European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dhesi]

My hon. Friend corroborates what I have been trying to outline.

Rather than taking back control of public services, Brexit is likely to result in more public services being run at arm’s length from directly elected representatives, who will seek to avoid being held responsible for poor performance. It is also vital that our trade agreement with the EU does not prevent economic growth and the growth in jobs and prosperity that comes with exporting our goods.

New clause 21 is all about information, but where is the information for businesses and workers in my Slough constituency? Large businesses in my constituency such as Mars, the confectionary producer, have interconnected sites and factories across Europe, making up an integrated network in which raw materials are moved across borders. Finished products made in one country are packaged, distributed and sold in others. Representatives of Mars are concerned about the return of barriers to the supply chain and about the possible impact on jobs. During visits to their factory in my constituency, I was told:

“It is a fact that Europe after Brexit will remain a critical market for UK exports and likewise the UK will remain an important market for goods produced and manufactured in other European states. There can be no economic advantage from either side restricting trade with a large market situated on its doorstep. In simple terms, if the UK and the EU fail to agree on a new preferential deal, it will be to the detriment of all.”

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that a large company such as Mars is able to import cocoa, chocolate and nuts from African and Latin American states and get over all the trade complexities in that import business, so it is very easy for it to get over some minor issues that he is concerned about with regard to the EU trade?

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that, but I would point out to him that we already have trade agreements, which is why in a previous exchange in Parliament I pointed out that we need to ensure that we have increased access arrangements and that we continue with the existing access agreements for developing countries.

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[Mr Leslie]

The hon. Lady deals with the point incredibly well.

If we end frictionless trade or introduce barriers, with potentially the return of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, very significant problems will arise. The Government are either deluding themselves by saying, “There’s some miraculous blue-skies technological solution to all these things”, or deluding others because of the fudging and obfuscation that is going on, when, in moving from the phase 1 to the phase 2 process, they put in a form of words that seems to be interpreted in almost as many different ways as there are people reading them. They have kicked the issue into the long grass for now, but we are not going to be able to get to a decent deal without this unravelling.

[Ian Paisley]

The long list of checks that the hon. Gentleman read out that would be applicable are, as he knows, currently applied. That is done in a very mechanical way, often by computer through a trusted trader-type scheme. A lot of the mechanisms, procedures and protocols that he read out, especially for food and medical products, are already applied. What would lead to new and additional checks is a change in tariffs between our exports and imported goods. Therefore, surely the imperative for everyone in this House is to urgently get on to the part of the negotiations where we can get a tariff-free deal with the EU. Otherwise some of the issues that he highlighted will need to be covered.

[Mr Leslie]

I agree that we want to have a tariff-free relationship with our European neighbours—that much we can all agree on. However, the hon. Gentleman should look at the circumstances where we export to third countries outside the European Union that are not part of the free trade agreements that we have accrued over the 40 years of our membership of the European Union. Those free trade agreements are there for a reason. As we heard earlier, the reason people want out of the pure WTO arrangement and into an FTA is precisely that they want to minimise many of the transactional barriers and the inertia that can be there.

Let us take the car industry as an example. The chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the car industry’s own representative, is now voicing concerns about investment in the sector gradually beginning to ebb away, partly because of the uncertainty of this whole situation. The level of investment in the industry in the UK was £2.5 billion in 2015, then £1.6 billion in 2016, and it is heading to less than £1 billion this year. Car companies are “sitting on their hands”, according to the chief executive of the SMMT.

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[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Gentleman has highlighted this contradiction, so will he explain why the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has not signed new clause 13—after all, he is on the record as saying that staying in the customs union would be a “disaster”—and why, given that Labour Members were whipped to vote against staying in the customs union, they have now made a volte-face and decided that staying in it is a possibility? What actually is the decided and determined policy of the Labour party on this issue?

[Mr Leslie]

I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) can speak for himself; he has done in the past and will do so again. I take the view that we should not shilly-shally on this issue, but stand up and say that there are risks to business and to our borders from our ports and airports being clogged up. We should also say that there is an economic cost—revenue costs for the Treasury—that could mean years of Brexit austerity ahead. All hon. Members, whichever side of the House we are on, need to recognise that some of the responsibility for these things will fall on our shoulders if we do not stand up now and say that staying in the customs union is the right way to proceed.

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[Mr Baker]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his positive reaction to our amendment. The situation is as I have described it: our unshakeable objective is to secure the seamless continuation of existing market access to the UK, and to enhance it where possible.

[Ian Paisley]

This is the one amendment that would probably have attracted support from the Democratic Unionists, but, because of the assurances the Minister has given—and, importantly, the assurances the Prime Minister gave even today at the Dispatch Box—we feel relieved for Gibraltar’s sake. Is the Minister essentially saying that the protections he is now affording to Gibraltar effectively mean it will not be treated in any way differently from any other part of the United Kingdom?

[Mr Baker]

The position is as I have set out, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if, in all the circumstances, I stick to that position. I hope that he will understand the strength of our commitment from that. We will deliver on our assurances that Gibraltar businesses will enjoy continued access to the UK market, based on the Gibraltar authorities having already agreed to maintain full regulatory alignment with the UK.

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[Kate Hoey]

I have been clear since the day that I came into this House that I wanted us to get out of the European Union, and I am just delighted that I have lived long enough to see it happen.

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Lady has been totally consistent year after year in opposing EU encroachment on British laws. However, there has been not a chirp recently from some of the Members who supported amendment 7. They oppose European encroachment on our sovereignty, but they were very happy to raise some feigned hope about parliamentary sovereignty.

[Kate Hoey]

There is a lot in that.

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[Ian Paisley]

I recall the Minister asking the right hon. and learned Gentleman to list, after all his 47 years’ experience in this House, one occasion when he, a former Minister, would have put into the Bill what he is suggesting the Government should have put into the Bill. He could not claw anything back from his memory banks to that effect. Surely, what this Minister has said in the arguments he has put to the right hon. and learned Gentleman has completely dismantled new clause 54.

[Mr Clarke]

Parliament will have an opportunity to give its assent to the Government’s approach to the transition deal, which they are on the point of trying to negotiate over the next few weeks. I have never known a Government go into an international agreement and start negotiating something towards a conclusion without giving the House the opportunity to express its views and without subjecting themselves to the judgment of the House on the objectives they are declaring.

This transition deal—I think that this is agreed on all sides—is probably going to be agreed in the next month. We are about to go away for Christmas. Everybody is hoping we will have a clearer idea of the transition or implementation deal by the end of January. As things stand, I do not think this House has ever discussed this—it has never had a debate on the subject. No motion has been put before this House to approve what the Government are seeking to do. If the Government have their way, we are simply going to discover, when they come back from the next step in the negotiations, what exactly they have signed up to.

The reason it is important that we should put down this marker is that I want to stick with what was set out in Florence, which was a Government policy position. At this moment—over the course of this week—the Cabinet is having a discussion. There is an attempt to keep this secret, but, unfortunately, leaks are coming out in all directions, and I sympathise with the Prime Minister on that. The Cabinet is debating whether everyone is prepared to be bound by the Florence speech or whether some of its members want to reopen it and start modifying it. That is why this new clause is a chance to say that if that be the case, the overwhelming majority of Members confirm and approve what was set out in the Florence speech.

I hope that we will not see the extraordinary spectacle of the fear of right-wing Eurosceptics meaning that such lengths are gone to that the Government put a three-line whip on their Ministers and all their Back Benchers to cast a vote against the Florence speech, so that some room is left for them to be able to negotiate further with the Environment Secretary, the Foreign Secretary or whoever it is wanting to reopen it again. The Foreign Secretary made a speech before the Florence speech in which he tried to undermine the Prime Minister’s position going there. When she had made the Florence speech, he wrote an article a few days later—I think that I have this the right way round—putting out a starkly different interpretation of what she had said. This House of Commons has not so far had the opportunity to express an opinion, which is what new clause 54 is about.

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[Ian Murray]

If that is not the case for financial services—I can see the Minister shaking his head to indicate that it might not be—perhaps I can turn the Minister’s attention to the Scotch whisky industry. Is that a sector that the Government are determined to throw under the bus? What about our wonderful Aberdeen Angus beef sector? Will the country be flooded with antibiotic beef to allow us to get a deal with the US, which may be contradictory to our deal with the EU? If the Minister is saying no to all those sectors, which sectors will he throw under the bus? The Government and the Department have drawn red lines that the chief negotiator for the European Union has described as contradictory to the aspiration of keeping financial services in the passporting arrangements with the European Union.

[Ian Paisley]

The only red lines from the Labour party that I have read about recently are these. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has said that we must leave the single market to respect the referendum result. The shadow spokesman on Brexit, the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), has said that we must leave the customs union because it would be “a disaster” to stay in it. That is the only controversy I can see here.

[Ian Murray]

Nobody voted to leave the single market and customs union. As the Chancellor has said, nobody voted in the European Union referendum to make themselves poorer. If the shadow Chancellor wants to walk through the Lobby with the Conservatives to take us out of the customs union and the single market, I certainly do not agree with him on that. I have been elected to represent a constituency that voted 78% remain and that is dependent on financial services, small businesses and the very healthy Scotch whisky industry. It is incumbent on me to defend my constituents’ interests from a Government who would be quite happy to throw sectors under the bus to get a trade deal from any country anywhere in the world, even though we already have 57 free trade deals that benefit all the sectors that I represent.