Oral Answers to Questions

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was in Scotland last week, and the opinion there is very divided on this issue, as it is in the rest of the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate, as a democrat, that the vote in 2016 was a national vote—a United Kingdom vote—and we are pledged to respect the majority result, which was to leave the European Union.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

4. What recent assessment the Government have made of the economic effect of the UK leaving the EU customs union.

[The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Stephen Barclay)]

Any assessment will depend on the counterfactuals that it is measured against, and those were considered in the economic analysis that was put out in November.

[Gill Furniss]

Many of my constituents in Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough contact me regularly with their wide-ranging views on Brexit. Will the Secretary of State reassure them that they would be no worse off if we left without a customs union and without the elusive trade deal that the Secretary of State for International Trade has failed to deliver despite stating that it would be the easiest thing in human history to negotiate?