European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and to have listened to her important observations on equalities and employment rights, and the potential for them to be weakened in this and other Bills. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, on his excellent demolition of a hard Brexit. As he said, a hard Brexit is a minority interest. Indeed it is.

In an earlier contribution, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, said that there is political paralysis caused by Brexit and that the Government need to reduce uncertainty. I agree with him, and I agree with all those business leaders who are urging the Government to start showing some leadership, given that we are half way through the period allowed by the triggering of Article 50. It is staggering that so little has been done and equally staggering that the Cabinet seems incapable of even proposing what it wants from our future trading relationship with the European Union.

Much has been said about the need for frictionless trade with the EU, and I think we are all in favour of that. However, I am prepared to acknowledge that frictionless trade means that we must stay in the single market and the customs union and that, if there are substantial changes to those structures, we will need a transition or implementation period of several years. Two years or less from March 2019 is simply not long enough, given the enormity of the changes that would be required. Anything other than staying in the single market and the customs union will hit investment, jobs and growth. There is already evidence that growth is lower than it could be and that it will go on being so, caused entirely by the uncertainties over investment that Brexit is causing.

That point was made recently by the Governor of the Bank of England, who estimated that Brexit is costing the UK about £200 million a week in lost growth. This is compounded by the fact that there now seems to be some evidence that all the uncertainties are causing the banks to get increasingly nervous about company borrowing levels post Brexit, and they will be looking closely at companies seeking to borrow without having developed a secure post-Brexit business plan. A failure of companies to invest is in no-one’s interest because it will cost growth and jobs.

Exit from the customs union will lead to soaring red tape, with new customs rules and paperwork, as the CBI has pointed out. It will hardly be frictionless. VAT will have to be paid up front. All the major changes will come as a huge shock for tens of thousands of companies that export only to the European Union that currently have frictionless, borderless trade and that have no experience of the paperwork required to export to places other than the European Union. How will those companies understand the required documentation and the rules?

I have heard it said recently that the Government are yet to train the people who will train the staff in the relevant companies. What checks are being made by Ministers on who is doing the necessary preparatory work and what resources are going into it? How many businesses might lose business because they do not know what they should be doing and fall foul of the rules? We should note that the French announced recently that they expect to spend three years training their customs staff.

In a recent report, the National Audit Office said that the Department for International Trade is struggling to develop specialist trade skills among staff and has therefore slowed down its work. Apparently, one of the problems is that staff have moved too often in Whitehall. The failure to deliver trade deals will lead to less growth and fewer jobs, yet the Department for International Trade has had an extra £25 million in the current financial year to prepare for Brexit. What has that been spent on?

I conclude that there is so much uncertainty that the British people have the right to be consulted again on the terms of Brexit, as negotiated. There are two reasons for that. The decision to leave the EU was made in a referendum. Constitutionally, I find it difficult to see why the people should be denied the right to a final say on the exact terms of Brexit once Parliament has debated those proposed terms. I draw the attention of the Minister to the fact that, in recent polls, the majority of the public want a referendum on the final terms. The last one I saw, a few days ago, showed 58% support for a confirmatory referendum. However, importantly, 85% of 18 to 24 year-olds and 74% of 25 to 34 year-olds wanted the right to vote on the final terms. I do not think we can disregard the views of young people, who will have to live with the consequences of Brexit. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, who a few moments ago talked about this issue. As I recall, he said that we have to bear in mind how history will judge harshly those who disregard the views of the young.