Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, there have been occasions in the past two years when I have reminded myself that the Vote Leave campaign’s personnel overlaps with that of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the TaxPayers’ Alliance and other right- wing think tanks. After all, the Global Policy Warming Foundation has made its entire pitch by denying the evidence in front of it, and the TaxPayers’ Alliance by promising that taxes can be cut without cutting public services, while promising at the same time that spending on the NHS can be increased. I fear that the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, promising an orderly no-deal exit came into something of the same category. I recommend to him Sir Roger Gale’s speech in yesterday’s Commons debate. As a Kent MP, he was talking about the implications of an unavoidably disorderly no deal.

Now we have this deal in front of us, which is justified on three grounds: that it restores British sovereignty; that it will, eventually, allow the UK to negotiate independent trade deals with third countries; and that it will save us the money that we have contributed to the shared EU budget, from which the Prime Minister keeps implying we get nothing back. It does none of those things. British sovereignty cannot be absolute in an overpopulated and interdependent world. Since we joined the European Community two generations ago, our economy has become highly integrated with those of our neighbours and other industrialised countries and significantly foreign owned. We are dependent on the good will of American, German, Japanese, French and now also Chinese multinational companies for our continued prosperity. Our media and our football clubs also have a high proportion of foreign owners, personnel and players, yet Brexit campaigners insist that the overwhelming threat to British independence comes from the Court of Justice of the European Union. Escape from that, and we will be free and independent.

There is no evidence to support the myth that the UK on its own will be able to negotiate better trade agreements than those it benefits from within the EU, nor that there is a significant group of third countries committed to free trade in contrast to an allegedly protectionist EU. President Trump is actively undermining the WTO and threatening a trade war between the USA and China. Nor is there any likelihood that major trade deals can be completed within the short transition period we have negotiated with the EU. Margaret Thatcher understood that the creation of the single market offered Britain the world’s largest open market for frictionless trade. This agreement’s rejection of the single market rejects her legacy.

Nowhere in the British debate, before the referendum or since, has any supporter of Brexit admitted the link between Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech of 1988, which I remember well, and our net contribution. She argued passionately that Prague, Warsaw and the other capitals of eastern Europe are also part of our historic European region. Since the Berlin Wall fell, a rising proportion of the payments that Britain, together with Germany, the Netherlands, France and the other net contributors, has put into the common budget has gone towards the stabilisation of eastern Europe, thus contributing to our own and our shared security. Let us remind ourselves that Norway has been contributing heavily as well. We have also contributed to shared resources, such as the EU technical agencies and the common research budget, from which we have benefited a great deal. As we prepare to leave, the Government are recruiting, at substantial extra cost, thousands of extra civil servants and setting up national agencies to replace what we are losing, and if we really want to control our borders we also need a large increase in the Border Force and in maritime patrol.

Margaret Thatcher also cared deeply about Britain’s place in the world. She understood that close relations with France and Germany, as well as with the USA, are central to Britain’s international standing. Those who claim to be her successors today interpret “global Britain” as a country that turns its back on continental Europe and pursues independent partnerships with China, India, the Middle Eastern monarchies and, of course, the Anglo-Saxon world, rather than grounding our global role in our European context.

It is extraordinary that a Conservative Party that used to stand for a strong British foreign policy has failed to spell out any coherent alternative rationale for our international role in the two years of drift since the referendum. There is no vision and no strategy. The political declaration offers only vague phrases on any framework for future foreign policy co-ordination.

I follow the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, in arguing that the Government are neglecting the domestic problems that lay behind the English majority that voted to leave the EU. IPPR North yesterday published figures showing that public spending cuts across the north of England—the regions that voted most heavily for Brexit—have been much deeper than in Scotland, Wales, London or the south-east. The OECD last week showed that Britain and the United States are by far the lowest spenders on labour market training among industrial democracies, which means we continue to rely on recruiting immigrants directly to fill skilled positions. The Chancellor nevertheless recently repeated his promise that taxes will be cut further, following the small-state ideology of the libertarian right and the TaxPayers’ Alliance—from which, I was surprised to read, the Leader of the House has apparently recruited her new spad.

If we are to bring the country back together, we need a long-term strategy to invest in this country’s most deprived towns and regions, whatever the outcome of our current political crisis over the EU. If we are to pursue the reconciliation for which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury rightly calls to heal the wounds that the 2016 referendum exposed, we have to tackle inequality, poverty and social divisions within this country. It will be easier to achieve that reconciliation if we sustain the foundations for Britain’s long-term prosperity and security within the EU rather than through this flawed deal.