EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Truscott Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Truscott (Ind Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as has been mentioned, the trade and co-operation agreement is a damage-limitation exercise. As has also been said endlessly, Her Majesty’s Government should have got a better deal on services. They should have used our undoubted leverage over fish—the one ace we had up our sleeve—to ensure access. Instead, we bartered away our fishing waters for precious little, if any, quid pro quo. President Macron wanted our cod and to eat it, and largely he was successful. Once again, the European Parliament, the supposed democratic arm of the EU, has been sidelined; the agreement’s ratification is a foregone conclusion.

We should also be concerned about how the British Parliament has been treated in this process—with nothing less than contempt—by our own Government. This agreement was rushed through Parliament with precious little democratic oversight. As noted by many noble Lords, legal experts have predicted that the trade agreement with the EU is anything but watertight and could lead to arbitrary revocation and retaliatory tariffs, impacting the UK’s economic stability and investment climate.

Much remains still to be negotiated with the EU, creating more uncertainty, not least access for our financial services and, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, just before my speech, sectors such as our music industry. There are already reports of backlogs, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and other noble Lords said, at our ports, as exports are delayed due to the new paperwork required. These delays particularly affect perishable goods such as fish. As the CEO of Marks & Spencer said:

“Tariff free does not feel like tariff free when you read the fine print.”


Businesses also face possible tariffs for re-exporting goods to the EU. Some parcel companies have already suspended road deliveries to the continent. This was not what we were promised by the Brexiteers. A deal was always going to be better than no deal, but this agreement has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese.