My Lords, I find it quite astonishing that a Conservative Government should introduce a Bill such as this. During the 1990s I was chairman of the northern region CBI. At conference after conference I listened to Conservative spokesmen promising a bonfire of red tape. The same dubious cry was taken up by David Cameron, and more latterly by Boris Johnson.
Yet here we are, facing a Bill that will not have proper scrutiny and gives businesses no time for preparation. It will increase the number of forms that have to be filled in by in excess of 200 million. It will cost businesses anything up to £15 billion. As my noble friend Lady Randerson pointed out, it will require at least 50,000 additional customs officers, along with thousands of additional public servants in government departments and quangos.
This is a bonfire not of red tape, but of business, and it presents an uncertain future for financial services. It is a perverse and retrograde step by a Conservative Party captured by an ideological, anti-European group, fuelled by populist, xenophobic nationalism. As the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast, this bonfire of business will directly lead to a fall in GDP and to us being poorer, particularly those at the bottom of the pile.
That alone is a very good reason for voting against the Bill, but there is an even more important reason. As my noble friends Lady Northover and Lord Wallace of Saltaire said, it represents a damaging change in role for the United Kingdom that is wholly against the interests of its people. Never has there been a time since the Second World War when we need close allies and the closest co-operation between the nations of the world more. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, there never has been a time when we needed closer dialogue more, and a forum in which to solve world problems that we all face together.
Instead, we have the politics of slogans straight out of the Donald Trump playbook of making America great again. We are told we will have a “Global Britain”. We are told we are going to “Take back control”. They are meaningless slogans. As Churchill said after Dunkirk:
“Wars are not won by evacuations.”
This Bill is facilitating an evacuation and will do great damage to the country. For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, it should be opposed. I shall vote against it tonight with great enthusiasm.
8.50 pm