Apart from getting longer, will it still be there at all and who will be able to go through it?
I would like to stay in the single market and the customs union. The pamphlet that I helped to prepare points out—Liberal Democrats please note—how it could be done successfully. My basic difference from the Government’s proposal is that we would stay long-term in the single market and in the customs union or, if you want to use the indefinite article, “a” customs union negotiated with the EU, which I think would be roughly the same thing. As far as I understand it, and I will be corrected if I am wrong, the objections to doing that are not from Brussels, as those requirements or suggestions were requested, but from London—ideological objections because of certain parts of the Conservative Party.
Someone made the remark in this context that they feel “trapped”. I think it was the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who asked, “How do we get out of this trap?” We are not the only people who are trapped: people in Bolton are trapped and see their public services and industry disappearing all at the same time. My noble friend Lord Grocott made the very valid observation that people feel that they are on the dumping ground of history. Without mentioning Professor Trump—actually he is not a professor, is he? I do not think he can even read a book. Without mentioning President Trump, we are aware of that sort of politics.
To go further on to the point mentioned by my noble friend Lord Monks, I say that earlier in the year we tabled an amendment to have a parliamentary role in a mandate. In a trade union you have a mandate, and then you have the executive look at the results of the negotiation by reference to the mandate. That was not done, which was a pity. It was the Commons that rejected it, not the Lords. If there had been such a mandate we would have been a little further forward, such as looking at the proto-treaty that emerged on 20 December, when we were on our way home for Christmas, about the EFTA/EU separation agreement.
I would like to ask the Minister to reply on Monday about how, if we did wish to synchronise the clocks of leaving the EU and rejoining EFTA, that would work. Would that be compatible with the proto-treaty published on 20 December?
In conclusion, the idea that the EEA is incapable of reform is not the case. It was always intended by Jacques Delors that it would evolve. It would be a different organisation with Britain back in it; there is no doubt about that. On the objection that, when we have left the table, we would not have a vote, even Boris Johnson’s logic surely would not demand that we leave the table, pay no money and yet complain about not having a vote.
I will finish where I began. To get out of the mess that we are in at the moment we are very much hoping that there will be support in both Houses—as I think there will be—for the emergence of some sort of interest in an amendment next week that we stay within the European Economic Area.
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