Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, this afternoon, we have had the glorious sight of many noble angels dancing on the head of a pin, effervescing with enthusiasm for the virtues of parliamentary oversight. Of course, they are absolutely right, but I just wonder where this particular angelic host was hiding during the previous 40-odd years, when rule was piled upon regulation and then dropped from the commanding heights of Brussels on to this so-called sovereign Parliament. There was not much debate then, or much protest from the usual suspects. There were not many Tarzans swinging through the jungle, if I may put it that way. You do not get back in your car, with your windscreen smothered in almost 50 years of parking tickets, and then decide that you can drive away while peeling them off one by one—although some noble Lords have come up with an answer: they want to drive away in reverse gear. That is what a good deal of the criticism is really about: going back to the future and reliving the glorious past, with all its myths, fantasies and metric martyrs.

It is suggested that the Bill is a cut-and-paste exercise. Thank goodness for that, because, while we use paste, the EU uses superglue. We can move things around, but it cannot: once you are in, you are stuck. We have a dashboard. We have this debate, we will have a stringent Committee—I hope it will be prosperous—and future Governments will be able to have their way, too. So, yes, let us defend the rights of Parliament against the Executive, but let us not forget that the Bill has already passed through our elected House of Commons. Yet we have heard threats from Opposition Benches today that they intend to tear the Bill apart—that is unacceptable, irresponsible and utterly undemocratic.

Sadly, politics is not the pursuit of perfection; it is usually a choice between the unappetising and the totally inedible. What is inedible, and impossible to stomach, is that knot of prejudice that simply refuses to accept Brexit. I will not point a finger at anyone in this House, although I suspect that some volunteers may like to step forward, but I will point a finger at Guy Verhofstadt—Mr Europe—who, the other day, offered the conclusion that Putin invaded Ukraine because of Brexit. Perhaps his foie gras had gone off or something. There was me thinking that independent post-Brexit Britain had pulled Europe towards its senses on Ukraine and into action, just as we did with Covid vaccines. Thank goodness we were able to make those decisions with some speed then. Mr Verhofstadt’s words are truly appalling.

Other words I find more compelling are those of Jonathan Reynolds, the Labour spokesman on the Bill in the other place. I was glad to hear them echoed today by the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman. During the Commons Second Reading, Mr Reynolds said that this Bill

“is not about Brexit—Brexit has happened; it is a fact.”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/10/22; col. 191.]

So we must stop pretending that the European parliamentary system was so much more democratic and its laws so much better considered. Brexit is a fact—a democratic fact—and it is our duty to get on with it.

Prime Minister: Trade Unions

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We sit down with the TUC and others to discuss these matters, and we worked together during the pandemic. I remind the noble Lord that the TUC does not represent all workers; 75% of workers in this country are not in trade unions.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that it is very difficult to imagine, and in some cases to remember, what it is like as a family to look towards Christmas not knowing how you will meet your responsibilities? Does that not put a particular cast on the current rail strike, which is aimed not at fat cats but at the young, the weak, the sick and, in particular, old people—grandparents who want nothing more than to get home and join their families for Christmas? Does he agree that the rail strike is looking less like a normal industrial dispute and more like one man’s ego trip?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. It is almost as if the rail unions, in particular, are seeking to punish the public at this difficult time and exploit the monopoly position that they have to make life as difficult as possible for people wanting to join their friends and family for Christmas. It is appalling behaviour.

Employment Policies

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Indeed, but the national living wage has been raised to one of the highest levels in Europe under this Government. For those who wish to compare our record with those of European member states, I remind Members that maternity leave provisions in the UK are one year; the minimum standard in Europe is 14 weeks.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that those who support the right to strike should be careful about seeming to be enthusiastic about all strikes? Does he agree that the current train strike is not simply against workers who want to get to work by train to support their families and pay their mortgages but against sick people who want to get to their hospital appointments and against young people who want to get to their colleges and schools? Is it not about time that we accepted that there are some strikes where the balance shifts from a right to strike to holding the whole country—the weak, the sick, the needy —to ransom, which is increasingly the case with this train strike?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend puts it extremely well and I agree with him completely. It is almost as if this action is designed to punish the travelling public. With the way they are targeting the Christmas period, when a lot of essential engineering work was due to take place to improve the service for the travelling public, and with the way that they are targeting the weeks before Christmas, when they know that many people travel to see their friends and loved ones, it almost seems as if they are positively enjoying the right to inflict damage on the public.

Economy: The Growth Plan 2022

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I add my own welcome to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. She has vast experience and formidable tenacity. As a board director, she helped make Tesco hugely popular. We live in hope.

What to say at this time of night? I have recently been messed around with a condition called oscillopsia. It means that things appear to move to and fro; they keep shifting in front of my eyes. The other day I saw that sterling had crashed. I blinked, and, when I opened my eyes, I found that sterling had recovered. That made me rather happy. Then I saw that the top rate of income tax had been reduced from 45%, but, after I had blinked—well, it had not. That made me less happy. And I watched Angela Rayner give what she said was Labour’s response: everything would be reversed. Then I blinked, and Keir Starmer said no, it would not. I do not know whether that made me happy or unhappy, but, if I am honest, it did not come as much of a surprise.

There is a lesson there: violent disunity in a party usually leads to the dustbin of history. It might get pretty crowded in the near future.

There is so much I support in the Chancellor’s package, particularly the principle of letting people keep more of their money. Frankly, I would not even have begrudged Mick Lynch the extra couple of grand that he would have kept if the top tax rate were reduced. I read that his package is around £120,000. Is that outrageous? No, 120 grand is well worth it for being on the side of working people—except that he is not on the side of working people. He is doing everything he can to stop people working, alongside any number of Labour MPs. I am sure that he is a lovely man, but he has about as much in common with most workers as I have with cross-stitch embroidery.

It is not as easy as that though, is it? We are in a beggar’s muddle. The whole of Europe is in chaos. We cannot simply go on—

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord understand that Mick Lynch was elected by a free vote of the members of the union, who knew exactly what they were getting? This Government say that they are in favour of ballots—well, then they should respect the ballot of the RMT members.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I suggest that he goes and stands not on the picket line but outside stations when normal people are trying to get to work to do their job. I shall not take any more interventions on that front.

If we as a Government want people to understand and accept what we are about, we have to stop using the language of supply-side this and demand-side that and instead try to get into their homes, sit by their firesides and understand the reality of their lives—and accept that they are scared. There is a lot that is scary right now. It is about the economy, stupid, is it not? No, it is not really—it is about people. The people are the economy; they are the ones who provide the creativity, products, services and extraordinary inputs that go to make those game-changing outcomes. All our language and policies should have one ultimate objective—to enable them to dream their dreams once more. If we cannot, and if taxes come down but mortgages, rents, debts and prices everywhere go up, we will open our eyes and find that Mick Lynch and his men of many miseries will be running the show—and then we will see what economic chaos is truly about. I really wish my noble friend well.

EU Coronavirus Vaccine Programme

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

Viscount Waverley. No? No connection, I think. I call the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs.

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My Lords, there have been some pretty knee-jerk reactions to this announcement. Can the Minister confirm that this decision is not about being against co-operation—far from it; it is precisely what Brexit and a new policy are about: a new relationship based on co-operation? However, does my noble friend agree that in this crucial step in our battle against the virus it would be entirely inappropriate to hand over decisions about costs, timing and distribution, and even rationing if it came to that, to a European Commission on which there is not a single British voice?

[Lord Callanan]

My noble friend makes a good point, but this was an individual decision about this particular programme, which we did not think was well suited to UK needs. We would not have been able to take part in the governance of the scheme or be part of the negotiating team. We would have had no say on what vaccines were procured nor on their price, quantity or delivery schedule, nor even on whether they would be made available to people in this country. It was a pragmatic decision on this particular scheme, but we do not rule out future co-operation with the EU on other schemes.

Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, the Bill is about climbing out of lockdown and getting back to proper business. If only we could do the same in this House. This debate is not a Second Reading, not as any of us would recognise. During Second Reading of this Bill in the other place, in the physical reality of the House of Commons, there were 16 interventions on the Secretary of State. We know that that makes for better legislation and better government, yet there will be none of that today.

I am here in person simply to show that it can be done. The risks, and there are risks, can be assessed by each of us. We spend our lives assessing risks for others, so why not for ourselves? I thank all those who have worked so hard to get us this far but, without wishing to be discourteous, I say this to the usual channels: “You have struggled mightily and already achieved the very difficult. Now achieve the impossible.” We have a job to do, like every doctor, nurse, porter, police officer, teacher, tour operator and shop owner in the country, so bring us back. Keep us in business too.

And so to the Bill. I declare my interests, particularly in the hospitality and creative sectors, which are suffering terribly. Many of us are not down by 20% or 50% but are flat on our backs, so the Bill is important. It says that we do not know precisely what to expect so we must be adaptable and flexible to deal with all the unintended consequences mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. A 20-day moratorium is great, but for many struggling businesses will not be long enough. Ministers must be ready to consider extensions, make rapid decisions, be flexible and learn as we go if we are to succeed not simply in salvaging what we already have but in building anew. We will need to be quick on our feet.

The Bill is just a start. We will probably need to strengthen the powers of the Small Business Commissioner; simplify planning applications; make sure that invoices are paid promptly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, emphasised; clarify and probably curtail the role of many quangos; speed up decision-making; and ensure that regulators use their pencils, not simply suck them—give businesses the benefit of the doubt and free up free enterprise, in a simple phrase.

When we look back on the last few months, I suspect that we will find that British industry was more than able to provide PPE in abundance, and quickly, but we lost out because those innovative firms in the private sector simply did not fit the parameters set by Public Health England.

There is no place called “safety” right now. We will have to take a few risks along the way but the Bill seeks to strike a balance. Businesses mean jobs. Many employees fear losing their jobs right now, and understandably so. The best protection that we can give those employees is to keep their companies afloat and ensure that more new companies are floated. The Bill is a very good start.

Covid-19: Businesses and the Private Sector

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Dobbs]

That the Virtual Proceedings do consider the contribution made by businesses and the wider private sector in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Motion was considered in a Virtual Proceeding via video call.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I am so sorry for the short delay, which has possibly been my fault with the technology. I am truly grateful to my Whips for this opportunity. I also thank the many noble Lords who have indicated that they want to contribute today. Even those who have made it through the virtual culling process have only two minutes, which is pretty thin gruel, and I am sorry, but this is a discussion that we will need to continue.

We are here to discuss the private sector, but I start by thanking all those who have done and are doing so much in the public sector: our extraordinary doctors, nurses, porters, receptionists, ambulance drivers—everyone in the National Health Service. I also thank the local authority workers, the civil servants, the members of the Armed Forces and police forces, not forgetting our charities and the millions of volunteers who do so much to bring our community together. At 8 o’clock tonight I will be applauding them all.

How often have we heard the cry, “I can’t wait to get back to normal”? We have even thought it ourselves, but we will not be going back to whatever normal might have been. We will have to move forward to meet what will be a changed world, with its own very different challenges. It is the private sector—not just big business, but the medium and smaller enterprises, start-ups and self-employed—that holds the answers to meeting those challenges.

What has the private sector done so far? What Britain has needed, it has delivered. A couple of months ago we found ourselves confronted by one of the most acute situations of modern times: literally a matter of life, death and days. The private sector rose to the challenge magnificently. We were desperate for more intensive care beds, so we built Nightingale hospitals. Yes, under the supervision of the Army and the NHS, but who actually built them from nothing in record time? It was contractors such as Mace, BDP, Vinci and McAlpine. Meanwhile, the private health sector provided 8,000 beds and more than 10,000 nurses to help the NHS take the strain. Who can forget the care homes, whose workers have toiled tirelessly through so many difficulties?

We needed face visors, so step forward the Royal Mint, Bollé Safety and Jaguar Land Rover, many of which manufactured visors in days, from a standing start. Protective gowns have come from Mulberry, Burberry, Barbour, Imperial Polythene and literally hundreds of others. The fightback has been tremendous, with well over 1 billion PPE items already delivered to the front line. I thank every worker involved.

But I am not finished. We need millions of test kits; where will we get them? From Roche, AstraZeneca and GSK. It is the same story with ventilators: Babcock, BAE, Honeywell, Rolls-Royce, Mercedes and even McLaren Formula 1. It is a long and extraordinarily diverse list of names, and I make no apologies for continuing with this roll call of honour. Brewers have turned out millions of bottles of sanitisers, and so have cosmetics manufacturers. Chivas and Budweiser have been standing alongside Estée Lauder and L’Oréal, not forgetting Diageo and PZ Cussons. Private enterprise has shown itself to be extraordinarily adaptive. I read on the BBC that one quick-witted manufacturer has turned his 3D-printing operation, which usually makes sex toys, to producing ear protectors for the NHS. This is not quite swords into ploughshares, perhaps, but it seems there is no end to the entrepreneurial imagination.

Beyond this, we have needed to keep food suppliers open, even as we have shopped at a social distance. Who changed overnight to meet the need? Yes, the retailers: the supermarkets, the takeaway outlets, the village shops in the countryside and the corner shops in the towns. We have even managed to meet the deranged demand for loo rolls. My village shop in Wylye has kept itself open and is doing home deliveries of food, prescriptions, news and, perhaps most important of all, comfort to the elderly, looking out for them. They have kept Wylye running, just as the power generators, petrol stations, transport firms, heavy-duty truckers and white-van drivers have kept the entire country running.

Who will provide the vaccine, as and when it is developed? Yes, the private sector, in collaboration of course with our finest universities, like Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial. Ask yourselves: who provides the backing and the financial resources for so many of these university research facilities? There is a simple answer: the private sector. The list of business that have adapted to provide Covid-related services is almost endless. Some have tens of thousands of employees, some less than 10. There is an excellent tally on the Manufacturer website that is so long that it will take an hour to read, and I hope will take noble Lords just as long to applaud.

Before the cynics start claiming that they only do it for the money, let them go and talk to some of those involved. This is what one business leader, whose company has been working on beating Covid, told me: “It was like nothing I have seen before. Our employees worked tirelessly for weeks on end, until late at night, and not seeing their families even over the long Easter weekend. They used their ingenuity and were motivated by the need to save lives.” And that particular firm did not ask to be paid for its efforts.

We have been faced with circumstances that no one alive today has ever seen before. It is a challenge of historic proportions. But no one has run out of fuel, no one has run out of ventilators, no one has run out of food, and neither must we run out of hope, initiative and enterprise.

Yet there is a price to be paid for beating Covid. More than 2 million people are now out of jobs. School and university leavers will find it far more difficult to move on with their lives with a quarter of all graduate jobs gone. A new generation is about to discover the pain of mass unemployment, through no fault of its own. There will be a heart-breaking rise in insolvencies and bankruptcies. Many firms will go bust, which is why the Government are right to bring forward a new insolvency Bill to help companies in trouble. There are hard times ahead for us all.

Yet there are some who seem almost to welcome the downturn, using it for their own narrow ideological purposes. “More control, more regulation; we must put welfare before wealth,” they cry. Rarely has more nonsense been encapsulated in a single phrase. Without wealth, and particularly without new wealth—which we are going to have to create—there will be no welfare. We cannot share what we have not got.

We are going to face entirely understandable demands for increases in spending on health, our growing number of elderly people, cleaner and greener industry, education and training. Yet, far from their hoped-for increases, these sectors and many others face budget cuts that will turn their dreams to nightmares, unless we can get Britain back to work.

Last weekend, the Sunday Times published its new “Rich List”. I know the very thought is enough to send timorous wee beasties into spirals of outrage, but who stood at number one? Sir James Dyson, that extraordinary, inspiring and very British engineer and innovator. His success does not make him perfect; he admits to mistakes. He blew half a billion pounds on developing an electric car: a great idea, but not to be. How did he respond to failure? Overnight, he retooled his facilities and began developing a new kind of ventilator for the NHS. That did not work out either: the NHS has more ventilators than it is able to use. Now, he has switched the workforce and facilities he used to develop the electric car concept into totally new research. “Ours is a life of risk and failure,” he says. “We try things and they fail. Life isn’t easy.” Well, he can say that again. But life is not about getting everything right; it is about getting enough right to make a difference.

Covid-19 must be fought on many fronts and in many ways. It is not just about a disease but about an economic recession that will bring with it mental illness, poverty, pessimism—afflictions that are already causing an increase in the number of non-Covid deaths. In the coming months, we will be hit by a tidal wave of appeals to support this sector or that interest, all of which may be thoroughly worthwhile, even vital. However, we cannot look forward if we are shackled by poverty and failure, and lockdown means poverty. If Britain ends up permanently poorer, the virus will have won. We need to turn the situation into an opportunity to create new wealth.

This will only come through the private sector. It is the private sector where we will find the means to take the revolutionary ideas pouring out of our universities and turn them into world-beating enterprises. It is the private sector where the new vaccines and drugs we need will be developed. It is the private sector where we will find new firms to harness the technologies that will enable us to live greener and cleaner, where the new jobs will be created that will restore hope and where the future prosperity of this country will be built. In the private sector. It is not perfect; I do not pretend that it does not have its faults, but it is the only solution to the challenge that Covid-19 will leave behind.

The Government have done an extraordinary job in providing short-term support, with furloughs, interest-free bounce-back loans and interrupted business-scheme loans, but, as always, our tomorrows will be created by ideas and enterprises that we do not yet know about. So, at every turn, the emphasis must be on supporting new enterprises, as well as bailing out old ones. Workplaces must look up again. Yes, there are risks in doing that, but there are risks on both sides of the equation. There is no place called safety right now.

I am also keen for this House of Lords to get back to our proper way of business. Otherwise, the idea will grow that we are nothing but a gathering of the elderly and infirm. Between us, we have many lifetimes of accumulated experience, so I welcome the commitments we have been given by the usual channels to get us back to full sittings as soon as possible—and perhaps even earlier, please.

One day soon, there will be a day of reckoning and inquiry, of looking back to ask how well we as a country did. Could we have done more to beat the virus? No doubt it will be filled with lurid headlines and partisan opinions that rely entirely on hindsight, but we must not shirk from that. We must go on getting better. We should remember that even Winston Churchill needed a Dunkirk before he reached his D-day. Nothing lasts forever, not even misery and disease. The infection rate is falling, along with the number of deaths, and I remain an optimist. I will stick to a few basic truths: there will be no recovery without risk, no welfare without new wealth, and a vibrant private sector is in the greatest public interest. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Callanan for his attention to this debate. We have all enjoyed some dodgy IT, the barking dog belonging to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and some very tempting sunshine outside. Nevertheless, we have got through what I think has been an excellent and wonderfully wide-ranging debate. Astonishingly, I am told that it is the first debate on the private sector in Parliament since the Covid crisis began, so, once again, the House of Lords is doing what it does so well.

Noble Lords will understand that I cannot possibly do justice to all the excellent contributions. However, I would like to express sympathy for those who were unable to participate despite preparing valuable contributions. I hope that we will get many more such opportunities over the coming months and when we get back to full and proper debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, made a very powerful point about the disabled—a point that touched me. It reminded me, and I hope that it reminds us all, that the private sector is not just about the big battalions or the behemoths; it is about ordinary people: workers; the abled; the disabled; working mothers; part-timers; the elderly; and apprentices, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, reminded us—those who will never be rich but who want no more than to care for themselves and their families. They are the private sector, too. There are millions of them and that is why we should care.

The debate ahead, which we will continue to have, has been pretty clearly outlined. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, criticised the Government. My noble friends Lord Lang and Lord Naseby questioned the abilities of those at the centre—in government and in the Civil Service—to deliver the things that they hoped to deliver. Where will the future balance come from?

Fascinatingly, there has been little criticism of the private sector but much praise—from, for example, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral. The private sector has done very well, although inevitably there have been some exceptions, as the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, reminded us. My noble friend Lord Balfe—I thought, quite correctly—also reminded us that we should examine the moral basis of what we do and how we do it. I hope that we will always do that. I enjoyed the characteristically powerful plea from the noble Lord, Lord Empey, for us to look at the role of the manufacturing industry and at shortening supply lines.

There will be—there must be—an ongoing debate, and even dispute, ahead of us about all the things that we have discussed. None of them is easy, yet many noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett; the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, with his plea to work together; and the noble Lords, Lord Liddle, Lord Campbell, Lord Fox, Lord Stevenson, and many others—talked about the public and private partnership. To give a little context to those perfectly correct pleas, the public sector employs less than 17% of the workforce; the private sector is far larger—five times larger—and that is why it deserves our attention.

I think that we can be proud of this debate. We must all get back to business. In particular, I am told that I need my hairdresser. In the meantime, I reiterate my thanks to all: those in front of the screens, those behind the screens and those who never made it to the screens. I wish them all health and happiness. Once again, I express my thanks.

Motion agreed.

Covid-19: Business

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

That is why we have put in place such a strong enforcement regime. We have given extra resources to the Health and Safety Executive and local authorities to help them enforce these demands. Ultimately, it is a matter of trusting in the many sensible, established companies up and down the country to do the right thing for their employees. Most companies are endeavouring to do that; it is in their interests, and that is why they are successful. We will not hesitate to take enforcement action against the small minority that do not.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, the only way we will recover is to grow our way out of this mess and create new wealth. Does my noble friend accept that the Government’s overwhelming priority is to get business back to work? To do that, our firms will need as much certainty as we can possibly give them. Does he agree that the suggestions we heard in the debate yesterday that the trade deal with our friends in the EU should be delayed—perhaps by up to two years—is, frankly, delusional? How can we expect employers and employees to do their job if they do not know what the rules will be for years to come? There are no easy options, but does he not agree that endless delay is the daftest option of all?

[Lord Callanan]

My noble friend is tempting me to go back to my previous role on Brexit. Of course, we will approach the negotiations constructively. I am sure he will be delighted to know that our position has not changed. We will not agree to any of the EU’s demands to give up our rights as an independent state. We are committed to getting a deal by the end of the year and will not extend the transition period.

Brexit: Single Market and Workers’ Rights

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, there are many other aspects apart from international agreements. When one looks at the performance of the UK economy, what absolutely stands out above all else is that in many industries our productivity levels are too low. Increasing productivity in this country, partly through better training and skills but also through more investment in the research base of this country, is the best way to increase our trade overseas.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that I get very confused at times, being a simple-minded fellow, about all these rights that people keep talking about? Is it not the case, for instance, that in the United States Volkswagen has pleaded guilty to criminal misconduct about emissions, has paid a fine of nearly £4 billion and has offered consumers more than £12 billion in compensation? Yet in the EU, with all our rights for consumers and everybody else, so far the consumer has been offered absolutely nothing. Can he clear up my confusion and tell me why?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I fear that clearing up my noble friend’s confusion might take me longer than I have this afternoon. There is no doubt that consumers have very strong rights in the US and that having a very strong, competitive market is probably the best way to ensure that companies such as Volkswagen behave properly.