UK Economy

Debate between George Kerevan and James Cartlidge

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to speak in this debate, which I very much welcome, because it is what we should be doing. There is a lot of excitement out in the rest of the estate at the moment, but following this enormous decision, with all its consequences, we should be sitting here as a packed Parliament discussing the huge impact. I very much welcome the shadow Chancellor’s point about the need for a cross-party approach, because this is potentially bigger than any party or any leader, no matter how charismatic or experienced they may be.

[George Kerevan]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could explain why this is an Opposition day debate and the Government did not call a debate on the economy after Brexit.

[James Cartlidge]

I am not an expert on “Erskine May”, but I understand that this slot was allocated for an Opposition day debate—[Interruption]—and there was a statement on the European summit.

I campaigned passionately for a remain vote, and I argued positively. I always set out what I thought was the positive case, but I have to say that in my view the negative case was made too often. We created a “cry wolf” situation: if we warn about some things too often, people eventually ignore us even when we are right. We must be honest and say that some of those predictions are coming true.

I believe that the country can come through this, come together and be stronger eventually, but if we are to do so, we initially have to recognise what we have lost and the strength that we have given up. The best way to look at this is to think of a very good Gwyneth Paltrow film—I do not know whether you have seen it, Madam Deputy Speaker—called “Sliding Doors”. We know what has happened: we have had the resignation of a great one nation Conservative Prime Minister; we once again, having reopened Pandora’s box, have the issue of Scotland; we undoubtedly, whatever the indices are showing, have turbulence in the financial markets; and we have profound uncertainty. The very best we can say is that we have a crisis of uncertainty. We hope that that will not be manifested as real pain in the economy, but it is quite obvious that there is a genuine risk of that and we must deal with it. As I said when I intervened on the shadow Chancellor, Fitch has issued a very serious warning of a 5% reduction in investment this year. The biggest threat is what might happen to inward investment. We must remember the current account deficit issue and the fact that the country is completely dependent on inward investment. If the big foreign firms look at this country less positively, we will pay a high price.

I mention “Sliding Doors” because if we had boarded the other tube train going to “Remainia” in the referendum —oh, how I wish that had been the case—