Oral Answers to Questions

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts
Thursday 21st April 2022

(2 years, 6 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lindsay Hoyle Portrait Mr Speaker
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I call the Chair of the International Development Committee.

Angus Brendan MacNeil Portrait Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
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It is good to see the Secretary of State in good health.

With what the Secretary of State calls the UK’s independent trade strategy, the UK cannot even export a chicken leg to any country in the world without the commensurate weight of paper and bureaucracy going with that chicken leg. When she sees the lorry queues in Kent and what used to be an easy market for the UK, I wonder whether her Department has catalogued the hurdles of paper that exporters now have to cope with to trade with the European Union, especially as the Financial Times reports that, in “cut-off” UK—to quote the Minister—exports have fallen 14% compared with a rise in the rest of the world of 8.2%. This independent trade strategy is looking pretty woeful.