My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow on from the speech of my noble friend Lord Austin, who has been a great friend over the years, promoting cycling at a time when it was not quite as popular as it is now. He is very welcome in your Lordships’ House.
There has been a lot of talk from the Prime Minister and others about regaining our sovereignty, but I have to ask this question: whose sovereignty and what exactly do they mean? It is very easy for Ministers to sit here, at the end of 2020, and think that we are a sovereign island state, maybe even with an empire whose every move they can control, forgetting that they do not have one any more and that most of the Empire sought more relevant economic and cultural links long ago, and we are left alone. After 50 years of war and its aftermath, our involvement in Europe and with our neighbours, and the encouragement that we gave to widening the EU eastwards, was a major contributor to peace: the free movement of people for work, leisure and relationships, and the understanding of the different traditions, languages, local rules and customs has been a major contributor to peace. Of course, the Erasmus programme, about which many noble Lords have spoken, is an essential part of that, and I hope the Minister will come back with a positive answer when he responds.
I lived in Romania for several years in the 1970s, under the Communist regime, and it was not a happy place. There was no liberty and no freedom, and the issues that occurred then are not over yet—as we see when we look at what is happening in Ukraine and Belarus. I have a train-operating business colleague who sent me a photograph a few years ago of one of his freight trains with machine-gun holes all the way up the side. Just imagine trying to run a business when you have machine guns going past you all the time.
I think the rest of Europe should be seen as our friends and trading partners—to which, of course, we export some 40% of our trade—and we should really encourage them. Therefore, the criticism of Europe as being bureaucratic is wrong. The people are not bureaucratic, but some of the processes needed to be, maybe to cope with 26 member states. Are our Government really right to criticise the EU for this when they produce just a framework Bill, which many speakers have said will dramatically increase the bureaucracy of trade with the EU, just as the interests of that mythical idea of sovereignty are lost?
My conclusion is that all the Government are doing is transferring sovereignty from what they believe was Europe to themselves, bypassing Parliament. For the reasons many other noble Lords gave, I will support the Bill, but through gritted teeth.
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