UK and EU Relations

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have never liked referendums, not least because they rarely solve disputed problems in political parties. But if you have a referendum, the golden rule is to have a strategy for what to do if you win and a strategy for what to do if you lose. The tragedy is that the Government at the time—David Cameron’s Government—had a strategy for winning but not a strategy for losing. We are now paying the price for that.

The issue is important because, before the referendum, Europe had been a divisive issue in Britain but the referendum has deepened that division. That is one reason why, although I voted remain, I do not think we can go back in any time soon, and I do not think any attempts should be made to reverse that referendum decision because all you will do is aggravate the divisions in the country. The divisions in the Tory party are serious, particularly in the House of Commons, where the party is divided much like it was over the corn laws in the 19th century. The problem for the Labour Party is rather different. It is much more to do with the divisions in our voters: working-class voters largely voted for Brexit while middle-class voters tended to vote remain. In other words, both the country and the two main political parties have divisions which make it difficult to come up with a proper structure.

One of the things I welcome, particularly in these position papers, is at last the Government saying that they want a good and positive relationship with the European Union. I wish that had been said more loudly and clearly at first, and that some of the more insulting comments that were made about the European Union had not been made; we are paying a high price for that. We now have to concentrate on how we deliver that better relationship, because we are all saying that, and these papers say it loud and clear. That is good, but the problem is in achieving that outcome.

One thing that troubles me about the papers is their relative vagueness. I understand that we are still, despite the time limit, at a relatively early stage of negotiations. It will not be the first time that the European Union has pushed negotiations up to the wire, and then made decisions at the last moment. That happens; we have done the same, and it is not a unique experience by one party. To get there, so much detailed work has to be done—much of which is being spelled out in this debate today—that we really have to work on this very hard if we are not to run into major problems. I would like to know from the Government how much we see equivalence on some of these areas of difficulty being a stepping stone on the way forward.

Look at the paper on the exchange of personal information and data, an important area for Britain. We are a world leader in many respects; we are also one of the countries that sets the standard in Europe. But somehow we are going to have to maintain that data protection standard at the same time as we are pulling out of the European Union, so we will probably need some form of equivalence system to make sure that the EU and the UK stay in step. Ultimately data protection will be something we need throughout the world to trade in increasingly complex areas, and we will need that relationship with Europe to do it in the rest of the world as well.

If we have to have an equivalence agreement—and I can see the logic of that and suspect the Government are looking at it—then you also have to have enforcement and dispute resolution, and that brings me to the other paper. The Government have turned their face against the European court, I understand that, but in the paper on the European court they say they will need international agreements on some of these things. That might be one way forward. We will have to come up with international agreements with the European Union without acting as a foreign power towards it as a power. That means we will need much more of that spelled out and will have to look at ways of getting international agreements which have the force of law without necessarily using the European court or the British courts, but just using conventional international law. That will apply to a number of these papers.

The last thing I wanted to mention—and I would have liked to have talked about it in much more detail but the document came out only today—is the foreign policy and defence issue. My noble friend Lord Judd mentioned this; one of the big problems for Britain is that for years Britain has been a drag anchor on the European Union. The Europeans really did see this as a political union; the British saw it as an economic union. I have put it before, in simple terms: the Europeans saw it as a political state; the British saw it as a supermarket. That role has made it very difficult for us to be seen as one of the strong members of the European Union. Very largely, we have been seen as a drag anchor. It remains my view that it is in Britain’s interest to see greater political union in Europe. Those who argue for the European Union breaking up are making a serious mistake. We need only to look at the history of it to see how wrong that can be.

We have a lot of work to do on this. If we are to use equivalence in a number of these areas, we have to come up with some method of dispute resolution, either via the courts or by setting up agreements of some type. It is on that that I want to hear more from the Government.