UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I wish I could be as optimistic as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that Keir Starmer will be able to make Brexit work.

I congratulate the committee on this excellent report. It is useful to focus on the non-commercial aspects of this broad relationship: foreign policy, defence, energy co-operation and the mobility of people.

I found the government response disappointingly thin on content. Its preference for the Turing scheme over Erasmus+ is specifically stated to be because Turing does not offer reciprocal benefits. Searching issue by issue for arrangements in which the UK gains and others give is no way to rebuild a close relationship with the EU and our neighbouring states. Good relations depend on mutual trust and broad reciprocity.

I read the article in yesterday’s Telegraph by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, on relations with the EU. As he was the Minister who negotiated the trade and co-operation agreement, it would have been valuable for the House to have heard his comments on this report, and he was in the Chamber earlier today. I was puzzled that he claimed in the article that his negotiations on fisheries and on security had been successful, and I was astonished that he made no reference to the impact of the Ukraine conflict on UK relations with the rest of Europe and on European security as a whole.

I agree with the report that UK participation in the loose framework of the European Political Community—alongside 20 other third countries, including Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Liechtenstein, as well as the European Union—is a useful but small step forward. No doubt its coming meeting in Spain will focus on support for Ukraine and the spillover of conflicts and migrants from north Africa into Europe. I hope that preparations are now well under way for the UK to host the fourth meeting in spring next year, but I note that the Government have already recognised that this is not enough by joining the PESCO Military Mobility project. We need to move much closer towards regular and frequent consultations on foreign and security policy, multilaterally in Brussels as well as bilaterally in national capitals.

I remind the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, that successive British Foreign Secretaries, from Lord Carrington and Sir Geoffrey Howe onwards, were architects of the development of the common foreign and security policy mechanisms, and I can think of no Foreign Secretary, Labour or Conservative, since the beginning of that process under Jim Callaghan who has not regarded that as an invaluable contribution to British foreign policy.

The article in yesterday’s Times by the noble Lord, Lord Hague, provided another powerful argument for foreign and security co-operation with EU members. We cannot rule out the possibility that Donald Trump might win the next US presidential election. If that happens, the British Government will need to respond with the closest possible co-operation with our European partners, as well as Canada and Australia, and we need to build that relationship now.

The chapter on energy policy restates what everyone following energy policy already knew, but which the proponents of leave denied: our energy supplies are already dependent on interconnectors with other neighbouring states and will become more so as we and others move further towards renewable energy. One might add that these Governments are all now painfully aware that the interconnectors are vulnerable to hostile sabotage and that defence co-operation in protecting the network from attack is a security interest that we share with states across the channel and the North Sea.

The noble Lord, Lord Frost, mentioned extra-European migrants in his Telegraph article but had nothing to say about the current confusion over mobility between the UK and the EU, which the report sets out. Policy here is incoherent, with the Home Office wanting to keep as many people out as possible, and DSIT and DfE proclaiming that we are open to foreign workers, foreign researchers and talented students. Some EU states are now imposing restrictions on the number of weeks that British businesspeople, academics and lawyers can work in their countries in return. I fear we will have to wait for a different Government before any reciprocal arrangements can be agreed that will allow a freer flow in both directions across the channel.

The report also recognises the flimsiness of any European strategy or framework for co-ordination across Whitehall. It has not helped that we have had six Ministers for Europe since the 2019 election, one of whom served for two months and another for five months, with the post now downgraded to a Parliamentary Under-Secretary. It is a great contrast with the coalition period from 2010, when David Lidington was in office for five years as a senior Minister of State, with real influence across Whitehall.

The Government are making almost no effort to get their act together in managing the complex relations with our nearest and most important partners, which cover most of the important interests across Whitehall. Furthermore, the cadre of expertise on the EU—its regulations and institutions—that had been built up in Whitehall is shrinking, at a time when even right-wing Conservatives admit that we need to rebuild political and policy links. We need to rebuild the networks of co-operation among officials, Ministers, political parties, schools, universities and civil society that have been so badly damaged in the past five years. I welcome this report’s contribution to making such arguments.