Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Callum McCaig Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

I think you are too young, Madam Deputy Speaker, to remember Sanatogen wine, but yesterday I was unfortunately on my sick bed. In fact, I was so ill—I do not expect any sympathy—that I could barely sip water, never mind Sanatogen wine, but today’s debate has been an absolute tonic. At times my blood pressure rose a little too high for comfort, but I think we have had a really good debate about this important agreement.

Unfortunately I have only about seven or eight minutes to try to answer all the points that have been raised, and I will fail in that. The usual rules apply, and anybody who has raised an important point will get a letter in response to it, because time—as ever—is against me. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on securing this debate, and hon. Members on the quality of almost all the speeches.

My hon. Friends the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), and for Newark (Robert Jenrick) raised a point about the unfortunate scare stories that have been put around. I gently chide the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) who spoke about the fact that the Government Benches were empty. In fact, many Members seem to have disappeared by the time he rose to speak—I am sure that was not a comment on his oratory. There were about 15 SNP Members in the Chamber, and it would be silly to suggest that those who were not present do not care about this important matter.

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Anna Soubry]

No I will not.

It does not enhance the reputation of the Chamber when hon. Members refer to the lack of people present, because that does not mean that other hon. Members are not in their rooms working and following the debate, or that they will not read it in Hansard. We all care, on all sides of the House, about this matter.

My hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole, for Aberconwy and for Newark made very important points about the scare stories. There has been a lot of unpleasantness around this matter. I would just say to the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) that perhaps he and others on the Labour Benches are now experiencing the sort of abuse and attack that, frankly, most of us on the Conservative Benches have been receiving for many, many years. This is really a rather good example of it. We have been told that we do not believe in our national health service, although we do, and that we want in some way to privatise it, which we do not. Equally, we have been told by an SNP Member that such was his concern that he decided to write to the Prime Minister and that the Prime Minister wrote back giving an unequivocal guarantee that neither the NHS nor any other public service was under threat from this agreement, at which point he—the hon. Gentleman—said it was not worth the paper it was written on. I do not think that that advances democracy; it is grossly insulting to the office of the Prime Minister and it does the hon. Gentleman no credit at all.

We then have the letter from the European Commission. I will not repeat it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole read out the most important points and put them on the record. Well, I hope hon. Members will take the view of the European Commission. It is a remarkable document from the EU. It is succinct and it answers good questions with good straight answers. It is absolutely clear that this trade agreement poses no threat to the national health service or any other bit of the public sector. It is most unfortunate that too many Opposition Members refuse to listen to the reality and take those assurances, and instead scaremonger and whip up a storm where no storm exists.

There has been criticism about an apparent lack of transparency. I am very grateful to the European Union, which during the course of the debate has tweeted a link to its website. I have visited its website. If Members follow me on Twitter, I will very happily provide a link to it. Again, I have to say—perhaps remarkably, although I am a firm supporter of our continued membership of the European Union; that is well known and has been known for donkeys’ years—in all seriousness that it absolutely lays out everything that is being negotiated very clearly in good plain English. The idea, therefore, that this is all being conducted in a secret manner is absolute nonsense.

It is very important to make the point that there have been six debates about TTIP in this place, and rightly so. That is exactly what this place does extremely well. Backbench Business debates, Westminster Hall debates—it matters not. They have all been opportunities, like today, for hon. Members quite properly to stand up and raise their concerns, as the hon. Member for Swansea West so ably did.