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European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I rise only because the noble Lord has spent so much time talking about my alleged position. Behind what a lot of the noble Lord has said is a sort of assumption that Europe’s relationship with a wider non-European world is an alternative relationship to the ones that we have. If you look, for example, at the level of trade and investment between the Federal Republic of Germany and China, you will find that it is quite as great as our own. If you were explaining this position in Germany, the Germans would find it almost incomprehensible. They do not see their relationship within the European Union as an alternative to their relationship with China. They see them both as being essential. Frankly—this is my question for the noble Lord—why pose these things as alternatives? Within the European Union we have a pivot which is vital to our relationship with the Commonwealth, the United States and China. These are not alternatives. They all converge and relate to each other. To pose it as black and white alternatives is deeply misleading.