European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

I would like to question that intervention. I think that common standards can be a bad thing for free trade. They can be the most effective of all anti-trade policies and, when it comes to the European Union, in many cases they are. They are used, particularly by Germany, to restrict trade in a far more effective way than tariffs might do. Therefore, it is precisely the kind of vague, if I may put it that way, standards to which the noble Lord has just referred that one should be wary of in this amendment.

[Lord Liddle]

If I may say so, the noble Lord has just shown the real objective of people who support Brexit. It is basically to weaken common standards and to turn us into some kind of mid-Atlantic regulatory free market tax haven, which is a horrific prospect for the British people. The fact is that the people who support that, with the exception of the noble Lord, do not have the courage to tell the British people that that is what they want.