The Government's Plan for Brexit

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Steve Baker

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

I do agree. It would be quite wrong for us to pay a market access fee. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) said, they sell us more than we buy from them, so perhaps they should be paying us a fee. Of course, the facetious nature of his remark, if I may say so, indicates the fallacy at work. It is one thing for us to cover the costs of programmes in which we participate but quite another simply to pay for the privilege of selling.

I offer some other things that the Government might consider saying, and that would not harm our position, when they set out their framework agreement. We could state our intentions on third-country passporting for deemed equivalence and mutual recognition, particularly in relation to the financial services industry. I recommend the Legatum Institute Special Trade Commission’s report on that subject. We could say that our withdrawal agreement will cover trade and non-trade aspects of our relationship, including, in particular, those covered in the magisterial 1,000-page document from Business for Britain. No one can say that there was not plenty of high-quality research available before the vote. We could say that we will have mutual recognition of products, standards, licences and qualifications. We could explain trade facilitation. We could talk about territorial waters and our intentions there. We could talk about our intentions for the aggregate measure of support in agriculture.

The Government could explain how the great repeal Bill will work, how transposition of EU law into UK law will work, what will happen when something needs to be amended or repealed and what exceptions there will be. I believe we can do much better on competition law—in particular, in driving out anti-competitive market distortions—than the EU currently does. We could explain our process for trade deal ratification. We need to say more about how WTO rectification will work. There has already been a written ministerial statement, but more can be said.

We need to explain to our trading partners all around the world our willingness to liberalise, to be more free-trading and to ensure that we are able to lift out of poverty people in some of the poorest agricultural regions of the world who are currently excluded from trading in a proper manner.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Speak for decency.

[Mr Baker]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. We need to help those people to build their way out of poverty through trade.

I would like to give the Government an example of a form of words that could be used to reassure industry. If I make mistakes on this, they are my own, but this is derived from some advice from a trade negotiation lawyer. We could say: “The terms of our withdrawal agreement will ensure no UK-owned or UK-based manufacturer will be disadvantaged by our exit. Both EU and UK manufacturers seek tariff and barrier-free access to each other’s markets, and we will seek to deliver it with a broad, deep and permanent free trade agreement. We intend that manufacturers in the UK will either pay no tariffs or that they will have the opportunity to take advantage of a fully WTO-compliant tariff drawback system. UK manufacturing, after we leave the EU, will be more successful, more competitive, and lower-cost.” If the Government made that statement, everyone would begin to understand that our future will be far brighter once we have left the European Union, taken back control and made our own way.

I leave the House with this thought: the Legatum Institute Special Trade Commission proposes that, if we implement the very best in contemporary trade practice, we can add an extra 50% to gross world product in the next 15 years. That means unemployment at 2% in the UK, no deficit and billions of people lifted out of poverty.

Child Poverty

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Steve Baker

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. He knows very well that, as I have already said to him, I am very happy to engage with him and his Committee on these matters. As he says, at the beginning of the previous Parliament, we called on him and the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) to do some work for us, and I have remained absolutely wedded to the proposals that they brought forward. In fact, the Social Justice Cabinet Committee that I now chair is tasked with ensuring that those early intervention measures are driven through all Departments. My right hon. Friend the Education Secretary is already acting on much of that with the early educational markers and by driving attainment much earlier on in areas such as maths and literacy, which will be part of our measure. The right hon. Gentleman will, I hope, note that I talked about publishing, alongside that, life-chances measures for areas such as debt, drug and alcohol abuse, and family breakdown. Those measures will help to guide us on when we intervene to make the changes necessary.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

In constituencies such as Wycombe, for far too long the combination of relative measures plus coarse aggregates has hidden real poverty in certain wards. Will my right hon. Friend focus on practical outcomes for families and individuals so that we can get out of the position where we complacently ignore those in need and real suffering?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree. Apart from the two key areas that we are going to study very hard and put forward proposals on—the educational attainment and worklessness measures—we will have a duty to report on the pathways to poverty that I spoke about. Those will be the guiders that allow us to drive forward the change that is necessary, often in the very early years, in families suffering deprivation.