European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

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

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, three and a half years after the referendum, at long last the people’s decision that we should leave the EU will be honoured, as Parliament passes this withdrawal legislation. There are issues about Parliament’s role in the process provided for in the Bill, but the major constitutional crisis of Brexit, the clash between the people and Parliament, is over. We are at a historic turning point for our country. The withdrawal from the EU that this Bill will enact can be the prelude to the renewal of our democracy and our economy, and to healing the wounds in our society.

The Government are right to insist in Clause 33 that the negotiation of our new relationship with the EU must be accomplished by the end of this year. There can be no virtue in perpetuating the transitional limbo. The essential elements of the necessary agreements can be negotiated on this timescale. On trade, we start from a position of regulatory alignment and no tariffs or quotas. To the noble Lord, Lord Barwell, whose maiden speech I very much admired, I say that it is in neither side’s economic interest to erect barriers where there are none. Any difficulties are not technical but political, and their resolution must be a matter of political will. As a country responsible for our own laws, we must insist on the principle of regulatory equivalence, not replication.

The free trade agreement between the US and Australia was negotiated in a year, in 2005, despite opposition from the agricultural lobbies in both countries, because President Bush and Prime Minister Howard were both determined to deliver it. A will to deliver quickly on the part of the EU will be much encouraged if we pursue parallel negotiations on an FTA with the US. If European manufacturers and farmers see the prospect of American exports entering the UK market tariff-free, they will press European leaders and negotiators very hard not to disadvantage them through having to face new UK tariffs.

Brexit is straining the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Welcome as the restoration of the Northern Ireland Executive and Stormont is, the fact remains that, whatever his protestations, to secure the withdrawal deal the Prime Minister cut Ulster adrift. His deal, providing for a new customs border in the Irish Sea, the subject of Clauses 21 to 24 of the Bill, gives a large shove towards a united Ireland.

I am more optimistic that Scotland can be retained within the UK. At the election, 54% of voters in Scotland voted for unionist parties; the situation is much more ambiguous than Nicola Sturgeon claims. I think that when Scots look down the barrel of the independence gun, they will flinch: they will balk at the economic sacrifice entailed by losing their subsidies from English taxpayers and will not want a hard border at Gretna Green.

Those former Labour voters in the red wall constituencies of England who were determined to have Brexit, despite all the advice from economists and remainers that it would make them poorer, demand a new politics. They are right to do so: they are the people who have been worst failed by neoliberalism. Market forces have been allowed to destroy communities and tradition, and have produced deep and persistent poverty, chasms of regional inequality, chronic financial crises and a climate emergency. Withdrawal from the EU will help us escape the havoc of neoliberalism, still dominant in a Brussels infested with the lobbyists of big business. Finance, inexorable as it is, is not the be-all and end-all, and nor is GDP.

The cruelties of austerity, such as the two-child limit for social security and the closing of Sure Start centres, have become intolerable—the Brexit vote told us this. The case for fiscal expansionism has now been accepted by the Government. We must reinvent the role of the state in rectifying injustice and using its power in humane intervention, so as to support the precariat and the people who are the casualties of technological change. Rules restricting public investment to the south-east must be rewritten. Support must be given, not just for big infrastructure projects but for local people creating productive local economies in post-industrial areas. Local culture and dignity must be respected. Whitehall must give away power and allow revived autonomy in communities across the UK.

This legislation opens the way to a rebuilding of national self-belief. We can end the ugly attitudes of nativism in a new era in our international dealings. Withdrawal from the EU entails radical remodelling of politics and policy, and so much the better.