European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

One of the risks for Members taking interventions is that the very next point we are about to make is stolen, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will just remind the House that the president of the CBI this morning said:

“If we do not have a customs union, there are sectors of manufacturing society in the UK which risk becoming extinct... Be in no doubt, that is the reality.”

This is at the heart of the debate. If we destroy the manufacturing model that I just described, we destroy a vital part of the economy and job losses will be considerable. That is why there are such high levels of concern across the business community about the Government’s current approach.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is being very generous in taking interventions. Will he just tell the House whether he believes that Britain should remain in the EEA—yes or no?

[Keir Starmer]

For the benefit of the House, I am going to go through the customs union argument before moving on to discuss the EEA and the single market, and then I have other remarks to make. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will deal with his point when I deal with the EEA. I am currently dealing with the customs union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) used an analogy about the ship approaching the iceberg. He seemed to suggest that there are only two options: jumping off the side into the freezing cold water or taking to the life raft. There is indeed a third option, which is consulting the passengers about whether they would like to change the direction of the ship to avoid the iceberg in the first place. I hope that that is eventually what this country will do.

The right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) criticised the Government for adopting the European Research Group-inspired red lines. We have heard from the Minister that, for instance, the EEA does not pass our test. Well, that is the Government’s test. I cannot remember it being a test on 23 June 2016. Those red lines have led the Government into huge difficulties with the customs partnership. “Max fac” will cost business £20 billion. The Government’s current proposal for the customs arrangements appears on the amendment paper alongside the names of Members including the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) and the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond). Clearly, that is a fudge. As the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said, those two Members never agree on anything. The fact that an amendment stands in both their names suggests that it will not withstand the heat of the kitchen.

Neither do I think that Labour’s amendment—another huge dollop of fudge—will withstand the heat of the kitchen. I hope that at some point Labour will be able to explain how the UK can have full access to the internal market of the European Union with no new impediments to trade and common rights. Well, good luck with that. I think that is completely unachievable, and that it would be intellectually dishonest for anyone to support it today. Labour cannot have its cake and eat it, any more than the Government can, in relation to our departure from the EU.

The logical conclusion of many of the speeches we have heard today, by sensible Government Ministers and Labour Front Benchers, is that we should stay in the customs union and the EEA or, even better, stay in the customs union and the single market. Why not go the whole hog and simply stay in the European Union? Instead, we have this bizarre situation in which the Prime Minister, when I asked her earlier today whether there was any damage that Brexit could inflict that would cause her to change direction, is unable to say “No, there isn’t.” She said that she is committed to doing this, even though she, who was a remainer—many Government Members were remainers—knows that it will cause huge damage. That is something for which they will be held to account in future, as will Labour Front Benchers, who in many respects are equally complicit in delivering Brexit.

Unfortunately, I do not have time to go into any depth on the other amendments. We will be supporting Lords amendment 5, on the charter of fundamental rights; amendment (e) in lieu of Lords amendment 3, which is about environmental principles; and the family reunion proposal, which is amendment (i) to proposed amendment (a) to Lords amendment 24, because I am afraid the Minister gave no explanation at all why he would not support it.

In conclusion, the whole process for scrutinising these amendments brings shame on the House, and I hope that the much-maligned House of Lords will be able to do a much better job and that it will have much more time for scrutiny than we have been allowed in this Chamber.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

One thing that my constituents in Dover and Deal were absolutely clear about when they decided to vote by a large majority to leave the European Union was the need to take back control of our borders and to end uncontrolled EU immigration—to end free movement. It is not just in my constituency; it is regions across the country, including Labour leave areas, which I know feel the same way. It should therefore be a red line for this House to ensure that, whatever happens, free movement comes to an end, because our constituents up and down the land have been very clear about that.

We must also ensure that we take the full opportunities that leaving the European Union will afford this country. That is why we need to leave the customs union and why we cannot stay in the EEA. The truth is that 90% of future economic growth in this world of ours will come from outside the European Union. In recent decades, the share of global GDP represented by Europe has halved, from about a third to just about 15%. Europe is in relative decline. We do not have to go that way ourselves. We can jump forward to explore, trade and participate in the fast-growing areas of the planet. I am not saying that it will be easy, but it is an instruction that has been given to us by our constituents and by this nation. What is more, when it comes to trade in goods, it is important to remember that the European Union sells us £100 billion more goods than we sell to it. It is therefore in its interests to ensure that there is frictionless trade, more so than it is in our interests.

We need to ensure that we are fully prepared for every eventuality and every single kind of deal that we might do. That is why I am making the case that we need to modernise our systems. We have needed to modernise them for years, so it is no-regrets spending. We should modernise them because the border is no longer as it was in the 1950s, where we checked every lorry; the border is a tax point. With the systems in place that technology now enables, trusted traders could be required to account for their loads and we could ensure that there was no need for any checks at the border whatsoever. That includes Northern Ireland.

Those who are opposed to us leaving the European Union like to cite Northern Ireland, but the truth is that we do not need any infrastructure or any checks at the border. We can have frictionless trade through the border, with audits in workplaces and computer systems that ensure there are proper audits. Singapore has such a single-window system in place, and countries around the world have such systems. We need to take advantage of that, because that is the kind of future we can make, and that is why I have been making the case for that investment to be made.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Has he read the report by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee? Members of that Committee went all around the world and could not find anywhere where there was the frictionless trade of which he speaks. They include a number of leavers, but they came to that conclusion. He has to face up to that reality and tell us how he will to deliver the borders of which he speaks.

[Charlie Elphicke]

That is exactly why I have been setting out the case for how we can use technology and these sorts of system, with a trusted traders scheme, and how we can build on the WTO’s trade facilitation agreement, to which the European Union has signed up. We should be making this investment—we should have been making this investment many years ago.

[Mr Alister Jack (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

On either side of the Irish border, excise duties are different, VAT is different and the currency is different, and we have had a common travel area since 1923. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is no need to have friction with trade if we have a free trade agreement?

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend makes the perfect case, and it is the case I have made in a report in which I set out how we can achieve that and manage it positively. We need to use technology and to engage with European member states across the water. After all, customs arrangements and the accounting of customs are not done by Brussels; they are bilateral. We can have bilateral discussions with the French and with the Belgians at the port of Zeebrugge. We must realise that there is no need to have a search point at the border and that the border is a tax point. That is the essential point, and it is the same in Northern Ireland.

That is why I am personally confident that we can and should invest in this. That means investing properly in the road infrastructure on the way to the channel ports and investing properly in computer systems. It means investing in systems to ensure that checks can be carried out away from the border. It is no-regrets spending, and that is why the Government should be making that investment now, not waiting for whatever the deal is to do it.

[Caroline Flint]

Since the referendum, the debate has often been polarised in this place and outside it between hard-line Brexiteers who feel that we can walk away without a deal and walk off a cliff edge, and hard-line remainers who do not accept the result of the referendum and want to find whatever way possible to stay in the EU. That is why I am not supporting Lords amendment 51. The essential choice for Parliament is whether we accept the outcome of the referendum and the article 50 process and agree that the UK leaves the European Union in March 2019, or whether we seek to subvert that process. Perhaps the Norway option—the European economic area—suits that purpose.

The EEA agreement helped three small countries that could not persuade their people to adopt EU membership and that accepted having no say in return for single market membership. They accepted the role of rule takers, not rule makers, with second-class membership of the European Union. Much has been said about Michel Barnier saying this morning that he will give us membership of the EEA plus the customs union. Of course he would—he would bite off the Prime Minister’s hand for that deal, because apart from leaving without any deal, it is the worst deal for the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Kyle]

The single market is a law-based structure with a court acting as referee. That is from where its strength derives, and it is a strength that the EU will not weaken by giving full access to countries with divergent regulatory systems or standards. That is why I stand to support Lords amendment 51 and to associate myself with the earlier comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) about the Labour Front-Bench team and how they have responded to the challenges they face in bringing us together.

The EEA offers us access to the single market with the greatest flexibility that we are ever going to achieve, and, best of all, it already exists. In two years’ time, we will never be able to set up all the regulatory systems, checks and standards that we need to satisfy the EU that we are a reliable partner in our own right. It is only in this place that we seem to get away with bending the laws of nature or, in this case, common sense to ensure that we can make the argument that that is the case. We will not get the exact same benefits outside of the single market.

The truth is that the Government are not negotiating with the EU; they are negotiating with themselves and pretending that that has the same consequences. The people on the frontline of the economy are watching, and they are increasingly horrified by what they see. After two years of negotiations, the Government have returned with only one bankable promise: we will get another two years of negotiations. This time, however, we will be outside the EU, trying to negotiate exactly the same benefits that we have just given up. Negotiation is the new normal. There will be an ever-ending set of negotiations that are never going to end. People seem to believe that a set of negotiations will end in March or in two years’ time, but we will have a new set of negotiations every time the single market evolves, and that will open up every single one of the wounds that have been on display here today, not just once, not just for the next two years, but indefinitely.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Kyle]

I am not going to give way, because the hon. Gentleman has already spoken, but I look forward to debating with him when his constituency fills up with lorries after we leave the single market.

There is a lot I would like to say about the honest challenges raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley. She spoke to us in a respectful way, and I hope that she will see that I and others have been respectful to her and always will be.