European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

61: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Single market: frontier controls
If no agreement is reached with the EU on frontier controls, taxes and charges, the free movement of goods and services, the Digital Single Market, standardisation and the full involvement of the United Kingdom in European Agencies by the day on which this Act is passed, then the Government's negotiating objectives under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union shall be on the basis that the United Kingdom will seek to remain fully in the Single Market.”

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am moving this amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lord Bradshaw, who could not be here tonight, but the amendment is also in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria It is slightly different from some of the previous ones we have debated today. It suggests that, if no agreement is reached with the European Union on frontier controls and all the other things in the amendment, the Government’s negotiating objectives should be on the basis that the UK will seek to remain fully in the single market, which I and many other noble Lords see as an alternative to the hard or cliff-edge Brexit, or whatever we like to call it. The first Division that we won a few days ago on Report was on the customs union. That was a good start, but I invite the House to go a little further. Although the customs union is good, quite a lot of problems would still be attached to it, particularly on the jobs and frontier control issues.

On the economy, we read every day of fears of job losses, the economy going down, and of worries from many companies, large and small, about the effect of Brexit. I suppose that the motor car manufacturers are some of the most frightened. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders believes that that there will be a £4.5 billion additional cost in tariffs, let alone all the other bureaucracy I shall come on to, and the RICS reckons that there will be the loss of 200,000 construction jobs if we are not in the single market.

Many noble Lords will have read the recent leaked government analysis of the drop in the economy if we go for a hard Brexit—in the north-east a 16% drop, and in the West Midlands a 13% drop—whereas in the UK overall there would be a 1.5% drop if we remained in the single market and an 8% drop if we ended up on WTO terms. It is worth my saying before the Minister does that the Government do not recognise these figures, but we all get used to the Government not recognising the figures they do not like. We will see what happens.

On the issue of frontier controls, 38 cross-border agencies are involved. With some of them the checks have to be done at frontiers—I include the Northern Ireland-Republic land frontiers in these remarks—and the paperwork, even with a customs union, can be pretty horrendous. We could spend hours debating customs, food standards, food legislation, and the need for pallets to be disinfected when they come into the European Union. Seed potatoes cannot be taken from inside to outside, so I do not know what will happen if a farm straddles the border in Ireland and the seed potatoes in one half cannot be taken into the other half, which sounds interesting. Other issues, among many, include animal and plant health, rabies, foot and mouth and pharmaceuticals.

Just to give one example, there is a transporter that moves goods for Morrisons from here to Gibraltar. Every lorry has to be checked for the point of origin of the goods, each having its own document, before the Spanish authorities will permit the vehicle to leave the UK on its route to Gibraltar. Heaven only knows how that will improve when we have left.

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[Lord Callanan]

I thank the noble Baroness for her comments. Amendment 61, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, but moved by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, seeks to maintain the UK’s participation in the single market if agreement is not reached in the areas of frontier controls, taxes and charges, free movement of goods and services, the digital single market, standardisation and UK involvement in European agencies. As a result of the significant progress made in negotiations, we are increasingly confident that we will secure a deal with the EU and that the prospect of leaving negotiations without a positive agreement has receded significantly.

I will say a little more about our objectives in the areas mentioned in the noble Lord’s amendment. First, on frontier controls, we have thought seriously about how our commitment to a frictionless border can best be delivered. Noble Lords will recall the Government’s clear position on this, which I touched on in my earlier remarks. On taxes and payments, the Government are committed to making cross-border trade as frictionless as possible after the UK leaves the EU and will take the necessary steps to ensure the UK economy remains strong in the future. On goods, a fundamental negotiation objective is to ensure that trade at the UK-EU border is as frictionless as possible. That means we do not want to see the introduction of any tariffs or quotas. To achieve this, we will need a comprehensive system of mutual recognition and the UK will need to make a strong commitment that its regulatory standards will remain as high as the EU’s. That commitment, in practice, will mean that UK and EU regulatory standards relating to industrial goods will remain substantially similar in the future.

As a number of noble Lords have mentioned, the UK’s services sector is a global success story. The Prime Minister has set out the Government’s objective of breaking new ground with a broader services agreement than ever before, with new barriers to trade permitted only if absolutely necessary. We want to agree an appropriate labour mobility framework that enables UK and EU businesses and self-employed professionals to travel to provide services to clients in person. We are open to discussing how to facilitate these valuable links. Given that UK qualifications are already recognised across the EU, and vice versa, it would make sense to continue to recognise each other’s qualifications in the future. An agreement that delivered these objectives would be consistent with the mutually expressed interest in an ambitious services agreement.

We have also been clear that, by virtue of leaving the single market, the UK will not be part of the EU’s digital single market strategy, which will continue to develop after our withdrawal from the EU. This is a fast-evolving, innovative sector, in which the UK is a world leader so it will be particularly important to have domestic flexibility to ensure the regulatory environment can always respond nimbly and ambitiously to new developments.

We will want to explore with the EU the terms on which the UK could remain part of EU agencies, such as those that are critical for the chemicals, medicines and aerospace industries—the European Medicines Agency, the European Chemicals Agency and the European Aviation Safety Agency. We are confident that a deep and special partnership is in the interests of both sides, so we approach these negotiations anticipating success.

In response to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about Dover, Ministers have met representatives from the Port of Dover on a number of occasions, most recently on Monday 23 April. Furthermore, DExEU civil servants have an ongoing dialogue with the Port of Dover and Eurotunnel.

With that information, I hope I have provided a clear picture of the Government’s objectives for negotiating a deal with the EU in these areas and that the noble Lord will feel content to withdraw his amendment. I reiterate that I cannot give any false hope that I will reflect further on this issue between now and Third Reading, so if the noble Lord wishes to test the opinion of the House, he should do so now.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in this short debate. Apart from the Minister they all expressed concern about the state of the negotiations and where they are going. The Minister gave us a very positive view on how the negotiations were going, to such an extent that one is tempted to believe that by the time the Bill receives Royal Assent they will all be agreed. There is the slight problem that it takes two to agree. As we have heard on many occasions, it is not just the European Commission but the many other European agencies there. If the Minister is that positive and hopeful about all these agreements, it is tempting to argue that he should accept my amendment because it will not be necessary.

However, he did not say anything about the rules of origin, which the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, also spoke to at length—we both read the same paper at the weekend. It is a very serious issue, as he said. Without agreement on the rules of origin I do not think there will be much free movement of goods across the frontier. I do not think we will be able to agree rules of origin in a couple of months. It is a very long drawn-out issue.

I was also concerned when the Minister said that we are having nothing to do with the single market and the digital agenda. If we are outside the digital agenda, we shall have very serious problems in many sectors of trade with the European Union. I rather hope the Government will look at this again. The Minister mentioned the agencies. He did not mention the railways agency this time, but I am sure he mentioned it in previous debates.

I shall read carefully what the Minister said. I will not divide the House at this late hour because we will all fall asleep before we finish, but I know we shall come back to this. Talking to the people of Dover, the harbour board, Eurotunnel and everyone else is one thing; it is probably almost too late to make it work with the massive changes that could happen. I leave noble Lords with a thought: if you live in Kent, near Ashford, and you have continuous traffic jams of trucks on the motorway during Operation Stack, usually caused by either a strike in France or the weather, I cannot see that there will be many people voting for Brexit in Kent by the time this is all over. With that aside, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 61 withdrawn.

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[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the issues raised and, if I may say so, powerfully argued in her speech by the noble Baroness are grave. People came to live here in the expectation that they would be welcome, of course, and that they would contribute to our economy, which would be appreciated. But most importantly they came here in the context of European citizenship, understanding that as part of being a European citizen they had every right to move here and establish their lives here. We, by our moves to leave the European Union, have circumscribed the rights of citizenship. This is in history a dramatic and grave event. We really have a responsibility to ensure that what people did in good faith—and in terms of citizenship—is preserved. If we have any claim at all to being a responsible nation in the global community, citizenship must be regarded as one of the most precious elements in human life. The need to be certain beyond doubt about what the position of these people will be is therefore essential.

The other point is that we are already seeing the consequences of not having settled the issues. The health service is having still more problems because people feel unable to commit their families to living here. I am involved in several universities and there is evidence that people who wanted to come and make a contribution in our universities as academics are thinking twice about it because they are not sure what their status will be. That applies also and not infrequently to people who are already here and considering promotion or some other job within the university environment. These are just examples, but these matters are urgent.

I remember absolutely clearly that when we had just had the referendum, the response from the Government was quite encouraging because it was said by the Prime Minister and others that, without any doubt, this matter would be given priority above all others. Where is the evidence of this priority above all others? We really need some convincing answers from the Minister this evening.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I spent this weekend with a couple whom I have known for a long time. She is German and he is British. They have children and she taught at a European school for 20 years. She said, “You know, ever since the vote two years ago I’ve been looking for an answer. I haven’t had one and I’m just fed up”. She has lived in the UK for 20 or 30 years and her conclusion was that the Government are now so untrustworthy, so devious and so unwelcoming that she is thinking of taking her family back to Germany, or perhaps Holland or somewhere. That is a common message that we have heard from many noble Lords and it is disgraceful that these citizens have been used as bargaining chips for the last two years. I hope that the Minister will give us some comfort that this period of real worry for their families will soon come to an end.