European Council

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The Prime Minister has been very clear about the importance of working more closely with source and transit countries— something she reiterated at the EU Council meeting—and we established the Organised Immigration Crime Taskforce to tackle that. It is working in 17 countries and has successfully disrupted organised crime groups through participating in intelligence sharing, arrests and prosecutions. We are also playing an important role in Operation Sophia, which has destroyed more than 300 smuggling boats, apprehended almost 90 suspected smugglers and successfully saved more than 26,000 lives.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, given the scale of the challenge of negotiating trade agreements with the rest of the European Union and other countries, which the noble Baroness acknowledges, what transitional arrangements are envisaged once we leave the European Union? As a pro-chancellor of the University of Bath, I urge the Government, in formulating the negotiating strategy, to ensure that among the negotiators there is at least one person with in-depth knowledge of the university sector, so that we can ensure that the negotiations in no way harm our university sector but enable UK universities to take advantage of the challenges ahead.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

A range of issues are involved in the transitional arrangements, the Department for Exiting the EU is considering them and a lot of work is going on. Of course we want to ensure that we are using the expertise and skills of universities and trade negotiators to get the best deal.