Commonwealth: Trade

Debate between Deidre Brock and Jake Berry

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jake Berry]

I will come to that point. We cannot offer enough plaudits to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire)—he is sitting here on my right—and our noble Friend Lord Marland for all the work that they have done to ensure that that first Commonwealth Trade Ministers meeting takes place next month.

In 2010 when I became a Member of Parliament, I was given a fantastic opportunity by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association to visit the Commonwealth parliamentary conference in Nairobi. I was delighted to attend, largely because I have always been a supporter of the Commonwealth, which is a unique family of nations, and all that it stands for and represents. In that meeting in Kenya, I was struck by an overwhelming message from parliamentarians from other Commonwealth countries: they had begun to believe that the Commonwealth did not matter to Britain anymore and that it had become of dwindling importance since Britain joined the EU. Notwithstanding the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), successive Governments of all political hues have neglected the Commonwealth and its tremendous potential.

Despite the neglect, it is at the time of our greatest national need that these countries have stood shoulder to shoulder with Britain. They have stood by us when, as a nation, we have faced our darkest hours. Commonwealth soldiers have left home to fight and die alongside British troops on far-flung battlefields half a world away from their home, in Europe, Africa, the middle east and south-east Asia. They have not forgotten our bond of shared culture and history that binds the Commonwealth together. It is now time for Britain to remember its old alliances. We must celebrate the Commonwealth and all that it represents.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the best ways to tackle poverty in Commonwealth countries is through renegotiating the many exploitative trade treaties that were signed in the bad old days of colonial rule, as advocated by my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin)?

[Jake Berry]

The best way for us to tackle poverty in the Commonwealth is for us to start trading freely and to make every single citizen of the Commonwealth richer. In truth, that is the best way of tackling it, along with other measures to which she referred.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon and our noble Friend Lord Marland. Together with the Maltese and the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, they have driven the issue of Commonwealth trade by organising the first ever Commonwealth heads of trade meeting, which takes place in London next month. That meeting has the sole purpose of increasing co-operation and trade between Commonwealth Governments and businesses. I hope it will put Commonwealth trade at the top of our Government’s agenda. Not only is it an exceptional meeting of Trade Ministers, but it is the perfect springboard for a successful meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting next year. I hope the Minister discusses next month’s meeting in his contribution to this debate, and takes the opportunity to put on record his commitment and that of our Government and his Department to expanding trade with our Commonwealth partners.

Royal Yacht Britannia: International Trade

Debate between Deidre Brock and Jake Berry

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock]

That semantic point is appreciated.

The yacht is promoted as the museum piece that she is, harking back to a time that cannot be recaptured: a piece from the days of steamships, polished and gleaming from bow to stern, beautifully cared for as a floating curiosity, but not a working ship, so recommissioning is out of the question. I assume Members have had a look at the YouGov poll and seen that the building of a new royal yacht is not supported. In fact, only among Conservative voters, by 41% to 39%, are there more people in favour of building it than not, and when we ask about whether the money to build and run a new ship could be justified, even Conservative voters turn against it.

It is notable, too, that Scotland has a more solid opposition to the idea than anywhere else: 60% against recommissioning, 66% against buying a new one and 68% think the costs cannot be justified. The costs, which are important at a time when working families have joined benefit claimants in the queues at food banks, are simply unjustifiable. We have heard there are lots of ways in which the yacht could be funded, but we have heard no firm proposals. As usual, the burden would fall on the long-suffering taxpayer. Like PFI and PPP and every other cunning plan that Governments come up with, it would cost the public purse, not private finance.

As has been mentioned, the old yacht had a crew of 250 and 21 officers drawn from the Navy. On royal duty it had a platoon of marines on board and warships accompanying it. I am guessing the Navy’s top brass do not have a new royal yacht as their dearest ambition, given the current state of their resources. Then we get to the capital costs. Are they to come from a defence budget already groaning under the pressure of carrying Trident, or are they to come from another part of the public purse? Given what we hear repeatedly about the shortages of equipment that armed forces personnel face, can anyone justify adding another capital spend to that burden?

[Jake Berry]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution to the debate. I think she is arguing that the public should not pay for the royal yacht, but would she support a royal yacht if it was funded privately?

[Deidre Brock]

The public say they are not supportive of the recommissioning of the yacht. That does not take into the account the running costs, which it has been suggested will come from several Departments, including the Department for International Trade. If the intent is to take the capital spend and running costs from elsewhere in the public purse, where will that blow fall? Given the austerity fetish that the former Chancellor inflicted on all of us and the reported comments of the current Chancellor that he intends to deliver on all of the already planned cuts, where exactly is the spare cash to come from? And how exactly does anyone square the fact that benefit sanctions mean that the poorest, weakest and most disadvantaged people are left to go cold and hungry, but we will all be paying for what must seem to them a new pleasure cruiser for the royal family? This is just a wistful throwback to the days of the Raj, a pleading with history to run backwards and ignore the dodgy bits on the way. This is a rosy-tinted fiction of a time that never was, a fond imagining that empire was a good thing and that fine gentlemen rise to the occasion upon demand.

It is reminiscent of John Major’s thoughts when he said,

“Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and—as George Orwell said—‘old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist’ and if we get our way—Shakespeare still read even in school. Britain will survive unamendable in all essentials.”

He was actually talking about why the UK should remain in the European Union. The current fantasy is a fairy story from the imagination of Brexiteers who imagine the UK has only to denounce the EU to rise again to great heights.

The sad and sorry Britannia plan sounds like the regrets of someone who has missed their chance drawing the tattered remnants of their dreams around them for whatever warmth they can offer while the world rushes by uncaringly. Flash-boat democracy has no place in the modern world, which has changed utterly from the day in 1997 that Britannia was decommissioned. We have emails, electronic trading, smartphones with more computing power than the moon landing craft, and entire businesses that exist only online. This is a different world from the world in which the yacht was decommissioned, never mind the world in which it was commissioned in the first place.