European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I wish that my noble friend Lord Mandelson was right on that. If it were the case, we might be in a different position but at the moment it is a hope rather than a guarantee.

When I worked in the European Parliament, as any noble Lords who may have been in the Commons at the time might remember, we saved 1000cc motorcycles. We also saved kippers and Scottish Arbroath smokies. As noble Lords may remember, on the 1000cc motorcycles we had those wonderful big bikes going round and round Parliament Square before they headed off to Brussels. I think it was Commissioner Bangemann who had tried to ban 1000cc bikes. Of course, other than in the States they were made only in Britain. Elsewhere they made smaller ones and they came up with this argument that the larger ones were inherently unsafe. Actually, it turned out that they were safer than small bikes, partly because they are ridden by safer riders. Unfortunately, we won not because of the great display of bikes going round Parliament Square but because we had a Minister at the Council of Ministers as well as MEPs. He is not in his place but I think my noble friend Lord Tomlinson was probably the MEP concerned at the time. So we were able to challenge that argument and we won.

It was similar with the smokies, on a smaller issue. Some bright spark in the Commission thought they should be transported only below a certain temperature. Of course, they can be sent by post—in those days, we used to get them early enough for our breakfast. We managed to save those, too, but we did it because we had MEPs in the European Parliament, we had a Commissioner and we obviously had a Minister at the Council of Ministers.

What worries me—and, indeed, what worries me about the intervention just made—is that we would become rather like what we saw a lot there, namely lobbyists around the corridors of Brussels, using others to make the arguments for us. Norway said to us, “We use our Scandinavian friends; we have a very close relationship, for obvious reasons, and they make our representations for us”.

The other issue, of course, that we are all beginning to see, relates to the regulations. These are the regulations that your Lordships’ House will soon have to put into the great repeal Bill. These have all been passed by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, in both of which we are represented as a member of the EU. Once we put those into the great repeal Bill, others will continue to be made. In the short term, there will be no problem, and in the transitional period, membership of the EEA is extremely attractive because it will take a long time before those are replaced. Certainly, if we remain in the customs union, which I very much hope we will be able to do, we will have to abide by rules, even if we have not made them, on those elements with which we trade and by which we export. That, however, is different from being bound by the whole acquis and judged by the ECJ, with no British member, on rules that we have not made, in a Parliament in which we have no seats and in a Council in which we have no vote. That is not what the referendum said.

Therefore, my heart is with the movers of the amendment and with wanting to stay as we were, but I also have time, occasionally, to read books. I am a great fan of Lampedusa’s The Leopard, with its famous advice:

“Everything needs to change, so everything can stay the same”.


Alternatively, in some translations—Italian speakers will know better than I—he says:

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”.


I want things to stay as they are, in that we should continue to trade freely with the EU 27, but to achieve this, we will have to change, and negotiate tariff-free, encumbrance-free access to that single market and it to us. That is what we must aim for. We have a fight ahead of us to keep our position in the customs union, to ensure that tariff-free trade and to work for the three objectives that have just been set out by my noble friend Lord Mandelson and the closest possible relationship with the EU 27. Our task is to persuade the Government that they have set their sat-nav for the wrong destination. That is where our energies must go. However, it is unfair to give people the unrealistic hope that staying in the single market, despite the referendum and our exit, is a possibility. We need to continue to trade as freely as possible with the EU that we have to leave. For that reason, we are not able to support this amendment.

[Noble Lords]

Shame!

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I think that I would like to say a few words, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, says. I sense there is some division. Let me start by trying to mend some bridges—pardon the pun. All of us in this House wish our country to prosper. We all want to see more investment and more jobs. The very simple question raised by these amendments is this: in light of the vote to leave the EU, how can we best do that? I know that the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Monks, and other noble Lords whose names are on these amendments, have long-held views that the best route to achieve that aim is, at least in part, for the United Kingdom to remain within the EU and within the single market. I respect their views and the steadfastness with which they hold them. I will try my best to be eloquent, but I am sure that what I am about to say will not deflect them and a number of other noble Lords, such as the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, from supporting this amendment. But I will briefly set out why the Government oppose the amendment. The first and most obvious reason is that it has nothing to do with the Bill. The Bill has one purpose only: to enable the Government to start the process of negotiation. It is not a means to dictate the terms of the negotiation.

The second reason concerns the democratic arguments. Very briefly, as I said earlier, the Government promised to hold a referendum and to honour its result. Yes, I know that the Conservative Government said that they would protect our role in the single market in the manifesto. But as my noble friend Lord Blencathra pointed out, the manifesto also promised to respect the result of the referendum—a promise which this Parliament endorsed by passing the European Union Referendum Act.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, the debate we have heard tonight has been a rerun of the referendum campaign. As I said earlier, during that campaign, every household was sent a leaflet which spelled out the consequences of leaving as regards our membership of the single market. A number of people on both sides of the argument pointed out that we could not vote to leave and then try to remain in the single market. Criticising the leave campaign, one of those arguing to remain said:

“Some of those advocating British withdrawal suggest that we can have our cake and eat it by staying within the European single market to retain the great bulk of our trade which is with EU countries”.—[Official Report, 2/3/16; col. 855.]


Those are the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and he was quite right. The four freedoms are seen by many across Europe as indivisible, and we should respect those views.

Much more than that, as other noble Lords have said, remaining a member of the single market would mean complying with the EU’s rules and regulations that implement the four freedoms, without having a vote on what those rules and regulations are. It would almost certainly mean accepting a role for the Court of Justice of the European Union. It would mean still not having control over immigration—relying on enforcement powers rather than creating an immigration system, which this Government intend to build, which allows us to control numbers and encourages the brightest and best to come to this country.

As to the customs union, were we to remain a full member, we would remain bound by a common external tariff, which would greatly limit our ability to strike our own trade deals and our freedom to determine the level of UK tariffs. Were we to remain within the common commercial policy, we would not be able to pursue freely our bold, ambitious trade agenda with the rest of the world. We would instead, as now, be ceding responsibility for this to the European Union. So to remain a member of the single market and to remain a full member of the customs union would, to all intents and purposes, mean not leaving the EU at all.

As to the EEA, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that it suffers from a democratic deficit. Once we leave the EU, as my noble and learned friend said earlier, the EEA agreement will no longer be relevant for the UK. It will have no practical effect. But we expect a phased process of implementation to cover our withdrawal from the EU in which both Britain and the EU institutions and member states prepare for the new arrangements between us. This is intended to give businesses enough time to plan and prepare for the new arrangements. The interim arrangements that we rely on will be a matter for negotiation.