UK-EU Summit

Catherine Fookes Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I have visited Belfast as a Minister more than once, and I have listened very carefully to businesses in Northern Ireland about their priorities. Northern Ireland has dual-market access, and I am absolutely supportive of Northern Ireland taking the greatest possible economic advantage of that. On the Windsor framework and the checks at the border on the Irish sea, if we are able to secure a sanitary and phytosanitary deal, that will obviously reduce the necessity for checks at that border, which I hope the hon. Gentleman would be able to support.

On safety, the trade and co-operation agreement agreed by the Conservatives left a gap in our ability to tackle crime and criminality, and stopped opportunities to work with European countries on closing the loopholes allowing illegal migration. We have to improve on that. On security, which was raised by the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar, we are responding to a once-in-a-generation moment for the collective security of our continent through an ambitious UK-EU security and defence relationship. In the shadow of the 80th anniversary of VE Day, which gave us all powerful historical reminders in our constituencies up and down the country, securing our collective future is paramount.

I remind the House that NATO was the creation of that great post-war Labour Government of Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin. It has been the bedrock of our security over three quarters of a century after the treaty was signed, and that will not change. In fact, a new defence and security pact strengthens European security and strengthens NATO, and to suggest otherwise is irresponsible. The United Kingdom is rapidly increasing defence spending, and it is playing a leadership role on Ukraine. The only person who would benefit from talk of division across Europe is Vladimir Putin.

On growth, the Government’s central mission is to slash red tape at the border, making it easier for UK businesses to trade with the EU and to cut costs for businesses and consumers.

[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

I am so pleased that the Minister is trying to negotiate a new SPS deal and working to remove the red tape. Would he agree with me that businesses in my constituency, such as Tri-Wall in Monmouthshire, are absolutely desperate to remove that red tape, so they can increase exports again, as they did before the botched Brexit deal?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and businesses up and down the country will benefit from a reduction in trade barriers.

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[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

I am delighted to contribute to the debate. I was really pleased to hear the Minister say from the Dispatch Box that, at the EU summit, we will focus on safety, security and growth. And, boy, don’t we need growth, after 14 years of chaos and disaster from the Conservative party. Since leaving the EU in 2020, businesses in Monmouthshire and across the UK have faced the many barriers that resulted from the Tories’ botched Brexit deal.

I must declare an interest: I am a big fan of the EU. No, that does not mean that I want to rejoin the EU, contrary to what the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) said. We need a better trading deal for our farmers, and for businesses in Monmouthshire. I was lucky enough, when I was at Middlesex Polytechnic many years ago, to take part in the Erasmus scheme. I went to Europe for two years; I studied in France. I learned French and did my finals in French. That cultural exchange—that ability to go to another country—is so important for our future, and for our young people. That was even before I met my Catalan husband, so now I have lots of family in Barcelona. It is so important to have close ties with the European Union.

As a member of the UK-EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, I was delighted that we were received with open arms in Brussels earlier this year. Our trading relations with our nearest and largest partner are too important to be taken over by playground politics from the Conservative party. I am so pleased that the new Labour Government are seeking a more co-operative and mature relationship with the EU. As one MEP said, “Thank goodness the grown-ups are back in charge”.

Wales has a unique relationship with the EU, especially regarding our world famous, delicious and best-tasting Welsh lamb. Farmers and National Farmers Union Cymru have told me that we need a new SPS deal. In 2023 alone, Wales exported £600 million of food and drink to the EU, and a large proportion of that was red meat, but UK exports to the EU overall were down 19% in 2023.

[Ben Coleman]

On the subject of lamb, will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact—I asked this of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey)—that the previous Government negotiated a trade deal with Australia that a former Conservative Environment Secretary described as a disaster for our farmers, not least those farming lamb?

[Catherine Fookes]

Absolutely, I remember that well.

The reduction in exports is mainly due to the increase in paperwork, form-filling, and checks and barriers to trade. Some companies have simply given up because they have had such a difficult time dealing with the red tape. Companies have also had to put up prices, which has impacted consumers. For farmers, businesses and consumers, we need a strong, beneficial SPS agreement. I am so pleased that the Minister is working hard on this. Our Government’s No. 1 priority is economic growth, and that would be supported by growing co-operation with the EU.

Recently, I met people from businesses in my constituency that export to the EU for a proper discussion about what Brexit has meant for them. Sadly, I was unsurprised by what they had to say. I have already mentioned the increase in admin, which has hit their productivity; they are doing more work for less reward. Requirements for product information and documentation are creating a time-consuming and costly burden. Once the paperwork is all done, there is another set of challenges. One person I met said that delays at Calais were borderline unmanageable. That is especially impacting the small and medium-sized enterprises of Monmouthshire.

One person I spoke to at the roundtable said:

“The biggest issue currently is that inspections at Calais for our products are very slow and at the same time we are restricted in terms of time spent at the port due to dangerous goods that are included in the load. This is a balance that is barely manageable for us.”

A person from another company said:

“What a disaster Brexit was for the import/export business: for my company, although through the agreement we are now back to ‘zero tariff’, the net result is simply a huge increase in admin and transport costs, for which ultimately the consumer pays.”

Finally, a person said:

“Exhibiting in the EU is much more complex and requires greater admin”.

They gave this example: if a business takes as much as a screwdriver to an exhibition in the EU, it must fill in a form for that screwdriver, even though it is to be used only to put up an exhibition stand. They said that every single piece of equipment must be counted in and counted out.

Three overall strands emerged from my roundtable: we must remove trade barriers; we must have dynamic alignment of standards; and businesses in my constituency would like a return to some kind of youth exchange scheme, like the one I benefited from. Trade is one of the most pressing issues at hand as we seek to rebuild our relationship at the summit next week. Removing barriers to export will be essential for farmers, businesses and consumers in Monmouthshire as the Government pursue their vital mission of economic growth.

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[Catherine Fookes]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Mr Francois]

In a moment.

While we were in the customs union, it was possible to negotiate those agreements only collectively via the auspices of the EU. That is a fundamental difference. It is important to note that by using this critical Brexit freedom, we have been able to negotiate almost 80 independent trade deals with nations around the world since we left the EU, including important Commonwealth partners such as Australia, New Zealand, and now India. We have also joined the trans-Pacific partnership, which materially improves our access to Asian markets worth trillions of dollars. Moreover—

[Catherine Fookes]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Mr Francois]

If the hon. Lady will let me finish this point, I promise I will do so, but I want to enjoy this bit.

We now have the delightful visage of our ambassador to the United States, one Lord Mandelson, having to acknowledge through metaphorically gritted teeth that we have been able to negotiate a trade deal with the United States—albeit one that is limited in scope—only because we left his beloved European Union. I think our Peter is struggling with that.

I will give way to the hon. Lady, who has been patient.

[Catherine Fookes]

If those trade deals were such sunlit uplands and such wonderful deals, can the right hon. Member explain to me why our seafood exports to the EU plummeted by 80% since the Brexit deal? Why did that happen on his watch, if that deal was so good?

[Mr Francois]

The hon. Lady pre-empts me. If she will give me a moment, I will get to fishing very shortly.

The TCA—part 2, heading 5—contains transition arrangements relating to fishing. In essence, the TCA allowed for a period of over five years during which there would be temporary arrangements on access to UK waters by EU fishing fleets. After that, under international maritime arrangements, the United Kingdom would become solely responsible for its own territorial waters, out to 200 nautical miles in some places. As this transition period is now approaching its expiration in 2026, the EU is pushing very hard to maintain its access to our fishing waters and—it would seem—even to expand its access in certain cases, were we naive enough to give in. It would be a complete betrayal of our fishermen if the United Kingdom Labour Government were now to grant major concessions to the EU in what will become indisputably our own sovereign waters once again come 2026.

EU Trading Relationship

Catherine Fookes Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab) [R]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the trading relationship with the EU.

I declare an interest as the chair of the UK Trade and Business Commission. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and to colleagues on both sides of the House who supported the application.

It has never been so timely to talk trade, but before we look forward, we need to look back at how we arrived here. It has been 4,744 days since Prime Minister David Cameron promised the country a referendum on our future relationship with the European Union: in his words, a

“simple in or out choice”.

Ever since, the UK’s relationship with the European Union has been anything but simple.

In the decade that followed Cameron’s speech, successive Conservative Governments did everything in their power to distance the UK from our largest trading partner. In 2020, the trade and co-operation agreement was signed with an ideological zeal to diverge as much as possible from the EU. Agreed by the Conservatives and cheered on by Reform, it is a choice that we are all paying for. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the barriers to trade that were put up by leaving the EU have set the UK economy on course to lose more than £100 billion over the medium term. The London School of Economics has found that the increased barriers to trade have left the average person paying £250 more every year on their food shop.

Repairing the UK’s trading relationship with the EU is all the more important given the dramatic change in the position of the United States. Our Government deserve praise for their calm and measured response to tariffs, but none of us can presume to know what the position of the White House will be in six days, let alone in six months. By contrast, it is certain that the EU will remain the UK’s largest trading partner. The EU accounts for 42% of UK exports and 52% of imports. That is our most essential trading partnership.

I welcome all that the Labour Government have done in our first nine months to begin to repair and reset that relationship. Ours was the first Chancellor to attend a Eurogroup meeting since Brexit, and the Prime Minister has been in lockstep with fellow European leaders in shared support of Ukraine. The leadership of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor has established the opportunity for a substantive change in UK-EU relations, but it is vital that we seize that opportunity. I want to see the most ambitious trading deal possible and will focus my remarks on three points: first, the importance of a deal that includes mutual recognition of conformity assessments; secondly, the case for deep alignment between the UK and EU on goods and services; and thirdly, a bespoke visa-based youth mobility deal.

One of the failings of the trade and co-operation agreement was the lack of a mutual recognition agreement on conformity assessments, which are used to determine whether a product meets a country’s regulations for goods and to ensure safety, performance and compliance with legislative requirements. Conformity markings include the UK conformity assessed mark and the EU’s CE mark. With a mutual recognition agreement, countries that recognise each other’s conformity assessment bodies and procedures avoid duplication of testing and certification for goods. Without such an agreement, products made in the UK and intended for the EU cannot be tested here, and vice versa. The EU has conformity assessment MRAs in place with countries including Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada. The UK has them with the USA, Switzerland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Last month, a coalition of 19 business groups, including the Confederation of British Industry, Make UK and techUK, called for a UK-EU mutual recognition agreement and said that it would support export-led growth, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. I look forward to hearing the practical steps that the Minister is taking to help make that a reality.

My second point is about alignment with the EU on goods and services. When the Conservatives signed the TCA, the winners were the ideologues who advocated for the UK to become a version of Singapore-on-Thames. The losers were our businesses, especially those exporting goods. The last Government made an active choice to diverge from European Union regulations and standards. If we listen to business, it does not take long to see the impact. The British Chambers of Commerce surveyed its members on how they had been affected by the TCA: they listed challenges for business from red tape, bureaucracy, paperwork and delays in goods flowing through customs. Recently, the Chartered Institute of Export and International Trade has found that that has caused a staggering 2 billion extra pieces of paperwork for businesses since we left the EU.

Part of the answer must now come from closer alignment on goods and services once again. Earlier this year, Best for Britain commissioned Frontier Economics to model a scenario with

“an expansive approach to mutual recognition, in which the UK and the EU take active steps to minimise regulatory divergence and commit to recognising the equivalence of each other’s regulations.”

[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

At my recent business roundtable in Monmouthshire, I spoke to Tri-Wall, a business that exports to the EU. Instead of sending one lorryload of its goods to different countries all across the EU, it now has to send a different lorry to every country, which really increases its costs. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need closer alignment to avoid that kind of problem?

[Andrew Lewin]

I agree entirely. I have heard far too many stories exactly like that in communities across the country.

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[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin).

The post-Brexit trade deals delivered by the previous Conservative Government have just been appalling. They have not worked well for Wales. We have been flooded with New Zealand lamb—and, as we all know in this room, Welsh lamb is of course the best-tasting lamb in the world. I congratulate the Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), on his continued work on an SPS deal. We desperately need that for our hard-pressed farmers and for the businesses in my constituency of Monmouthshire.

I recently had a business roundtable with businesses such as TXO, Siltbuster, GreenMeadow and others. They said to me that they are drowning—of the 2 billion pieces of paper that were mentioned earlier, the businesses in my constituency must have 1 billion of them. They are drowning in paperwork, and it is slowing them down. To be honest, after I met with them, during my two-hour business roundtable, I was astonished and amazed that they had all stayed in Monmouthshire, employing local people, while continuing to face such a barrage of barriers and administration.

The No.1 thing that those businesses need is for us to remove some of those trade barriers. In order to smooth their trade, we need to keep our standards the same as those in the EU. That was the No.1 priority of all those businesses, and I congratulate all those who signed the letter saying that. We must have regulatory alignment if we are to grow. We must remember that this Government’s No.1 mission is economic growth. If we align with EU standards and continue to grow our trade with the EU, that is exactly what we will get.

I am delighted to be a member of the UK-EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly and to have gone to Brussels recently. We were welcomed with open arms by our MEP colleagues, because they said they felt that the grown-ups were back in the room; they were delighted with the leadership of the Prime Minister bringing us closer to Europe. I encourage the Government to continue to do that work.

Storm Darragh

Catherine Fookes Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Oppong-Asare]

The Government are working at pace to step up further preparations for winter. We are investing £2.4 billion up to March 2026 to improve flood resilience and better protect communities across the country. We are also looking at lessons from the floods, which are being fed directly in to the floods resilience taskforce that was set up under this new Government. That will look at flood defences and bolstering the nation’s resilience to extreme weather. I had the opportunity to attend the floods resilience taskforce with a wide range of stakeholders, and it is a positive way to address future issues. We recognise the significant impact flooding has on farmers and rural communities, which is why we are providing up to £50 million for internal drainage boards and an additional £60 million through the farming recovery fund.

[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for coming to the House to explain what has been going on in relation to Storm Darragh. Like everyone I thank the emergency services, and I also thank Monmouthshire county council for all the work it did this weekend. Over 2 million households lost power this weekend, including a group of constituents in Llangybi, one of whom was extremely vulnerable. Will the Minister share with us how many households have been reconnected?

[Ms Oppong-Asare]

As my hon. Friend mentions, up to 2.3 million customers lost power during the storm. As of this morning, as I mentioned, just under 24,000 customers are without power. The Government have been reassured that the operators are due to reconnect them all by tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine Fookes Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do understand the concerns of those who save to send their children to private school because they believe in aspiration and opportunity. Every single parent shares that aspiration to opportunity, whichever school they send their children to. Under the last Government, we did not have enough teachers in basic subjects in our state secondary schools. The Tories were prepared to tolerate that. I am not.

[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

Q13. Three million people across the country, including an estimated 70,000 in Wales, will benefit from Labour’s Budget measures on the minimum wage and the national living wage. Members should contrast that with the Leader of the Opposition, who said that the minimum wage was hurting businesses, or the shadow Chancellor, who called the minimum wage a “burden”. Does the Prime Minister agree that those comments underline that the Tories have no interest in protecting working people or boosting the income of the lowest paid?

[The Prime Minister]

It was the last Labour Government who introduced the national minimum wage—in the teeth of opposition from the Tory party. I am proud that this Government have now increased it by over 16%. That means an increase of over £2,500 a year for a full-time worker aged 18 to 20. Whether it is our Employment Rights Bill or decisions at the Budget, this is a Government who are proudly on the side of Britain’s working people.

Infected Blood Inquiry

Catherine Fookes Excerpts

Friday 26th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am sure the whole House sends its sympathies to the Blake family on the loss of their son Stuart in such appalling, tragic circumstances. As I indicated a moment or two ago, I do not think any of us can conceive of the grief of losing a child in those circumstances, but Stuart’s parents are clearly people who are affected—they are exactly the kind of people whom the scheme has in mind. Whether they are partners, parents, children, siblings or those who provided care, it is absolutely critical that the compensation body recognises their suffering.

[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. I would like to talk about Linda, one of my constituents, who sadly lost her husband Bill Dumbelton because of the infected blood scandal. He contracted HIV and hepatitis C, and lost his job when he told his employer that he had HIV. He had no life insurance—he was unable to get life insurance at that time because of his HIV status—so Linda had to pick up the pieces and deal with all the financial problems when he died. Can the Paymaster General please update the House on how the scheme will be used to compensate those affected by the scandal, including spouses such as Linda? Are the Government still aiming to make those final compensation payments by the end of the year?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. We are looking to make and start those compensation payments by the end of the year. Again, I am sure the whole House offers its sympathies to Linda on the loss of her husband. My hon. Friend highlights another problem when she speaks about the fact that Linda’s late partner could not secure life insurance at that time. Another aspect of this scandal was that the people who were both infected and affected were, in decades past, unable to access the support that they should have been able to access.