Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

I thought the days of doom and gloom and doubt were behind us and that even the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) would have livened up a bit and become a bit more optimistic about the United Kingdom’s future post Brexit, but obviously not. We were told that the UK’s role in the world would diminish, but we see 2021 as a year in which the UK stands tall in the world: we are hosting the G7 in Cornwall; we have COP26 in Glasgow; a global education conference will see us try to educate some of the poorest children in the world; and we are also going into the presidency of the UN Security Council.

More locally at home in the west midlands, there were many predictions in the years since the Brexit vote that we would see job losses and the end of production at, for example, Jaguar Land Rover. However, what have we seen over the past couple of weeks? A firm commitment by the company and investment in the west midlands—30,000 jobs and so many more thousands in the supply chain across the UK. The six new all-electric vehicles that will be built there will provide so much job security to so many people. A global green Britain—that is the impact of Brexit on my community.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said that many Conservative Members would have benefited from the Erasmus scheme. Well, I have news for her—I do not think they did, actually. Many of those who benefited from that scheme were middle-class people; it was disproportionately towards middle-class children. People like me from the background that I had in a working-class community in the suburbs of Birmingham did not have those sorts of opportunities. That is why I am pleased that we have an extra £100 million going into the Turing scheme, which will help people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Time and again, we see examples—I can think of just about 25 million—of Brexit’s positive impact on the United Kingdom. One of those example is vaccines, and today we see disgraceful vaccine nationalism being deployed by the European Union. If SNP Members ever wish to play “Just a Minute” on Radio 4, they would be the worst ever contestants, because we hear hesitation, deviation and repetition from them quite frequently: hesitation, because they want to talk about anything else and far be it from them to talk about any of the issues that are currently happening in the Scottish Government; deviation, because they want to talk about any issue that they do not have responsibility for; and repetition, because time and again they reignite the old debates in this House to cause more division. I thought we had put this behind us. We will see from Brexit that all four nations of the United Kingdom are going to prosper together.