The Government's Plan for Brexit

Angela Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Let me be absolutely clear. We cannot say this often enough: this debate is not about whether we Brexit but how we Brexit. That is of prime importance. Decisions taken during the withdrawal process could have a huge impact on our economy and the prosperity of the people of this country. I do not accept the comments by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). The future of this country and its prosperity is of prime significance to the Members of this Chamber, and we have a right to discuss, debate and take a vote on it.

The people may have voted for Brexit—we cannot say this often enough, either—but they did not vote to be poorer. I echo the comments made by my right hon. Friends the Members for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). The time for digs against and negative comments about those of us who want the best possible deal for the UK is over. It is time to move on and to be responsible and mature in terms of what we are looking for.

It is the responsibility of Parliament to explore what Brexit means, both for our constituents and, importantly, for businesses located in our constituencies. I shall take for an example a key sector of our economy—food and farming, the biggest manufacturing sector in the UK economy, with a value of more than £108 billion, providing 3.9 million jobs. Seventy-five per cent. of our agricultural exports are to the European Union.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

My hon. Friend and I are both members of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Yesterday, I had a meeting with a Minister from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and I fear that there is a problem in the Department with the conflation of two issues—free trade and access to the single market. Will my hon. Friend comment on that issue?

[Angela Smith]

I shall come on to the option that we should follow in the negotiations. As many Members have illustrated, we all have views on where we should be going. The National Farmers Union has modelled three scenarios for the outcome of the negotiations: a free trade agreement with the European Union; World Trade Organisation rules; and trade liberalisation.

The potential cost to farming of non-tariff barriers to access the EU and worldwide trade range from 5% as a result of regulatory divergence to 8%. If direct farm payments are reduced or taken away completely from farmers in those scenarios, there will be a hugely negative impact on farm incomes, ranging from a reduction of £24,000 per annum under the best deal—the free trade deal—to an impact of over £30,000 per annum on individual farm income under the trade liberalisation scenario. The EU spends £3.2 billion a year on support to farmers, which is just under 25% of what we pay the EU to be a member of the Union. A key question for the Commons is whether we continue direct farm payments to farmers at the existing 100% level. Do we reduce it, and do we look at the impact on farm trade and individual farmers? We need answers to those questions before we can sign off any Government position on what we do in Brussels in summer 2017.

The farming industry employs more than 80,000 seasonal workers a year. The NFU has called for a seasonal agricultural workers permit scheme. The Government refuse to commit to such a scheme, but without that input there is little hope for the horticultural sector. Furthermore, the food and drink manufacturing sector has a skills gap. By 2024, it will stand at 130,000. On top of that, one in 12 employers in the sector report an intention on the part of their employees to go back home.

The road haulage industry, which is a critical service for the food and farming sector, has a skills shortage of 45,000. Sixty thousand drivers in the UK are foreign, mostly from the EU. The veterinary sector is another vital service for the food and farming sector, and reports that over 50% of vets registered every year in the UK come from abroad, mostly the EU.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech about the importance of the farming sector. She will know that we have had representations from the National Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which have millions of members, all of whom are concerned about biodiversity, which is what farmers support in this country. Farmers cannot provide the environmental goods if their income makes farming uneconomic.

[Angela Smith]

Mr Speaker, I did not get the extra minute for the second intervention.

[Mr Speaker]

It is right that all of us should be held to account, including the Chair.

[Angela Smith]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said.

The labour shortages that will or could result from Brexit should be taken seriously by the Government. We need to know what resources and plans are required to take account of immigration policy and restrictions on freedom of movement and on the development of the domestic workforce. It is reasonable that this Chamber has an understanding of where the Government are going on this key issue before it accepts the Government’s negotiating position on Brexit. These concerns should be addressed when the Government publish their plan.

My own position is that we should retain membership of the single market, but I also believe that we need a proper timetable and sufficient time for Parliament to scrutinise the proposals and to amend them if necessary.

I will vote against the amendment, therefore, because there are no guarantees before us today. Nothing that I have heard today gives me confidence that the Government will not try to wriggle out of the commitment to put a plan before this House. The vote today is not against Brexit, but against a motion that will potentially curtail the right of Parliament to act in the national interest, as it should do, and in so doing, act in the interests of our constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

The conundrum we are facing is that this is the first time in our history that the establishment and the Government of the day, having decided to have a referendum, have got a result that they disagree with. The Labour party’s 1975 referendum, and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish referendums, all delivered a result that was satisfactory to the establishment and the majority in this House. Today, we face the opposite.

Two weeks ago, I was at the annual general meeting of my local National Farmers Union office, and a lady said to me, “What is it about London—what don’t they get? We voted to leave. Leave means leave.” As a founder member of Vote Leave, I think that we were pretty clear right throughout the campaign about what we wanted—we wanted to take back control. The Government have been pretty clear that they are going to deliver on that.

We wanted to take back control of our money. On my first day at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my Secretary of State’s briefing said that we were handing back £642 million of real money because the Commission, under the ECJ, disliked the manner in which the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) had implemented the then CAP reform. So there was I, democratically elected and responsible to this democratic House, with nothing I could do about it. This House began from the principle of deciding what taxes were and who was responsible for them, controlling the monarch of the time, and it still has that fundamental role. The people will get back their role of kicking out politicians who raise taxes and spend them badly, because we do not have that at the moment.

We voted to take back control of our laws. I know about that in spades from my time at DEFRA. About 90% of DEFRA’s work is the implementation of European law. I tried manfully in negotiations to work with good allies, but we were outvoted on many occasions, and our farmers are struggling with the latest CAP reform. With many areas of activity competing strongly to be the worst, I would say that the EU’s governance of fishing wins, because it has been a catastrophe. Getting back our powers to control our fishing will restore our marine environments and fish stocks, and bring prosperity and wealth back to our most remote marine communities.

[Angela Smith]

I am listening to what the right hon. Gentleman says about the CAP, but does he believe that post-Brexit—in 2019 and 2020—the UK Government should continue to give support to farmers at the levels they are currently receiving? Does he believe that that money should still go to farmers or not?

[Mr Paterson]

Emphatically yes. If the hon. Lady had listened to my speeches during the referendum campaign, she would know that I said, “And, if appropriate, more.” What we will now be able to do is to embrace technology. The EU is becoming the museum of world farming because it is so extraordinarily hostile to technology—and that also applies to fishing.

The hon. Lady has also mentioned immigration—quite rightly. The most angry people I met when I was at DEFRA were the fruit farmers in Essex, Kent and Hereford who had been deprived by the then Home Secretary, now our Prime Minister, who had stopped the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, which brought in 21,250 highly skilled Romanians and Bulgarians before their countries became full members. I worked hard with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and the then Home Secretary to see how we could work our way around this. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) is absolutely right—we need a supply of skilled labour to work in our horticultural, fruit-picking and vegetable industry, and also in food processing.

At the other end of the scale, I know an eye surgeon whose family—they are Sufi Muslims—came from the United Provinces of India. She gave me, unprovoked—I have clean hands; she started it—the most extraordinary lecture attacking current immigration policy whereby she has to take less qualified, less skilled, less safe and less experienced eye surgeons because they have European passports, and she cannot choose more skilled and safer ones from Bangalore, Hong Kong or San Diego. I would like us to have the choice of the world’s workers—whether fruit packers or eye surgeons—on a permit scheme. I wholly endorse the comments of my right hon. Friends the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) because it would send out a tremendous signal if we stated here and now that there are very large numbers of EU citizens working in our economy who make an enormous contribution. We should give them, up to a certain date, the right of abode, and from then on move to a permit system.

We said that we would take back control of our ability to trade around the world. SNP Members make a huge fuss about the single market and the customs union. We have to leave the single market if we want to come out from under the cosh of the European Court of Justice. The single market does not exist anyway. My noble Friend Lord Bamford recently gave a very good speech in another place saying that there are 10 standards for brake lights on tractors within the current so-called single market. It is a non-problem. People just punch in the information when they go on the production line.