UK and EU Relations

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, unlike the previous speaker, I warmly welcome this stream of partnership and position papers, which I believe reflect rather well on our Civil Service and its creative resources and energies.

I shall confine my comments in my five minutes to one point and plea. The worst and silliest advice ever given to a Prime Minister throughout this whole saga was to avoid seeking fundamental changes in the way the European Union works. That was the advice given by officials close to David Cameron and by think tanks such as the Centre for European Reform. They all said that deep reform is not on and that it should be avoided. They advised sticking to a shopping list of British demands, which is of course what Mr Cameron did, against his earlier judgment and inclination, with absolutely disastrous results. Far from avoiding the fundamental principles of the European Union, we as a major regional power and networker should have opened them up in close alliance with the majority of European peoples who see the overwhelming need for new models of European co-operation. That is where all good Europeans should be turning their efforts.

All along, what is happening to the whole European Union has been the real story, which too many people have avoided. It faces entirely new challenges from unprecedented migrant movements larger than anything in history, from a totally transformed world trade pattern and from the new phase of global digitalisation and networking, which is changing the entire conditions of international relations and trade. That is the point that so many columnists, and the BBC in particular, have completely failed to grasp.

This brings me to my plea: we need one more position paper to add to all that we have had, including the one today. I would like to see this position paper majoring on the following points. First, it should address the whole of Europe’s crying need for new immigration strategies, of which our own wish for stronger border controls is only one aspect. The theoretical principle of free movement of persons, introduced at Maastricht, which is said to be so fundamental, has in reality long since collapsed as country after country adopts border restrictions and job regulations for immigrants, such as France itself and all of the Visegrad countries.

Secondly, there is the need for the old EU economic model to be replaced with arrangements which respond to the powerful decentralising and localising pull of the digital age in all areas, as well as the need to bring a new philosophy not just to trade and industry but to security and all aspects of regional co-operation including energy—although, of course, on quite different lines to the present bankrupt EU energy policy.

Thirdly, there is the need for Europe, which is a fast-shrinking part of the global trade order, to revise its trading provisions fundamentally in the new globalisation phase, and adopt new platforms and blockchain technologies which invalidate the old protectionism and the old customs union concept to which our friends opposite, the Labour Party and others, still cling. That makes them prisoners of the past, one and all.

Fourthly, there is the question of how to reverse out of the blind cul-de-sac of the chronically sick euro system which demands an unattainable, undesirable and unnecessary degree of budgetary tax and political centralisation, and prepare for the fintech age of crypto and virtual currencies and the demise of cash which lies just ahead.

Today there are good Europeans looking forward and vested-interest Europeans clinging to the old hierarchy. A weak, outdated and fractious continental Europe has always been of immense damage and danger to Britain. We just cannot isolate ourselves from it; that way lies disaster. Rather than trying to walk away from what will be a lopsided Europe overdominated by a reluctant Germany, we should be committing our considerable intellectual and diplomatic resources and our huge experience to the design of a more modern European model and the pathway towards it. That would include the deep defence partnership which the latest position paper talks about, and very welcome it is. That is one example of many on how closer co-operation in Europe can be achieved outside the rigid confines of the old EU treaties.

Long before Brexit, we should have been doing this anyway. We should have been afraid of neither treaty change nor allegations that we are somehow heretics challenging the sacred European principles. We are neither. We are, or should be, realists who want, and always have wanted, our region to be stable and to prosper—and continue to be so—in utterly changed conditions. It is a different world from the one in which the EU was conceived 60 years ago. We can argue endlessly about exit payments, land borders, citizen status and transition times—where, in my view, it seems a no-brainer that there should be an EEA-type holding pattern. These can all be resolved in due course, as we move to a sensible customs partnership. But the real issue is what is happening in Europe in this age of upheaval and disorder, and how we work hand in glove with our partners in the face of the colossal new challenges. That is the missing frame to our overall approach and we need now to set it out with boldness and foresight. Can we please have another paper on that?