Resetting the UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, the report we are debating today, so ably introduced by my noble friend Lord Ricketts, is an important one, as it marks the first six months of the follow-up and implementation of the UK-EU summit last May. It is important, too, because our debate marks the beginning of the run-up to the probable next summit this summer, which will hopefully register the conclusion of some, if not all, of the negotiations already begun and the engaging of new steps.

The report is also notable because it records the vote against the attempt by one of the co-authors of the trade and co-operation agreement—the noble Lord, Lord Frost—to emasculate its conclusions and recommendations. Let us be grateful for small mercies.

The top priority, I suggest, along with many others, must be the security of Europe and the restoration of a strengthened deterrent against Russian aggression such as has been unleashed on Ukraine—a deterrent based on a far more effective European pillar of NATO than we have had hitherto. Fortunately, talks on security are resuming now after an unfortunate setback, and our own Government are refusing to take no for an answer. I welcome that.

There are of course plenty of critics of the reset, but they need to be able to answer some of the following questions. Do they seriously discount the benefits to our agri-food exporters of an SPS agreement lifting the costly and time-consuming checks at the EU border? Do they ignore the lightening of the burden on Northern Ireland’s commercial operators from such a veterinary agreement? Do they not think that a youth mobility scheme would benefit both sides, supplementing the decision to join the Erasmus+ scheme, which we, like many other third countries, should never have left in the first place? Is there not clear mutual benefit in linking our and the EU’s emissions trading schemes, or in ensuring that the cross-border admission schemes we are both setting up to deal with carbon content—the CBAMs—are broadly equivalent, thus avoiding creating new non-tariff barriers and seeing exports from third countries being diverted to us? Is there not mutual benefit, too, in more energy interconnectors, as foreseen by the recent Hamburg meeting, and a more integrated electricity market? Should we not rejoin the pan-European rules of origin convention? All these questions and more are hard to answer in the negative, although some in this Chamber have no difficulty in doing so. If they cannot be so answered convincingly, are they not more the fruit of unthinking obstruction? To suggest that they are somehow betraying Brexit is the height of absurd.

Two catchwords, one on each side of the UK/EU divide, seem to be heavily overused. The first is the description of UK objectives as “cherry picking”. In reality, every negotiator tries to achieve their own prime objectives. The EU Commission certainly does—or at least it did when I was a Commission negotiator in the 1970s. Every negotiator recognises that there is a successful negotiation only where there is a balance of mutual benefit, including some form of continuous alignment and financial contributions to joint objectives. The second of the two problems I see in the way people address these issues is the incessant repetition of “red lines”. Naturally, both sides have such limits to their negotiating flexibility, but endless repetition is merely a recipe for not thinking things through and a disincentive to those on the other side to subject their own limits to critical scrutiny. So I make a plea for a reduction in the brandishing of those two facile catchphrases—“cherry picking” and “red lines”—and for a sharper focus in the phase ahead on where we can agree common ground, not on where we cannot.