Brexit: Domestic and International

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, another brilliant Ugandan, to this House. I would like to hear him talk more about Uganda, which I visited when my father was in the embassy there.

We should thank the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, for this debate but also perhaps for exposing the questionable arguments for the UK’s prospective departure from the EU. This is a very important debate because the magnitude and extent of trade are essential for improving the livelihoods of people all over the world and for dealing with the massive challenges of global problems, whether they be climate change, the quality of the environment or security.

I am glad to say that the mainstream of the Labour Party has always recognised that a good society works with strong trade and with public bodies. I have worked in both sectors, and the small high-tech company I helped to set up benefits from free trade in the EU but, regrettably, is completely blocked from trade with the USA. Leaving the EU may lead to our being blocked by both the EU and the United States.

It is of course the founding principle of the European countries that, within and outside the EU, they believe in trade and public bodies as being the basis of a good society. It is partly because of the broad commonality of European societies that European trade has prospered. The proposal being moved in this debate is that international trade, especially for the UK, will expand as a result of the UK leaving the EU. One has to ask, however, what will be the real benefits to the British people of detaching our business from our European partner countries when major countries such as Germany are more successful on average than the UK in both trade and productivity, both within and outside Europe, as other noble Lords have pointed out.

Germany maintains its successful trade at the same time, of course, as maintaining much higher standards of living and a better environment, especially in housing, as I would see when I visited as a councillor in the UK. Surely the UK should be working even more closely with such successful countries, whose new industrial collaboration and technological methods have been recommended for this country, for example by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who explained his ideas to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee.

Indeed, the success of this new methodology, which the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, also mentioned, is attracting new investments into those countries by leading UK industrial and high-tech companies. It was excellent to hear another engineer, the noble Lord, Lord Bamford, speaking in this debate, and to hear his comments about technical collaboration. There are excellent UK companies, but I think we have to see where the leadership and the new developments are coming from.

One of the important features is what is going to happen next. One of the interesting points that I have tried to discuss with civil servants in the UK and in Brussels is what they are thinking. I have heard some sphinx-like utterances that one of their ideas is that every effort should be made for the UK and other countries outside the EU to continue to participate in technological and scientific networks based in the EU. These have been very successfully developed. Indeed, I myself, with UK colleagues, helped to set up one in aerospace and other engineering which is very important.

These networks, based in Brussels, which I am sure will continue, will greatly help UK industries and research organisations to participate in and contribute to the latest technical advances and to trade, but I am afraid that will be a second best for the UK because there will no longer be the funding streams for UK research and industry that we have seen over the past 20 years. One hopes that UK industries will also receive funding from the UK Government to participate in industrial fairs. This point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

Criticism of the lack of funding for UK businesses to export and explain themselves was made by the British Chambers of Commerce, and that point is made in the document from the Library. Representatives of British SMEs whom I have met in various parts of the world have also complained that funding is not available for them to participate. Meanwhile, the European Commission has technological representatives all around the world, many of whom are seen at these major trade fairs. I think, therefore, that it is very important that we continue to work in these EC networks; it is clear that the EC would welcome that.

One of the other features about the development of our industry and our trade and the connections to technology will be to question how UK international trade will make good use of the UK’s continued participation in these very large and technically successful intergovernmental European agencies such as the European Space Agency, the European Medicines Agency, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, telecoms and so on. It is extremely important that negotiations dealing with these agencies are very successful.

Finally, one hopes that when the Prime Minister was talking about getting closer to Europe, she was not thinking of the kind of schoolboy abuse that we heard today about Europe and we hear sometimes from the Foreign Secretary.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I remind your Lordships that this is a time-limited debate, and speakers should seek to contain their speeches within the five-minute limit.