EU Trade Agreements: Replication

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

If we get an agreement via the withdrawal agreement with our European Union partners, that is exactly what will happen: those agreements will roll over. Let me explain to the House why: the United Kingdom will be deemed by the European Union to continue to be party to those agreements. We will get continuity, but we will not get the same continuity if we do not get an agreement with the EU. Those who continue, by their actions, to make no deal more likely will have to be responsible for the consequences.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend and Somerset neighbour on achieving a deal with Switzerland so effectively. Does he share my enthusiasm that this is the beginning of an opportunity for this country to trade more freely, to be able to cut the cost of goods coming into the country and to stop acting as a protectionist racket for inefficient continental European companies?

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful to my parliamentary next-door neighbour for his comments. Indeed, we have a great opportunity as we leave the European Union and as we take up our independent seat at the World Trade Organisation to be champions for global liberal free trade at a time when the voices of protectionism are rising. That is important not only for the United Kingdom or, indeed, for the economic wellbeing of the trading world, but for the wellbeing of those we have managed to take out of abject poverty as a result of a liberal global trading environment.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

The Secretary of State makes a bewildering point, because I did not talk about being ill informed about the triggering of article 50, but he makes his own point and perhaps he understands what he means.

Now that the Prime Minister has finally brought her deal back to the House of Commons, it is hardly surprising that Members on both sides do not believe it to be in the best interests of our country. I know that she is now reaching out to her rather unlikely new-found friends in Unite and the GMB, and even to Opposition Members, but colleagues will recognise that this is a paradigm of too little, too late. Workers’ rights and environmental standards and protections are a vital part of Labour’s concern about the future relationship. We cannot agree that the UK should be in a situation in which we might fall behind our EU counterparts. The principle of non-regression from current levels makes it almost impossible to take action against the loss of a specific right but, as the TUC has made clear, what is required is not vague assurances but the binding long-term guarantees that working people need. These are not, even now, being offered.

On 10 December, the Prime Minister called a halt to the first part of the debate. She acknowledged that the package of the withdrawal agreement and the future political framework, as it stood, would not gain the support of the House. She undertook to change it and to come back with legally binding assurances on the backstop after listening to Members’ objections. Indeed, the Secretary of State for International Trade went as far as to say:

“I think it is very difficult to support the deal if we don’t get changes to the backstop… I’m not even sure if the cabinet will agree for it to be put to the House of Commons.”

Well, here it is, and here he is, but the only thing that has changed is that the Prime Minister has lost yet more votes, and more of the confidence of Members and of the country. The letter from the EU that she has brought back is a long way from the significant and legally effective commitment she promised last month. It is a reiteration of the EU’s existing position. She has delayed proceedings in a futile bid to run down the clock but, once again, nothing has changed.

Before the intermission in our debate, when the Prime Minister was trying to press her Back Benchers to support her, she claimed repeatedly that there was no possibility of renegotiation, but then, when defeat seemed inevitable, she scrambled back to Europe in a vain attempt to do precisely that.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

You are criticising—[Interruption.] I do apologise, Mr Speaker; Even Homer nods. The hon. Gentleman said that the Prime Minister told us that she could not renegotiate, but now criticises her for coming back saying she could not renegotiate, as she said. That seems a little unfair.

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman is extremely courteous and always punctilious about the truth of what is said in this Chamber. I simply stated the fact that the Prime Minister had said it was impossible to renegotiate but that, when she faced defeat, she tried to do what she herself had said was impossible.

The Government could have used some of this time to respond to the Treasury Committee by providing proper economic assessments containing an analysis of the Northern Ireland backstop and setting out the short-term economic impact of the Prime Minister’s proposed deal. On 11 December, the Committee published its report on the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration. It concluded:

“The White Paper scenario, which is akin to the Chequers proposal, represents the most optimistic and generous reading of the Political Declaration, insofar as it is consistent with it at all. It does not represent the central or most likely outcome under the Political Declaration. Therefore, it cannot be used to inform Parliament’s meaningful vote on the Withdrawal Agreement. The information provided includes no analysis of the Backstop, and there is no short-term analysis of any of the scenarios, including on public finances and on regional and sectoral job losses and gains. The Government has only provided long-term analysis, which does not show how the economy will transition to a new trading relationship, or the path taken by inflation and unemployment”.

The Chair of the Committee, the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), commented:

“The aim of this report is not to recommend how MPs should vote, but to ensure that MPs are as informed as possible when it comes to choosing a division lobby. Yet the Government has made this difficult to achieve. The Committee is disappointed that the Government has modelled its White Paper, which represents the most optimistic reading of the Political Declaration, rather than a more realistic scenario. The Committee is also disappointed that the Treasury has not analysed the backstop and fails to include short-term analysis of any of the scenarios, including impacts on public finances and on regional and sectoral job losses or gains.”

In the Chancellor’s letter responding to the Committee, he revealed that

“there is not yet sufficient specificity on detailed arrangements for modelling purposes, and therefore the provisions of the backstop have not been included in the analysis.”

Indeed! Members are being asked to take one of the most important decisions for our country on the basis of inadequate financial information, and it is precisely this lack of specificity that has left Members across the House unable to have confidence in the Prime Minister’s deal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

The problem with the withdrawal agreement is that it does not do what the Conservative party said we would do. In our manifesto, we said we would leave the customs union, but annex II, under the backstop provisions, would keep us in the customs union. We have had endless guarantees that the United Kingdom would not be divided, but the whole appendix divides Northern Ireland from the rest of Great Britain—something that Unionists are opposed to in principle, not just as the details of a treaty but because it seeks to divide our country.

The Conservatives and those who campaigned for Brexit always said that we must be free from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Why? Because it is a political court as well as a legal court, and because, Mr Speaker—I know you think this is very important—it could overrule this House and overrule our democracy. It could make laws for us that could not be stopped by Parliament—unless of course we withdrew altogether, which is what we are doing, with the purpose of taking away its authority to rule over us. For all this—for potentially being locked in a customs union, for dividing our nation up, and for allowing the European Court of Justice to continue—we are going to pay our European friends £39 billion of taxpayers’ money. For that we get nothing in return—no guarantee of any trade deal in future, but a vacuous political statement that could mean anything to anybody.

In the detail of this treaty and its failures, and its inability to deliver the Brexit that people voted for, perhaps we forget the economic benefits that come from making decisions for ourselves. We know from our own lives that the decisions we make for ourselves are likely to be better than those made for us by other people, but that is true as a nation as well, because any decision made in this House is accountable to the British people. The aim for us as politicians in all parties is to see the standard of living of the British people improve generation after generation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) said. That is something we seek to do. In the Conservative party, it was one of the founding principles that Disraeli followed—the “condition of the people” question.

The advantage of leaving the European Union is that we can once again make these decisions for ourselves. We can have a trade system that opens us up to the world, rather than being the fortress that the European Union has created to try to maintain its standard against the winds that blow from the rest of the world and have made the rest of the world grow so much faster than Europe has managed in recent times—a Europe that is mired in recession and economic failure.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that if he takes just a minute longer, he might persuade me to join him in the Lobby.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am delighted to hear that. I think there will be a cascade of Members going into the Lobby to vote against this bad deal, because it denies us the opportunities that will make Brexit a success. It takes us further away from the ability to open up our economy to the benefits of free trade and the benefits that would allow the prices of food, clothing and footwear to be reduced, increasing the standard of living, most particularly of the least well-off in society. Instead, we are tied into a protectionist racket that keeps prices high and makes our economy less efficient. The rest of the world is overtaking us and the whole of Europe because it becomes less competitive as it seeks an outmoded, anti-competitive system, thinking that it can simply protect itself.

In this withdrawal agreement, there is no end in sight to the backstop—it could go on for generations. How long did the backstop turn out to be for Norway when it voted not to join, before it got a fully-fledged deal of its own? Over 20 years. “Temporary” in European terms is, for most of us, a generation. Of course, “temporary” in parliamentary terms is even longer, as we remember with the Parliament Act 1911 and the Liberal promise never delivered on to abolish the income tax—typical of the Liberals, you might say, Mr Speaker.

We risk denying ourselves these extraordinary opportunities and, in doing so, taking ourselves away from the electorate, for whom we promised to deliver on Brexit. Ultimately, whatever we think, surely we owe it to our voters to deliver. Otherwise, why should they ever trust us again?

US Steel and Aluminium Tariffs

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is right that there is an issue of global overcapacity and that, as I have said, that must be tackled on a multilateral basis because it cannot be effectively tackled on a bilateral basis with the use of tariffs. That will not be a successful way of dealing with it. What it has resulted in is a great deal of energy being spent on blue on blue activity, rather than on dealing with the issue at source. However, he is wrong about the support to the steel industry. As of 8 November 2017, the Government have, for example, paid more than £207 million in compensation to the steel sector as an energy-intensive manufacturer.

The hon. Gentleman is also wrong about the Opposition’s vote against the Trade Bill. They voted against not the provisions of a Trade Remedies Authority, but the setting up of a Trade Remedies Authority, which would have meant that we had no defence whatsoever. He is wrong about another matter, too. The American President was not involved in the Bombardier dispute. That was a commercial dispute brought by Boeing and nothing to do with the US Administration. However, the hon. Gentleman is right on the precedent of national security. The problem with using national security, as has been done in this case through the section 232 mechanism, is twofold: first, if the United States were successful, it would set a precedent for others to do the same and to use national security as a pretext for protectionism; and, secondly, it leads the WTO into the realms of having to determine what is, and what is not, acceptable as a definition of national security. That is something that the WTO has always shied away from.

When it comes to the countermeasures, we will still want to see what the measures themselves are. Specifically, we have been talking to the Irish Government about the issue of bourbon being on the list because of the potential implications for the Scotch whisky industry and the Irish whiskey industry. We will want to continue those discussions with the Commission.

I made it very clear that we will have whatever safeguards are required. I do welcome the WTO dispute. If we are talking about the need for an international rules-based system, it is the appropriate mechanism for us to show our displeasure and that is the correct route for us to go down. Once we have left the European Union, I hope that we will have no problems with a UK exemption.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Will the President of the Board of Trade confirm that we are obliged not to seek an exemption for ourselves because of the duty of sincere co-operation, and that we can therefore can only do things with the EU? Does he share my concern that tit-for-tat retaliation is not in our interests and may make a trade war worse? The lesson of trade history is that protectionism is worst for the country that imposes it, and going tit for tat is therefore not in the national interest.

[Dr Fox]

My hon. Friend, as usual, raises interesting points. He is completely correct that a tit-for-tat dispute will help nobody. The United States has already seen an increase in the domestic price for steel. That means that input prices in the US are likely to rise, its output prices will ultimately rise and it will become less competitive, which is not an answer to its current trade predicament. When it comes to the position of the United Kingdom, had we been given an exemption by the US, we would still have been required to carry forward any counter- measures proposed and implemented by the European Union, but if we had implemented countermeasures without any measures actually having been applied to the United Kingdom, we would have been in breach of WTO law. It is a Catch-22.