European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

Does the Solicitor General accept that if we were to leave with no deal and we were trading under World Trade Organisation rules, that would necessitate a border, and that leaving with no deal is therefore inconsistent with Government policy as he has just stated it?

[The Solicitor General]

I entirely agree. The Government’s policy is to achieve a deal, because we are mindful of the points the hon. Gentleman and others understand.

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[Mr Vaizey]

It is great to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate. Yesterday’s was very entertaining and we did make a piece of fudge, and I am pleased to say that my side of the House got the biggest piece—I just want to put things beyond any doubt. Of course it was a fudge, because a lot of this is about compromise. Today’s debate is perhaps less entertaining, because we are debating far more serious issues to do with our economy, jobs and human rights.

I wish briefly to inject a slight note of reality into the debate and perhaps allow my constituents to contribute to it. I was emailed the other day by a small manufacturer based in my constituency on the subject of how it exports to the European Union. Some 60% of its manufactured goods, with an average price of about £150, go to countries in the EU. It told me that it was not necessarily worried about customs charges, but it is very worried about customs delays. Its customers in Germany and France know that if they order from this firm they get their goods in two or three days. Nevertheless, the costs are real. Its product costs 40% more for Norwegian customers than for Swedish customers, and 50% more for Swiss customers than for German customers. This company sends out 30,000 parcels a month. It is a great British employer, but the punchline is that its new distribution centre is going to be based in the EU, because of the 15% costs that are going to be added to its business by our decision to leave. The reason it has to compete is that its competitors are based not in the United States, Norway or Switzerland, but in Germany, France and Italy, and Brexit has given them an immediate advantage.

That is the reality of what we are talking about. We hear a lot of bluster. Whenever people who urge caution or realism about Brexit stand up, they are told to be optimistic and, indeed, patriotic. One prominent member of the Government compared Brexit to Y2K, which was an issue when, 18 years ago, double-digit computers were switching from the 20th century to the 21st. Apparently, Y2K was a ridiculous scare story and absolutely nothing happened. [Interruption.] This was the millennium bug; sorry, I am so old that I call it Y2K. A constituent emailed me to say that it is true that nothing happened with the millennium bug, but that was because, as he pointed out, thousands of people—he was one of them—delivered millions of lines of code, planned for it for five years and implemented the changes for two years, giving up their nights and weekends. The message to Government Front Benchers—perhaps the Foreign Secretary—is that changes of this nature are complex and difficult, and they take time and require planning. That is why the amendments we are debating are important and why a spirit of compromise and pragmatism must be injected into the debate.

To a certain extent, I am on repeat mode: I always like to have a bit about free trade deals in my Brexit speeches. We have already heard one speech saying that the EU is absolutely rubbish at free trade deals, but if we look at the large trading blocs’ free trade deals, I think it compares pretty well. It certainly compares well at the moment with the United States, which has come out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and is bitterly renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. The United States does not have a free trade deal with India or China, so we cannot really castigate the EU. The EU has free trade deals lined up with Japan and Singapore. Indeed, as the trade envoy to Vietnam, my instruction from the Department for International Trade is to secure a trade deal between the EU and Vietnam so that we can piggyback off the back of it.

As I have always said, trade deals are not easy to negotiate, but the EU can hold its head up high. We are often told that the EU holds back developing nations; it does have trade deals with developing nations and encourages them, but it quite rightly expects some give and take—for example, high labour standards, so that there is not unfair competition—and perhaps to have a voice in those countries on issues such as human rights.

I am not a dyed-in-the-wool Euro-fanatic, and I echo what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said when he cited Dan Hannan, because we all know that as a pragmatic Brexiteer, Dan Hannan has said repeatedly that we should try to stay in certain elements of the single market—that is in black and white. The ideology has to be stopped, and we have to look at things. That is not to say that the EU itself cannot reform. It should take Brexit as a signal of how it should be more flexible, and its legally based approach to the negotiations is unhelpful. Although I appreciate the irony of the Brexiteers who campaigned against Galileo now saying that we should have our own Galileo, for me it is an example of European Union inflexibility. The amendments are important, and I shall continue to listen to the debate. I look forward to further developments.

[Chuka Umunna]

I rise to speak in support of Lords amendments 1 and 51 on the customs union and the EEA. To be clear, I regard Brexit as rather like the hay fever from which I am currently suffering: it is consistently horrendous and there is very little that can mitigate the appalling effects. But I am absolutely clear that if we are to leave the European Union, the least worst option is for us to continue to participate in those two entities. All the evidence shows that, and many British businesses support it.

The arguments for the customs union have been well made by the Opposition Front Benchers, so I shall concentrate on the EEA. It is not the perfect model—I have never claimed otherwise—but it should be the starting point of any discussion if we say, as both main parties do, that we seek in any deal the exact same benefits as the single market. As has been said, the EU is clear—Michel Barnier said it yesterday—that we can be part of the customs union and the EEA. It is true that we would no longer have a vote on EEA rules at the EU Council; rather, we would be a rule shaper that served on the committees that draw up those rules.

Let us be honest, though: none of that really goes to the heart of where most concern about the EEA lies, which is with immigration and the continuation of some form of freedom of movement. Those are the big issues—the two elephants in the room. I am the son of an immigrant and I represent a constituency in which the majority of families are of an immigrant background, but I acknowledge that many of the communities that the Labour party represents are the opposite.

There is concern about immigration out there; we cannot duck it and we cannot ignore it. If we are honest, views are just as strong, if not stronger, in relation to non-EU immigration as they are in relation to EU immigration. There are parallels between the discontent in some of our traditional seats about EU immigration now and the discontent that there was about the Commonwealth immigration in the 1960s of which my late father was a part. There was, after all, a form of free movement from the Commonwealth until 1971, and there is now, of course, a form of EU free movement and would be if we were in the EEA. I do not deny, and I have never denied, that immigration can pose challenges, both economic and cultural, to communities, but it need not be that way if we implement the right policies.

As has been said, our former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has put forward a six-point package to address some of the concerns and better manage immigration, which includes acting to prevent the undercutting of wages by immigrants; removing newcomers after nine months if they fail to find a job; and putting in place a bigger fund to help mitigate the impact of migration on local communities. However, we need to do far more to help immigrants to integrate into their local communities, to speak English, to learn about the culture and so on. My father was so successful at that that he married an English woman and had mixed-heritage children.

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[Mr Speaker]

Let me encourage colleagues, please, to make brief interventions. There is very, very, very little time.

[Chuka Umunna]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman.

All the things I was talking about can be implemented now to better manage migration while we are part of the EEA, and I support them, but what are the real underlying causes of concern here? Not enough decent affordable housing; a shortage of school places; an NHS in crisis; and not enough well-paid and decent jobs. Let us not pretend that all these problems will disappear or be mitigated if we cease participating in the EEA. As hon. Members have said, they will get worse, because there will be less revenue going to the Exchequer to pay for those things.

Those underlying problems are no more the fault of European immigrants now than they were the fault of the Commonwealth citizens who came here in the 1960s and 1970s. Let us make no mistake: people in traditional Labour voting areas were saying exactly the same things about the Windrush generation, about south Asian immigration, and about the likes of my father from west Africa being the cause of our problems way back then, as they do now in respect of EU citizens. Curbing Commonwealth immigration then and ending EU free movement now did not and will not solve these problems, and we know it. That is why Labour Governments have always addressed those problems by properly funding the NHS, by having a national minimum wage, by investing in our schools and so on. That is why I will vote for the amendment tabled by my party’s Front-Bench team, and also for Lords amendment 2.

A colleague came up to me in the Tea Room yesterday. She represents a seat in the north-west and, to my surprise, she told me that she would also be voting for the Lords EEA amendment. I asked her how come she was doing that. Despite the issues and the challenges that I know that she and many of my colleagues have to deal with in respect of that issue, which I do not have to deal with in my own constituency, she said, “Yes, there are big concerns about immigration, certainly compared with your area, Chuka, but the bottom line is that we have nothing like the amount of immigration from the EU or from outside the EU as you do in your constituency. I know that the cause of our problems is not that immigration, so I will not go around saying that I agree with any claim that that is the case, because I know what that will do. It won’t help us deal with any of these problems, but what it will do is deprive people of jobs.” That is why I say to my Labour colleagues that we should not ignore this issue of immigration, but let us deal with the problems and underlying causes in a Labour way. That is what our history dictates.