That this House, for the purposes of section 13(1)(c) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, takes note of the negotiated withdrawal agreement laid before the House on Monday 26 November 2018 with the title Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community and the framework for the future relationship laid before the House on Monday 26 November 2018 with the title Political Declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom.
Relevant document: 24th Report from the European Union Committee
I thank the House for its warm welcome, though I am not sure it is entirely deserved. I am delighted to reopen the adjourned debate. In my estimation, it is increasingly difficult to understand and keep track of exactly what is going on in this debate. It is even more difficult to try to explain it to the general public outside this House, particularly after yesterday’s shenanigans in another place. Let no one say that Speakers with powers improve behaviour. This House is a shining example of good behaviour, apart from the occasional expostulation from my good friend Lord Cumnock of Foulkes.
—after we leave the European Union, I would have been appalled. May the United Kingdom continue to prosper. Yet here we are. It is Groundhog Day. As for the debates we had yesterday and in December, I cannot help observing that, fascinating and excellent though the individual speeches may have been, we are often good at pointing out the problems but, with very few exceptions, we do not usually come up with many practical solutions that might help the Prime Minister in her discussions and negotiations.
Whatever views you have on Brexit, this stage of Brexit was always going to end in a compromise, especially during the course of transition. Yet what is so extraordinary is the sight of countries with some of the world’s most powerful economies and greatest histories unable to agree on how to trade in a fair, practical and sensible manner. What an appalling example to the rest of the world, which so often looks to the countries of Europe—including us—for wisdom, guidance and fair play. Trust has seemingly broken down between the Commission and the United Kingdom. There is more and more miscommunication and misunderstanding between the two.
Yet if we want a deal before we leave at the end of March, this one before us is the essence of what we are most likely to get. It is too late for anything else. I agree with many of the deal’s critics that it is far from perfect, but it is the one the European Union has agreed. However, unless something extraordinary happens over the weekend, there seems to be a consensus in both Houses and among political commentators that the House of Commons will not pass the deal next week—at which stage, no doubt, there will be discussion of the alternatives. Please, not another referendum. Can you imagine the debates we would have in this House on the questions, the franchise, the dates, the length of the campaign and its funding? Please, not that. There has to be another solution if we are not to leave on WTO rules at the end of March. That requires the Prime Minister to return to Brussels and the Commission to hear her out in a positive manner.
My Lords, I make no apology for the fact that I will continue to press the Minister, and the Government, about the effects of the political agreement on our health services.
I start by thanking the Minister for addressing some of the questions that I raised in my speech in December, particularly those concerning medical research. It saves me from repeating the whole speech, which, as good as it was, would be tedious for me and for the House. However, I will return to some of the unresolved and serious matters that the NHS, the research community, pharma and medicine face, post Brexit—and to how very serious the issues of safety and availability will become if we should be so foolish as to crash out of the EU in a couple of months. I make no apology for continuing to speak about health and social care issues. I did it during the passage of the Brexit Act. I have been doing it during the extensive and somewhat bizarre debates about the “in case we crash out” statutory instruments. We tackled those concerning the regulation of human tissues, embryology, organs and blood yesterday. I will continue to raise these serious matters today and will do so during the passage of the Trade Bill.
At every stage I have sought reassurance from the Government over matters of reciprocal healthcare, the free movement of medical and nursing staff, the regulation and supply of medicines, clinical trials and research, the conduct and regulation of which is so important in the UK. Access to the portal is vital to patients across the UK and Europe.
The response of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, in his opening remarks yesterday, was welcome, after a fashion. However, I want to raise two issues. What the noble Lord said was in many ways too aspirational and not concrete enough. It was about wanting to explore new relationships, not to continue the ones that work already and are beginning to fall apart. Secondly, it was about the future. The noble Lord said:
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, and to hear the contributions from other colleagues in the House.
Between the previous debate and this one, I visited the Middle East and north Africa, and a political friend of mine there told me that the world is both laughing and crying at us. They are laughing because of the farce of the Government’s ineptitude but crying because they love our country, as I and we all do, they need us to succeed in the world, and they see the canny British pragmatism of being independent but trading freely as part of the EU, with our openness and liberalism, being set aside in an uncertain world. To make the case further, the British Business Secretary—clearly going through trauma, as anyone listening to the “Today” programme this morning would have heard, but staying in the Cabinet, half-heartedly but on full pay—wrote this week that global confidence in the UK is seeping away because of the actions of the Government. They and he were of course right; it is a combination of farce and foreboding.
We have had the worst trading Christmas since the crash. Up to 5,000 jobs are going at JLR. Some £800 billion of assets in services, jobs and those managing them have moved and are moving to the EU. There are job shortages in key sectors, and on 21 December HMRC advised pharmaceutical companies to stockpile six weeks’ worth of stock over March and April. These are all now fact, and the permanently devalued pound compounds them all. They are the consequences of the prospect of leaving our biggest trading market, with no combined customs system.
Sir Walter Scott wrote what would be an apt description of the Brexit campaign:
“Faces that have charmed us the most escape us the soonest”.
Now the problem is that there is finally the crashing reality of what leaving means, and it does not match the rhetoric in a campaign that appealed to many people’s lesser angels. Realisation is never as good as anticipation, but the promises made, which could never have been kept, should never have been accepted by the Prime Minister in her Lancaster House speech. Lines in the sand have been washed away with every government retreat, and red lines suffer from greater and greater anaemia. Just yesterday, in a desperate attempt to appease the DUP, the Government committed to giving the non-sitting Stormont a veto on entering the backstop, which is utterly meaningless. We heard of course about a ferry contract being given to a company with no boats, but now we have a vote being given to an Assembly with no sitting Members.
11:58 am
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, it is because so many people are concerned about the EU withdrawal and what it will bring that my conscience has directed me to say a few words in this mammoth debate. As far as I understand, severely disabled people have not been adequately considered in this saga. There are thousands of complicated rare conditions that people have to live with, and medicines become part of their lives. Already, the European Medicines Agency, which deals with safety of medicines and trials, has left London for Amsterdam. We will not have voting rights, which is most frustrating as we are the leaders in this field.
Britain’s most commonly used medicines are produced in 50 countries and drug companies say that airlifts, drug priority routes and export bans would be needed to prevent shortages under a no-deal Brexit, because of increasingly complex supply chains. Analysis carried out by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has found that the 20 most commonly used drugs in the NHS come from 23 other EU states as well as 27 other countries. The British Generic Manufacturers Association has said that delays in crossing the Channel was the number one problem for medicine supply. I have heard nothing about the supply of medicines for rare conditions, which can be vital to an individual’s survival. This whole situation could become a nightmare. Working together in co-operation in healthcare is paramount.
Just before the Christmas Recess, some of us were invited to visit the Francis Crick Institute, which carries out worldwide medical research. It was a great pleasure to meet some of the young researchers who were bursting with energy and enthusiasm and were the brightest and the best; research institutes must have them in order to compete in world research. Some 40% of the Crick scientists are Europeans, as are 55% of the post docs. Virtually every scientist thinks that a hard Brexit would completely cripple British science, while 97% think that a no-deal Brexit would be bad for UK science. One student working on an effective immune response is leaving the UK to return to Germany once her PhD ends. This decision was made because of the UK’s decision to leave the EU. At the moment, people have no idea how funding for post docs will be guaranteed and the insecurity causes students great concern. It would be sad if Brexit were to cause the brightest and the best to do their research elsewhere.
Another major anxiety is that the Government and the independent Migration Advisory Committee have shown that they do not understand the needs of severely disabled people who are living in the community and need to employ people so that they can live independently. The White Paper, The UK’s Future Skills-based Immigration System, published in December 2018, states that only the brightest and the best earning £30,000-plus a year can come here to work from anywhere in the world. Other workers will be allowed to come for a maximum of 12 months only, to be followed by a “cooling-off period” of a further 12 months, whatever that means. Perhaps the Minister could explain it. It will not entitle anyone to access public funds or to the right to extend a stay. Does this mean that employers will have to pay for private healthcare for their employees?
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. My speech, however, will be taking a slightly different path from hers.
Nothing has changed since we debated the withdrawal agreement last month to make it any more palatable. That includes the extra bits of parliamentary process, both in Parliament here and in Northern Ireland that the Government invented yesterday. None of that can override the withdrawal agreement itself. The withdrawal agreement is as unsatisfactory today as it was last month. Fortunately, the Government’s Motion is only a take-note one and hence I shall be spared the need to vote against it, but I hope that the other place will reject the withdrawal agreement when it votes on it next week.
The principal problem remains the backstop, which passes all power to the EU, which will then decide whether we enter the backstop and whether and when we exit it. In practice, that means that it calls the shots on the terms on which we exit. This betrays the referendum result. Staying in some kind of limbo—following the rules indefinitely but having no say in them, while paying through the nose for the privilege—does not respect the sovereignty of the UK or the decision of the majority who voted to leave the EU.
I have been dismayed by the way that the EU has treated us. When the Prime Minister met the European Council on 13 December, she was again treated shabbily. The draft declaration which had been prepared to follow that meeting was deliberately and ruthlessly edited by her fellow Council members to remove references to the backstop being temporary and of short duration. They also deleted the reference to giving further assurances, and indeed none has been forthcoming.
It is about time that we stopped being supplicants to the EU. We are still the world’s fifth-largest nation in terms of GDP. We chose, as is our right, to leave the EU and have spent the last two and a half years trying to do so in a civilised manner within the terms of Article 50. We deserve better than being treated like a naughty child, to be scolded and punished at every turn.
12:10 pm
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For me, the key lies with the backstop—an issue that most European Governments will not understand, on a border they have never seen and whose history or background they almost certainly do not truly understand. I understand why my noble friends in the unionist parties find the backstop so objectionable. Without their support, this deal does not get through the House of Commons. We can trade all sorts of different views on the backstop. The Attorney-General has opined why no one should fear the backstop, and this has been supported by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. Usually, when he says something is so, it is so. But the politics of this is different, and we need to go the extra mile. The Government yesterday published further thoughts and clarifications and indicated support for the helpful amendment brought by Mr Hugo Swire. But this issue stands in the way of a deal. If I were the Taoiseach of Ireland, I would fear no deal more than anything else. It is a paradox that the obstacle to there being a deal is a thing they invented to try to make sure there would be no border.
This is the political challenge facing the Commission, the Irish Government and the UK Government in reaching an agreement. I believe this period does not need to end in shambles. We need to rebuild trust with the Commission. After all, we will still be neighbours, traders and markets; we shall still share fundamental values as well as vital security infrastructure. We disagree on political direction. Failure to amend the deal will be a failure for Her Majesty’s Government but also for the EU and the countries it represents. I hope, therefore, that minds will be concentrated next week.
With a very small step forward by the EU to agree a better arrangement for Northern Ireland, and by bringing unionists on board in another place, we can remove so much uncertainty at a stroke and begin the work for a positive and prosperity-driven relationship between the UK and our friends in Europe.
“We have been clear that we want to explore association with EU research and innovation programmes”.—[Official Report, 9/1/19; col. 2224.]
While research programmes are protected to 2020, this completely ignores the fact that most research programmes take years to design, negotiate and fund. Brexit is already having a chilling effect on future research. What do the Government intend to do about this? How can they ensure that our universities and research organisations are not severely disadvantaged by being excluded from the funding and regulatory regimes of which they need to be part?
I shall return to the issue of the portal, which the noble Lord failed to address in his opening remarks; I hope he will do so at the end of this debate.
Agreement must be reached in the negotiations on UK participation in the single assessment procedure and access to the portal and database, which underpin the cross-national clinical trials regulation and come into operation in the next year. No access to the portal will severely reduce the ease of UK-EU trials set up and hurt our thriving life sciences environment. Clinical trials take years to plan and run. As things stand, UK researchers will enter the implementation period unsure what regulatory conditions they will face when they exit it. What is the Minister doing to resolve this issue with the necessary urgency? Is he aware of the cost of failing to do so? The deal as it is expressed does not achieve access to the portal. The political declaration makes no reference to how UK-EU clinical trials will operate after Brexit and this is of significant concern. As every day passes, uncertainty continues to increase in the research community over what the regulatory framework will be after 29 March and whether UK institutions will continue to be able to lead on UK-EU trials.
A further aspect is the mobility of researchers. The publication of the immigration White Paper in December has not clarified how changes to the rules will affect medical research; perhaps the Minister would care to do so. The current Migration Advisory Committee recommendation is for a salary threshold of £30,000 per annum, a figure that would penalise many research technicians—skilled workers who form the backbone of the research workforce but are often not highly paid. EEA nationals will now be subject to the immigration health surcharge and immigration skills charge. Students from the EEA will be required to have a visa to study, as current non-EEA students do.
On UK-EU mobility, it is good that the importance of the international movement of researchers is recognised in the political declaration, but there is not enough detail on the extent to which this will continue, either for researchers moving across borders to live and work, or for short-term travel for shared projects such as clinical trials. Could the Minister clarify that?
It is absolutely essential for our world-leading medical research environment, and for the breakthroughs that benefit patients, that we continue to attract, recruit and retain global scientific talent at all levels. At present, neither the political declaration nor the immigration White Paper offer this certainty. Yesterday, the Minister made no mention of medicines, which is an issue I will continue to raise because of the supply of medicines in the short term.
Finally, I raise the issue of the European reference networks following Brexit. The ERNs are virtual networks of medical specialists across Europe. They facilitate discussions on complex or rare diseases and conditions that require highly specialised treatment. As such, they are an essential resource for the 30 million rare disease patients in Europe. I agree with the Specialised Healthcare Alliance that continued UK involvement in European reference networks is vital to driving forward improvements in rare disease care in both the UK and the European Union. However, at present, the ERNs are open only to EU member states and EEA members, which means that there is a clear risk that the UK will no longer be able to participate. Can the Minister ensure that the Government work with the European Commission to ensure that the UK is able to contribute to ERNs following Brexit, in the interests of patients with rare diseases? I hope the Minister will be able to answer these questions at the end of this debate.
There are only 43 sitting days left if there is no February Recess, and we are still promised more than 40 trade deals to ratify, as well as up to another 600 statutory instruments on delivering exit. We now simply cannot achieve a sensible, orderly exit, nor are the Government likely to be capable of delivering one at all.
We all know, mostly from speeches from the opposite side in these debates, that the party of incrementalism and resistance to radicalism struggled with being in a political union with the continent, because it never faced down its English nationalist edge. Instead of taking on UKIP, it sought to subsume it. It was the same when it struggled with the free trade arguments a century ago and land reform a century before that. Why it has been a surprise to some that it has been incapable of agreeing an exit when it could never agree what membership meant has been the surprise to me.
The difference now is that, in previous times, there was a clear opposition with a philosophical basis for their opposition: the Liberal Party, an alternative official opposition with an alternative proposition. But Labour now cannot even agree that the UK should stay in the single market, which guarantees the best economic and social future for our country. The Labour leadership, trying to inch the party to a general election in which the party will have a manifesto commitment to leave the EU, is not offering any meaningful opposition, so it is no surprise that it is not clear what it seeks in the meaningful vote. We heard from the cri de coeur of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, yesterday that he wants an election to unite his party, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, wants an election to unite hers. With both supporting Brexit, however, it cannot be a realistic way forward, nor will it adequately address the clear divisions in society, which were present long before the Scottish referendum, never mind the EU referendum, which nearly broke our union apart.
The divisions are deep in society, in the nations of the union and in the parties. The majority of Conservative Members do not want the Prime Minister’s deal, but she is persisting with it, and the majority of Labour Members want a referendum and Jeremy Corbyn is turning a deaf ear to them. We cannot easily get out of these divisions, but we need to accept that decisions of these magnitude need to go beyond a particular binary poll with undeliverable promises.
A higher proportion of registered voters voted yes in the Scottish independence referendum than voted leave in the EU referendum, but one side lost and one side won. But we surely cannot be in a position in which a 37.4% vote of registered voters on the winning side in the EU referendum has all the moral weight of democracy behind it, but the 37.8% of registered voters on the losing side in Scotland are cast aside as losers in perpetuity.
We cannot get out of the minority complex easily, but digging ourselves deeper into it over the last two years has not helped. However, least we can start. I hear the argument that another referendum will compound the divisions, but they were present before and will remain after. At least those who have to live with the consequences of this, young people in particular, need to have a say. Those who voted leave will decide whether this is what they actually voted for and whether it is worth it. This is a better start to addressing the deep social and economic divisions that allowed nationalism to breed than to limp on a journey into even more damage and division that this course takes us into. Perhaps then we can release government to focus on why this nationalism in Scotland and some parts of England has grown in recent years, while it is beneficial for our whole union to do so. We can at least have the rest of the world no longer crying with us or laughing at us.
I have to declare an interest, in that I employ EU workers. They are happy to work at the weekends and to live in. It takes time for disabled people to train employees to meet their individual needs. Many of the people who are willing to work and to be trained for employment with disabled people come from Europe. Already, many of these much-needed people have returned to the EU due to problems involving Brexit. I find the Government’s proposals on these matters unacceptable.
Care workers also work in care homes and hospitals. These rules will also apply to them as well as to ancillary workers in the NHS. These employees need to be honest and willing workers; they do not need to be high flyers on a high wage, but they do need to be treated fairly and looked after. Many UK workers do not want these jobs and some of them are not fit for purpose. Our social care is already in crisis and it needs to be saved.
There is also a shortage of vets, about half of whom come from Europe. Many of them work in abattoirs. If they are restricted, this will affect animal welfare. I hope that sense will prevail before it is too late.
The EU is fond of saying that it does not know what we want from the negotiations. While I think that that is said with largely malicious intent, I too have struggled to see the clarity and confidence in our negotiating position. Why, for example, we even bothered with the Chequers proposals last summer completely defeats me. However, my disappointment in the Government’s negotiating skills does not diminish my pride in this country and my confidence in its future outside the EU. We should now turn our efforts to three things.
First, we must concentrate on planning for our exit on 29 March without this withdrawal agreement. We should not use defeatist language like “crashing out” or “no-deal Brexit”. We are simply leaving: it is just an exit. We will, of necessity, revert to trading with the EU on WTO terms and we need a clear strategy for that, including what our stance will be on tariffs. We must make every effort to reach agreements on matters such as citizens residing out of their home territory, on travel arrangements including flights and visas and on practical methods for reducing friction at our borders. The very clear statement yesterday by the president of the Calais port that there would be no practical problems in maintaining traffic flow demonstrated that there has been a lot of scaremongering. Indeed, too often, risks have been talked about as if they are virtual certainties that would be incapable of mitigation by practical steps.
Secondly, we must start working with the EU on a proper long-term trading relationship. The starting point must not be the vacuous and inadequate political declaration. We need to go back to the basics of the current economic equilibrium of our trade. Put simply, we buy a lot less in terms of goods from the EU than EU nations buy from us, but our service sector is in surplus. Our negotiations should be built around what is important to each side, not just what is important to the EU.
Thirdly, we should get to work on trade arrangements with other key nations. The withdrawal agreement prevents meaningful trade negotiations because there is no certainty about whether and how we will escape the backstop.
There will be problems, points of friction and some real practical difficulties, I have no doubt about that, but we shall no longer have to hand over the £39 billion included in the withdrawal agreement. We can spend it on our national priorities. The Government must now restore pride in our nation and confidence in our future. The best way for that to happen, even if there is some short-term pain, is to reject the withdrawal agreement and move rapidly to charting our life outside the EU as a free-standing nation.