Brexit: UK-EU Relationship

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, when I first joined your Lordships’ House, I think 50 years ago, I was grabbed by the Leader of the House, Lord Jellicoe, who said, “My dear chap, there’s going to be a lot of development in Europe and this European lark is going to take a long time to come about. We’d like you to think—would you be willing to serve on the Council of Europe?”. I had a full-time job and I was not highly paid. I assumed that if I went and did this, my pay would be deducted. But then I found myself on the Council of Europe, and everyone was rather kind to me. Shortly after that, Lord Shackleton came up to me and said, “I wonder if you’d join the EETC?”—he was chairman of the East European Trade Council. I said yes, and before long I found that I had been absorbed by other people far more intelligent than me, and that my job was that of a pen-pusher. When we had the original referendum, I was secretary and treasurer of the Conservative Group for Europe, and we introduced the slogan: “Britain in Europe: it’s our business to be there”. We were thinking about trade—exports and imports. Now, suddenly, we find that from a relatively weak economy, we are in a rather strong position globally and able to trade globally. I wonder where we go next.

In simple ways I suffer a bit because, legally, I am a French peasant farmer. I have a vineyard in Provence, where I produce rosé, although the grapes are generally eaten by foreign wild boar—I have a permit to shoot the wild boar but no gun with which to do so—so, with all the local ingredients, I suffer from that. However, I also produce olives. Wild boar will eat the olives when they drop off the trees but have not yet worked out that if they shake the trees hard enough, they will fall down. There is always an element of history in these relationships. In the second century BC the first wines from Provence were shipped to the United Kingdom. They went to Hengistbury Head—I am not quite sure how to spell it—which leads to Stonehenge. You therefore realise that in trade matters there are historic relationships between countries. At the moment we have a good relationship with France—we heard an excellent contribution from my noble friend. We have to decide what we do next, and with whom.

In the whole concept of Europe we obviously have to look at economies, which are in general more privatised than they were before, and at defence. We look here, too, to France, with its ownership of Airbus and the relationships it has. I have a love of the sea, having served in the Navy in the Mediterranean; afterwards I followed in a private boat the travels of St Paul. I nearly drowned everybody, but it must have been the same for him in those early days. That taught me about the business of immigration. I had not realised how many migrants there were—I am going back 10 years or more—moving from one country to the other. I made a point about taking people into slavery. One day a pirate decided that for the slave market in the Mediterranean islands they could do with some white slaves instead of black ones, and then raided one of the churches in Penzance or around there and took away the entire population of the church, which was then pushed into slavery in the Mediterranean. All these are little stories you get told and do not necessarily believe.

We have a close relationship with France, and they are becoming less French and more willing to co-operate internationally. Here, I look at this debate and think: it has come at the right time, but what do we do next? Trade is the key issue, but what do we trade in? When I was secretary of the Conservative Group for Europe we had that phrase, “Britain in Europe: it’s our business to be there”—it was meant to be about business. But we trade successfully with most of the countries of the EU and with France in particular. When you look at the co-operation with Airbus, we have some friends and partners. I cannot work out what we do next, but we need to enter into new treaties or alliances with as many people as we possibly can, and we should not try to plough a lonely furrow. When you have the wild boar about, lonely furrows do not work.