Resetting the UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, on the excellent report he has produced, which is exactly what I would expect of a committee which he chaired. However, our debate today has shown the difficulties he had in producing a consensus, because there are clearly many Members opposite who do not want to move beyond the Brexit debate or see a closer relationship with our friends and allies in the European Union. They seem completely oblivious to the economic cost of what Brexit has brought—virtually every estimate is at least 4% of GDP—and the fact that the public now believes overwhelmingly that Brexit was a mistake.

We need this reset of the relationship and to get closer. I will make three brief points about what I think is necessary if it is going to succeed. First, all the issues to do with a closer relationship with Europe are extremely complex. What you need is a top Whitehall team in every department working on these issues and, at the centre of government, someone bringing all these people together to hammer out differences between departments, and a very strong permanent representation in Brussels. I believe these things have weakened since Brexit. I experienced it for seven and a half years when I was in Downing Street and saw how effective it was, but we must rebuild these institutional capacities if we are going to make a success of the relationship.

Secondly, we must be willing, if we want much greater access to the single market, to make meaningful contributions financially. I am not talking about the nonsense of the €7 billion, which came up in the ridiculous arguments about SAFE, but we have to be prepared to pay more to the budget than simply administrative costs. The French, Germans, Dutch, Swedes and others are significant net contributors to the EU budget. The reason why it is necessary is that in order to get the weaker members of the union to co-operate in the single market there has to be some kind of measure of cohesion, and we will have to pay into that.

Thirdly, the Government have got to make the case to the country much more strongly for why we need to get closer to Europe. It is necessary to convince our European partners of our seriousness. Making the case at home will help convince them of our seriousness. At the same time, for us as the Labour Party, it will help unite at home the opposition to the far-right populism that is such a danger to this whole venture.

In a way, the 2016 arguments for Europe are completely redundant. The world has changed enormously in the last decade. Economically, we have Trump tariffs, the rise of China and a world of greater instability. We need to be part of the EU.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I am finishing—and it is an advisory speaking time.

On defence, we face huge challenges. The transatlantic alliance now hangs by a very insecure thread, in my view. We have to be much closer to our European allies and partners and we have to get closer to Europe. We need to explain why to the British public, in economic terms, to give us greater security against China and the United States’ tariffs, and in defence terms.