European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Lawson of Blaby Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome this important Bill. We now need to be clear about the way ahead. The White Paper, to which my noble friend the Leader of the House referred, states that the Government will seek,

“an ambitious and comprehensive Free Trade Agreement and a new customs agreement”,

with the European Union. It is right that we should offer this—complete free trade with no strings attached—but it is unattainable. That being so, we should waste no time banging our heads against a brick wall. As soon as it is clear that, sadly, our European Union partners will not accept our offer, we should move on. There is nothing to be gained by protracted and doomed negotiations. The worst thing for British business and the British economy is prolonged uncertainty.

Much of the confusion arises from the misconception that what we are about to embark on, once Article 50 has been triggered, is a trade negotiation. As seen by our opposite numbers across the channel—and, as some noble Lords have said, we do not at present take enough account of this—it is nothing of the sort. If it were a trade agreement, like the trade agreements we are currently seeking with countries outside the EU, now that we are free to do so, success would be achieved by virtue of the mutual economic benefit such agreements confer. However, although there would indeed be mutual economic benefit in a trade agreement with the EU, that is not how they see it at all. For them, understandably, this is not about economics: it is a highly political divorce settlement.

In many—probably most—EU countries the political establishment is at present preoccupied with the struggle against the rising popularity of Eurosceptic anti-establishment political movements, some of an unsavoury nature. Our European partners are quite clear that, were the UK to secure a satisfactory agreement, this would give a huge boost to these movements. Indeed, the anti-establishment parties themselves openly recognise this. This is particularly the case in France, which I know best, where the Front National is riding high. French fears will receive sympathy and support from Germany, not least because Alternative für Deutschland is on the rise. Although we may have friends in some of the other, smaller, member countries of the European Union, there is no way that the EU will, collectively, agree the sort of trade deal we are offering which would, in any event, be vetoed by the European Parliament.

In a nutshell, as the White Paper explicitly states, echoing the Prime Minister,

“no deal for the UK is better than a bad deal for the UK”.

However, for the majority of the rest of the EU it is abundantly clear that no deal is better than a good deal—good, that is, for the UK. We have to be realistic: the only common ground, and thus the only practicable outcome, is no trade deal. That is no disaster: there is no greater nonsense than the claim that, in the absence of a trade agreement with the EU, we shall be falling off a cliff edge. There is no cliff edge, for the simple reason that there is no cliff. In the absence of a trade agreement with the EU we shall continue to trade with our former partners, but on WTO terms.

Some noble Lords may be unaware that the UK already does far more trade with the rest of the world than it does with the rest of the EU, and the gap is widening with every year that passes. The overwhelming bulk of our trade with the rest of the world is conducted on WTO terms. Moreover, the minor economic disadvantage of being outside the EU customs union and the so-called single market—a disadvantage which has already been mitigated by the fall in the sterling exchange rate—is greatly outweighed by the non-trade economic benefits of Brexit. First among these is the consequence of the promised great repeal Bill, which will enable us to repeal or amend damaging EU regulations, which is of particular importance to our smaller businesses. I know that the party opposite is concerned that this may adversely affect workers’ rights but less than 10% of the vast corpus of EU regulation concerns workers’ rights. It is the other 90%-plus that needs to be judiciously culled. Then there is the substantial benefit of no longer being required to pay our massive net contribution of getting on for £10 billion a year into the EU coffers—a figure which, were we to remain in the EU, would rise sharply in 2020, when the rebate secured by Margaret Thatcher will come to an end.

I conclude with a brief word about this House, of which I have been a Member for some 25 years. The amendments which have been tabled do not seek to amend the provisions of the Bill but to add to them substantively, and perhaps to delay the Bill. In the unprecedented circumstances in which we find ourselves, were the House to entertain any of these, it would embark on an ill-advised, improper, and fundamentally unconstitutional manoeuvre.