Business of the House

Debate between Mel Stride and Peter Grant

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue of sharia-compliant loans on behalf of pupils at Sheffield Park Academy. Within the Treasury, that comes under the responsibilities of the Economic Secretary. As the hon. Gentleman has suggested, the Department for Education also has important input on it. If he would like to contact me, I would be happy to make sure I facilitate appropriate contacts with the Treasury—if that is appropriate—and certainly with the DFE.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

May I say that an ability to make glory out of a football defeat qualifies you for honorary membership of the tartan army, Mr Speaker.

On 1 May, a constituent of mine and his colleagues received an email from the subcontracting firm they worked for telling them that the company was being placed into administration, leaving them out of pocket by £1,000 each. They were successfully taken on by the main contractor, but in the five weeks since then the employer has refused all attempts to communicate with him. He has failed to give his employees notification of who the administrator is—if indeed an administrator has been appointed. The Gazette has no notice of liquidation, and Companies House records, as of this morning, do not record the fact that the company is in the process of closing down. So may we have a debate, in Government time, on not only the protection of workers’ rights when a company genuinely does go into administration, but what protections there might be where a company claims to be in administration incorrectly in order to avoid paying its workers their due wages?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman raises a specific point about the experience that one of his constituents is having with a particular business, and on that aspect of his question I would be happy to facilitate contact, perhaps with an appropriate Minister at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to see what possibilities there are. On the more general point he makes on policy on administration, we have BEIS questions on Tuesday coming and he may wish to raise the issue then. Equally, he may wish to consider it for a Westminster Hall debate, perhaps when BEIS is the Department due to answer those debates.

Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis

Debate between Mel Stride and Peter Grant

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Yes is the answer. We have a bright future ahead of us. We have the opportunity, with this deal, to go out and do other deals around the world with other countries. The report makes specific reference, for example, to the United States, China, India and other important trading nations. We know that those parts of the world outside the European Union are growing far more strongly than countries within the bloc of the EU27, so I am optimistic about the future of my country.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am not going to draw any conclusions, Mr Speaker, on your assessment of how big or beguiling any of my attributes might be, because they obviously have not been enough to catch your eye until now. I draw the Minister’s attention to footnote 42 of the analysis, which states:

“For the purposes of EU exit modelling, the UK is assumed to pursue successful trade negotiations with the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Brunei, China, India…Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay…Uruguay”,

United Arab Emirates,

“Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain”.

In the real universe, in which none of those deals is fully in place by the end of the transition period, how much worse than the Government’s own grim forecasts will the economic impact of Brexit really be?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman is questioning some of the assumptions within a very complicated model, and as he has identified, the assumptions include that free trade agreements will be entered into with a variety of other countries. It is incumbent on him, if that is an area of the model that he wishes to stress-test particularly forensically, to look further into it, to look at the work that I have already outlined to the House will be carried out independently on behalf of the Treasury Committee, to question Ministers on that specific issue as he sees fit and to proceed in that manner.

Leaving the EU: UK Ports (Customs)

Debate between Mel Stride and Peter Grant

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend is correct. We will be in a perfectly good position to ensure that we have near frictionless trade on day one, using the kind of facilitations that we are already using when it comes to the policing of our borders with the rest of the world, and indeed that exist between other countries such as Canada and the United States.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

We waited a long time to get to the end of that, and I not sure that we are any further forward as a result. The Minister finally understands what the rest of the world has been thinking after they have read every statement, listened to every speech and played through every attempt at clarification that we have had from the Government since the day of the referendum. My bingo card is not quite complete, but we got “deep and special”, “unprecedented” and “innovative”. We got “frictionless” twice, and we also got “streamlined”. However, I do not think that I heard “taking back control”, which is where I missed out on the jackpot, possibly because it is difficult to talk about “taking back control of our borders” when the Minister is trying to justify why we are not going to have any customs controls and therefore no border controls of any kind.

I remind the Minister that the port of Dover reckons that 99% of its traffic goes to and from the European Union, and it takes the massive great lorries an average of two minutes to get through. The other 1% goes to the rest of the world, and it takes an average of 20 minutes for those lorries to get through. There is no degree of customs check that can prevent Dover—in fact, most of Kent—from becoming a car park. We have not even started to talk about the impact on the Welsh ports. Where will the border be for traffic going from Wales to Northern Ireland via the Republic of Ireland? All the possible locations for a border have already been ruled out.

Has the Minister read the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee report that was published at the end of last week? Has he read the report of the Exiting the European Union Committee that was published on Sunday morning? Has he read the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee’s report that was published this morning? All of them say that the Government’s obsession with leaving the customs union will simply not work. I draw his attention to a conclusion of the Exiting the European Union Committee’s report of December 2017:

“It is difficult to imagine any possible deal, consistent with WTO and other international treaties, that would be more damaging to the UK’s interests than leaving the EU with no deal whatsoever in place.”

Does the Minister agree with that? Does he understand that we are now barely six months away from when we effectively need a deal in place? When are the Government going to get rid of the clichés and soundbites, and start giving us genuine solutions to the problems that they, and they alone, have caused?

European Affairs

Debate between Mel Stride and Peter Grant

Thursday 15th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We will be seeking a unique deal for our country that recognises the prime importance of financial services both to our country and to the European Union and of the provision of competitive finance to the EU’s businesses and consumers. She mentioned CETA, and the relevant point there is that the negotiations, which were led by Michel Barnier, recognised the importance of attempting to include areas such as financial services, which is exactly what we will seek in the negotiations that will now follow.

We have the reassurance that the UK and the EU both issued a published text on the approach to the implementation period that reflects the significant common ground between us. The text would codify an implementation period that preserves the current status quo for business and consumers, is time-limited but also provides a sufficient window for the EU and UK to put new processes and systems in place, and ensures continuity in the application of international agreements. As a third country, the UK will have the ability to use the period to negotiate and sign new trade deals, while reflecting the fact that we cannot bring these agreements into legal effect until after the end of the period. We will also introduce a new registration scheme for EU citizens arriving post-Brexit but during the implementation period, when EU citizens should be able to continue to visit, live and work in the UK as they do now.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

The Minister has referred to the potential opportunities to negotiate new trade deals after we leave the European Union, and one of his colleagues has been keen to big up the prospect of the riches to be had from that. Can the Minister name any country in the world that has indicated it would be more likely to give a beneficial trade deal to the United Kingdom on our own than it would be to negotiate a deal with the world’s biggest single internal market?

[Mel Stride]

What I can tell the hon. Gentleman is that a large number of trade missions have been led by the Department for International Trade and its Secretary of State. We have had extremely encouraging discussions with a large number of important potential future trading partners with whom we may be seeking free trade agreements. As I have said, we will be able to negotiate deals within the implementation period, although they will not come into effect until we are beyond that point.