EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I voted for the agreement reluctantly. I would have preferred a clean break and the time to scrutinise the small print for the myriad traps it contains. However, to give credit to the noble Lord, Lord Frost, this agreement does deliver sovereignty, and that matters. While many in this place sneeringly traduce sovereignty as xenophobic nationalism embraced only by knuckle-dragging gammon, it is historically and now the only basis for democratic accountability. The demos voted to remove the unelected legislature in Brussels, unanswerable to UK voters. Now that is a reality, they may look at unelected lawmakers closer to home—good.

Good also that the Government have nowhere to hide and will need to look the electorate in the eye and own each and every decision they make, including the egregious parts of this agreement. Voters matter. Listening to the hours of contributions last week—I was culled from the speakers’ list—I noted a rather self-congratulatory, back-slapping tone from the Government Benches. It rang rather hollow. In truth, it was the perseverance and steely courage of millions of voters, who used the ballot box and electoral vehicles such as the pivotal Brexit Party time and again to pile on the pressure, that forced the Conservative Party finally to honour the referendum. Let us acknowledge that it is the voters who got Brexit done, against all the odds, against the machinations deployed by the highest echelons of the technocratic establishment and against many in this place who really believed that they had the right to overturn 17.4 million votes and shared with Donald Trump a refusal to give loser’s consent and who even now, today, lack the imagination to see life beyond Brussels or Erasmus or to see Brexit beyond the narrow prism of GDP.

Yes, this agreement has flaws, but its existence is proof that a democratic movement can change the course of history. In the context of lockdown Britain, when we will need every ounce of that democratic spirit, bravery and sovereign freedom to rebuild society, it will do for starters.

UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, on the details of the mechanism proposed under the protocol, as well as the protocol statement that has been made, my noble friend will find that a number of draft decisions are also being laid before Parliament setting out in greater detail the arrangements agreed, which include provision for the settlement of disputes.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, we are assured in the Statement that the primacy of sovereignty is now beyond doubt. This sounds very positive to me, but I am not convinced that there are not worrying cracks in the Statement that sovereignty can seep through. I echo noble Lords who asked for more detail on EU intervention, but my main point is that, in debates here and in the other place, it has been suggested that that this agreement was pushed through in order to make a deal possible from the EU’s point of view. Can the noble Lord reassure us that he understands that those “red wall” voters who loaned their votes to the Government did not do so for a trade deal? 2016 was not about a trade deal. If it happens, fine, but it is about sovereignty, and sovereignty is not in trade or in technicalities, as discussed here. Does the noble Lord understand it, as some of us do, to be about democratic control at home and not just about trade? Maybe it is time to walk away in order to retain that democratic, sovereign control.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I find myself between a rock and a hard place, because many of those who have asked questions today have been critical of the Prime Minister for stating what he has said about sovereignty and the need to protect our right to control our borders, to make our own laws and to control our fish. That is a statement that he and the Government have repeatedly made: we ask the EU to recognise and negotiate with us in good faith as an independent sovereign nation, which is what we wish to be. On the other hand, the protocol recognises that we are seeking to be pragmatic, and there are many benefits that your Lordships have not brought out: export declarations have been put in the bin; we have protected supermarkets; and businesses will be able to use VAT returns as they do today, without any burdensome process for splitting some of the issues. So there are pragmatic positives. However, I must tell the noble Baroness that the Prime Minister should be taken at his word on what he is saying.