Trade Bill

Lord Fox Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th March 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Fox]

24: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause—
“Trade agreement with the EU: mobility framework
It shall be the objective of the Secretary of State to take all necessary steps to secure an international trade agreement with the European Union which includes a mobility framework that enables all UK and EU citizens to exercise the same reciprocal rights to work, live and study for the purpose of the provision of trade in goods or services.”

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, on Report your Lordships have already voted through an amendment that creates a process for Parliament’s involvement in setting a mandate for future trade deals and for helping to approve a final deal. Separately, your Lordships have made clear a strong preference for the UK remaining in a customs union. In part, this amendment is the third part of that and is intended to set the scene for the long-term future relationship between this country and the EU. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for their support for this amendment.

The amendment sets out an objective for a future EU trade deal: a mandate to include,

“a mobility framework that enables all UK and EU citizens to exercise the same reciprocal rights to work, live and study for the provision of trade in goods or services”.

That reciprocal nature recognises one important fact: not allowing or enabling EU 27 people to work and trade in the United Kingdom will mean no such rights for UK people in the EU. By voting for this amendment, your Lordships would create the best possible chance for talented men and women in the UK to work, and continue to work, and offer their services within the EU 27, and of course it would be a win-win scenario. On the other side of such an arrangement, we would continue to welcome into this country people who contribute positively to our economy and our social fabric. Their skills make a positive difference.

In Committee, I outlined at some length, and according to the Government’s own advisers, the positive role that people from the other 27 EU countries play in this economy. Noble Lords will be relieved to know that I will not replay those arguments today, in part because in no measure were those facts challenged during that debate. There has been a net benefit to the UK from the activities of EU 27 citizens here. My speech also acknowledged that issues were thrown up by migration in some communities and that those issues have not been sufficiently recognised and dealt with by successive UK Governments. The benefits of those EU citizens working in the UK have also been insufficiently recognised publicly by successive Governments.

In Committee, the Opposition Front Bench spokesman, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, spoke about the appearance rather than the reality of unbridled immigration, and that refers back to the point that I have just made. Although I recognise that this perception is very important and that Governments have to do something about it, I do not believe that we should be put off from doing the right thing and supporting the amendment. I hope that, by doing so, we will demonstrate the value that we place on mutual agreement and on the mutual opportunities that we can create for our people, our businesses and our communities.

As for the Government, I did not notice a great warming to my argument in Committee, although I always foster hopes. However, I appeal over the heads of the Front Bench to your Lordships to see the value in this amendment. Supporting it would be a major step towards setting out the mandate for UK negotiators. It would signal what sort of country we want to live in and it would reject one of Mrs May’s red lines. Opposing the amendment or sitting on one’s hands would pander to the false picture of the role of immigration in our society and would impair the UK in so many ways, not least in trade. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment because I believe that it is vital to preserve mobility rights and, in doing so, protect some of the UK’s most productive sectors.

I have noted before the relative silence on trade in services in the Brexit conversation. Attention has been focused on the at-the-border issues associated with trade, rather than the more complex behind-the-border issues of domestic rules, regulations and qualifications, which are germane to trade in services. As I have said before, this silence is particularly hard to understand, given services’ contribution to the UK. They account for over 40% of total exports, 80% of the UK’s GDP and four in five jobs across the country. The largest single destination for UK services is the EU, worth £90 billion annually.

If services have been treated like the second son, mobility has been the Cinderella of the story, pushed from the start to the wrong side of what some of us see as a wrong-headed red line. There is, of course, an inextricable link between mobility and services. Services provided in this country, such as tourism or higher education, depend on inward mobility. Service packages linked to goods, such as maintenance contracts, depend on outward mobility. Services delivered in the consumer’s country are often provided on a fly-in, fly-out basis, and the scale of this trade is significant. The CBI reports that employees of just one firm undertook 17,000 trips from the UK to the EU and 10,000 in the opposite direction in a single year.

--- Later in debate ---

There will of course be other opportunities for the noble Lord, Lord Fox, to press this point. The immigration Bill will come before your Lordships’ House, and there is a White Paper. I appeal to noble Lords to reflect on whether this is the appropriate vehicle and time to press the amendment. With those points, I ask the noble Lord to consider withdrawing the amendment.

[Lord Fox]

My Lords, I congratulate those Peers who have taken part in the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Puttnam, all forcefully put the moral as well as economic case behind the amendment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for mentioning the industrial revolution. If we are to build a significant place in that industry in the world, as the Government’s industrial strategy seeks to achieve, it will not be by closing the borders and stopping people coming in to give us the value of their services, their knowledge and their ability to build it. This will be a global exercise. If we want to lead in it, we have to fling open our doors and let those people into this country.

The Minister of course put a persuasive case on the proposed regime. In essence, we are taking the regime that has been applied to non-EU migrants and putting it on to EU migrants. I have worked in companies that have sought to bring people into this country to do important jobs, and I have to tell the Minister that it is an extremely difficult process. Making it harder for our closest allies and biggest market to bring people in is not the solution to this problem.

The Minister is right to say that there might be other opportunities to put this point, but I am someone who likes to seize the day. I beg to seek the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox]

My Lords, we have heard many times about the soft power of education as it reaches out around the world. This is a way of collecting hard data about the economic benefit to this country. I cannot see why the Government would be unable to support it.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, the Government welcome international students, who make a valuable contribution to the UK economically and culturally. They bring greater diversity to university and college campuses and an international dimension to the experience of all students. They also stimulate demand for courses and add to the UK’s impressive research capacity. In the longer term, they offer the prospect of productive business, political, cultural and research links. Of course, they also bring welcome income to UK universities and our wider economy.

We are pleased that the UK remains a highly attractive destination for international students. UK higher education institutions hosted almost 460,000 EU and non-EU students in 2017-18, the highest number on record. There remains no limit on the number of students who can study here, and there are no plans to introduce one.

In the Higher Education and Research Act, there is provision for a faster and simpler route for high-quality new providers to enter the sector and gain degree-awarding powers. This allows the sector to diversify and strengthen its international offer, providing even better opportunities to students from all over the world.

The Department for Education currently publishes data on the value of UK education exports annually. These statistics cover education exports and transnational activity relating to higher education, further education, schools, English language training and products and services. I am grateful for the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. It is important to look at the statistics, and I will start by giving a view of the ones that we already publish. The latest education exports data publication was dated January 2019. It set out that total education exports and transnational education activity were estimated to be worth almost £20 billion in 2016. International students at higher education institutions contributed £11.9 billion in exports through living expenditure and tuition fees alone that year. This accounts for around 60% of the total value of education exports and activity.