Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, outside this House, the Brexit bus circles round and round, day after day. It is a very old diesel bus, causing pollution in the area and adding to congestion in Westminster, thus winning over no hearts and minds. I wonder what happened to that shiny new bus we saw in 2016 which advertised £350 million a week for the NHS.

I want to speak about transport. At the start of this Parliament I tabled a Private Member’s Bill entitled the Open Skies Agreement (Membership) Bill. It was designed at the time to prompt the Government into acknowledging the importance of our membership of the EU-US agreement which governs aviation. I little thought that, 18 months later, this would still be an issue. The political declaration proposes a comprehensive air transport agreement but it does not specify whether the Government are still aiming for the fully liberated market access that we have at the moment. Recent well-sourced coverage in the media suggests that we are still some way from reaching agreement. Both UK and US airlines regard it as absolutely crucial and there is apparently some sort of draft agreement. However, the negotiators still have to work out the mechanism by which the UK can continue to be covered by it. Whatever it may be, apparently it is noticeably inferior to our current arrangements and there is a crucial argument about the question of majority ownership which the US requires for UK airlines. It conflicts with the EU rules on this.

Of course, we have a big national airline in Britain—BA, which is UK and Spanish-owned. This is not a philosophical point; it is a crucial one. Eighteen months ago, some Brexit supporters in this House openly mocked when I raised the possibility that airplanes might be grounded on 30 March 2019, but no one has yet worked out how to keep them flying. This is just one example of the complexity that stares at us from every direction as we try to separate ourselves from the EU in a totally artificial manner for our modern, interdependent world.

In the transport sector, we are currently wading through 70 Brexit-related SIs. We have dealt with about half a dozen so far, which makes our task next term pretty important. The pointless waste of Civil Service, industry and parliamentary time being spent trying to artificially recreate a structure that mirrors exactly what we have now means that many other vital issues are being ignored. The Department for Transport—led by a keen Brexiteer, of course—is hopelessly behind schedule in preparations, as the NAO report pointed out. In early November, we were still debating a haulage permit scheme in the same month that hauliers had to submit applications to get their inadequate permits in January. Meanwhile, concrete barriers are being erected along Kent motorways in preparation for their conversion into giant lorry parks in anticipation of major congestion at Dover if this is not sorted soon.

As in so much, the political declaration raises more questions than it answers. In an earlier White Paper, the Government said that they wanted “reciprocal access” for road transport. Does that equate with what they now call “comparable market access”? There is no mention of the crucial issue of cabotage rights. Nor does the declaration answer the question of the need for an international driving permit. All it says is that,

“the Parties should consider complementary arrangements to address travel by private motorists”.

There is an even more restricted and less ambitious attitude to railways, where the department aims only for bilateral arrangements with Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands—our immediate neighbours. What about trains, particularly freight trains, that go well beyond those countries? In his evidence to the EU Internal Market Sub-Committee, the Secretary of State made much of the importance of the UK being able to diverge from EU standards, but the industry representatives who gave evidence said that they want to keep the same market-leading standards as the EU.

I want to touch briefly on the university sector. I declare an interest as the pro-chancellor of Cardiff University. Here, the Government’s horizons have narrowed since the early post-referendum days. When the market sub-committee looked at examples of Galileo research some months ago, the idea of the UK no longer being part of that massive project seemed pretty absurd, but last week the Government confirmed that we will withdraw from the project and develop our own system. That is possibly the most harebrained idea so far. It would mean years of work and billions of pounds being abandoned, only to be replaced by a system that we can have little hope of developing for a decade and at massive cost. This is an area where we really are world leaders.

Yesterday, I attended the Home Affairs Committee to take evidence on Horizon funding, Erasmus and the impact on universities. Representatives stressed to us the importance of international co-operation in creating excellence. My own university of Cardiff is a clear example of the impact of this funding, with £30 million of Horizon 2020 projects supporting international research co-operation on a scale and of a quality that is simply not possible through national funding mechanisms.

We need a people’s vote. According to my concept and the international definition of democracy, it should be renewable. People are allowed to change their minds when they see new facts.