Relations with Europe

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for introducing the debate and I add my voice to those congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge. Her great experience in local and national government and in the private sector, as well as that extra dimension and perspective that comes from seeing this country from the outside as well as the inside, will surely continue to elevate and enrich your Lordships’ counsels.

This is going to be unpopular, but there are two fundamental misunderstandings when we talk about our relationship with the EU. The first is that the EU is behaving as a rational economic actor interested in maximising the benefits for its citizens. Of course there are people in the European Commission who think that way, and there are many in the national capitals who do so, but there are also many who are still resentful about the referendum result, whose judgment is clouded by emotion, who see Brexit as a sin that needs excommunication and who look on this country rather as China does on Taiwan: as a kind of renegade province that needs to be brought to heel.

That leads to the second misunderstanding, which is the implication that has run through a number of the speeches today: that somehow the remaining blockages and shortfalls in the TCA were all a result of Tory standoffishness. I just do not think you can look at the story of the negotiations and credibly claim that. Where we have imbalances—for example, the way in which EU nationals can use our eGates but not the other way around, or the way in which we grant equivalence to financial services companies from Europe without any reciprocity—the blockages were not on our side. On the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, just raised, the United Kingdom does give visa-free access to touring artists, for a long time if they are on expenses and for a slightly shorter time if they are being paid, but the blockage, again, is not on our side.

I am afraid there are some people in this House who will always blame Britain, never Brussels, regardless of where the problem lies, but it is not the UK Government who can fix this. I think that this Government will learn what the last one did, which is that the EU is conditioned to say, “No cherry picking; you cannot have your cake and eat it”, whatever we come up with, even if we are coming to it with precisely what it has just been asking for. We found this during the talks. In September 2018 at Salzburg, Theresa May came to the EU with the kind of deal that it should have bitten our arm off for, promising to follow all the rules and pay for the privilege—but it replied, “No cherry picking. You’re a third country, you’re going to have to be treated like a third country; take a Canada-type deal”. A year later, Boris Johnson said, “Okay, fine”, and it replied, “Oh, no, you can’t have a Canada-type deal because you have to regulate”. I am afraid that there is a certain conditioning that is not prepared to engage in productive bilateral talks. We need to understand that.

I can understand how the new Government came in, as many previous ones have done, and said, “We’re going to reset by offering all these things that the EU has been asking for: a new deal on energy, a new deal on chemicals and a new deal on defence”. But again, instead of pocketing those concessions or saying, “That’s great; quick, grab those things before the Brits change their minds”, the EU came back with a list of counterdemands, as though we were not offering concessions but rather making demands. Actually, who is the bigger beneficiary of these things? Yes, both sides would gain from an energy deal, but particularly those countries that we kept warm during the last winter when their Russian gas supplies ended. Yes, a mutual deal on the recognition of qualifications would help both sides, but there are many more EU professionals here than the other way around. On defence, I have to say, frankly, that there is not a scenario where we will be menaced by a Russian army from across the channel. We are not the demandeurs here.

The worst possible attitude with which to enter negotiations is some kind of need, or perceived need, to atone for the referendum result. The sooner we look at our actual, practical national interests, the better for both sides.