US Tariffs: Scotch Whisky

Debate between Conor Burns and Alan Brown

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns]

As I said before, we view this round of tariffs as wrong, ungrounded and without foundation. I do not share the hon. Lady’s overall concern. It is very important to remember that this goes beyond Scottish whisky—there are other sectors, such as cheese, clothing and so on that are caught in the crossfire of an almost ancient dispute, which goes back to 2004. They should not be, and we will do everything we can to try to persuade the United States that this is the wrong course of action and of the damage it will do to small producers, who are exactly the sort of people for whom the President says he wants to stand up in the United States. I hope that we can persuade him to protect those people here in the United Kingdom.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Given that I do not actually have a distillery in my constituency, I am in the unusual position of having more workers in my constituency employed in the neighbouring aerospace sector, at Prestwick airport, and in the Airbus supply chain. It is important for both sectors that this trade dispute is resolved as soon as possible. It is also quite obvious that, although whisky is a by-trade of this, unilaterally taking tariffs off American whiskey will not solve this, given the amount of trade we send to America. These negotiations are therefore important. Given that the Minister did not pick up the phone to the US ambassador while he was in Vietnam, did he contact the EU to see what it was doing about this?