

It is a great pity that none of the strongest opponents of the EU is here this evening to hear the variety and depth of the debate. The Government’s very late response to our report also makes a depressing read. Either the Government have very few words in their lexicon, as envisaged by my noble friend, or they have very few ideas, because the same banal, generalised, high-level statements are repeated over and over again: “ambitious and comprehensive”, “frictionless”, “no cliff edge” and so on. The endless repetition was so intense that at the end of reading the response I felt that I was being brainwashed.

As with the White Paper, I was also distressed by the Government’s apparent smug self-confidence. I have referred to this before as hubris. I believe that the use of the terms “world class” and “world leading” show that overconfidence. However, there is a new line that appears in the Government’s response to the report, which is that it will be all right because we are already well integrated with the EU and currently have no trade barriers, so apparently we are unlikely to have any in the future. If the Government seriously believe that, they have been deaf to the statements coming from our current EU partners, who have said, in terms, that if you leave the club, cease to pay the membership fee and no longer agree to play by the rules, you can no longer enjoy the benefits of membership. We have already announced not just that we want to leave the club but that we do not even want associate membership.

I think that in reality, like ducks on a lake, the Government are paddling furiously just below the waterline. Indeed, the impressive list of meetings that they have held with business organisations, set out in the government response, and the hundreds of additional civil servants they have recruited are signs of the effort and work going on. I just reflect that it is a pity that those extra civil servants are needed in order for us to fight just to stay still. I would have preferred them to do something rather more creative.

What I looked for in the government response was some acknowledgement of the sheer complexity of the situation. The committee report that we are discussing today makes that complexity plain—albeit this is only an introductory taster to the true difficulties. This morning our committee discussed its next report, which looks behind and beyond the level of detail in the report we are discussing here to a further level of complexity. I believe it should be compulsory for everyone who tells us that it is all quite straightforward to read not just the summary but the body of this report. Only by doing so can you understand the complexity. It does not need to be this report; it can be any one of the excellent reports produced by our EU committees. They are authoritative and comprehensive but, as I have said before, they are also depressing.

In my inbox and on Twitter there are two categories of pro-Brexit campaigners. Just to clarify matters, I do not put everyone who is pro-Brexit in these two categories, but I want to refer to two types of correspondents. One is what I call Brexit bullies, who feel that, by shouting loudly and heaping sometimes personal insults on those who oppose Brexit, they will drown out the arguments being put before them. Then there are the lemmings—those who blindly follow their leaders towards the Government’s famous cliff edge. This report and others in the series should be read by all lemmings. It sets in context, in factual, precise detail, the enormous complex task that the Government face. I will briefly refer to a couple of detailed issues.

Our report refers to potential costs and delays associated with more complex border and customs processes. The Government’s response that that is all done electronically now has been put forward in the Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland context. I very much hope that it could be a contribution, although that should not be overestimated in its potential. But in general terms, the value of electronic processes needs to be considered. I draw noble Lords’ attention to an article in this week’s Times about the considerable delays at the Turkish/Bulgarian border—up to 30 hours. Reference was made to bulky sheets of documents. Turkey is in the customs union with the EU. The point made in the article is that EU states can and do impose significant transit fees and permits based on a quota system. Each EU country sets its own fees. That is despite the customs union.

The Road Haulage Association has warned of the need for significant investment in infrastructure of ports and customs. We have very little such infrastructure because we have not needed it for 40 years. It warns of the total lack of experience and knowledge in the road haulage industry on these matters. Can the Minister tell us precisely what the Government are doing to prepare for this?

On dispute resolution procedures, our report refers to the advantages of the EU system and the disadvantages of the WTO system. We need to ask ourselves, why would the EU agree, as the Government suggest in their response, to a separate and new system that the Government hope to set up with the EU when one already exists from their perspective? Any new system that is established has to be accessible to small businesses and just as accessible as the current system.

The Government’s response, beyond the Prime Minister’s statement that we would not remain within the single market or the EEA, does not have much detail. In debate earlier this week, one noble Lord, when referring to negotiating and revealing our hand, compared our negotiations to those with the IRA and the DUP in Northern Ireland. I want to examine that. Negotiations in Northern Ireland were between groups who had been seeking to kill each other. We are talking about negotiating with our EU partners and friends who have sat on the same side of the table with us for 40 years. The Government place too much emphasis on keeping their powder dry and keeping their cards close to their chest. Those other countries which have been our friends for 40 years know every nook and cranny of what we are trying to negotiate and what we want to do.

These days, there is global interdependence. If we want to trade we effectively have to pool sovereignty with others. The irony is that because the EU is the world’s biggest customs union, it dictates many of the terms and standards of world trade and we will have to accept that, whatever the Government lead us to in terms of negotiations on Brexit.