Brexit: Foreign Policy

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Soley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the foreign policy implications of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union post-Brexit.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has said on a number of occasions, we remain committed to European security and values. Having reached sufficient progress on phase 1 of the negotiations, we will now begin work on the new, deep and special partnership. We will work with European partners to develop the details of an ambitious relationship, including on foreign policy, and alongside the negotiations we will be seeking even stronger bilateral relationships with member states.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Currently, the high representative represents the European Union in its increasingly global activities, which are very important to this country. I have yet to hear any coherent plan from the Government on how we are going to relate to her work—at the moment there is an Italian high representative—and how we are going to balance that with our increasing representation in individual EU countries without stripping our assets from the rest of the world.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, as I have already said, the UK, after we leave the European Union, will remain committed to strengthening ties with the remaining members of the European Union. The noble Lord may well have seen the common foreign and security policy document that we published in September, which laid out some of the key areas of discussion. On his point about European partners, I am sure that he followed very closely the UK-French summit only last week. The issue of security on a bilateral basis, for example, among other areas, was discussed in a very deep way. That underlines the continuing sense of respect and importance that is given by European partners to the UK’s role after we leave the European Union.