UK-EU Summit

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, who has experience of this. He will know that I have said in this Chamber before that I think it is a great shame that, when the Brexit debate was taking place, so little attention was given to the impact on Northern Ireland. Some people were taken aback, and certainly there were no preparations by the Government for how Northern Ireland could manage this. The SPS agreement removes the barriers on agri-food products. I will take away the point the noble Lord makes—I think it is wider than just agri-food products—see what is happening and discuss it with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and will come back to him ASAP on that issue.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, there are another five minutes left.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Will the noble Baroness accept that this has been widely supported throughout the country, and right across parties, because it shows that this Government have at least lived in the world we live in, and not in some past world? We now go forward to work more closely with our biggest and most important market and our closest neighbour. Will she accept those congratulations and our hope that we can move further forward in this direction?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am always happy to accept congratulations. The noble Lord makes a very important point about living in the real world. The issue of alignment came up a moment ago. If you look at what has happened already, you find that there has not been the divergence that we were told was going to happen. That is why the paperwork that British businesses have to go through in order to export is such nonsense and a burden for them. This is about living in the real world and doing the best we can for the economy and the people of this country.