Brexit: UK-EU Relationship

Lord Ricketts Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ricketts (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am delighted and honoured to join your Lordships’ House. I am grateful for the overgenerous comments made in my direction this morning and not a little daunted to be speaking after such experienced parliamentarians as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon.

I will start with a word of sincere thanks to the staff of the House for their professionalism and thoughtfulness at every stage, and to my sponsors. I have known the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, since he was appointed Governor of Hong Kong. In fact, I was the official who met him on the steps of the FCO on his first day. He bounded up to me and said, “Peter, I am not going to wear that hat”—and indeed he did not. The noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, has had to play the role of sponsor and mentor before, since I succeeded him in the Foreign Office as Permanent Under-Secretary. I am thinking of wearing a label around my neck saying, “If found wandering, please return to Lord Jay, thank you”—like Paddington Bear.

My career in the FCO began in the year after we joined the European Economic Community and it ended in the year that we voted to leave. I have to confess to the House that I am left deeply worried about the longer-term damage that that decision will do to this country. The mood I find in Europe is not one of wanting to punish the UK but of great sadness that a country that has done so much for peace and prosperity on the continent should be turning its back on this project, at a time of such turbulence and danger in the world. The European countries see the European project as still being a great deal better than the alternatives of narrow nationalism on the continent.

I was keen to make my maiden speech in this debate because the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, is absolutely right to put the focus on the key issue: the future relationship of this country with the EU. The Brexit negotiations and the transitional arrangements, which I personally am sure will be necessary, are means to an end. The end will be the future enduring relationship that we have with our neighbours on the continent. In last week’s excellent debate on the EU Select Committee report I heard the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, quote Article 50, which refers to the need for a future framework for the relationship. I found that an important insight. I am sure that Parliament should be consulted over the terms of our proposition to our other EU partners, to muster as much national support for that as possible—but, along with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and other noble Lords I think it is now urgent to begin to assemble the building blocks of what that future relationship will look like.

The most important element is the one where there is still the least clarity—and other noble Lords have already referred to it. It is where we are going to strike the balance in our proposal between the freest possible access for goods and services to the European market and whatever controls on immigration are judged to be necessary. Those shark-infested waters are probably not ones for a maiden speech, but I will make one observation: while you can, in the excellent catering outlets of your Lordships’ House, have your cake and eat it—provided you pay for it—I am not sure that that is a sufficient basis for our policy towards future relations with the European Union.

Without going into the detail of trade, I will take up what other noble Lords have said about the scale of our trade with our EU partners. I will take France, the country I know best, as an example. We export £32 billion-worth of goods and services a year to France. That is twice our total exports to China and five times our total exports to India—and that is to France alone. So, although it is clearly vital to have “new and dynamic trading agreements” with parts of the world beyond the EU, as the Prime Minister put it, surely it is a top priority to ensure that those arrangements apply to our trade with the European Union.

I will touch briefly on four other building blocks of our future relationship, all of which I think have already come up in the debate. First, there is the importance of close co-operation on fighting terrorism and organised crime. As ambassador to France, I was there at the time of the appalling terrorist attacks this time last year and I know from experience the importance of our co-operation on these matters, not least for the security of British citizens in Europe. I know that the intelligence, security and law enforcement communities in Europe respect the professionalism and capacities of our own security and intelligence agencies. It seems vital that we maintain the operational co-operation with our European partners, which means being part of the information exchange networks, and instruments such as the European arrest warrant.

Secondly on foreign policy, my personal judgment is that we will want to continue to co-operate with European neighbours in a whole range of foreign policy areas. I note, for example, that the UK votes more often with France in the UN Security Council than it does with the United States—so I hope we can have a continuing forum for active co-operation on foreign policy, not just a place where we passively align ourselves with EU decisions.

Thirdly, on defence, which is a complex subject that I shall not go into in detail today, I believe that our know-how and the professionalism of our Armed Forces are greatly respected around Europe, as other noble Lords have said. I believe that the European Union does some useful work in its relatively modest missions around the world, civilian and military, and that we ought to have the opportunity to continue to be part of that. It will be positive if the EU finally decides to invest more in defence research and equipment, as recent reports have suggested. I think we can be completely relaxed about the prospect of a European army; it is never going to happen. Nations with serious military forces, such as France, will never agree to put them under supranational European control. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, posed an interesting question about future European security arrangements, and I am sure that the House will come back to debate them.

Finally, and following the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, there is the position of EU migrants in this country and of British citizens in EU countries. It is clearly vital. There is obviously an ongoing argument about how quickly an agreement can be made, but I do not think that there is opposition to the principle.

Establishing a list like this seems to be a useful part of building a consensus around what our offer should be.

I shall say a brief word in conclusion on bilateral relationships with our European neighbours. Although they cannot replace formal co-operation, as ambassador in Paris, I was constantly struck by the depth and breadth of the web of relationships between our countries. Of course, there is a relationship between the two Governments—defence is an example—but the web goes but far beyond that. There is the sheer movement of people. We counted 12 million British visits a year to France and a similar scale of visits to other European countries. Within that are exchanges: parliamentary, educational at all levels, cultural, artistic and sporting. All areas seem to contribute greatly to the strength of the relationships across the channel, and history is never far behind. During my four years as ambassador in France, we commemorated the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, the 200th anniversary of Waterloo—that was a tricky one—and the 600th anniversary of Agincourt. So history is always there.

I believe passionately that the future of this country will remain inextricably linked to our neighbours across the channel and will continue to be influenced by what happens there, and I look forward to continuing to contribute to debate in your Lordships’ House on those issues.