European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mandelson (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and his very intelligent contribution to this debate, but I want, first, to make a remark about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hague. Contrary to what he said today, the noble Lord believes that we should stay just,

“one step short of the single market”.

I know this because he wrote it. He could therefore not possibly agree, in my view, with the Government’s present approach.

George Osborne was right when he said that the Government are being driven by politics not economics in their approach to Brexit. This is what has changed since the noble Lord wrote his original article. That is why the Government can contemplate Brexit at any cost: the economics are secondary; the trade is secondary; the investment and the jobs are secondary. What matters instead is assuaging the ideologues. Herein lies the danger for the country: the Government have lost their sense of perspective in this matter. The Prime Minister is terrified of looking less than full-hearted, so she is overcompensating. Debate is discouraged in case it gives the impression of being faint-hearted. Critics are attacked in case their arguments catch on.

As is well known, I was a remainer: not, I might say, because of my pension rights but because I am a patriot—a patriot rather than a nationalist. That is why I think that the approach the Government have chosen to take to Brexit is wrong. Instead of saying, “We are leaving the European Union but want the closest possible relationship with the European Union” and meaning it, the Government have decided that we are not just out of the European Union, but fully out of the entirety of the single market and the customs union as well. We do not want to have anything to do with one single bit of it, as Mrs May wrote in her article on Friday. In other words, to all intents and purposes we are going to be out of Europe altogether and we will be the worse for that as a country.

I can tell noble Lords that our former EU partners have heard the Government loud and clear. I travel on the continent still: the people with whom we are going to negotiate have got the message that we want clean out of the place. This cannot avoid having consequences in the negotiations.

However, the most important point, and the main point I want to make in this debate, is that this is not what a lot of leave supporters backed when they voted in the referendum. Yes, they wanted to leave the European Union but they did not want to turn Britain into a poorer, politically isolated offshore tax haven without reach or influence in the world. Once they see the consequences, they may—I stress may—want to think again about the outcome of the Government’s chosen path, and Parliament’s job will be to reflect that change of view and create the means of expressing it.

I will conclude by saying one thing about trade, and I have been a Trade Secretary at home, as well as a Trade Commissioner in Europe. The Government can say they want a comprehensive trade agreement to give us,

“the exact same benefits as we have”,—[Official Report, Commons, 24/1/17; col. 169.]

as David Davis said in the other place some weeks ago, but unless we comply with Europe’s market rules and accept its common product standards and the regulation of services that it prescribes, we will not have the same trade. We will not have the equal benefits, and to say otherwise is a fraud on the public. We can pay for access—and no doubt we will have to pay through the nose for this—but it will not bring the same volume of trade or the same rights, and we will not have the same means of enforcing those rights in our trade in Europe.

That is why, when all this becomes apparent—it having been carefully obscured in the referendum—the political circumstances will change and so might people’s minds. We cannot foretell exactly what the context will be in 18 months’ or two years’ time but I believe, and I hope noble Lords will agree, that we cannot simply consign Britain’s economic future to this headlong rush towards Brexit at any cost. We have a responsibility not to next year’s growth figures or inflation figures but to the prosperity of our country for decades to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, first, I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register, in particular as a partner in the international commercial law firm DAC Beachcroft and as chairman of the British Insurance Brokers’ Association.

I join many other speakers in congratulating the Government on bringing before us such a short and simple Bill. Whether we like it or not, on 23 June last year the people of the United Kingdom voted on a single, simple proposition and made their decision. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that it was not just an expression of view, and I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark that I am not sure where he got the word “quixotic” from; the decision had nothing to do with tilting at windmills or Don Quixote. Perhaps he was just expressing an anacoluthon. It is entirely appropriate that Parliament should respect the decision in the clearest possible terms. I also applaud the decision to convert the body of existing EU law into domestic law, which is by far the best way, in the Government’s own phrase, of “providing certainty and clarity” at a time of great uncertainty and obscurity.

Like many others in the Chamber, throughout my political career I have always been an advocate of closer co-operation among the Governments and peoples of Europe, but it saddens me to say that the European Union simply failed to adapt to the complex, rapidly shifting challenges of what I describe as the new world order. Last year’s referendum exposed the inherent conflict between global aspirations and domestic fears. For many, globalisation has created a sense of near panic and of a loss of control, and it was powerful, simple, powerfully simple arguments about regaining control that narrowly won the day on 23 June last.

The Government’s White Paper speaks of an “outward-looking” nation. I believe that attitude, that policy and that philosophy can heal the wounds left by the referendum and re-establish “One Nation”. Our intuition and surely our reason combine in warning us that, while “Island Britain” must always be a physical reality, it can never again be a geopolitical reality. That is why I very much welcome the title of the Government’s White Paper—The United Kingdom’s Exit from and New Partnership with the European Union—and its consistent tone of grown-up, hard-baked and thoroughly considered realism about where we stand. Of course the precise nature of this new partnership needs to be fleshed out, but it will surely be founded upon what we in the United Kingdom can uniquely offer to the world.

The White Paper also recognises that the UK is one of only two global full-service financial centres, and the only one in Europe. Over 75% of the EU 27’s capital market business is conducted through the United Kingdom. Our insurance sector—the sector I know best—has in my view no equal anywhere in the world. The expertise we possess here is in no hurry to emigrate, but we must ensure, through a positive approach to mutual market access, that it is not forced to go elsewhere in order to carry on trading. I also believe we lead the world in our independent legal profession, our independent judiciary and the concept of the rule of law. I join the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, in warmly applauding the judgment of the Supreme Court. Whether you read the consenting judgments or the dissenting ones, it reads like one of the great judgments of all time, and I commend it to colleagues.

The closing section of the White Paper contains the compelling confirmation that, in the words of the Prime Minister,

“the British people voted to leave the EU, but they did not vote to leave Europe”.

I respect the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson. How long ago was it that he was chairman of the Young European Left and I was chairman of the Conservative Group for Europe?

[Lord Mandelson]

Too long.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral]

However, we have to move into this new world, and we must do so in a positive frame of mind. In that spirit, I was delighted to note a commitment to negotiating,

“a phased process of implementation … This would give businesses and individuals enough time to plan and prepare for those new arrangements”.

That again underlines why it is so overwhelmingly in our national interest that these negotiations should be successfully concluded within the two-year timeframe set for them. I have every confidence that outcome can and will be achieved, and we in this House have a responsibility to help. The last thing we should do is to break the Prime Minister’s bat just when we most need her to go out and play the innings of her life for her country, and complicating amendments to the Bill would do just that.

In my view, the Prime Minister deserves our full confidence. That is why, on the basis of this short, crisp Bill and the broad assurances and sound common sense of the White Paper, I believe the Prime Minister will be set fair to negotiate not only for our exit from the European Union but also for the best possible new strategic partnership with our close allies, colleagues and friends on the continent—our continent—of Europe.