UK and EU Relations

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

Meanwhile, my Lords, in the real world very many people in industry, commerce, business and universities, and not least countless ordinary families, are waiting for some kind of certainty about where their future lies. They have to plan and make arrangements for the future but at the moment that is just not possible.

Nowhere is that more important than in the sphere of law. I serve on the Justice Sub-Committee. We took evidence on civil law and listened to very distinguished barristers in this country. I was quite moved when, one morning, they broke off and said, “Look, what we want to say to you as a committee is not in our selfish commercial and financial interests. There are a lot of families who cross borders and a great number of broken families. There has been a real problem with the children of broken families, with one country giving a verdict on their future but one of the partners rushing off to get a verdict elsewhere. For the first time, we are beginning to work in a sane, constructive atmosphere in which a verdict given on the future of children will run across frontiers”. What are we doing? Cross-border realities are the nature of life in Britain.

On Ireland, a great deal has been said but I want to say only this. Fixing the Irish problem is not just a technicality; it has been a peacebuilding process. People have been engaged in building a new future for Ireland. If we jeopardise that, history will never forgive us.

I am afraid that there has been a fundamental flaw in Britain’s relationship with the Community from the very beginning—right from the time of the European Coal and Steel Community, when we were not a member. We have always insisted on looking at it as a financial or commercial arrangement, but the driving force behind it has not been financial or commercial arrangements; it has been the political objective of a stable and peaceful Europe. Our failure, intellectually and emotionally, to engage in that process of building Europe has meant that we have not built up a great well of good will towards us. I was a Minister for Europe a long way back and I know that we are seen as always being concerned about what we can get out of it, as distinct from what we can contribute to it. That is a cultural difference and, if I may say so, a moral challenge that we have to face.

In conclusion, in the face of the world as it is, we have no alternative but to regenerate a good working relationship with Europe. Whether it be terrorism, events in south-east Asia and Burma, the Korean peninsula or the United States, or climate change and an accelerating increase in the flow of refugees across the world, there is no way that we can face those things without working with our European partners. We have to generate a sense of joint commitment with Europe on these matters. If we do that, we can then approach together much more constructively the practical challenge of how we organise ourselves.