Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I shall be brief because I spoke in December. I put my name down in this case to speak if something came up, and a couple of things have come up. The first is a small point: in his opening speech, the Minister answered a lot of points made in December, but I do not think he answered mine. I asked: which of our preparations for leaving on WTO terms need EU co-operation at this stage and is that co-operation forthcoming?

Secondly, I was in the Chamber last Wednesday when the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said:

“I do not buy the apocalyptic predictions”.—[Official Report, 9/1/19; col. 2270.]


A little before that, the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, said:

“I do not for one moment believe the scaremongers”.—[Official Report, 9/1/19; col. 249.]


I thought, “Hurrah, at last, agreement. People are starting to realise that these scare stories about no deal are hugely exaggerated”. But no, they were talking about different scare stories: those about the risk of delaying Article 50 and holding a second referendum—the uncertainty that would persist; the anger that would erupt; the civil unrest; the delayed business investment, referred to today by the noble Lord, Lord Curry; the risk to democracy itself; and, above all, the risk of a Marxist Government.

The remainers who dominate this Chamber do not believe those scare stories but they believe, magnify and exaggerate every scare story about leaving with no withdrawal agreement and going on to WTO terms. No mad fear about Mars bars and insulin, water and sandwiches is too absurd to repeat. Why this double standard about risks in the future?

In one of the most colourful images used in the debate so far, my friend the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, described people like me as being so insouciant that even if we were told that the four horsemen of the apocalypse had asked for landing rights at Heathrow, we would not be worried. I took the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, aside an hour or so ago and said, “For a man of your erudition, Peter, are you unaware that the four horsemen of the apocalypse are entirely fictional characters?”. They are figments of the imagination of St John the Evangelist, who was having a psychedelic dream at the time, as far as we can tell. I am looking to the Bishops’ Bench for confirmation of what exactly happened. I am blessed. Just as many of the other fears are fictional.

We face a balance of risks and opportunities whichever way we go. I judge the risks to this country of delaying Brexit—the uncertainty, the anger, the disillusionment, the polarisation, the constitutional crisis—to be greater than the risks of leaving with no withdrawal agreement in place and arranging for WTO terms. I do so mainly because we can mitigate the latter risks with preparation, as we are doing. We can listen to people such as Sir Rocco Forte, my noble friend Lord Bamford, the head of HMRC, the chief executive of Calais, as my noble friend Lord Lilley mentioned, whereas we will struggle to mitigate the risks of the other course of action.

I venture to suggest that what most people in this Chamber—the remainers—are really scared about is that no deal might be a damp squib. It might all happen with only minor problems. I think that is really what keeps them awake at night.