Exiting the European Union and Global Trade

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Adrian Bailey

Thursday 6th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I have been lenient with the hon. Lady because I appreciate that she has been in the House only for a matter of days. Nevertheless, she should be intervening on the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), not making a speech about something said earlier by someone else. I am sure she will get the hang of it, but I cannot let her go on any longer. I am sorry.

[Mr Bailey]

The ability of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) to make a speech while intervening demonstrates that she is rapidly acquiring the skills of Parliament.

To return to the point I was making, if being a member of the EU is an impediment to trading with other countries, why do some of our key EU rivals, such as Germany and France, manage to trade far more successfully with other markets than we do? Could it be that, notwithstanding their EU membership, they are doing something right that we are not doing? Our approach should take that into account; we should not blame the EU for the deficiencies in our ability to get the maximum from our trading potential with countries outside the EU.

There is a rather naive and totally fallacious belief that somehow it is going to be easy to trade with other countries when we come out of the EU. If we look at the World Bank ratings on the ease of doing business in the expanding markets of China, India and Brazil, we see that China is ranked 96th, India 149th and Brazil 143rd. The idea that they will become any easier to trade with if we come out of the EU is, quite frankly, self-delusion. The right hon. Member for Wantage outlined some of the practical difficulties in setting up any trade negotiations with other countries, and they will still be alive.

The fact is that by coming out of the EU, we are moving from a trading bloc that is relatively easy to deal with to one that is not. We need to make it clear, at this point, that we want to remain in the EU single market and customs union.