Queen’s Speech

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this debate on the gracious Speech. I am sure I am not alone among your Lordships in finding yesterday’s colourful ceremony inspiring and refreshing. It brought home to me, as it always does, just how great a privilege it is to be a Member of your Lordships’ House and to be able to play a role in improving legislation using the vast and diverse experience possessed by so many Members.

I congratulate my noble friend Lord King on his entertaining and interesting speech yesterday. As he recognised, the elephant in the room is the looming referendum on our membership of the European Union. I wish I could agree with him that, like Mr Larry Adler with his mouth organ, if we go on and on playing the same tune eventually we will get it right and our partners will come to appreciate us. I cannot see any evidence from the pronouncements of European leaders, either during or after the Government’s negotiations, that they want to hear us again, so I cannot be confident that the much more fundamental reforms that are clearly needed in the EU are going to happen anytime soon.

What we do know is that the five presidents’ report, published in June last year, reveals the European Commission’s intentions that fiscal union will be developed within the framework of the European Union, meaning that the UK will be dragged in. I do not buy the arguments of those who believe that we must remain in order to maintain our influence on the world stage. The five presidents’ report also proposes abolishing the UK’s representation on key international bodies, where global regulations and standards are increasingly set. It states that,

“in the international financial institutions, the EU and the euro area are still not represented as one”.

It singles out the IMF as one example.

In visits within the last month to Holland and France, I found that almost every banker and businessperson I met wanted to discuss the likelihood of a British vote to leave. Many of them, perhaps surprisingly, expressed the view that the only way to persuade the leaders of the EU to abandon their aspirations to deepen the structures of the Union to the extent that it becomes effectively a federal state will be if we vote to leave. The Swiss people voted last year to end the free movement of people, which their current arrangements with the EU require, and therefore they are now preparing to renegotiate their trading arrangements with the EU. Switzerland, as your Lordships are well aware, is the second-largest financial services market in Europe, so we would be in good company if we were to be engaged in similar talks at the same time.

I believe that a vote to leave will provide the best chance that Europe will morph into a looser community of nations while perpetuating free or nearly free trading arrangements that are so essential to our prosperity, the growth of new businesses and the creation of jobs. We would, of course, remain able and free to collaborate with our European partners in many areas on a bilateral or multilateral basis, in programmes such as Horizon 2020 for scientific research and other programmes.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to continue work to deliver NHS services over seven days of the week. There are other excellent proposals in the gracious Speech, including the focus on improving children’s life chances through the Children and Social Work Bill. I also welcome yesterday’s agreement between the Government and the BMA and I congratulate the Secretary of State.

I find myself in full agreement with the views of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on HS2 and the northern powerhouse. It is welcome that the Government have committed to continue to support its development and, as a director of a company that manufactures plastics on Teesside, I am well aware of the crucial need for further investment and job creation in that region, building on the very welcome establishment by Hitachi of its new rolling stock factory at Newton Aycliffe. I have read recent newspaper articles suggesting that the costs of HS2 are escalating rapidly and that this may lead to the truncation of this project, possibly as far south as Crewe. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure the House that there is no truth in these rumours.