EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. The £350 million figure that was splashed across Vote Leave’s bus did not last very long when subjected to scrutiny. It also did not take into account the huge range of benefits that we gain from membership of the European Union that go beyond that membership fee, as Vote Leave put it.

Freedom of movement—this is often lost—is a two-way process. There are 1.5 million UK citizens who benefit hugely from freedom of movement across the European Union. I often pose this question, but it is yet to be answered: what is the difference between an EU migrant and a UK ex-pat living in the European Union? They are exactly the same. I and others have been appalled by the language used by the Vote Leave campaign, not least about migration and refugees, because we benefit from working with our European partners on foreign policy.

President Obama has said that his worst foreign policy mistake was not dealing with the aftermath of Libya. The campaign in Libya had nothing to do with the EU; it had everything to do with this Government not dealing with it appropriately. And where is the biggest influx of refugees coming from? They are coming from the failed state of Libya. It was a UK foreign policy failure of the worst kind and it had nothing to do with the European Union.

On the issue of UK foreign policy disasters, Labour Members will be well aware that Chilcot will be published in a few weeks’ time. The European Union had nothing to do with the disaster in Iraq; it was another UK foreign policy disaster.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

rose—

[Stephen Gethins]

I will make some progress.

Compare that with the EU as a soft power. It has made progress in stabilising south-east Europe and it could play a future role in the middle east and north Africa region and in dealing with the former Soviet Union. Europe can be a soft superpower and we need to be at the heart of that. As our partners in the EU have said, our membership of NATO and of the EU complement each other and have given us the longest period of peace, stability and prosperity in European history. We should not forget that.

The EU has also made us fairer. It protects us in so many ways, including through provisions for paid holidays and by giving parents—mums and dads—the right to parental leave. Just think of the draconian trade union laws that this lot here want to bring in: do we really want to be left to the mercy of a right-wing Conservative Government when it comes to social protections? Those social protections have been advanced through our membership of the European Union.

Last night, the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), who is not here—which does not surprise me, given the going over he got from my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond)—was reminded that he had previously said that

“we could easily scrap the social chapter”.

He is right—they could easily scrap the social chapter and all the benefits that go with it, because, when it comes down to it, this is a right-wing Tory power grab. The right-wing Tory foxes would be put in charge of the chicken coup of progressive politics in the United Kingdom.

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[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure—a nostalgic pleasure—to follow the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). He reiterated the fears he first enunciated in relation to our leaving the exchange rate mechanism, and those fears proved to be wrong. He next enunciated those fears in relation to our not joining the euro, and they proved the reverse of the truth. It is nostalgic to hear him recycling his damaged goods again today.

It is even more of a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). He and I worked together at the Department of Trade and Industry. I think I am the only serving Member of Parliament, apart possibly from the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam, who has experience of successfully negotiating an international trade deal and of introducing, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham, the single market programme into this country.

We have that experience, and I want to apply it to some of the arguments because on this issue, as on most issues, I find that when we in politics do not have that experience, we simply adopt the most plausible argument that supports our case. By and large, that is what happens on matters of trade and economics in this House, because there is so little experience of them. In a way, I am a member of an endangered species as one of the few Members who has such experience.

Let me first take the very idea that trade agreements are necessary and essential for trade. I hate to say this, because I have a vested interest in claiming to have experience of these things, but trade agreements are less important than people imagine. That is particularly the case for agreements between developed countries, largely because of the success of the Uruguay round, which brought down tariffs between developed countries to negligible levels. The average WTO tariff that would apply to British exports to the EU, in the almost inconceivable circumstance of our having no free trade agreement with it, would be 2.4%. It is better not to have it and I would rather not have it, but compared with the movements in the exchange rate, it is negligible or much less important than it is made out to be. The only important trade deals are those with fast-growing markets in Asia, Latin America and Europe that still have high tariff levels, and we ought to be looking to negotiate trade deals with those markets.

[Bob Stewart]

I entirely agree with everything my right hon. Friend has said. We have not so far discussed the fact that people want our market just as much as much as we want their market. It takes two to tango in any trade deal, and trade deals will go on regardless.

[Mr Lilley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Trade deals take place because they are in the mutual interests of both parties; they are not military conflicts. They take place between two parties, like trade itself.

A very plausible but incorrect argument is that trade agreements always take a long time. When the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was asked whether Ministers had done any study of trade agreements, he sidestepped the question. A freedom of information request has actually revealed that neither the Treasury nor the Government have done any study of the trade agreements about which they talk so knowledgeably. However, such studies have been done. I refer to the study by Professor Moser of the Centre of European Union Studies in Salzburg of every single trade agreement in the past 20 years. There are 88 of them. They took an average of 28 months, but the time for each varied greatly. The deals that took a long time were those that involved lots of countries, which certainly concurs with my experience. Of course, by definition any EU treaty involves 28 countries and takes a long time, because all 28 have vetoes. A lot of EU treaties are being held up now, but bilateral treaties take less than that average of 28 months. We should not start deluding people into thinking that it will take a long time to negotiate bilateral deals with countries that already have bilateral deals with Switzerland, for example.

The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam asked rhetorically whether anyone was queueing up for trade deals with us. Well, look not for what they say but what they do. Switzerland has trade deals with countries whose total GDP is four times that of the countries with which the EU has trade deals. Chile has trade deals with countries whose collective GDP is even bigger. Switzerland has a trade deal with China. We are told that it is a bad deal for Switzerland, but clearly the Swiss did not think so. The Swiss published the details of the deal online; Members can look at it themselves. By the time the EU even gets around to negotiating a trade deal with China—which by the way will never succeed because the EU will always insist on human rights terms the Chinese will not accept—the Swiss will have zero tariffs on the vast majority of their exports to China.

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[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

I want to make a short contribution about the effect of the EU on the economic viability of our fishing industry and to congratulate the fishermen who have taken part in the flotilla on the Thames today to make sure we hear where they stand.

Our fishing industry is a ghost of its former self. Before we joined the EU, we had a successful, viable fishing industry all around the coast. I remember seeing fishing boats in south-east Cornwall moored three or four deep along the quayside. I do not see that today. Although fishing is no longer the largest employer in Looe—tourism is—people come to traditional fishing towns and expect to see fish being landed. A highlight they often mention is tasting fish and chips from one of the award-winning restaurants or buying fresh catch from fishmongers such as Pengelly’s in Looe. Where would tourism be without our fishing?

In 1971, just before we joined the EU, we had a thriving fishing industry bringing home millions of tonnes of fish and directly employing over 21,000 people. Last year, it caught about 600,000 tonnes and employed under 12,000 fishermen. According to a report co-ordinated by the New Economics Foundation, there was a 12% fall in the number of fishermen between 2003 and 2013. My late husband, Neil, was one such fisherman. He was forced to fish alone on his boat as a result of economic pressures arising from reducing quotas while still trying to meet the costs of increasing insurance, harbour dues and landing charges, not to mention repair costs and gear replacement.

The report attributes the decreasing employment to a decline in the number of vessels owing to the forced scrapping imposed by successive Governments to meet the artificial targets from the European Commission and to vessels investing in new technology—the latter might be true for larger vessels, operating with several deckhands, but is certainly not the case for small fishermen like Neil. It was a simple economic decision taken because he often could not land and sell the fish that swam into his net. The report also says that the trend of declining numbers of fishing vessels and fishermen is likely to continue.

The report does not mention the declining fish quotas that the EU sets each year. Haddock is just one example. The UK gets 10% of the total allowable catch, while France gets 70%, and the same applies to many other species in many other areas. Would hon. Members go into a bank alongside a French person, each of them with a bundle of notes to the value of £70, and throw £60 into the wastepaper bin, while the French person invests it all? That is effectively what fishermen in Looe are being forced to do today because of the quota share-out agreed by the EU in 1983 known as “relative stability”.

[Bob Stewart]

Everyone in the House knows the sad story of my hon. Friend’s husband. How much increased capacity would the fishermen of Looe get were we to leave the EU?

[Mrs Murray]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I will come to it in a moment.

I will not get into arguments with those who want to remain, further sacrifice this great industry and abandon the economic wellbeing of our coastal fishing towns, which would be disproportionately affected. I cannot say that Neil died as a result of the common fisheries policy, but I can say that it contributed to the economic pressure he felt when deciding to fish alone. We talked about it and decided that it was better that he work alone in less rough water than work in storms to provide for two families.

I say we throw our fishermen a lifeline. Our Fisheries Minister has been to Brussels and seen for himself how little he can deliver through horse trading in the Council of Ministers over proposals put forward by the unelected European Commission. I say, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), that if we vote to leave, the Minister could make the decisions that apply to fishermen in the UK’s 200-mile median line limit.

As someone who has lived and breathed the UK fishing industry for 30 years, I say there are no economic benefits to UK fishermen from EU membership. About 92% of UK fishermen are calling for the UK to leave. I say we throw them a lifeline, vote to leave and take back control of our 200-mile line—80% of the total EU pond. We would not necessarily have to say to member states, “You can’t come and fish in our waters”, but it would be on our terms, not those arising from horse trading among 28 states sitting around the EU table debating proposals from the unelected, appointed, bureaucratic European Commission in Brussels.