Brexit: Deal or No Deal (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Would he not agree that in trade negotiations, the leverage of one side or another is a function of the proportion of the GDP of that party which is exposed to trade with the other country in question? I am sure the noble Lord is very well informed on these matters and knows that, in the case of the British relationship with the other 27 members of the EU, we have 14% of our GDP exposed to the EU—that is the proportion exported to the EU—while in the other direction, with the exception of the Republic of Ireland, no single member of the EU sells to us more than 4% of its GDP. So in fact our dependence on them is much greater than their dependence on us.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

That is one way of looking at the balance between the United Kingdom and the EU. But at the same time, I think the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would accept that if we are putting at risk 10,000 jobs in the United Kingdom, we are putting at risk 15,000 jobs in the EU; if we are putting at risk 100,000 jobs in the United Kingdom, we are putting at risk 150,000 in the EU. There are two ways of looking at this, and it would have been a good idea if the committee had also called some Commissioner—I am sure there is one—responsible for employment in the EU and asked how they would react to seeing very large numbers of their own citizens made unemployed by the fact that they cannot reach a deal with the United Kingdom. Would that not have been helpful? The noble Lord, Lord Davies, would be the first to accept that EU levels of unemployment are running at between 8% and 9% at the moment, compared with just over 4% in this country, so the EU has double the rate of unemployment that we do. You would have thought that in those circumstances they would think the jobs of people in the EU were quite important and would not want to sacrifice them by having no deal with the United Kingdom. It is important to ask that question.