EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register and add my praise for my noble friend Lord Wharton of Yarm’s maiden speech. I greatly admired his activities championing the northern powerhouse. At that time, I had reservations about his referendum activities, but all that is behind us now. I feel most strongly that the time of mourning and looking back has gone. We have spent a year arguing with each other; it is now time, as the noble Lord, Lord King of Lothbury, said, to think what we are going to do for Britain. Brexit did not cause our problems and is not going to answer our problems: it is our combined efforts—civil society, the commercial sector and the Government—deciding what we are going to do with our economic, industrial, commercial and social fabric that can make us the winners that we so want to be. We need a great deal of positive energy in that.

I commend the Prime Minister. He said he wanted Britain to leave the EU and to negotiate a trade deal. He has done both these things in the timetable he set for himself and the country. Politicians are often accused of not doing what they say: in this case, he and his team deserve credit for delivering what he said he would. Whatever the quibbles about the agreement we have reached, things would be a great deal worse without it.

Let me move to the detailed question about what we are going to do about our industrial strategy. Forgive me, this is not a matter of Twitter wars or soundbites but of extremely knowledgeable, experienced people coming together to look at our priorities: academics, leading businesspeople and top-quality civil servants. I think it is time to reverse the balance: for campaigning, political skills are excellent, but now we need a much more hard-headed, cool-hearted, pragmatic, logical purpose. I hope we will see more people join the Government who have those skills—there are many of them in the Tory Party—and can take people with them and earn respect.

I particularly commend the activities of the International Chamber of Commerce. For many years, it has been unequivocally committed to global trade. Those who work with the ICC—I have been a director of the UK component for many years now—argue that we should reset trade relations, do trade differently and develop a trading strategy that includes climate, development, digital and foreign policy to deliver a more inclusive, sustainable and greener economy. So say I. We remain the world’s fifth biggest economy and have any number of settings where we can play our part, whether it is CHOGM, the G7 or COP 26, which will be a really exciting moment for us later in the year. We need to put a positive message of how we are going to put the past behind us and remain on extremely civilised terms with our European friends.

Of course, European Britain is part of global Britain, and constantly blaming the inadequacy or otherwise of the agreement will be exactly like when people complained that everything that went wrong in Britain was Europe’s fault. We need to stand on our own two feet. We need a degree of Margaret Thatcher’s bracing energy and positivism; no carping, constructive work and looking forward. Let me just say—have I got time?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

There was an error with the clock, but I fear my noble friend has had her two minutes.

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[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I also warmly welcome my noble friend Lord Wharton and congratulate him on his maiden speech.

This is definitely an agreement towards a relationship on which we can build, so that is very positive. However, I urge my noble friend the Minister to turn to some urgent matters in the first few days of the agreement being in place. In particular, while I welcome that the agreement has led to no tariffs or quotas, I am sure that he will share my concern on the rules of origin provisions and country of origin rules. He was silent on this point but already it is having grave repercussions for our food and drink industry, which is the largest manufacturing industry in the country. Will he therefore urgently address the issue so that products such as pies, sausages and other processed meats can be exported fresh rather than just frozen, which is the position from 1 January?

I realise that the bottleneck at Dover has been eased at the moment as we are currently running at only about 15% of its 2019 capacity, but will my noble friend look favourably on increasing the freight capacity on east coast ports? I think in particular of the capacity that has been released with the sad loss of the Hull to Zeebrugge ferry service, but also increased capacity through other east coast ports, to ensure that northern businesses such as Potter of Melmerby and Reed Boardall of Roecliffe do not have to trundle down to Dover to access the EU market.

There is a severe shortage of vets, which has been exacerbated by the fact that we now require vets in connection with the urgent release of export health certificates. Perhaps my noble friend can address that, as well as the loss of access to the European Food Safety Authority and what will replace it.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, we need to have a short break to allow for the digital switchover of noble Lords taking part remotely.

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[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, we are behind time, so I urge brevity from noble Lords. We will soon be eating into the time for the winding-up speeches.