Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

A very happy St Patrick’s Day to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will not say it in Welsh, even though St Patrick was Welsh and was born near to me in Neath Port Talbot in Banwen.

I have a lot of sympathy for this motion, partly because it does not mention independence. It sets out the predictable disaster that Brexit has been, which has been made so much worse by an appalling Tory deal. I am acutely aware of the strange irony of having nationalists against nationalism, both in the case of the SNP, which opposed Brexit, yet want to break up Britain—I suppose that it will be breaking up Scotland next—and that of the Tory nationalists, who wanted to break away from the EU but do not want to break away from Scotland. I am an internationalist and want to see us together as one Union and in closer alignment with the EU.

The simple fact is that the Budget confirms—as the Office for Budget Responsibility said—that the appalling Brexit that has been negotiated will cut our economy by some 4%, which equates to about 1.4 million jobs lost according to the Office for National Statistics. That will cost everybody in this country about £1,300, so it will cost a family of four about £5,000. That is not as much as would be lost by Scottish independence, as confirmed by the London School of Economics, but we are here to talk about Brexit.

The people who voted for Brexit, many of whom I represent, presented good ideas of wanting more jobs, more money and more control. That is what they were promised. There is nothing wrong with wanting those things. The problem is that they did not get them. They were promised an “oven-ready” Brexit, but the oven was turned off during lockdown and the pandemic. The Welsh and Scottish First Ministers both wrote to the Prime Minister in June and September to say, “Why do we not extend the transition period, because we will lose preparedness and negotiation time? And if we are Brexiting, let’s get the best Brexit.” Stupidly, of course—the Welsh First Minister recently said he was “baffled” by this—the Government and the Prime Minister decided that they would go ahead, and look where we have ended up. We have massive reductions in our exports. There will be impairments to our imports from April, so instead, the Prime Minister delivered a half-filled sack on Christmas eve with no services inside, despite the fact that 42% of our exports to the EU are services. We have ended up just saying, “Let’s have more deals under the comprehensive and progressive trans-Pacific partnership”, but the Japanese one is worth £1.6 billion when it would have been worth £2.6 billion through the EU.

In summary, I am a man who wants to see us as four nations, in closer alignment to the EU, and the Government not to hide the problems of Brexit through covid, and, incidentally, not to stop people marching—if they do eventually want to resume membership—through the awful Bill banning protest yesterday. Let’s stay together.