European Council

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I suggest that we want to be looking forward, not backwards, and that is what this Government are doing.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

Will the Minister tell us her understanding of the difference between a White Paper and a Green Paper? If the document that comes out next weekend looks, of necessity, like a Green Paper, will the understanding then be that there will be a national conversation about the various trade-offs—what we are actually looking at at the moment are different packages of trade-offs—between the different ways of handling our future relationships?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I have set out, the White Paper will be a comprehensive document detailing the entire breadth of our future relationship, and we expect and ask the EU member states to consider the proposals seriously. We both need to show flexibility to build our relationship. This will be a detailed paper about our view of our future partnership with the EU and we look forward to discussing it with it over the summer.