Brexit: UK-EU Relations (EUC Report)

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. He chairs the Home Affairs Sub-Committee on Brexit, of which I am a member, and one of the things we have focused on recently is security, which is so important here.

The report is absolutely delightful to read—I agree with almost every word. Every now and then I look at the speeches made by Monsieur Barnier or by the Secretary of State David Davis, and I noticed that they flag up areas of agreement and say that there is more agreement than we sometimes recognise or is recognised in the media. I hope that they are right. If at some stage in the very near future they suddenly produce, with a flourish, an association agreement, nobody will be more delighted than me. But if they do not, and we run into difficulties at the Cabinet meeting at the weekend, which we might well do because of the infighting at the moment, we will be in deep trouble.

When I started reading this document, one phrase, which we all need to bear in mind, caught my eye almost immediately. It says in the fourth paragraph of the summary:

“We note the European Parliament’s advocacy of a UK-EU Association Agreement, and suggest that UK commitment to such a dynamic and evolutionary partnership could bring a positive change in the tone and language of the negotiations”.


I agree. Two of the key words there are “dynamic” and “evolutionary”. One of the things that will not happen is that we will end up with a number of set and rigid parts of an agreement which will be hard to change as the relationship between the EU and the UK develops. It almost certainly has to be flexible and dynamic. I therefore welcome that and think it is a great use of language. The committee also says that the use of red lines by both sides—it is both sides—is disastrous in trying to get to a solution. I understand how important it is for both sides to say that they will not accept certain changes in the run-up to the hard side of the negotiations. But at the end of the day, those red lines on both sides have to be breached. There cannot be an agreement without some degree of breaching. It might be marginal, but there will be breaches, and if there are not, there will not be an agreement.

Ever since the referendum—the result did not surprise me that much, although I voted remain—I have felt that the key to understanding this is to understand that the United Kingdom needs the European Union and the European Union needs the United Kingdom. That is not just for the financial, economic and trade reasons, which of course we spend a lot of time on, but it is also, as the noble Lord, Lord Risby, mentioned, about security, defence and the political impact this will have on British and European Union influence around the world. It has damaged both of us in terms of political influence. I worry about that, and if the European Union looks as though it is fracturing and the United Kingdom is getting more distant from the European Union, the only winner in that situation will be Mr Putin; he will be delighted, because that is part of Russian foreign policy. We need each other.

I was delighted again at the suggestion of a joint UK-EU parliamentary group, which I suggested in this Chamber immediately after the referendum, and for which I got support from all sides of the House. We have to do that. We cannot do it yet, because the agreement has not been made, but when it is ready, I hope that we will rapidly set up a high-powered UK-EU parliamentary group. Again, we will need that degree of interaction between the two parties to make it work.

We will need joint institutions—I have gone on for some time about how they will be necessary. If we are to get agreement on security, on policing and the security exchanges in general, as I hope we will, but there is an idea that we cannot have institutions that constantly examine changes in UK and EU law and the way they affect the exchange of information about intelligence, policing and crime, we will have a rather rigid system which will not be flexible enough to meet the demands of the occasion. We have to build flexibility into this, and that is why I was so pleased to see reference to a “dynamic and evolutionary” partnership—a phrase used several times in the report. That is what we need.

I do not want to speak for too long, so I shall conclude my remarks with this final point. If, as I said, the Government come up with an association agreement that covers the many points that we are all nervous about, nobody will be more delighted than me. It really will be good news. Maybe that is what David Davis and Michel Barnier are talking about when they say that the agreement is about more than is immediately apparent. However, if there is not such an agreement, we will be in deep trouble, and it will be deep trouble not just for the UK but for the European Union. I say to the Government that if they are in that situation and if, after the Cabinet meeting, there are still divisions that prevent us getting an effective and good agreement between the EU and the UK, they will need to step outside party-political lines and reach across the Chamber. They need to talk to people like my right honourable friend Keir Starmer and to my noble friend Lady Hayter on the Front Bench here, who has done so much. They have good knowledge of the situation.

The Minister might smile but this is not about the Conservative Party and the divisions within it. I understand that; there are divisions in the Labour Party too, as well as throughout the country. When a country is deeply divided like this, a politician with good judgment will step outside that and put the needs of the country before the needs of his or her own political party. If the situation is as bad as some people suggest, the Government need to make that gesture and move. If they fail to do so, frankly both the EU and the UK will be greatly diminished, not only in our eyes but in the eyes of the world. My belief is that in the longer term the European Union will have one advantage from the United Kingdom leaving, and that is the fact that the United Kingdom has always been a drag anchor on further political union within the EU. My guess is that over time some key countries in the European Union will move further and faster on political union. I say “Good” to that. It is in our interests that they do so and we should encourage and support it. However, let us not pretend that somehow or other this will not have a profound effect on the United Kingdom.