European Free Trade Association

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is nice for a leaver to make just a brief contribution—perhaps you have heard enough from leavers, Mr Gapes. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) on securing this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), who made a powerful case from his point of view in relation to EFTA.

My view is that we should get behind the Government. We on this side of the Chamber should certainly be supporting the Prime Minister and the Government. To say that this is a Brexit-dominated Government, when the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, and the excellent Minister were remainers, paints an unfair picture. I think the Government are working in the interests of all the British people.

The Government decided to delegate the decision about whether we remain in or out of the European Union to the British people. There was a massive democratic process and we had the leave result. We are leaving in 413 days, so as my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk said, the clock is ticking.

In the referendum, the British people voted to end free movement, not to spend billions and billions of pounds each year with the EU, and to make our own laws in our own country that will be judged by our own judges. Within all that, Parliament should debate what Brexit looks like—quite rightly—and this debate is part of that.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Bone]

I cannot, because I have very little time.

It is right that the Government are saying, “Hang on. We’re the fifth biggest economy in the world. We want to make a bespoke deal.” The Brexit Secretary has described the deal as Canada plus plus plus, but he is really saying that it is a bespoke model. From that point of view, how can people object? We are in a unique situation. We already have a free trade arrangement with the European Union. It sells us £80 billion more of goods than we buy from it, so it is in its interest to have a deep and special relationship.

In conclusion, I hope the whole House will get behind the Government to achieve what must be in the British interest: a bespoke deal and a special relationship with the European Union. I urge my Conservative colleagues to stop carping at the Prime Minister, to get behind her and to support the Government, not vote against them. They should argue their case and let the Government take us out of the European Union in the best possible way in 413 days’ time.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to begin the winding-up speeches. Scotland’s preferred option was not to leave the European Union at all. It is dangerous to conduct this debate on the basis that all the arguments have been lost. I sympathise with a great deal of what hon. Members have said today, but their starting point seems to be, “We have now lost the argument—we are in for a hard Brexit and for coming out of the customs union and the single market, but let’s see how much we can salvage.” It is not too late for the Government to come to their senses and decide not to leave the single market or the customs union.

It is important that we continue to compare the benefits and disadvantages of EFTA membership not with the hard Brexit that we are heading for, but with where we are now. As hon. Members have said, we had a referendum over membership of the European Union but nobody in the United Kingdom has ever voted in a referendum on the single market or the customs union, so none of us has the right to say that we know how people feel about our membership of them.

I must remind hon. Members of the likely economic impact. Some have decided that the economic forecasts are not worth the paper that they are written on. Presumably they think the billions of pounds it costs to run the Department that produces those forecasts are not worth it either, so I look forward to the Estimates debate in a few weeks’ time—I can think of a big saving to our spending on the Treasury. The Scottish Government’s paper “Scotland’s Place in Europe” indicates that over the 10 years after Brexit, GDP in Scotland is likely to fall by £11 billion a year and public spending is likely to fall by £3.7 billion a year, on top of any reduction imposed from Westminster. That is twice Scotland’s total expenditure on further and higher education, which demonstrates the scale of economic damage that we face.

The UK Government say that they have not done any impact analysis, but they have done analysis of the impact, which is not the same thing. I have not yet seen those papers in their Fort Knox establishment on Parliament Street, so I can only quote from what has already been put in the public domain. The Buzzfeed papers show that the Treasury think that at best we will see a 2% reduction in economic growth, even if we remain in the single market, and at worst we could face an 8% reduction, which would be a recession like none that we have ever seen or ever want to see. We are talking about a serious threat to the economic and social wellbeing of these islands.

I recognise that membership of EFTA—if we are allowed in, although it is still not guaranteed that the four existing members will want us to join—would not be as bad for us as falling off the cliff edge, but it would still be significantly worse than where we are now. I hope that all hon. Members who have argued for EFTA today will not accept that the argument about full membership of the single market or the customs union has been lost. EFTA countries are not in the customs union; we heard evidence from several witnesses in the Exiting the European Union Committee yesterday about what that means for Switzerland. In some ways, the Swiss position appears to be closest to what the Government want, because officially it does not include free movement of people, although in practice it pretty much does.

[Heidi Alexander]

rose—

[Peter Grant]

I will give way once, but I am conscious of time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander]

I understand the note of caution that the hon. Gentleman articulates about EFTA, but I also understand that Scottish National party policy is to remain in the single market. If his party does not favour remaining in the European economic area by staying in EFTA, how does it propose to remain in the single market?

[Peter Grant]

As I said, our best option is to respect the wishes of the 62% not to be dragged out of the European Union, but if that option is taken off the table—