My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Empey. It seems to me, though, that one should put them into a wider picture, because this is yet another example of how the best outcome of the negotiations is worse than where we are. I do not think that this Committee has to remind the country as a whole that this is what we are negotiating. We are negotiating a situation that we already have but in which we will of course have no say. Even if we get the very best deal we can, and protect our industry and the excellence of our regulatory structures—which, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, rightly pointed out, has meant that in one case 40% and in another case 60% of these devices are brought here, whether or not they are manufactured here, because of the excellence of our regulatory control—we will no longer have a say in the central issue of how the regulatory structure is changed in future. This is crucial in this case because,
as we all know, medical devices are constantly changing and improving. If we accept that, then we recognise that the way they are regulated—the way in which we set the standards—will also change, and that we will play no part in such decisions.
I am a patriotic person. I object strongly to the intention of sidelining my country from these things and us being the beggar, because that is what we are going to have to be. To compare us with Turkey, to put it delicately, does not fill me with enthusiasm. I suggest that this is another example of the intended consequences of Brexit because the people who are enthused by Brexit—and I see few of them around just at the moment—want to believe in a world in which we can operate on our own without any drawbacks. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, has rightly pointed out that that is not possible, and that the world we live in is a world of co-operation and joint concern in getting the right answers.
I wanted to intervene because I was unhappy with one part of what the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said. He talked of the need to protect ourselves and the importance of this to his own Province as part of the United Kingdom. I want to turn it round and refer to the importance of our contribution to these decisions, the important place that Britain should have in these discussions, not only with regard to medical devices—and the curious expression in the amendment that I particularly like, which refers to the “safeguarding of public health”—but of course to any medical aspect. We have had several debates in the Moses Room on precisely these issues. What this means, of course, is that Britain is saying, “We no longer want the opportunity to play a proper part in seeing that we do this right”.
8.30 pm
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that this is a moral issue. If you remove yourself from the opportunity of doing good, that is a moral act—actually, it is an immoral act. You are saying, “I am not prepared to play my part in making the decisions which matter not just to my country but to the world as a whole and that part of the world in which geography, history, culture and religion place me”. I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister will recognise that although this is a probing amendment—and although he will no doubt say that this will all be dealt with in the discussions and of course it would be quite wrong for the Government to say anything about it too definitely—the idea that we are going to do anything else but this is obviously fatuous. If we do not have such an agreement, we will be shooting ourselves not only in one foot, which we are in any case, but in both feet, because we will not be able to play our part, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, rightly said, in a very important aspect of the development of new technology.
I know that the Minister will say that—and I shall be happy for him to say it because that is what he has been told to say—but I say to him that this is all fatuous because we know perfectly well that the Government have to get a deal of this sort because if they do not, it will seriously damage our economy. But when they get it, it will be a second-rate deal and not as good as what we have. During all these debates, what we should have said, and sometimes have said, is
that this is a debate about how Britain does least worst, having made this decision. I shall listen carefully to the tone of what my noble friend says because I just hope that the Government are beginning to understand quite what damage this whole process is doing.
Finally, this is doing terrible damage to the industry. How do you run a business when you do not know whether you will able to run it from Britain after Brexit, particularly after this elongated transition arrangement in which the Government seem to have given way on all the things that Europe has demanded? As a businessman, I run businesses but I do not know how I would run a business in medical matters because I do not know anything. As a businessman, I would say that the Government would be barmy not to do this deal—but of course they have to do it and are negotiating with a very powerful group of people. They therefore might not be able to do the deal.
If I am running a business, I cannot say to my shareholders, “I’m relying on the ability of Mr Davis to negotiate this deal”. I am not sure whether I would have a unanimous vote at the annual general meeting, were I to turn to them and say that was what I was relying on. Trying to run a business is difficult enough anyway in medical matters because these things are constantly being improved and changing. I would be trying to keep up with that and the difficulty of doing so would be extreme. Now I would have a new thing, which is that I might not be able to manufacture or to get recognition in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, pointed to the fact that the British Standards Institution now has an organisation in the Netherlands. No doubt it will be placed next door to Unilever and others which find it no longer possible to see their future in this country.
That is why I talked about patriotism. Sometimes people talk as if we are not the patriotic ones; we are. We are the ones who say, “Britain is better off without all this nonsense”. The Government will say that this is all a matter of negotiation. We know that it is not; it is actually a matter of existence. If we do not negotiate it properly then another industry will not be here. We have also already given up the thing that ought to matter most, which is Britain’s opportunity to make the world a better place to live in.