European Affairs

Debate between Chuka Umunna and Greg Hands

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

The Government are undertaking analyses of so many different factors involved in this particular arrangement and question. We have always made clear our commitment to ensuring that the House is properly apprised of all the relevant facts when it comes to examine the actual withdrawal agreement in due course.

As we prepare the ground at the Department for International Trade, its Ministers have made more than 100 overseas visits in the past year and a half. We have set up 14 trade working groups, covering 21 countries with a substantial market size. None of that would have been possible without the excellent work of our Department for International Trade staff, both at home and in post in 108 countries around the world. I put on the record my thanks for their hard work, professionalism and invaluable expertise.

[Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

The Minister is right to pay tribute to his Department’s staff. First, has he noted the comments of the Department’s recent former permanent secretary to the effect that, if we are to leave the European Union, non-EU trade will not make up for the loss of trade that we currently enjoy with the EU? Secondly, the Secretary of State was part of a campaign that promised that we would start negotiating new trade agreements with other non-EU countries as soon as we voted to leave. How many of those new trade agreements are being negotiated right now?

[Greg Hands]

The hon. Gentleman knows full well that this is not an either/or situation: it is not a choice between having trade with the European Union or with the rest of the world. The Government’s objectives are clear, namely, to secure a deep and comprehensive partnership with the European Union while still being able—crucially, outside the customs union—to pursue an independent trade policy and to secure those agreements with the rest of the world.

On what was said during the campaign, the Department for International Trade has the capability in place and we have built up the Department. I have mentioned the 14 trade working groups. We are clearly not able to carry out a trade negotiation while we are still members of the European Union, but the hon. Gentleman seems to be demanding that we have those negotiations while at the same time saying that we should stay in the EU, which would prevent us from having the negotiations in the first place.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Chuka Umunna and Greg Hands

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I will come on to that right now.

The Prime Minister said in a speech to the CBI in 2010:

“In five years’ time, we will have balanced the books.”

The Government have failed to do that. It is worth revisiting the promises made then before giving the Chancellor the congratulations he seeks now for this 2015 Budget. In June 2010 they set a forward-looking fiscal mandate to achieve a cyclically adjusted current balance by this financial year. It was a rolling target, but no one took the rolling nature of it very seriously, so let us put that to one side. In short, they were saying they would eliminate the deficit by this financial year. In 2010, by their own measure, we were told they would do this, achieving a surplus of 0.3% last year and 0.8% this year. That is what we were told would happen. In the event, the Chancellor completely failed to meet that goal. The deficit came in at 2.4% last year, is forecast to be 1.7% of GDP this year and does not move into a surplus until 2017-18, some three years later than planned on their own measures.

There was also a supplementary target for public sector net debt as a proportion of GDP to be falling by 2015-16. The Chancellor managed to achieve that through some jiggery-pokery with the numbers, namely rapid asset sales in the last Parliament to pay down enough of the debt for his supplementary target to be met. But rushed asset sales mean poor value for the taxpayer, as the disastrous sale of Royal Mail illustrated in technicolour.

It is also worth reflecting on what we were told the debt-to-GDP ratio would be in 2010. It was supposed to fall from 61.9% of GDP in 2010 to 69.4% and 67.4% last year and this year, but debt as a proportion of GDP was 80.8% last year and is forecast to be 80.3% this year.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Hands)]

It is falling.

[Mr Umunna]

The truth is—I say this to the Chief Secretary—the Government borrowed over £200 billion more than they planned in the last five years. That is more in five years than the last Labour Government borrowed in 13 years. Now they want us to pat them on the back for their failure. I will not do it.