Lord Lawson of Blaby: If the noble Lord allows me to develop my argument he will see exactly what the problem with what he is saying is, because no agreement is by far the most likely outcome. As the Prime Minister made clear in her excellent Lancaster House speech and as the subsequent White Paper reiterated, no agreement would be better than a bad agreement. Sadly—and it is sad—a bad agreement is all that is...
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords—
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords—
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, I assure your Lordships that I will be very brief indeed. I shall start by declaring an interest, an even more personal interest than that declared by my noble friend Lord Tebbit. My home is in France, yet despite that, I have gone on record—in this House on a number of occasions and elsewhere—as saying that I would have liked to see the Government give an unconditional...
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, given that the Royal College of Physicians has agreed that electronic cigarettes are the most effective way of getting smokers away from the habit of smoking tobacco, will the Minister ensure that when the much-desired great repeal Bill comes along, dealing with the adverse effect of the tobacco products directive, which prevents the transition to e-cigarettes, will be a high priority?
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, I warmly welcome this important Bill. We now need to be clear about the way ahead. The White Paper, to which my noble friend the Leader of the House referred, states that the Government will seek, “an ambitious and comprehensive Free Trade Agreement and a new customs agreement”, with the European Union. It is right that we should offer this—complete free trade with no strings...
Lord Lawson of Blaby: Will my noble friend ignore the misery mongers on the Opposition Benches? Is she aware that some time back, long before the beneficent Brexit decision, the majority of economists, including the Bank of England, were saying that sterling was overvalued and needed to come down, and that inflation was too low—far below the 2% target—and needed to go up? When these things are gradually...
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s reassertion that we will trigger Article 50 before the end of March. That is of the first importance. I also suggest that the Leader of the Opposition, whom I greatly respect, as she knows, was talking complete nonsense when she spoke about somehow being half in the customs union and half out of it. You are either wholly in or wholly out.
Lord Lawson of Blaby: I suspect that that was completely out of order. I personally would like to see a free trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union with no strings attached. However, I fear that that is unattainable; even if the EU were to agree with it at government level, the European Parliament certainly would not. However, we have nothing to fear about a World Trade Organization...
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, since the single most important factor in determining the success of development in developing countries is the quality of leadership in those countries, would my noble friend ask her department to consider whether the best use of its burgeoning budget might not be to provide scholarships for the leaders of the future from the developing countries to study at our excellent universities?
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, I commend my noble friend for dismissing this earlier projection or model. Is he aware that it is regarded as completely useless for two reasons? One is that it takes no account of the other economic dimensions besides trade—there are many—and the other is that it is a so-called gravity model, designed for geographers. All reputable economists regard it as completely useless...
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, my noble friend—for whom I have the highest regard, as she knows—will also know that I am in no way anti-nuclear. The Statement refers to the fact that this is the first new nuclear power station for a generation. The last one was Sizewell B, for which I authorised the public inquiry when I was the Secretary of State for Energy in 1982. Is she not also aware that every single...
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, my noble friend will have shocked the House with his revelation of the massive amount of fraud in local authority maintained schools. What is being done about that?
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, may I commend the Government on the very sensible decision they have taken, for the reasons set out by my noble friend? I must say that I find this very curious. Normally in this House I hear noble Lords criticising the Government for not making up their mind. Now they are being criticised for having made up their mind.
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, as a former Secretary of State for Energy, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on her appointment as Minister for Energy. I realise that she is so early in her job that she is not a great authority on the issue, but bearing in mind how well she has performed in her previous role, I am sure that it will not be long before she is very well-versed. She will come to realise that the...
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, can my noble friend remind me: was it not a decision of Parliament, by an overwhelming majority, that this important issue should be decided by a referendum of the British people?
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, I am sure we all wish the present Prime Minister well in the next phase of his interesting career, whatever he may choose that to be. Does my noble friend recall that the present Prime Minister made it absolutely clear that, in his view, Article 50 should be triggered without delay following the referendum result? Surely that is sensible given that delay, and the consequent...
Lord Lawson of Blaby: Not necessarily; up to two years.
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords—
Lord Lawson of Blaby: Will the noble Lord—
