EU Withdrawal

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, this afternoon my son was in Parliament with his geography class from school. Next month, he will be 18 years old. Our older daughter turned 18 in October 2016. Neither had a vote in the June 2016 referendum. Both will now have a vote. Like them, there are 2 million youngsters who did not have a say in their future and who still do not have a say.

We are told—we have heard it in this debate—that we have to respect the will of the people and we have to respect democracy. Democracy is holding this country to ransom with a vote from three years ago. The electorate have changed, demography has changed and, as we are told time and again, in the 2017 election, implementing Brexit was in the manifestos of both parties. People vote in elections for lots of different things; there are hundreds of items in manifestos, and to say that they voted just because “Brexit will be implemented” was in a manifesto is absolute nonsense. Governments also change their mind after elections about their manifestos, and people change their mind. After all, the PM said that there would be no election to start off with. Then we had the vote that was lost by 230 in the other place—the biggest defeat in history—so now the Prime Minister has changed her mind and has backed the Brady amendment. In fact, she now has a reputation for turning. Time and again, her red lines have become pink. She does not just turn; she pirouettes, but not as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who made a brilliant speech earlier.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, said that we must obey the will of the people and their instructions but as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, said clearly, we are a representative democracy. For Nick Boles MP, 60% of his constituency voted to leave yet he has the guts and the bravery to go with his opinion on a Norway-plus option. That is representative democracy, because he thinks it is in the best interests of his constituents and of the country. On that theme, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said that in the other place there should really be a free vote when it comes to the meaningful vote.

What about the 48%? There were 17.4 million who voted leave—52%—but what about those 16.1 million? This is the tyranny of the majority. In normal election cycles, every five years people get a chance to change their minds. Most importantly, next week it will be three years since the referendum was announced. People then had four months to make up their minds on an issue of the utmost complexity, covering more than 40 years, which was not even one of the top 10 issues in people’s minds at that time. Yes, the NHS was there, as were taxes, infrastructure and education, but not the EU. People had to learn about it and decide in four months. They voted for various reasons and, yes, people were deceived—on both sides, arguably. Of course the migration crisis was at its peak in 2015, something that was milked by UKIP during the election. Where is that migration crisis today? As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, concerns about immigration are at their lowest in 16 years. The world has changed and the facts have changed.

Just today those at Migration Watch UK, of all people, released the claim that immigration will actually increase if Brexit takes place. It said that the average of 250,000 will almost double and hit half a million—so much for reducing net migration. But analysis after analysis shows that the migration of 3.5 million EU people has brought net benefits to our economy, whichever way you look at it. These immigrants are not a drain on our public services; they support them. There are 130,000 of them working in the NHS and the care sector alone.

What about the claim that we have no control over EU migration? I have brought this point up and asked Ministers about it time and again. Finally, I got it in writing from the Government in December. In an Answer from the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, the Government have now admitted in response to my Question that the 2004 regulation allows every EU country to repatriate EU nationals who have come in through free movement after three months, if it is shown that they do not have a job and cannot support themselves or are not in full-time education. We have never used this provision but other countries, such as Belgium, repatriate thousands of people every year. We have had control over EU migration. Why has that been hidden from the public? Finally, the Government acknowledged in writing, first, that this regulation exists; secondly, that they could use it; and, thirdly, that they never have. People are being conned. Why is this country not waking up to this nonsense?

People say that you cannot rerun a referendum—“We are where we are”—but what do we know now? Now we know that Northern Ireland is the Achilles heel of Brexit. The backstop is stalling everything. It is necessary for the Good Friday agreement and for the precious peace that we have in Northern Ireland. In fact, I would pay the £8 billion net a year that we pay to the European Union for the peace that it has brought over the last four and a half decades. But how much was Northern Ireland mentioned during the referendum? It barely was, yet now we know what a major issue it is.

The Government have lost by 230 votes, and now we know more in every area. We had an excellent debate here on security. There are databases that we use every day, let alone having access to Galileo. We have looked things up 500 million times on one European Union security database alone, and there are many others. What is to happen if this is not sorted out? The security of our citizens, the most important priority for any Government, is jeopardised by the nonsense that is Brexit. On consumer rights, now we know that our consumer protections are also being diminished. Which? magazine says that in a no-deal situation, there would be a bonfire of consumer rights and protections.

I am proud to be the president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs. We know that 130,000 out of 450,000 international students here are entitled to home student fees, home student loans and the right to remain here indefinitely after they study. If there is no deal and this issue is not sorted out, analysis says that there will be a decline of 57%. As a university chancellor, I say that the effect on all our universities will be huge. What about the academics at our universities, 20% of whom are from the European Union? In this great country, with less than 1% of the world’s population, we produce 16% of the world’s leading research papers. Much of that world-beating research is because of the collaborations that we have, including with European Union universities.

Dominic Raab said that he did not realise how important the Dover-Calais corridor is, or how important frictionless trade is. But now we know, as does he, how important they are to our automobile industry, which relies on the one-hour just-in-time principle.

At Harvard Business School, I conducted a role play with one of the world’s experts in negotiations, Professor Deepak Malhotra, in which he played the Prime Minister. The scenario came down to, “She did her best; the EU did its best”, then because she knew that she would lose the vote in Parliament, she pulled it at the last minute. Does that sound familiar? It is exactly what happened in December. Our role play continued, with the only solution being that she would go back to the people and say, “I will implement whatever you want, unlike my predecessor”. We would then have a people’s vote as a result, and if we did then I bet that we would have a 60% remain vote. Instead, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said in an excellent speech, we are now in a holding pattern and waiting for the announcement “Ten minutes to landing”, except that we have 44 days left and no deal is still being held out as a threat by the Government to the EU and to Parliament.

The European Union negotiators are painted as the bad guys. We have heard in this debate that they are the ones being intransigent—but it is nothing like that. They have in fact been entirely consistent throughout; they have a mandate from the 27 countries and they are holding the line. It has taken two years to negotiate three items covering 600 pages, yet the political declaration—the framework—has less than two years to be negotiated. It is 26 pages long and it is full of platitudes and a wish list.

We are going into a blindfold Brexit. This can has been continually kicked down the road, “To infinity, and beyond”. The uncertainty this has caused for investment in this country has been tragic. The lowest growth rates in our history are forecast for the next five years, at less than 2%. Other countries have looked upon the UK as a gateway to Europe and the investment that flowed into that gateway is now being jeopardised.

Then we hear the nonsense about going global. Dr Fox said that we would have trade deals signed at the stroke of midnight. Supposedly, four are ready, including one with the Faroe Islands—big trade partners of ours. What about the 50% of trade that exists at the moment with the European Union? It may be declining but it is still 50% of our trade: approximately 45% of our exports and 55% of our imports. On top of that, 17% to 18% of our trade comes from free trade agreements through the European Union’s deals with over 50 countries. Two-thirds of our existing trade, therefore, is with and through the European Union. Then we are saying that all these other trade deals will just roll over. Dream on. The Japan-EU trade deal, the biggest in world history, took years; the Canadian one took eight years. They are not going to roll over a trade deal with a bloc of 500 million people—the biggest trading bloc in the world—to a country of 65 million people and a much smaller economy. It does not work like that; that is not the real world.

Some say that we should be doing more with the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth, including India, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, makes up less than 10% of our current trade. India has only nine bilateral free-trade agreements, and not one with the western world. Try doing a free trade deal with India with the hostile immigration attitude that we have at the moment. The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, who is not in her place, said, “Look, in spite of Brexit we’re still doing so well”. Actually we are not doing that well. Our economy has stalled. In spite of being in the European Union for more than 40 years, until the referendum we were the fastest-growing economy in the western world. We were flying. We were at the top table: a global economy, respected by the whole world in spite of being in the European Union for 40 years at that stage.

The only way forward is for Brexit to be delayed. That is the only way. We have now heard that Olly Robbins was speaking in a bar in Belgium. I hope that he was drinking our King Cobra, which is brewed in Belgium, and I thank him for what he said. We must delay Brexit—tout de suite, à ce moment. We are beyond playing chicken with the EU and with our people and their livelihoods. There is too much at stake: it is irresponsible and unacceptable. Article 50 must be delayed immediately. The Prime Minister’s deal is as dead as a dodo. No deal should not now be an option. The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, is absolutely right.

To conclude, that leaves two options: the least worst, which is a Norway-plus deal, and the best, which is to go back to the people and have a people’s vote. Dr Victoria Bateman of Cambridge University was naked on Radio 4 earlier this week, with the words “Brexit leaves Britain naked” written on her. As I have said time and again, the people of this country have now seen that the Brexit emperor has no clothes.