My Lords, I shall be voting in favour of this Bill. This is not because it is a great outcome—far from it—but because we are faced with a binary choice here between a poor deal and a no-deal outcome, which would be catastrophic for British interests.
I want to make two brief points about why I think it is nevertheless a bad deal for British interests; the first concerns trade. The Government have made some extravagant claims, and the agreement in principle provides for tariff and quota-free access, but it also creates new non-tariff barriers in the form of extra bureaucracy and checks on goods, imposing significant extra costs on British business. I spent 15 years of my Foreign Office career working on EU policy in London or representing the UK in Brussels. I recall endless criticism, from many quarters, of a supposed unstoppable tide of EU bureaucracy. The reality is that, especially in comparison with what is coming, this was a golden age of genuinely frictionless trade.
By comparison, we are invited to see this deal, with its creation of a vast amount of form-filling and red tape, as a triumph. To put it gently, this feels a stretch. Moreover, the deal does nothing for the British services industry, as others have said, which is 80% of our economy and is an area, unlike goods, where we have a surplus with the European Union. Frankly, it is hard to understand the negotiating strategy, which seemed to prioritise fishing—0.01% of the economy—and did almost nothing for financial services, which contribute £75 billion to the Exchequer every year.
On trade, the deal is also not the sovereignty triumph that is claimed. Behind the detail about processes and committees, there is a hard reality: if now or in future we diverge significantly from EU labour or environmental standards, the EU will respond by restricting our access to its market. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, if we want to maintain free trade, we must become rule-followers rather than rule-makers.
As for the security provisions, senior government Ministers claim the deal makes the UK safer. As my predecessor as National Security Adviser, the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, pointed out, this is impossible to reconcile with the facts. The deal delivers some worthwhile provisions, such as the fast-track extradition arrangements, but, most damagingly, we have lost access to the Schengen Information System, which delivered our police and security services real-time information on the location of terrorists and criminals. I know from my time as National Security Adviser how valuable that was. Now it is gone, and British citizens will be less safe as a result.
It is not all bad news. The deal at least provides a framework and structure on which we can build. This process will go in only one direction; both common sense and, I anticipate, economic necessity, will compel us to build deeper and wider co-operation in future. I agree with the Prime Minister’s statement that this is not an end but a beginning, but I suspect I have a different vision of the ultimate destination.
8.27 pm