My Lords, many of the arguments we have heard on these amendments almost boil down to saying that nothing can ever be changed for the better. This is, indeed, a peculiar psychological quirk of human beings, but it is not borne out by history. As my noble friend Lord Lamont said, if this amendment is passed and we are in a customs union but not in the European Union then the UK will be obliged to operate a system of external tariffs with no say in setting them. The UK would not be able to enter into new trade agreements with other countries around the world and would be bound by the rules and standards of the European Court of Justice—and that would apply even in the domestic economy. The UK would be significantly worse off than it is today.
A customs union is, by definition, a form of discrimination. Ricardo, Cobden, Gladstone: those great liberals would be spinning in their grave at the thought that their descendant party today is in favour of this form of trade discrimination. The answer to growing protectionism in the world is not to retreat inside a protectionist bloc of slow-growing countries that constitute just 10% of the world’s future economic growth, but to seek free trade opportunities wherever we can find them. The answer is not to discriminate against African and Asian economies, but to be open to all. It is not to turn our back on our friends in the Commonwealth, eager to do trade deals with us in this week of all weeks. It is not to yearn to,
“keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse”.
It is to embrace a model not of harmonisation and identical regulation designed to prevent and extinguish innovation, but one of mutual recognition, to learn how to achieve better ends by better means. It is not to rely on a wall of protective tariffs to keep the world at bay, but to play to our strengths as a common-law, English-speaking, scientifically advanced nation of shopkeepers and entrepreneurs. It is not to be parochial and regional, but to be ambitiously global. And it is not to listen to millionaire loveys and Trekkies gathering in Camden.
I am genuinely surprised that some in the parties opposite want to discriminate against Africa, with an average agricultural product tariff of 14.8%, 25% on sugar refining, 20% on animal products and 31.7% on dairy products.