Nothing to fear from EU exit – veteran Lamont

FORMER Chancellor Norman Lamont has told a group of business leaders and academics that the North West economy would survive British withdrawal from the European Union.

Lord Lamont was addressing an audience at the University of Bolton where he is currently a director of its Centre for Islamic Finance.

The 72-year-old Tory peer, who was a cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major and served as member of the House of Commons for 25 years, is a renown Euro-sceptic but said he would remain open minded about whether Britain should opt out or stay in the EU until Prime Minister David Cameron had completed renegotiations in 2017.

Lord Lamont said the promised referendum after that  process would make 2017 “a historic and momentous year”.

Although he told his audience he was not advocating withdrawal from EU, he put up a pretty robust argument as to why companies should not fear an EU exit.

“I would argue we don’t have to be in the single market of the EU to prosper,” he said. “But many people would answer they would be fearful if we left the EU, that it is a leap in the dark.”

He said in Bolton and Lancashire there were concerns for the manufacturing sector.

“US and Japanese firms exploit the single market just as much as EU firms do,” he said. “Switzerland, which is outside the euro exports proportionally more than the UK does to the EU.”

Removing the burden of much European regulation would be welcomed by many companies in Britain, he added.

“There are arguments the EU would raise tariffs against us,” he said.”Frankly, I find that unbelievable, considering the European Union sells much more to us than we do to it.

“Businessmen might get nervous in the short term (about leaving) but I think they would be wrong.

“People say Britain would lose foreign investment if we left the EU. I have not come here to say we should leave the EU and I will not make a decision until 2017, but I just want to crack the conventional, easily stated view that it’s impossible for Britain to live outside the EU.

“I don’t believe that it’s impossible. Some of the Japanese motor companies, and the American investors said if you don’t join the euro we’ll all decamp.

“All the Japanese companies, Toyota, Nissan the lot of them, they said, if Britain doesn’t join the euro, we’re off. None of them left at all.

“Sometimes businessmen overstate the effect of politics and laws. The fact that someone sells motor car components to Europe isn’t because of some law. It’s because there’s a customer there – it’s nothing to do with politics.”

Lord Lamont said he had forecast the sort of crisis which has hit Greece and the subsequent strain in relations in the EU.

“I am not at  all surprised that we have had these  tremendous tensions between southern Europe and the northern Europe, where the policies have been largely those of the Bundesbank and of German austerity,” he said.

Lord Lamont was Chancellor at a particularly difficult time that included Britain’s exit from the ERM.  Many economists have attributed the economic stability and growth enjoyed by Britain in the 1990s and thereafter to the tough policies introduced by him.

He was also Britain’s chief negotiator at the Maastricht Treaty and secured Britain’s non-participation in the euro.