UK Parliament / Open data

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

My Lords, it is not a question of everything being hunky-dory, but of how desperately worse off we would be were we not to remain in the single market. For goodness’ sake, let us apply a little reality to this. Even President Trump may wake up one day and realise that, given the nature of 21st-century trade in the world today, 40% of the content of Mexican exports to the US actually originates in the US. That is the reality of trade and of the single market; that is why I have no hesitation in describing it as a vast factory floor.

Another thing that is changing interests is that while tariffs and customs controls are important, as we will find out, increasingly so are product standards, copyright and intellectual property rules, investment rules and, yes, rules governing data sharing and transfer. The point is that in the single market we have a single rulebook that covers all these things and therefore we have an even playing field across the entire European single market on which our businesses can conduct their business. We will struggle outside it, especially if in pursuit of a US trade deal we choose to comply with equivalent American rules instead of European ones. The more we diverge from European rules, the more difficult we will find it to trade in our own vast home European market.

8.45 pm

That brings me to my last point, which is the Government’s version of global Britain. We are right and they are right to seek greater access to global markets for Britain’s goods and services. I spent four years painstakingly doing that as the Trade Commissioner. But let us be clear: we are not pushing against an open door in the international trading system. Many fast-growing and emerging economies where we want to deliver our goods and services in the future are becoming more protectionist than ever. Public sentiment is hardly making the prospects for trade more positive in these economies, and President Trump will make things a whole lot harder. If we are not careful, the policy of “America first” and the protectionism that goes with it will spread like a contagion across the international trading system, making new agreements even more difficult to negotiate in the future than they are now. That is why I think that the Government are taking a huge risk in jeopardising what we currently have, the trade that we currently bank in the single market, for the sake of entirely speculative future gains elsewhere. They are not gains, they are speculations about what we hope we will be able to achieve elsewhere in the world later.

Let us remember that we cannot even begin to negotiate any sort of trade arrangement with the European Union until we have finally left it, and when we know what we will have to offer to other countries in future trade agreements will depend largely on our future relationship with Europe’s single market. If we entered the EEA and stayed in the single market but left the customs union, as Norway has done, we could trade more easily in Europe and form trade agreements with others in the rest of the world. That really would be having your cake and eating it. Out of the EU and the single market, on the other hand, it is not yet clear how the Government will manage the negotiation, but if the word on the street is right that Ministers will

seek sectoral agreements in, for example, automotive goods and financial services, I think we are going to be disappointed. I would be very surprised if the EU negotiated on that basis because of its completely understandable objection to cherry-picking and because of the sheer practical difficulties involved in creating customs arrangements that would be very problematic to design and introduce, and even harder to police.

I have the feeling that the Government simply do not understand exactly what they are biting off in trying to negotiate a whole new trade deal on the basis that they are: with the European Union but outside the single market. Perhaps they understand how difficult it is going to be and secretly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, that, when it comes to it, it would be better just to pay the bill and leave without getting a deal at all. I hope very much that that does not happen. It would be an economic disaster for our country.

Let us be clear. Any deal on offer on the basis of the Government’s current approach would be highly suboptimal for us. That is why I support the amendment—to leave the European Union, if that is the will of the people and of Parliament, but to stay in the single market. Yes, it would mean compromising on some of the political objectives that many leave campaigners hold dear, but there is the whole country to think of, not just the ideologues among the leave campaigners. That is what Parliament is meant to do: reflect and represent the interests of the whole country, not just one part of it.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
779 cc662-3 
Session
2016-17
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
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