That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)
My Lords, I must begin with the convention of saying what a pleasure it is to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, albeit some 20 hours after he sat down. Like him and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, I propose to address the main part of my remarks to issues of foreign affairs and defence.
In the course of his speech, the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, said that he often felt that his thunder had been stolen by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. The truth is that by the time Kerr and Ricketts—the old firm of the Foreign Office—have finished, there is not much thunder left for the rest of us. In the course of yesterday’s debate, we had two quite remarkable speeches from the two noble Lords. They concentrated and drew on their extensive and much-valued experience from the Foreign Office and provided a quite remarkable tour d’horizon.
My views on Brexit are well known. I do not believe that there is any deal or subsequent political agreement which will offer the United Kingdom better advantages than those we enjoy today as a member of the European Union. We have the opt-out from Schengen and the single currency, plus the rebate; no other member enjoys those privileges. I have to say that the difficulties of the last three years corroborate my view that the best interests of this country are to be served by remaining a member of the European Union.
I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who I do not believe is in his place, who laid down something of a challenge to those of us who support remain. I will make the point this way, if I may: it is a privilege to be sent here, but with that privilege comes an obligation to exercise our best judgment. I venture to say that my best judgment is that remaining is the best solution to the constitutional, economic and political crisis in which we now find ourselves. I cannot for the life of me understand the logic of a position which says that we must observe the referendum result, irrespective of the consequences, in all circumstances. That is hardly sensible, nor indeed logical.
With that by way of a preliminary, may I say that I fear my contribution today may be more episodic than thematic? In the gracious Speech, we learned that the Government wish to continue playing a leading role in global affairs. The future of NATO is a global affair, and it is to that that I wish to address the main part of my speech.
Over the weekend, at the plenary meeting of the NATO parliamentary assembly, serious differences emerged among the delegates from Turkey and those from other members of the NATO assembly. These differences reflect the equally serious differences within the members of the alliance itself. Who could possibly think, and justify the notion, that the action authorised by Mr Erdoğan is an anti-terrorist operation? Who could possibly think that with air strikes and heavy armour, there will not be civilian casualties and—as we have seen to the extent of perhaps as many as 150,000 people— the mass displacement of thousands of civilians? This operation is an intransigent and opportunistic operation, made possible only by the ineptitude of President Trump; no doubt with an eye to re-election and having learned nothing from the adverse consequences which have flowed from his unilateral renunciation of the Iranian nuclear agreement. Neither the newly imposed sanctions by President Trump nor the dispatch of the Vice-President and the Secretary of State to Turkey can now rescue the position.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow a fellow Scot, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, who spoke with his usual authority on these matters. I apologise for the fact that you are hearing from me today; yesterday there was a direct clash with the European Union Committee—an important meeting with our sister committee from the Swiss Parliament. I am grateful to the Whips’ Office for enabling me to swap the time.
It was a great comfort to hear, in the second sentence of the gracious Speech, that the Government intend to work towards a new partnership with the European Union, and referred to “friendly co-operation”. That was important, because it was the theme that underpinned the Beyond Brexit report of the European Union Committee in March. I will return to that.
Other good news came in the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, when he referred to the fact that 1,000 new diplomats were being “minted”, of which 500 would work in Europe. As he said that, I was thinking of the empty-chair policy: the policy, starting on 20 August, of non-attendance at EU meetings. The system is that the Government look at the agenda for a forthcoming meeting and decide whether it is in the national interest to attend. If they decide not to attend, they give any vote that comes up to Finland, as the rotating president. The net effect is that we now attend about a third of EU meetings.
I and the committee feel that this is badly wrong, for three reasons. First, it is not liked by our partners in the European Union. It is disrespectful to their institutions and is not in accord with the idea of moving towards a partnership with the European Union, or with friendly co-operation.
As I pointed out before, to create a deep and meaningful relationship one does not start with an empty chair.
Moving on to my second complaint, it is not clear that this test creates predictability about the UK’s appearances, either for us as parliamentarians, or for our EU partners. An agenda, after all, does not necessarily —in my long experience of meetings—reflect the eventual content of that meeting: meetings tend to wander around. Matters of national interest may well be discussed that were not on the agenda.
My Lords, it is humbling to be here, and the speeches in this debate so far have set a high bar. First, I want to address our ethical duty on the world stage in trade deals that we may enter into, and also ask how the Government will fulfil their obligations at home with the devolved nations over trade.
Yesterday was World Bioethics Day—I declare an interest as an instigator of this UNESCO day—which has taken off around the Commonwealth precisely in large part through the influence that we have globally in health sciences. But will future trade agreements live up to the standards that we have set, or will we fudge dropping standards in making trade deals, as my noble friends Lady Cox and Lord Hylton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, raised yesterday? One area is organ donation—no, we do not trade in human tissue. At home, Wales has led on opt-out organ donation, or soft presumed consent, and England and Scotland are following. We have set an international standard and we export our expertise and our training of transplant teams.
The Commonwealth Games will be an important launch pad for working with other countries in the Commonwealth on ethical practice. With India, a memorandum of understanding is in place between the MOHAN Foundation and NHS Blood and Transplant, but it needs to be expanded to those countries with poor or non-existent transplant practices. But it is not always easy to know what is going on further afield. There is alarming circumstantial evidence that some places with whom we have massive trading arrangements still have very worrying approaches to transplantation, including using taken—so-called “harvested”—organs from prisoners, including prisoners of conscience.
We trade with countries that still have the death penalty, and with countries whose respect for human life is deeply questionable, but we must not sink to their level. Why do we do so little when our loyal Kurdish allies and their babies and children are deliberately injured and killed? We must maintain and drive up ethical standards because, if we do not, we compromise our own civilisation standards. Others have already referred to our need, as the gracious Speech stated, to play a role in global affairs, defending our interests and promoting our values. When those values slip, we lose all moral authority.
3:50 pm
Lord Pendry (Lab)
My Lords, I intend to raise an issue that was not specifically referred to in the gracious Speech but should have been. I refer to the recent troubles in our former colony of Hong Kong, which must be taken much more seriously by the Government and need some urgent action. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, when delivering her first policy address in October two years ago, said she wished to enhance people’s livelihoods and foster a more inclusive and harmonious society under “one country, two systems”. However, her actions over the past few weeks hardly square up to that pledge. She went on to say that her Government would take concrete actions to resolve problems for the people. These words must have a hollow ring in the ears of those who are demonstrating for a freer and democratic Hong Kong on its streets today. We must recall the pledges of the Sino-British joint declaration, including that Hong Kong would have its own legal system, multiple political parties, and human rights including freedom of assembly. These pledges and the need to have them implemented are precisely what the demonstrations wish to see enacted.
I have a deep affection for Hong Kong and its people. I lived there during my national service days in the Royal Air Force, and I also had the distinction—some unkind colleagues may argue that it is perhaps my only one—of winning the colonial middleweight boxing championship of Hong Kong in the late 1950s. More seriously, however, in those days I was able to see a great determination by the then Administration to solve a massive housing problem not of its own making, which was little short of miraculous. This involved resettling some 300,000 refugees who had, as a result of both the civil war in China and the Japanese occupation, felt the need to flee to Hong Kong for sanctuary. The Hong Kong Government could have refused entry. They could have placed a duty on the citizens of the outside world, or they could have sent the refugees to their homelands, but they did not. They embarked on a resettlement programme of gigantic proportions, which would shame a number of countries faced with immigration problems, including our own, in the present world.
I raise this historical example to illustrate the ingenuity of that Administration at that time. Going back to Hong Kong some years later as a young MP with my colleague and now noble friend Lord Cunningham of Felling—he was in his place, but he is not there now—on a parliamentary fact-finding mission, one could see good progress in many areas, but it was painfully slow in others, such as law and order, human rights and industrial relations. However, we did meet some promising people who were doing their bit: a doughty, elderly Geordie and human rights campaigner called Elsie Elliott, whose work has been carried on since then by others—in particular, Emily Lau, the vice-chairperson of the Democratic Party; Henry Litton QC, who works on legal reform; and a Jesuit priest and member of LegCo who was the founder of the industrial relations institute. All these and others were forging ahead for progressive policies until of course the recent events brought the likelihood of positive advancements in jeopardy.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, and to be able to agree wholeheartedly with so much of what he said, with the importance of the issue he raised and with his final sentiments.
I hope that the British Government and the EU will, over the next 24 or 48 hours, reach an agreement that the United Kingdom can leave the EU on 31 October, with a free trade agreement with the EU, and allowing the UK to negotiate its own trade deals with the rest of the world. However, before discussing those issues, I must make a confession. As a Minister, I misled the British people in two respects pertinent to our discussion of those issues, and I want to set the record straight.
As Secretary of State for Trade and Industry under Margaret Thatcher and then John Major, I was responsible for negotiating the Uruguay round, which halved tariffs, began to pare back non-tariff barriers and, eventually, set up the World Trade Organization. I was also responsible for implementing the single market programme that made us part of the single market. When doing so, I made enthusiastic speeches about how both these agreements would boost Britain’s exports to the world and the EU. As a scientist by training, when I make a prediction, I subsequently try to check whether it has come true. If it has, I claim credit for it. If it has not, I usually keep quiet, though I try to learn from my previous failures, so that I can do better next time.
Looking back on both the Uruguay round or World Trade Organization and the single market, what effect have they had on our exports? In the quarter of a century since the WTO was established, our goods exports to those countries with which we trade just on WTO terms have risen by 87%. That is a fair amount, but anyone looking at it fairly must recognise that, on previous trends, a large amount of that growth would have occurred anyway. A small part of it only can be attributed to the near halving of tariffs between industrial countries and the removal of some non-tariff barriers. Growth of our exports to the EU single market over the last quarter of a century has been even more disappointing—20% barely, over 25 years, which is less than 1% a year, less than the trend before the single market was growing and less than most people would have expected had there been no single market to encourage and promote our exports. It is true that, over that period, our imports from the single market and the rest of the Common Market grew substantially and, as a result, our deficit in goods with Europe rose. All the figures I have referred to are for trade in goods. Our deficit in goods has reached nearly €100 billion, which wipes out the surplus that we earn with the rest of the world on all our trade.
My Lords, I think I heard the noble Lord say that the Commission cannot be removed. That is not true. The Commission has to be appointed by the European Parliament and sometimes it does not accept the nominee of the particular country, and also each country is itself ultimately responsible for appointing its own Commissioner. Moreover, it is possible for the European Parliament to sack the Commission as a whole. I do not know why the noble Lord has made this claim.
Theoretically it can, but de facto it cannot. The European Parliament did once sack the whole of the European Commission because of corruption when Madame Cresson appointed her dentist, but then the Commissioners were virtually all reappointed. If that is the noble Baroness’s idea of democratic accountability, I have to tell her that it is one of the reasons I am in favour of getting out.
It is indeed that lack of accountability which makes me—
I just mentioned that, so I wonder if the noble Lord was listening to me. The European Parliament did sack the Commissioners, but they were all reappointed—virtually all of them except for Madame Cresson.
I shall give way again so that the noble Lord can tell me what really happened.
The Commission exercised its power, just as it is exercising its power now, in the case of some nominees for the next Commission, not to appoint them. When there is a complete slate, it will vote on that slate collectively. The European Parliament has a good deal more say over the appointment of the Executive than we in this House have over the appointment of, say, the Civil Service. While it is a good thing that we do not have a say over appointments to the Civil Service, the structure in Strasbourg and Brussels is more democratic than what we have here.
I believe that what the noble Lord has just told me is that it reappointed the slate, and that is broadly my recollection. But in practice it does not. However, what I said about the experience of southern Europe not leading to anyone being removed is a simple fact.
I am grateful to the noble Lord. We were both around at the time, but I do not believe that Madame Cresson was reappointed.
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The truth is that, within NATO, Trump and Turkey have form. The United States’ failure to sell Turkey the Patriot missile defence system prompted Turkey to respond by buying from Russia the S-400 missile system, in the teeth of almost unanimous opposition from the other members of the alliance. Trump’s response to that has been to kick Turkey out of the F-35 aircraft programme. Who benefits from this? It is, of course, Mr Putin. I have said many times in this House that Mr Putin’s primary objective when it comes to NATO is to undermine it and to seek to cause circumstances in which there is established a European security architecture, in which he would expect Russia to play the most prominent part, all the while using energy as an inducement to members of the alliance or a threat. Now we see Mr Putin received with acclaim in the capitals of Middle East countries, where American influence is not even second best and where, it has to be said, the influence of the United Kingdom is at a very low ebb. It seems a long time since the expertise in Arab affairs of the Foreign Office was rather humorously described as the camel corps—the camel corps has been in substantial retreat for some time.
Mr Obama left a vacuum when he set down red lines and then chose not to take action when those lines were breached. In that, he was assisted by the indecision of the House of Commons which, when recalled in 2013, failed in the end to pass either the Government’s Motion or the Opposition’s amendment. One could almost say that, like nature, Russia abhors a vacuum.
In Europe, Trump’s capriciousness has caused European members of NATO to consider alternative structures for defence. That is understandable but it should be unwelcome. Assurances are made that this will not be at the expense of support for NATO but complementary. I fear I have doubts that that will be the case. The problem is this: the United Kingdom outside the European Union will have little or no influence over any such alternative structures. Within the European Union, the United Kingdom would have both influence and a veto. The truth of the matter is this: Brexit or no Brexit, deal or no deal, NATO now needs our Government’s attention.
There was a powerful section in the remarkable speech by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, when he detailed the foreign policy inadequacies of the Government’s present engagement on a variety of issues. From that list, I pluck NATO, and the overwhelming need to ensure its integrity.
Given this lack of clarity, the whole thing is difficult to scrutinise. That brings me to my third point, which in many ways is the most important: the interaction of this policy with the scrutiny reserve resolutions made by both Houses in 2010. Not turning up to meetings to do with the 200 or so files that are held under scrutiny reserve by the EU Select Committee would be in neither the spirit nor the letter of the resolution. Certainly, handing our vote to Finland is not within the spirit or words of those resolutions. We are, in any case, undertaking a terrier-like correspondence, and the Minister has agreed to see me next week—I think—on this point.
There is one bit of good news: yesterday we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, that we had turned up to the General Affairs Council this month. Last month we did not, and 16 Foreign Ministers from other countries looked at an empty chair—Britain’s—alongside those deputy Ministers who had turned up. It would help the House if the Minister gave a quick update on the empty-chair policy, given the huge number of extra diplomats and that we are now turning up to the General Affairs Council.
I turn to our Beyond Brexit report, which was published on 25 March and is about how Britain conducts itself with the EU after the Brexit process has taken place. Since 25 March, we have had no response from the Government; indeed, the only thing that looked even vaguely like a response was read out in this Room by Her Majesty on Monday. When might we expect a response to Beyond Brexit, as it is a most important report? It may not have the answers, but it raises a lot of the issues that this House will be very interested to grapple with. It contains 60 pages of meat. The logic that it lays out applies equally in any Brexit deal and it also applies in a no-deal Brexit. I do not want to go through the whole report, but there were three general areas in it, and I thought that I might reflect briefly on each of them.
First, the formal structures perceived within the withdrawal agreement have on top a joint committee, which has hanging off it various specialised committees, or sub-committees, which deal with certain subject areas, including citizens’ rights, Northern Ireland, the sovereign base in Cyprus, and Gibraltar. At the Swiss meeting—it was a private meeting, so I am constricted in what I can say about it—it was interesting to hear that they run their affairs with the European Union via a joint committee. They have no deal, as it were, for it. The joint committee has stood the test of time and has been pretty active. We had an interesting exchange of views and were given quite a few useful tips about how one might run a structure like that—we intend to carry on our discussions with the Swiss as well.
We concluded that the joint committee conceived under the draft withdrawal agreement was a bit too powerful. It has the power, for instance—albeit slightly limited—to change the withdrawal agreement. We felt that it was not very transparent and would be hard to scrutinise. Unfortunately, in the absence of a government response, we have no answer to any of those questions and we are not able to make progress on these issues and raise the concerns here in the House.
The middle section of the report concerned the less formal structures; for instance, the EU agencies and the EU programmes. These are referred to in the political declaration, but with vastly different levels of detail. We name a few EU agencies that we are interested in joining; where the programmes are concerned, none of them is named and there is a just a sentence or two of warm words. Equally, the security partnership is laid out in considerable detail within the political declaration. On all those things we need a lot more detail; they are all matters we raise in the Beyond Brexit report and ask for comment on. We are still waiting, seven months later, for that comment to arrive.
I want to raise two other little questions relating to the less formal structures. On one, it appears there is an answer, but we have not been given it. We said that UKRep—now to be called, I gather, “UKMiss”—needed a lot a more resource. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, yesterday that a lot more resource is being pumped into Europe. I recently visited UKRep in Brussels and I think that the extra number of posts there was around 40, so that resource is being given. It is an easy answer to give to us formally: that UKRep is getting more resource to be able to cope with the increased work it will be asked to do.
The other thing—as a Scot, I feel strongly about this— is the recommendation that the devolved Administrations be heavily involved in matters of importance to them. Again, we need to hear back on that. At this very difficult time, certainly in Scotland at the moment, a clear statement about that would be most valuable, particularly in my area, Perthshire.
The final section of the report deals with inter-parliamentary relations and the scrutiny role of Parliament. There are two things to be scrutinised: the new governance structure for the relationship between the EU and the UK and the mechanisms for that, on which we made a whole set of recommendations; and the dialogue regarding the negotiations that will take place—over what I suspect will be many years—on the future relationship, on which we also made recommendations, but we have no answers. Parliament itself will need to do a lot more work. The European Union Committee is very lucky, in that we are invited to many inter-parliamentary meetings at the moment. That will no longer automatically happen, so we will have to work harder to maintain the relationships with the various parliaments. In addition, the European Parliament itself will undoubtedly set up one of its formal structures. It has under its rules of procedure a formal way of dealing with third countries. Forty-four third countries have a formal committee facing them, and we will be the 45th.
In closing, I return to the words of the gracious Speech:
“to work towards a new partnership with the European Union”,
and the “friendly co-operation” that it envisages. I urge the Government to engage with the Beyond Brexit report, as these are issues that the Government and Parliament need to work together on. Although today the press and media are occupied exclusively with the period up to Brexit, planning for beyond has never been more vital.
We expect our Armed Forces to act based on that moral authority. We claim to maintain respect for human rights and values, and to do that we send our forces into terrible situations. They are young, and trained to be physically strong and react quickly, and many are deeply traumatised. When they return, they may have been injured physically, mentally or both. Thrown back into civvy street, some do not survive the stresses and end up with broken relationships, self-medicating with alcohol or other substances or escaping with gambling and so on.
For anyone in the country convicted of an alcohol-fuelled crime, the announced rollout of the sobriety scheme is very important and to be welcomed. It will be a fundamental plank in supportive rehabilitation, rather than compounding trauma with a prison sentence that is devoid of services that help the person tackle the underlying issues driving their behaviour. Amendment to legislation in 2011 to pilot the sobriety scheme has shown great success, with 92% fully compliant with the sentence and remaining in the community to address their underlying problems, free of the mind-clouding damage of alcohol.
The British Crime Survey shows that, year on year, alcohol-fuelled crime accounts for 40% to 60% of all violent crime. Overall, the economic cost of alcohol-related harm was £20.5 billion last year. Our hospital emergency departments are overflowing, and half are in crisis, yet our Brexit obsession has resulted in around one-third of our European doctors leaving or planning to leave, further exacerbating the workforce crisis. Yes, Brexit is breaking the NHS. More money and hospital beds are greatly needed—but the NHS also needs staffing. I caution against thinking simply that a revision of the Mental Health Act or other legislation will result in better care. The Treasury has to realise the damage to clinical care that has already happened in the last two years because of the pension cap change.
There are several major issues over trade that affect the devolved nations, particularly Wales. First, can the Minister explain how the business support project Kingfisher will provide support and funding specifically for Wales, and in particular how business sectors specific to Wales will be taken into account and not neglected? Secondly, how will the needs of vulnerable people be considered in a discretionary system that can provide benefits at a secondary level, particularly for those least able to withstand the predicted rise in food prices and those who are most vulnerable during the winter pressures on the NHS? Thirdly, what additional post-Brexit funding will be available to boost infrastructure investments and support public services, particularly to cover inflationary costs on public sector budgets, in the devolved nations?
Fourthly, what is the action plan to proactively involve the devolved Governments in negotiations over overseas deals, particularly in areas such as agriculture and fisheries, where the devolved nations will be required to implement the agreement on the ground and deal with all the practical issues that may arise when environmental standards differ or when the deal may threaten the environment? One example may be the use of glyphosate, the herbicide widely used in the US, the UK and across Europe and known commercially as Roundup, among other names. There is mounting evidence of serious adverse impacts on human health, and that it is contaminating food and also damaging pollinators. Will our coming environmental standards be so flexible in trade deals that they become meaningless, or will we drive food production standards higher than ever and lead the rest of the world? I hope the latter.
Our trade relies in large part on services of all types, particularly education and training, and the sales and profits from scientific and other inventions or creations. The original concept of copyright legislation was British—from the Statute of Anne 1710. It set the world standard, and now more than 160 states are parties to the Berne convention. However, a body of EU law deals with substantive and procedural rights over intellectual copyright. When negotiating future trade arrangements involving intellectual property rights, the Government must respect the United Kingdom’s existing domestic and non-EU international laws and obligations, including the Patents Act 1977, which gives effect to the non-EU European Patent Convention. Otherwise, any commercial benefits from our discoveries or creations may be jeopardised. Can the Minister assure the House that such consideration will be embedded in negotiations?
Whatever happens next, we are at the beginning of a journey that must be paved by high ethical standards. It must be respectful of the world and of the rich diversity of nature and people, and not be isolationist and selfish. The journey starts at home and we must live well.
That is a very sketchy background to where we are today. What should the Government do? I have twice asked the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, in Parliamentary Questions what steps the Government are taking in relation to the United Nations, being a co-signatory to the declaration, requesting that they engage in directing the Hong Kong Government to honour the Sino-British joint declaration. Perhaps the Minister replying to this debate will do rather more than his colleague and answer that.
The Government should also follow the US Government’s legislation by introducing the equivalent of the Magnitsky Act, which would ban officials from Hong Kong and mainland China who are guilty of violating human rights and the rule of law from entering the United Kingdom and freeze their assets, sending a powerful signal to the regime and to the demonstrators. Furthermore, the Government should endeavour to bring forward legislation to ensure that all holders of British national (overseas) passports have the right to enter the United Kingdom to work, which would give an uplift to the young people of Hong Kong.
Finally, the Government must address a very up-to-date worry: supporters from mainland China are bullying and intimidating fellow students from Hong Kong in British universities who are merely carrying out legitimate activities in support of those demonstrating in Hong Kong in favour of the Sino-British declaration. What are the Government doing to stamp out this practice? I await the Minister’s reply.
The future for Hong Kong cannot be easily forecast. The words of Napoleon Bonaparte conjured up a feeling of uncertainty in many when he wrote: “Let China sleep, for when she wakes the world will be sorry”. Napoleon’s words ring true today, but the question is how we will move forward. Perhaps as a nation we should also bear in mind the words of a previous Conservative Prime Minister: “Hong Kong will never walk alone”. Let us hope not.
My conclusion is not that trade deals are useless but that they are far less important than both sides of the debate about Brexit realise. Be they free trade agreements or the less conventional, but supposedly much more thorough, single market, they have much less effect on our trade than most of the discussion in this place would lead us to believe. They can be useful. I certainly prefer low or no tariffs to high or rising tariffs. I prefer the removal or reduction of non-tariff barriers, but what drives trade is not trade agreements; it is producing goods and services other people want to buy and getting out and selling them. And what drives that is much more than trade agreements; it is what Keynes called “animal spirits”, which are more likely to be stimulated by creating a competitive domestic environment, by reducing the regulatory burden—without reducing standards, by the way—and by better skills and more investment. It is that rather than trade deals, useful though they can be.
Be that as it may, the core argument of those who have been trying to persuade the people of this country to reverse the decision they took in June 2016 and remain in the EU is that our prosperity depends on us giving up our democratic national control of our trade, regulatory and economic policy. They assume there is a trade-off between prosperity and democracy. I do not think that is true. Prosperity and democracy normally go hand in hand because, in a democracy, if the Government do not deliver prosperity, you chuck them out and replace them with a Government that can do better. Unfortunately, that is not what the EU is like. Its effective Government, the Commission, is not elected and cannot be removed. Its main economic policy is the euro, which has been a disaster, particularly for southern Europe. Some 40% of young people in Spain are unemployed, 45% in Italy and 53% in Greece. Millions of people of all ages have lost their jobs, but no Commissioner has lost his or her job because they are not accountable in the way we expect.