EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, in this heavily Europhiliac debate, I thought I would concentrate on just one of the basic misconceptions to which noble and Europhile Lords, and indeed the Prime Minister, still cling: that the single market is a good thing and that we might lose inward investment, free trade and jobs if we left the EU and its customs union. The single market is a bad thing: it is what imposes the thousands of regulations which weigh down all EU economies in their trade with the markets of the future. Together with the euro, it is the economic iceberg which will eventually sink the whole project of European integration, at great social cost.

As for us, in the mean time, our free trade with clients and suppliers in the EU will inevitably continue when we leave it. Articles 3, 8 and 50 of Lisbon oblige Brussels to negotiate a free trade agreement with a departing country. The EU already has FTAs with 67 countries and dozens more are in the pipeline. As its largest client, and with our substantial trade deficit, we will hold the whip hand in agreeing our own free trade agreement, which will be unique to us.

Your Lordships may have missed the Government’s Written Answer on 14 December to my noble friend Lord Stoddart, who had asked whether the burdens of single market regulation applied to countries signing FTAs with Brussels. According to the Answer:

“It is not the case that as a result of these trade negotiations the countries concerned will have to adopt all the legislation and regulations that apply to EU member states. The aim of these negotiations is to eliminate, as far as possible, duties applied to trade in goods and to address non-tariff barriers that affect trade in goods in services—ie rules, regulations and practices that affect market access. Non-tariff barriers can be overcome through a variety of methods. These include the adoption of international rules”—

the World Trade Organisation—

“mutual recognition of approaches to testing, standards, et cetera, and commitments to end discriminatory practices”.—[Official Report, 14/12/12; col. WA 263.]

What more do we want?

Why should inward investment be affected when the reasons for investing here will not have changed? It is interesting that our Invest in the UK agency gives 13 good reasons for investing here—and not one of them is our membership of the European Union. Therefore, I hope we will hear no more scaremongering from the same old quisling voices of big business and elsewhere, which told us that if we did not join the euro, the City of London was finished. It became number one in the world, so why should we listen to them now? Some hope, my Lords, but I trust that the British people will ignore the Brussels propaganda when the time comes.