European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Debate between Ian Blackford and Liam Fox

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We will accept your guidance on these things, although I was looking forward to the debate that we were having.

Now that we see the scale of the bad Brexit deal, the question before the Scottish people is clear: which Union does Scotland wish to be part of? Which future will we choose: this broken Brexit Britain or the European Union? If this whole Brexit saga was truly about sovereignty, the Scottish people cannot and will not be denied our sovereign right to that self-determination. No democrat and nobody in this House should stand in the way of that—even boris with a small b. The Tory denial of democracy is a position that cannot and will not hold. Scotland will have the right to choose its own future.

Now that the detail of this deal is finally in front of us, people hope that Brexit fictions are swiftly replaced with Brexit facts. Judging by the Prime Minister’s performance today, his Government are still drowning in delusion or simply just putting on an act, but for those of us who have lived in the real world these past four years, it is long past time that reality finally bursts the Brexit bubble. In recent days we have heard wild celebrations and claims from leading Brexit cheerleaders that this is the largest free trade deal in history. I am sorry to inform them that it is not. The biggest and best free trading bloc in the world is the one that this Tory Government are dragging Scotland out of. It is made up of 27 nations and 500 million citizens. It is called the European Union.

In the middle of a pandemic and economic recession, Scotland has been removed from a market worth £16 billion in exports to Scottish companies and a market which, by population, is seven times the size of the United Kingdom. Leaving the European single market and customs union would be damaging at any time, but in the middle of the current crisis, Prime Minister, it is unforgivable. It is an act of economic vandalism, pure and simple.

As usual with the Tories, it is people who will pay the price. Initial Scottish Government modelling estimates that the deal could cut Scotland’s GDP by around 6.1%—that is £9 billion in 2016 cash terms by 2030. That will leave people in Scotland—the same people who have always opposed Brexit—£1,600 poorer. That is the cost of the Prime Minister’s Brexit.

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Perhaps he could tell us what estimate he has made of the cost to the Scottish economy of losing access to the UK single market through independence.