UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl and his committee on not only producing this report but, for once, getting it into the Chamber for debate before it has gathered too much dust. He has done remarkably well there.

The House knows my attitude to things European. I welcome what have been called “changing attitudes”, but I am a member of the Lord Speaker’s panel for schools and there has been no change of attitude there. School pupils were appalled by the referendum result. Every time I speak to a school, I say quite clearly, “I think it was a dreadful thing and we should reverse it as soon as possible. Does anyone disagree?” Occasionally you get the odd hand, but very seldom. Most of our younger generation, including the students at Cambridge University whom I meet from time to time, believe that we should repeal the whole process. That is why I welcome recent statements about looking again at how we can get a closer relationship.

It is fine to say that you can go around Australia for tuppence, or whatever, but most people want to go to Europe. Most people want the Erasmus programme back and students from the European Union to be able to come here. Most students want to come here. I want to see a Government looking to get as near as they can to the single market and back to the customs union and free movement. It seems incredible that we have such labour shortages but do not allow people to come into the country who would be prepared to work and benefit the economy.

I welcome the European Political Community and Britain’s participation in it. I see that we are hosting a summit next year; I hope we will put a lot of effort into it. I have also been interested to see recently that the French in particular are looking at a possible different structure. It has been common gossip in Brussels for years that the EU needs a different structure to enlarge. As someone said to me of the Baltic states, “You let one in and they’ll veto all the rest”. We have to work out a different structure; this two-tier structure is certainly worth looking at and working on, because I think it would work. It would probably also work for some of the current members of the EU that appear congenitally unable to keep its rules when it does not suit them. They do not seem to realise that the EU is an organisation where you have to compromise and, in the end, agree in order to go forward. That has been the EU’s secret—people can talk together. In this landmass, with fewer languages than India and a far smaller population than India or China, we have no option but to work together.

One hundred years ago this year, my grandmother moved into her first married house. She had gas mantles—not electricity—and no radio, and penicillin was a thing of the future. By the time she died, towards the end of the last century, all those things had changed. I say this because my granddaughter, now aged two, will probably be alive for the better part of another 100 years. This world will then be very different. Britain will be a small part of a small continent. It may well be China’s century—however much fantasy we have, I can tell noble Lords it will not be Russia’s—and we need to come to terms with that. The only way of doing so is to work with our European colleagues and to accept that you have to make compromises in working together —compromises that lead to the better good, a stronger Europe and a better place for us to leave our children to inherit.