My Lords, I support the amendment moved by my noble friend as a way to probe aspects of the Government’s approach to our future trading relationship with the European Union. The EEA was created when the UK, Denmark and Ireland changed from being members of EFTA to members of the EU, but the scale of their commercial relations with the other EFTA countries made it necessary to abolish customs barriers between the two groups of countries. A similar imperative will operate in the current situation as far as the UK market is concerned, given the scale of our trading with the EU. Obviously, in many ways the EEA would not be my preferred option because I would prefer to be in the single market—indeed, I would prefer to remain in the EU. However, given where we are after the referendum, I certainly think it is worth the Government considering and responding to the points that have been made.
My noble friend referred to the excellent report by the European Union Committee on Brexit: the Options for Trade and the fact that paragraph 5 of the conclusions says:
“EEA membership would be the least disruptive option for UK-EU trade, not least because it would maintain membership of the Single Market for services”.
I specifically ask the Minister whether this paragraph of the report, highlighting the importance of services to our economy and the way that that can be handled within an EFTA-type solution, has been discussed with the City of London, and what kind of response was made by the City to the point in the report.
Obviously, we will have a further chance to look at the report when it is discussed in this House on Thursday, but it is very germane to the discussions this afternoon, both on the EEA and on the single market.
Therefore, it is quite right to highlight it today and I take this opportunity to do so. Certainly—this point has been made many times—whatever people voted for in the referendum, we are all pretty sure that they did not vote to make themselves poorer. As a result of that, exploring the best deal possible, in looking at all the possible options, is going to be vital. I believe that the Government need to take the amendment and the report very seriously.
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