European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Inglewood, a fellow Cumbrian, although his connections to Cumbria go back an impressive 400 years longer than mine.

Since January 2018 I have spoken just twice on Brexit-related legislation, and one of those occasions was to explain some technicalities in the report of the Delegated Powers Committee, which I chair. But tonight I am speaking in a personal capacity.

I warmly welcome the Bill, which marks the first and most vital phase of “getting Brexit done”. I welcome it in its current form because it means that at long last we have a Commons that is in accord with the people of this country, who over the last three years have seen their vote in the referendum sabotaged every inch of the way by some Members of Parliament who put their own arrogant, selfish view before the decision of the electorate.

Over Christmas I met quite a few of my former constituents—you know, the little people up north accused by remainders of not knowing what they voted for. We had no view on defeated MPs from other parties, but they shared my relief—and indeed pleasure—that the electorate had got rid of Tory MPs such as Grieve, Soubry, Gauke, Allen and others. They hoped that we would hear no more from them. To that, I would add former Prime Ministers and Deputy Prime Ministers, who will no longer need to travel to Brussels to assure Monsieur Barnier that Brexit will be stopped.

Could we also hear less from those who voted remain telling us what the leavers did and did not vote for? I had the opportunity to study the polling data about leavers. The majority expected to take an economic hit and were willing to accept that, provided we got back control of our laws and Parliament. The last Chancellor of the Exchequer kept repeating the shibboleth that people did not vote to be poorer—wrong again, Chancellor. They expected to be poorer because the Chancellor and all his dodgy Treasury documents told them that repeatedly.

So now we have the Bill before us today. It is right that ongoing parliamentary scrutiny of trade negotiations has gone. We saw in the last Parliament how even those remainers who agreed on what they disliked could not agree on anything that they liked. The main point I want to make to my noble friend is that EU negotiators will play even harder and dirtier now in the negotiations. They take the view that the United Kingdom has to be punished for daring to break away from them and to stop other countries leaving. First, they will demand sequencing of talks—the trap Theresa May fell into. That is, they will not discuss trade in goods until we surrender our fishing grounds and sell out our fishermen. And if we do that, then they will not discuss financial services until we sell out on trade in goods. And even if we extend the period by another 20 years, I do not see that they will do a deal on financial services unless we surrender every national interest.

So let us be ready for it. Of course, when we sell cars to the EU we must comply with their design regulations, just as we have to comply with different regulations when we sell to Hong Kong or California. However, there can be no question of complying with the EU demand that we can sell them goods only if, for example, our workers do not volunteer to do overtime above 60 hours a week, or we agree a corporation tax rate which the EU approves of or that we cannot give any state aid in any circumstances. We must not be tied to EU regulations when we leave but have maximum freedom for divergence if we wish to create our own laws and do things better.

We need the freedom to do gene editing, set higher environmental standards and approve medicines a lot faster. Are we willing to accept the cruelty of live animals being transported on excessively long journeys without proper food and water? Are we willing to let any more diseased plants and trees into this country and not be able to step up phytosanitary controls? There are hundreds of areas where we can do better, provided we do not sign up to accepting EU diktats on keeping all aspects of the single market and customs union.

And by the way, the people voted to leave the single market and customs union, too. We were repeatedly told by the Government and remainers that if we were foolish enough to vote leave, we would be thrown out of the single market and customs union. We the leavers knew that, and 17.4 million people voted to do just that. So, in conclusion, I say to my noble friend that the Government are delivering on leaving the political union on 31 January. We must be out of the customs union on 31 December of this year as well.