Bernard Jenkin
Main Page: Bernard Jenkin (Conservative - Harwich and North Essex)Department Debates - View all Bernard Jenkin's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 day, 16 hours ago)
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Alex Burghart
When I first arrived in the House, the leader of the hon. Gentleman’s party was advocating leaving NATO and giving up Trident, so I will take no lectures from those on his side of the House. My party is committed to 3% defence spending, and I think that those defence contractors in his constituency would very much like to see a Conservative Government spend some of that money in his patch.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Would my hon. Friend care to disabuse Labour Members who seem to be under the impression that whatever amount we put in, somehow our defence contractors in the UK will get more out of the fund than we are contributing? The history of defence procurement in Europe is that France and Germany invariably make sure that they get more out of it than they put in, and we are always the losers. I do not think we will suddenly become winners when we are not a member of the EU.
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend’s experience in these matters speaks volumes. The truth is that we must be absolutely certain that this will not be just another scheme for funnelling money into French defence companies while keeping it away from defence companies in other jurisdictions.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
May I point out that the Conservative motion says that the Conservatives stand by the result of the 2016 referendum, but the Labour amendment does not say the same of the Labour party? Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that a one-term mandate in one election trumps a referendum result, or does he respect the referendum result of 2016?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I absolutely respect the referendum result. If the hon. Gentleman bothered to read our manifesto, he would discover that there are red lines: we will not go back to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement. Let me say to the Conservative party that delivering on our manifesto promises will unlock huge benefits for the United Kingdom, reduce barriers to trade and accelerate economic growth. In an uncertain world, it will keep us safer, more secure and more prosperous. That is what this Government are working towards.
James MacCleary
My hon. Friend is a strong advocate for farmers in her constituency and across the country, and I absolutely agree with her.
Our fishing communities have suffered similarly. I hear from local fishers in Newhaven, in my constituency, who fear their livelihoods are close to collapse. Elsewhere, we have the example of offshore shellfish in Brixham, represented by my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), where a vet is now needed to sign 17 separate documents by hand for every shipment of mussels. If the deadline is missed at Calais, the entire catch goes to waste. That is not taking back control—it is losing the plot.
The Tories have thoroughly botched our relationship with Europe, but Labour’s overcautious approach risks cementing this failure. We acknowledge the Government’s recognition that this Brexit deal was not working, but their approach falls a long way short. Where Britain needs bold leadership, they offer nothing more than reluctant half-measures; where we need decisive action, they offer excuses and red lines.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point about shellfish. The environmental and hygiene standards we apply to our shellfish remained exactly the same the day we left the EU as when we were in the EU—it was the EU that supplied all that bureaucracy and requirement for wet stamps. Under World Trade Organisation rules, if a territory has equivalent standards, it is obliged to allow goods to enter its jurisdiction unchecked. Why does the EU breach this international law so wantonly, and why have the Government become a supplicant to the EU, trying to gain its favour to remove these illegal barriers?
James MacCleary
I think the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge that the regulations he references are not the only barriers to export in this country. I mentioned Calais; the port of Dover currently sees massive delays in getting any goods through the port because of the additional bureaucracy and security that are necessary as a result of Brexit. Newhaven port in my constituency, which I know very well—in fact, I humbly suggest that I know it better than other hon. Members—has had to spend millions of pounds simply putting in place more barriers in order to move goods through the port, and that is what is slowing things down. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point about equivalence, but at the end of the day, it is not the only output of Brexit that is harming our industries.
With its half-measures, Labour seems so afraid of its Reform-shaped shadow that it has ruled out bold measures to set free British business and stimulate growth. Britain cannot afford such timidity; our businesses cannot afford it, and our young people, who face a future with fewer opportunities than their parents, absolutely cannot afford it.
James MacCleary
I am pleased that the right hon. Member agrees with himself.
By contrast, my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) tells me of an engineering firm in his constituency that, due to the mountains of Brexit red tape, now finds it far easier to trade with South Korea than with Europe. This is not just damaging, but frankly absurd. The one thing that the Government will not do that is guaranteed to deliver growth is negotiate a bespoke customs union with the EU, yet they are hiking national insurance for businesses, stifling investment and refusing to support the most vulnerable in our society by not scrapping the two-child benefit cap or safeguarding personal independence payments.
James MacCleary
I will, if I may, make a little progress, because I am conscious of the amount of time that I am taking up.
Only a customs union can give businesses the long-term certainty they need, which will help to shield British jobs from the looming threat of Trump’s trade wars. I will take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman first and then from my hon. Friend.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
The hon. Gentleman told us that he has a constituent who finds it easier to trade with South Korea than with the EU. What does that tell us about the EU? Is that not one reason why people voted to leave? It is because of its excessive bureaucracy and its protectionism. Why is it easier to trade with South Korea than with the EU if it is not for EU bureaucracy?
James MacCleary
Just to be clear, I was talking about one of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth. But on the hon. Member’s point, the reason was the trade barriers put up by the Conservative party as part of the Brexit deal. It is as simple as that. It was a protectionist party putting up trade barriers, and it continues to advocate for it.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) and his flowery optimism for the future of this country, with it somehow being a terribly good thing that we are realigning ourselves with the European Union without actually rejoining it. It makes me wonder about all the debates I have attended over 33 years in the House about our relationship with what used to be called the common market, then the European Communities and now the European Union.
This debate has a ring of familiarity about it, because there are two sides in the House that tend to completely misunderstand each other—only, I think that Conservative Members now understand the truth, because that came out in the referendum. The referendum demonstrated that the House of Commons was completely out of alignment with the population on the question of our membership of the European Union. The whole Brexit story was about a battle within the House as to whether the pro-EU majority would assert itself and somehow negate the referendum, or whether the referendum would be respected. That is why my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and her shadow Cabinet colleagues are right to put at the front of the motion the importance of honouring the referendum result.
The fact is that a referendum result represents a superior mandate to a single term of election for an elected Government, because that referendum takes place on a single issue. I do not think anyone would pretend that the European Union was the main issue at the last general election, so anyone in the Government or indeed in the Liberal Democrats trying to use the general election result as a mandate to circumvent the result of the 2016 referendum is playing a dangerous political game.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
Of course, that argument was used in reverse on those of us who had had concerns about Europe for 40 years as we were told—exactly to my hon. Friend’s point—that a referendum was superior to continuous elections. We made a decision after the last referendum; that was a generational move. We have hardly had a generation in the few years since the referendum.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I agree with my right hon. Friend. The important point is that we do not have a written constitution, but we do have in our minds a hierarchy of legitimacy on which, in the end, the democratic credibility of the House depends. The fact is, a referendum represents a superior mandate on a single issue and, with a great struggle, the pro-EU majority eventually aligned itself with the decision that the British people had taken on our membership of the European Union.
Sir John Hayes
Since we are straying into political ideas and philosophy, is not the point that the democratic legitimacy we enjoy in this place is on the basis of popular consent, and there is no more direct expression of popular consent than a referendum, which is why its result has to be honoured?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I agree with my right hon. Friend, and that is why it was an extremely ominous portent that the Minister at the Dispatch Box refused to answer him on the question of whether there would be alignment or subjection to the European Court of Justice. If the referendum was about one thing, it was about taking back control of our laws. In fact, many of us in the leave campaign at the time argued that the British people do understand sovereignty—they certainly did by the end of the referendum—and getting into permanent alignment of regulation or subjecting the meaning of laws applied in the United Kingdom to the scrutiny and jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice is giving back control. It is a dangerous thing for a Government elected on the principle of honouring the referendum result, and one who are now playing dog-whistle politics with immigration, to be backsliding in secret, with a sleight of hand, into allowing jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and permanent alignment back into our law while pretending that is not happening. That is exactly what the Minister did at the Dispatch Box.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I will give way to my right hon. Friend, but I have another point that I wish to make.
Mr Francois
My hon. Friend will well remember that during the referendum a booklet was circulated to every household in the United Kingdom, which famously said:
“This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.”
The people decided to leave, and some in this place spent three years trying to frustrate their decision. In that context, is he concerned that today the Minister blatantly refused three times to answer a straight question about whether the Government would concede dynamic alignment at the summit? Is that not the sort of duplicitous behaviour that made the public so angry in the first place?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I agree. But there is another dangerous game being played by another political party: the Liberal Democrats. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) pressed the hon. Member for Lewes (James MacCleary), who wants to rejoin the European Union, on whether there would be another referendum, and he did not say that there would be. That we would have a referendum to leave the European Union but not require a new referendum to rejoin it would be incendiary politics for this country.
Why have people become disillusioned with their politicians? It is because politicians seem to agree to one proposition and then do something completely different from what was voted for. I hope we can all agree on one proposition: that there could be no possibility of a proposal to rejoin the European Union or to accept dynamic alignment or the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice—except over its current limited areas, which will eventually expire—without a further referendum. That is a serious matter.
Caroline Voaden
The hon. Member talks about people losing their trust in politics. Does he agree that the promise of £350 million a week to go to the NHS, which was broadcast on the side of a big red bus during the referendum, might have somewhat reduced trust in his party?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I am happy to point out that after the referendum and since we left the European Union, we are spending way more than £350 million a week more on the NHS than we were, and our contributions to the European Union have fallen dramatically—in fact, much faster than was expected under the withdrawal agreement. So the benefit that was on the side of the bus has turned out to be correct, although I believe it was a statistical sleight of hand to use that particular number; I disowned it at the time. But have no doubt that if we are to get drawn back into the European Union, we will have to start raiding the NHS to make payments to the European Union again. I do not think that is what the British people voted for.
That brings me back to this great defence fund, which I think will be borrowed. Will we have to borrow some of that fund as well? No, it was going to be borrowed through some European Central Bank mechanism. Will it instead be taxed? In any case, it is all Government borrowing, so will we add to Government borrowing by participating in the borrowing or funding of that fund, or would it not be better if we just remained aloof from it to concentrate on spending money on our own defence? That is the point that has already been made: the money that we have committed to defence over the years, in the period since the second world war and, indeed, since the end of the cold war, is far greater than that of the vast majority of EU countries. We also mandate our nuclear deterrent to the protection of the whole of Europe. We play our part in the defence of Europe. As for the idea that we can deploy troops more quickly through free movement of people, what planet are the Liberal Democrats on? It is utterly ludicrous.
I come back to the point about the defence fund. There have been such funds in Europe before, but I can assure Members that the game that every country plays is the one where what they put in, they get out. The French are past masters at that. They will participate in a multilateral programme, but if they do not get the lion’s share, they pull out. They pulled out of the Eurofighter programme when that was meant to be part of their deal because they were not getting enough work out of it. Therefore, the idea that it is a freebie for British defence companies to participate in the fund and get extra money into the British defence industries will simply not happen.
In any case, this fund is not about creating warfighting capability this year or next year, which is what we need; it is about the very long-term, big programmes that the defence industries want. That will not rescue us from America’s absence from NATO, if that were to occur for more than a few months or a few years under Donald Trump. Let us also remember that Donald Trump will not be there forever; he has 45 more months to go. Let us not do more damage to NATO by making it look to the other side of the Atlantic that we will take care of our own defence in Europe from now on. That is very dangerous.
I remember Madeleine Albright, a Democrat Secretary of State, railing against what was then called the European security and defence policy. She warned that it represented the “Three Ds”: the duplication of NATO assets, which was wasteful and unnecessary; the discrimination against non-EU members of NATO such as Norway, Turkey, Canada and the United States; and the decoupling of American and European defence policy. Is that what we want? Is that what this House wants? Is that what the Labour party wants? No. The Labour party says that NATO is the cornerstone of our defence and rightly so, but what signal is it sending to President Trump?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I ask that he wait just a minute.
What signal is it sending to Donald Trump by suggesting that we will have an EU defence policy that excludes the United States? It is exactly the wrong signal for this moment.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I am pleased that my hon. Friend raises that point, which I want to elaborate further. The real point is that J. D. Vance, the vice president, came over to Munich and ripped a hole through the Europeans, including ourselves, for not having spent enough, although we were one of the top spenders. Since then, the Americans have gone on and on about that, but each time we get the sense that they are keener to decouple. Does what we are about to do not give strength to the argument that we do not need them any longer and therefore they need to look somewhere else? That is the danger, because NATO was not just about defence of the west; it was about making sure that the US never goes into isolationism again.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Yes. That promise of creating an EU defence capability has been on the table since the St Malo declaration of 1999, in the aftermath of the Maastricht treaty that first introduced the word “defence” into the EU. That was when France and the United Kingdom, under a Labour Government, declared that the EU would have autonomous military capability, with separable but not separate military forces from NATO.
We still have the absurdity in which the armed forces of the EU countries are allocated to NATO tasks but, at the same time, are ready for EU tasks. There had to be a complicated de-confliction arrangement to try to ensure that an EU defence mission does not conflict with a NATO defence mission. We finished up with something called the Berlin-plus arrangements, which Turkey has never accepted because it is not a member of the EU but is a member of NATO.
There has always been an impasse between NATO and the EU on those two questions, and it is all completely unnecessary because NATO has a military headquarters, it has a political committee and it is an international organisation. Indeed, it is the most successful military alliance in the world. Why is the EU trying to duplicate it just for itself? The EU is more interested in statecraft and state-building than defending our own continent. The anger with which Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz have attacked Trump reflects a latent anti-Americanism that has always been there and which we could do without at this moment.
Sir John Hayes
My hon. Friend makes a profound argument. He highlights the EU, which sees itself as a supranational body, and NATO, which, by nature, is anything but that, in that it is a confederation of sovereign nations. That tension lies at the heart of the EU’s ill-concealed and now evident disdain for NATO. I do not know whether the Government are careless or unknowing of that. They are either complicit or ignorant; I wonder which one my hon. Friend thinks it is.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Sadly, European Union defence has always promised far more than it delivers. It was meant to galvanise all the European states into spending more money; it failed and just did not do that. When any serious military operation was required, it was NATO. To the EU’s credit, some EU military operations are taking place, but they are on a very limited scale. The British and the Americans need to reinforce the Balkans now, because the Europeans are not committing enough on their own and are incapable of doing so.
Even if, this time, there were rapid growth in EU military capability to address the crisis that we face, it would take decades to replicate what the Americans currently provide, such as tactical nuclear weapons and air cover. Why does the EU need to have its own air defence policy when that is exactly what NATO does? It does European air defence. We need to bolster NATO. It is encouraging that force planning for a possible peacekeeping force in Ukraine is all being done at NATO and not in the EU crisis management centre or at EU military headquarters. Only NATO has the capability to plan large-scale military activity.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. What does he know about it? I would be interested in him challenging me.
Luke Taylor
Does the hon. Gentleman not see the fragility of a European defence that is dependent on key items of American hardware, which he correctly identifies that we do not have, and which it will take decades for us to replicate, operate, integrate with our systems and train people on? Does he not see the fragility of our defence if President Trump or another incoming US leader says, “Actually, you’re on your own. We don’t care about the defence of Ukraine”?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. While I am in the Chair, interventions will be shorter than that.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has made that point, but the best thing for all European nations is not to try to build our own EU defence capability, but to strengthen NATO. There is an argument that we are somehow doing this through the EU so that it can strengthen NATO, but I do not think that is really the ambition of the bureaucrats in Brussels. They have a flag and a Parliament, and they want an army—a Euro army. That is what people periodically talk about, particularly the Germans and the French. They want a Euro army, but that would send the wrong signal to President Trump. Yes, we need to develop those capabilities, but let us develop them through NATO.
Jim Allister
Is not the hon. Member’s point put beyond all doubt by the wording of article 42 of the treaty of the EU, which expressly says that the purpose of co-operation is to arrive at common defence? Is it not therefore perfectly clear that the EU is setting itself up to have its own sovereign defence capability?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Yes, and when we look at the European Defence Agency and all the mechanisms that have been created, we can see that the European Defence Agency is an embryo European Ministry of Defence. That is what is intended.
Let us just suppose that, in the ideal world that Labour and the Liberal Democrats live in, this defence capability comes about. The fundamental problem is that the European Union was never originally conceived as a defence and foreign policy organisation. There are many countries in it with very different—[Interruption.] No, it was functionalism that drove the foundation of the European Communities. It was about trade and creating a single market. Defence was never in the minds of the early founders of the European Union, and it is very ill suited to the task of getting defence capability, because the institutions were not designed for that purpose. It is not in the culture of those institutions. To rely on them for our defence and security is extremely unwise. On the other hand, NATO is already very well suited to the task and does not need to be duplicated.
To put it mildly, given the political disunity in the European Union, particularly towards Trump—okay, that afflicts NATO as well—this is not an instant solution to the political problems in NATO, if those are what the European Union is seeking to resolve. We should dispense with the idea that making a defence pact with the European Union is somehow the great panacea for all the problems we face on our continent because of President Putin. On the contrary, I think it is likely to make things worse—more complicated and more bureaucratic—and it would probably make our defence industries less competitive, because they would be cocooned inside this fund, instead of competing on the on the global stage with the Americans. Incidentally, our defence procurement co-operation with the Americans remains essential. They have the lion’s share of the technology; they are way ahead of the European Union when it comes to technology.
So, why are the Government doing this? I think they have always been religiously committed to the idea of EU defence—they introduced it in the first place, in the St Malo declaration—but why are they so devoted to doing this now? Of course, it is what the European Union really wants. We are the supplicant in these negotiations. We are asking the EU for concessions, and the one thing that would really make it feel good is drawing the United Kingdom into the defence arena of the European Union.
Meanwhile, what concessions are we getting from the EU? I do not see any. It will be interesting to find out. It will not instantly reduce all trade barriers, because we are not in the single market and will not be in the single market. It will still apply all the checks, including the antiquated wet stamps that are applied to forms certifying the fitness of shellfish. Wet stamps are so last century, but the EU is still using them on customs forms. That is how backward it is. There are electronic frontiers between African countries where there are no barriers. Incidentally, that is the answer to the Northern Ireland problem.
I fully support the Opposition’s proposals, which are to question everything that the EU will demand of us and which the Government might pursue, and to reserve our ability to tear up those agreements if they are not in the national interest. The Government do not have a monopoly on the national interest. “National interest” is a subjective term—the national interest might be different in the mind of one person and in the mind of another. As far as I am concerned, we left the European Union in the national interest, because we wanted to remain a sovereign democracy, in charge of our own laws, and to be like most other countries that are not in the European Union; they get on fine. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) pointed out, the economy is still growing, or was growing until the Government hit it with their Budget. We have every opportunity at our feet.
One of the reasons we left the European Union—sorry to relitigate all these arguments—and left that slow-growth, high-unemployment, high-regulation, high-tax trade bloc was so that we could make deals with the high-growth, low-regulation, high-employment parts of the world, which in the end will provide us with far more business than we get from the EU. Actually, the vast majority of our trade, particularly our services trade, is outside the EU—people forget that. By being obsessed with trade with the EU, we drive our economy into a straitjacket; we are well out of that.
The Government should take away from this debate a warning. They know that they are being attacked by Reform. Those voters would probably never vote Conservative, or are less likely to vote Conservative than Labour, but they are going to Reform because they can sense the backsliding going on in this Government. If there were ever to be another referendum, I would hazard a guess that the vote would be against rejoining the European Union, so there can be no rejoining by stealth, which seems to be the Government’s policy. We will stand by the British people, and will dishonour any agreement that the Government make with the European Union that is not in our interests.
Indeed, there are parts of the withdrawal agreement that we may need to revisit—for example, in the Northern Ireland protocol. The technology has moved on, and we can move to an electronic frontier across the north-south border, without the need for checks on trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. One of the founding principles of the Act of Union was that there should be frontier-free trade within the United Kingdom as a whole. If the continuing development of the Northern Ireland protocol continues to impose those checks, those checks are not in the national interest, and we should reserve the right to jettison the protocol and replace it with something better.
Tom Hayes
After 30 minutes of speaking, the hon. Member has probably said everything he needed to say, and if he did not, we have a serious problem in this House.
On the question of expanding opportunities in the UK-EU relationship, I am particularly struck by the need for a capped, controlled, balanced youth mobility scheme. Around our country, including in my constituency of Bournemouth East, young people are suffering generational challenges that their predecessors did not face, be it their inability to buy a home at an affordable price, find secure work or get the education they want, or the fact that they have gone through a cost of living crisis and a pandemic. Surely we owe it to our younger generation to provide them with some of the conditions that will allow for a better life. A capped, balanced, controlled youth mobility scheme is key to that.
Such a scheme will not just be beneficial for the youth of the UK. I have in my constituency a significant number of English language schools. I had the privilege of visiting Beet Language Centre in my constituency last Friday for a roundtable that it hosted, and we were joined by other important language schools. They talked to me about the difficult financial circumstances they are all in and the difficulty of keeping the doors open because of the damaging Brexit deal that was negotiated. With a youth mobility scheme, we can put money back into our English language sector, which is critical.
We are living in an insecure world. Britain’s soft power is critical to ensuring that we are respected around the world. By bringing people to the UK—and particularly to sunny Bournemouth—for one to two weeks, or four to six weeks, they get a sense of how wonderful, open and accepting we are as a country. They can then take that back to their families and their home countries, and they can grow an affection for this country, come back repeatedly, spend money here and grow our tourism sector. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole has the highest concentration of English language schools of any borough or local authority in the UK; they contribute £400 million to the BCP economy. Indeed, English language schools contribute £44 billion nationally. Imagine how much better we could be if we had a youth mobility scheme and support for our English language schools.
I will soon conclude my speech so more Members can speak, but before sitting down I want to talk about not just the importance of the UK-EU reset as a way of delivering trade in its own right between the UK and the EU, but the benefits of trade. In an increasingly protectionist world, we need to be talking up the benefits of trade. Trade brings people into closer, and more harmonious and profitable relations, with one another. It brings down the walls and the barriers between nations. It makes war less likely because it binds people in peace. It does not just put money into people’s pockets or create jobs in our communities; it grows our economies faster and it raises living standards.
We know that trade has its challenges, but—done well—trade deals can help to make sure our countries prosper. At its heart, the EU-UK reset should be about trade, our economy and our businesses. It should not be a question of identity, culture wars and scaremongering. It should be about grown-ups gathering in this Chamber and talking about what is important to our constituents on the basis of the facts, rather than rehashing old, tired debates and scaremongering. We need to face the future, and I am pleased that finally we have a Government who are doing so.
Ms Creasy
And lo, Bugs Bunny did appear. We have also heard from the man I started arguing with 33 years ago as a young campaigner about the merits or otherwise of working with Europe. It appears that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) was on the other bus in the debates about Brexit. That is exactly it: our constituents, who might listen to this, would be horrified to see us going backwards again, acting as if the last 10 years had not happened and there was no evidence about what Brexit means.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Who is it that is trying to take us back to the past? It is the Government. Brexit is giving this country its new future and the Government are trying to turn the clock back. That is what is wrong.
Ms Creasy
I hate to warn the hon. Gentleman, but I have a horrible feeling that if he were to compare the speech he made today with many of those he made between 2017 and 2019, he might find that he would lose “Just a Minute” on the grounds of repetition. That is going backwards. This country deserves better.
Let me start with a clear statement of intent. Brexit has happened; we have left. I am not here to prosecute the argument to rejoin. We do not have time for that. What we need is a salvage operation, because of the damage that has been done, especially in a world with so much uncertainty, where tariffs are now part and parcel of the everyday conversation and the damage that is being done to our constituents.
We can fight many things in life, but geography really is not one of them, however hard some Members on the Conservative Benches try. We heard from the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) the continued myth that somehow the isolation to our status that Brexit has brought would bring us strength. The last 10 years—indeed, the last six months—have shown how clearly that is not the case. In fact, we are uniquely isolated and at risk as a nation. That is why what this Government are doing is absolutely right. They are getting on with signing trade deals, trying to sort out the damage that has been done and, indeed, looking for that hat-trick.
I have to say to Conservative Members that there is no conspiracy here. Those of us who were here in 2019 remember exactly the details of that deal and the fact that a five-year review process was written into it. What we are going to see next Monday is not some secret negotiation; it is part of the trade and co-operation process—[Interruption.] I hear Conservative Members chuntering. Hang on, I can see their tin foil hats! I beg them to look at the details of the agreement, which said clearly that there would be a renegotiation point, where we would review whether or not it was working. I am sorry that the shadow Minister is not in his place. He tried to claim affinity with Sam Beckett but frankly I suspect he is going to be more like Jim Trott from “The Vicar of Dibley”. He will say, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no”, and then have to say yes. The summit is not the end. It is the start of the process of reviewing the trade and co-operation agreement, and looking at what is in the best interests of this country.
Let me be clear: I am absolutely committed to the idea that there should be parliamentary scrutiny. My colleagues on the Front Bench will know that I have been concerned that the European Scrutiny Committee was deleted, because I think we should be able to discuss these matters. However, I think there probably ought to be a summit first in order for us to have something to discuss. I hope that will account for me putting in an advert for the Backbench Business debate that the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and I were going to have after the summit on 22 May, so that we parliamentarians may properly examine what comes out of it. Sadly, he is not in his place, which is a shame because I know how strongly he feels about these things, and I am sure he would want to talk about the benefits of Brexit and other mythical creatures. The summit is the starting gun. It is not the final deal, and it is really important to look at it in that way.
This is the test for the motion today. Are the Opposition really telling us that the trade and co-operation agreement is perfection? Is there absolutely nothing in that agreement that they would not wish to amend, revise or refine? Is there absolutely nothing in what it has delivered in the last five years that they are troubled by? For example, there are 1.8 million fewer jobs in our economy because of the Tory hard Brexit, and the academics who have studied this recognise that that figure will rise to 3 million by 2035. Trade is down 27% with the European Union—a bloc that we do five times more trade with than we do with America. Over 16,000 businesses have given up trading with Europe all together, because the truth about Brexit is that it was just paperwork—reams and reams of it—and small businesses in this country have sadly had to up sticks.
I declare an interest as the chair of the Labour Movement for Europe. I am not standing here arguing to rejoin, but I am a red against red tape and what I see is the amount of paperwork—[Interruption.] I am loving the fact that Conservative Members are chuntering from a sedentary position, as if this was some sort of revelation. Perhaps they can borrow some tin foil from their fellow Members and talk about a conspiracy. They would do better to reflect on the impact of the border trading operating model—an entirely self-inflicted wound by the previous Government on British farmers and British food supply chains that pushed up inflation, because charging for pallets of food coming into the country created more and more paperwork. Unless Conservative Members are genuinely telling us that they think “chef’s kiss” for the trade and co-operation agreement, it is right for us to look at whether there are things we can do to deal with the problems it has created for our constituents—including the £6.95 billion of additional cost to households—and to account for some of the myths that have been created.
Again, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire—he will accuse me of being obsessed, but let us look at what he talked about—said that somehow being out of the European Union made our response to covid better. Well, he might want to talk to the UK covid inquiry, which found that it was the reverse. It found that our failure to prepare was increased by the fact that we were dealing with a no-deal Brexit; it harmed our covid response. He might even want to reflect on the words of the UK medicines regulator, which said we could have used the emergency processes to bring forward our own vaccine. I am sure that is what he was talking about.
The hon. Member also talked about Ukraine. He might want to reflect, as he thinks about the summit on Monday, on how hard it was for us to make the case about the importance of standing with Ukraine from outside of the room, and that those who were less convinced who were part of the European Union would have heard our message more clearly if we were inside the room, particularly when it came to gas imports. We championed Ukraine, but we had to shout from outside rather than being part of the conversations from the start.
This summit needs a strong agenda, and that is exactly what this Government are talking about. It is an agenda focused on fixing the problems that this trade and co-operation agreement has created. That is what the public want—they agree with us. They do not want us to spend five to 10 years on treaty renegotiation and the possibility of rejoining; they want us to salvage this country from the damage that Brexit has done. Two thirds of the country say that Brexit is bad for the cost of living, and 65% say that it has had a negative impact on the economy. Opposition Members might want to reflect on the fact that that is nearly twice the number of people who think that immigration is bad for our economy.
The British public are not daft; they are wise about what needs to happen next. They understand the value of a defence deal. They understand that, in a world with Putin at our doorstep, with the challenges we face and the uncertainty in other parts of the world, it is absolutely right and proper, and will complement NATO, to work more closely with our European counterparts, to increase investment in the UK defence industry and to collaborate on crime. Those of us who used to have constituents whose needs were served by the EU arrest warrants know the damage that the previous Government’s deal has done. Those of us who want to see us stepping up the way we collaborate on international aid know that we need to get round the table with our European counterparts. The best way to tackle those who might be stuck on a boat, fleeing persecution, is to try to stop the conflict at the source. That is what collaborating on international aid with Europe could offer.
The public understand the value of an SPS deal, which my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) mentioned, and the value of the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention, which deals with the paperwork about rules of origin. Thanks to the Tory hard Brexit, those rules mean that every time a tomato is brought into this country to make a pizza in the Wirral, extra paperwork comes with it. The public would want us to look at the VAT rules, because small businesses are now struggling with 27 different VAT regimes. They would also want us to sort out the carbon border adjustment mechanism; that is how we save British steel, which will be affected if there is a divergence. We need to look at how the emissions trading schemes can be linked, and we can save British business £800 million in charges.
The public want us to look at mutual conformity assessments to try to reduce duplication. They want common sense on regulation. The previous Government tried to bring in separate regulatory regimes and, understandably, British business said, “That is twice the cost.” British businesses want to be able to sell to their neighbours; they do not want extra pieces of paperwork. The previous Government tried to make us have separate regulations on airline safety—as if an aeroplane taking off in London would need to follow a different set of regimes if it landed in Berlin. That is bonkers. Understandably, we walked back from it, and we should not go back to those kind of arguments just because those on the Conservative Benches have a blindness when it comes to Europe.
This Government have got their head on. They are looking at what they can do to help the chemicals industry and supply chains, and of course it is looking at what a deal on youth mobility might look like. This is a summit; it is about having the conversation, looking at the details and looking at how we can support apprenticeships through youth mobility. Clearly, youth mobility is not freedom of movement, otherwise I would have heard complaints from Opposition Members about the fact that we have freedom of movement deals with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay—[Interruption.] I can see a Conservative Member saying, “Yes, indeed.” I presume they are going to call for the abolition of freedom of movement from Canada, then; that would be consistency.
We could also do more to help our creative services and financial services, and, yes, to resolve some of the tensions in Northern Ireland. Many of us feel deeply that the people of Northern Ireland have suffered the most as a result of the Tory hard Brexit. Yes, we could do a deal on fishing. We could acknowledge the fact that our fisheries industry felt sold out by the previous Government by supporting them to be sustainable. All those are issues that we can return to in that Back-Bench debate, but we cannot do that if we do not have the summit. We cannot walk into the summit saying, “No, no, no.” We need to walk in saying, “What gives? What are the opportunities here? How can we solve some of these challenges?”
Many, many years ago, one of my next-door constituency neighbours was Winston Churchill. We on the Labour Benches have become the defenders of his vision of ending conflict in Europe. Conservative Members spend all their time fighting with each other and fighting a ghost. We need to talk about the future. We need to get away from the fantasy that somehow Brexit will deliver and start getting back to the cost of living crisis in our communities and how we can help people.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
This is something that I have looked at quite closely. The reason for the collapse is that the United Kingdom is not in the internal market, so we do not give direct applicability and direct effect to EU SPS laws. The EU procedure is to check every consignment of shellfish coming into the EU to see if it complies with EU standards, even though the provisions in EU law on clean rivers, clean beaches and clean water all exist in the United Kingdom, and our provisions are probably of a superior standard to those that apply in much of the EU.
Mr Francois
I defer to my hon. Friend, who is clearly a subject matter expert.
I will conclude, because others want a chance to speak. The Labour Government will go for dynamic alignment. They will sign us up as a passive rule-taker at the behest of the EU, despite the British people voting in 2016 to take back control of their laws. I have absolutely no doubt that if the Labour Government get away with this surrender summit early next week, that is precisely what they will do. It is therefore very important that we alert the British people, and the media that serve them, to exactly what Labour is up to, in an attempt to expose the situation and prevent it getting any worse.
In summary, we will not allow our obsessively Europhile Prime Minister—in this context, our “white flag” man—to surrender our right to govern ourselves. This surrender to the EU has absolutely no democratic mandate, and we will oppose it tooth and nail. If necessary, we will eventually overturn it. Remember what the booklet in the referendum said:
“This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.”
The British people decided to take back control of their own laws. It is not for Labour to give them away.