European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hill of Oareford Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford (Con)]

My Lords, this is a technical Bill with a simple purpose: to provide as much legislative certainty and predictability as possible as we leave the EU. In some ways, it is quite a boring Bill, but that does not mean that it is not important. To translate the whole body of European law into British law will be a massive task. To provide the certainty, the Government must be able to move fast at a time when, by definition, not everything is yet clear. But we have to balance that need for speed with making sure that the Government face proper scrutiny. No one knows better than this House the need for proper scrutiny—we are experts at being boring—and no one knows better than us the state in which legislation often comes to us from the other place.

I gently suggest to the Government that they look with an open mind at constructive suggestions as to how the process of scrutiny could be improved. This is an area at which this House excels and where we can burnish our reputation. We will damage our reputation if we try to use this Bill to play politics, slow the process down or seek to undo commitments given in manifestos or in parliamentary votes, so I was encouraged by the remarks made by the Opposition Front Bench that it sees the Bill in the same light.

I agree with the Government when they say that the Bill should not be used to increase uncertainty, but they themselves need to reduce uncertainty by taking some decisions and being honest about the consequences of them. Just as with any other change in politics, there will be winners and losers from Brexit. There is no point denying that basic truth. The Government need to concentrate on working out how to mitigate those losses and to accelerate the wins.

Business leaders increasingly say to me that it is the political paralysis caused by the process of Brexit that depresses them more than Brexit itself. They want the transition agreed with the minimum of argument and then to have clarity as to the future direction of travel. Instead of talking endlessly about Brexit, they want to know about life after Brexit. Here, the Government will have to choose. There is a reason why we have the saying that he is trying to have his cake and eat it; we know that it is physically impossible both to have your cake and eat it. So, to state what should be obvious by now, we are simply not going to be able to be both in the single market and free to make our own rules where we want to.

Although there is flexibility in the European system when it wants to be flexible, we will not be able to converge where it suits us to have continuity and to diverge where it suits us to be more competitive. During the referendum, one of the reasons why I voted remain was that I thought that it would make no sense at all for a service-based economy such as ours to be bound by rules over which we had no influence. Now that we have voted to leave, that same logic holds—actually, the logic is even stronger, because the act of Brexit is itself changing the dynamic in Europe. Contrary to one of the referendum myths, we had a lot of influence in the EU: pro-free trade, pro-markets, pro-business, pro-proportionate legislation. But that voice has fallen silent. As a result, Europe is already moving in directions that we have traditionally resisted, whether that is a financial transaction tax, more screening of overseas investment or more centralisation of supervision of financial services. For an economy that is as dependent as ours on services, how could we in all seriousness subcontract all rulemaking to someone else?

If, as I believe, we will have to choose, we must surely place a greater priority on being able to shape our own future than on preserving the status quo, particularly when technological innovation is itself going to change the status quo, whatever we decide on Brexit. We need speed, honesty and certainty. The Bill can help us on that path and it is in that spirit that I hope we can approach it in this House.