European Council

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 11th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As the Statement made clear, we are at a particularly difficult time. We need to find compromise. The House of Commons is deadlocked. In the Statement, the Prime Minister acknowledged that this is an unusual situation. However, talks have begun constructively. We are exploring areas of disagreement and areas of agreement. We are looking to move forward in the hope that we can get a common approach. We all want to leave the European Union in an orderly way. We want to ensure that we have a strong future relationship with the European Union. Crucially, any future relationship with the EU needs to be underpinned by a withdrawal agreement. That is needed to take forward the future relationship. If we can agree a withdrawal agreement, we can move forward to tackle the other issues about which noble Lords and, indeed, Members of the other place are particularly concerned and, I hope, develop the relationship with the EU that we want to see in the future.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, following up on the question from the noble Lord, Lord Howell, does the Minister agree that if cross-party talks are to get anywhere the Government have to start talking with real intellectual clarity? In the other place, the Prime Minister was trying to muddle together the question of a customs arrangement and a customs union just as a starting point. On the customs union, the Labour Party is clear that we are prepared to accept EU tariffs because we think that frictionless trade with the EU is far more important than the chimera of negotiating independent trade deals with the rest of the rest of the world. Will the Minister tell us whether the Prime Minister is prepared to have that degree of clarity about what is necessary if these joint talks are to move forward?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I say, the talks are constructive and the Government have been very clear that we want to deliver the benefits of a customs union with the ability to deliver a negotiated trade policy. That is what we believe we can achieve. We believe that it is a reasonable place to start and we will be discussing with the Opposition how we might achieve that.