UK and EU Relations

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, the timetable spelt out by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is even tighter than he says. The reality is that on the present timetable there are 12 months between now and when, to allow for ratification across Europe, we have to agree. I therefore hoped that the position papers from both the EU and the UK would clarify the progress that had been made on these negotiations. I am afraid that I came away—in so far as I managed to read them—feeling that the two sides were operating in parallel universes. They were not congruent or engaging. I came to the conclusion that the solidity needed in negotiations has not actually started. The latest word across the wires is that the next stage of those negotiations may indeed have been postponed.

In my youth, I took a professional interest in the skill of negotiation, in which certain unwritten rules are pretty universal. The first of those is: be clear about your optimum objective. The second is: do not prematurely disclose your bottom line. The Government have breached both those rules pretty spectacularly. They are not clear what form the future partnership is likely to have. They may use all sorts of aspirational adjectives to describe it but the reality is that they have not been clear. These papers describe, for the most part, second-order issues but do not relate them to how the partnership which our Government intend to achieve will look, particularly in relation to trade. On the other hand, the Government have been overkeen on spelling out our red lines—on migration and on having no role whatever for the ECJ. I expect that they may well, in the end, have to compromise on these issues.

Rule 3 is: understand where your counterparts are coming from and be clear about their relative strength. Rule 4 is: identify their bottom lines. Despite the access to diplomatic and political contacts which the Government have throughout Europe, there seems to be no very effective assessment of where Europe is coming from in the negotiations or of how the European institutions and the 27 member states are approaching them. These papers do not give a single clue as to the Government’s assessment of the EU position, nor is it self-evident in them what the Government consider the EU’s red lines to be. The most self-evident of the EU red lines, one which could guarantee the agreement of both contributing net payers and late receivers within the 27, is on settling the budget. Unless we face up to that early, the rest of it is not likely to be delivered at all.

Rule 5 is: settle what can be settled early on. This applies even if, theologically, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. It is always useful to have some bits of agreement in your pocket. The EU and UK negotiators appear to be misjudging this, particularly in relation to Ireland, which can only be concluded once we know what the general trade and migration arrangements will be.

Rule 6 is: identify key outstanding areas of difference. Rule 7 is: keep as many options open as possible. The first of those is the only one on which the Government have clearly set out the different positions and compared them to citizens’ rights. I wish that they would do that more generally.

Rule 8 is: do not believe your own propaganda—not during the referendum, nor indeed since, not the pronouncements by the Foreign Secretary or the Brexit-supporting press. It will not help at all. Rule 9 is: yes, you can threaten to walk away, but only seriously contemplate it if you know where you are going. As yet, we do not have a clear idea what those who advocate, or are prepared to contemplate, no deal mean by it—we need to know. If I were back in the days when I was assessing role-playing negotiators, I probably would have given Messrs Davis and Barnier roughly a C-plus—the plus for resilience and good humour.

I also have rule 10, which is: be prepared to take advice. At the moment, it appears from the discussions with business leaders that they all fear that the Government are not taking their advice. There is also the key issue for us of whether the Government are prepared to take advice from Parliament, and in particular this House. I very much endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said about getting on a proper keel the relationship and the rapport back between Ministers and your Lordships’ EU Select Committee. We have 12 months to get this right, a key part both for the negotiations and the legislation—in whatever form it comes to us from the Commons. If the Government, this House and the Select Committees are at odds, we will not manage this well.