Trade Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly welcome the Minister to the House and I entirely endorse the three principles of good public policy that he set out in his speech: good government, clear thinking and decisiveness. Alas, they entirely refute the trade policy that the Government are following, which does not observe any of these three principles. This is because by far the best trade policy for this country is membership of the European Union, the second best is membership of the single market and customs union and the third best is membership of the customs union with the best deal we can get in terms of access to the single market and services.

The first policy—membership of the European Union—was the policy of every Prime Minister of every party and Government from Harold Macmillan in 1962 through to David Cameron in 2016. The third of those policies—membership of the customs union—was effectively the policy of Theresa May, and we have come to this pass because of the collapse of successive waves of good government, clear thinking and decisiveness.

However, we have to make the best that we can of the dire situation. I will make two comments on the situation in which we currently find ourselves. The first is to do with the wider trade negotiating strategy of the Government with the European Union because, with all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Astor, it accounts for half of our trade and dwarfs all the other potential trading partners.

If it is true, as reported this week, that the Government are proposing to unilaterally withdraw from the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol that was agreed last year, not only would that be a major issue for the Government in terms of their breach of international law—we have seen that the Government’s chief legal adviser has resigned today because he is not prepared to implement that policy—it would also be a very big issue for this House. When the legislation comes to us, we will be invited to agree to a course of action that is, frankly, unconstitutional. It is also a clear breach of the Salisbury convention, which states that, in respect of major, controversial policies, Governments should abide by their election manifestos, and the Conservative Party’s manifesto pledged to implement the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol.

Therefore, it is my view, on reading about our present constitutional arrangements, that we should reject outright a Bill that involves Her Majesty’s Government abrogating the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol agreed by Boris Johnson last year.

In respect of the wider trade negotiations taking place at the moment, the two key sticking points appear to be fishing and state aid. Obviously, we want the Government to get the best deal they can in terms of fishing quotas. On state aid, the Minister said that he was the private secretary of Nigel Lawson, who would be absolutely aghast at the Government’s proposal to cast all current state aid restrictions to the winds so that they can follow a new interventionist industrial policy.

As it happens, I am to the left of the Minister and I actually support a more active industrial policy, but everyone who deals with trade and industry knows that, before you can get to a decent industrial policy, you have to have a stable economic policy, an open trading system, a stable exchange rate and clear, effective and understandable rules for takeovers and acquisitions. All of these are at stake in the Government’s Brexit policy and their trade policy in particular. I greatly regret that the Minister’s speech did not in any way reconcile the high aims and ambitions he set out at the beginning with the actual policy of Her Majesty’s Government.