Brexit Opportunities Unit

Lord Strasburger Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the day-to-day arrangements in the protocol for the democratic scrutiny of laws in Northern Ireland are democratically anomalous. We have said that before and it is why we had to negotiate the consent arrangements in the Northern Ireland protocol to ensure democratic support, or not, for these proposals. We will be setting out our approach to the Northern Ireland protocol more generally later this week.

[Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]]

While the benefits of Brexit remain so elusive, should we not instead be tackling the serious downsides of the EU trade deal, such as the huge hit to our £111 billion creative arts sector? British performers now face major obstacles to touring in Europe, including prohibitive costs and mountains of red tape. Meanwhile, musicians from Tonga and other third countries can tour freely in the EU. Since their negotiators were so much more successful than ours, should not this new director be recruited from Tonga?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we stand fully behind our great creative industries and support them in touring around the European Union. As is well known, we have launched a campaign in the small minority of member states that do not allow relatively easy touring. We are actively lobbying the member states concerned and will continue to do so, in the hope that they change their arrangements to make them as liberal as ours.