European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

John Baron Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady is being very generous in giving way, and I appreciate the manner in which she has introduced the debate, but may I gently remind her that predictions about the consequences of voting to leave or no deal have proved very wrong in the past? We heard dire economic predictions in 2016—for instance, it was predicted that by Christmas that year 500,000 more people would be unemployed—but the economic reality has been very different. The predictions were wrong then, and I suggest to her that they are wrong now.

[Yvette Cooper]

I think the hon. Gentleman is talking about the assessments of the impact on confidence that were made immediately after the referendum. Those were very different from the assessments of the impact of, for instance, World Trade Organisation tariffs, which are very practical, because it is clear what the impact will be on numbers, or on border capacity if customs checks are necessary. Those practical measures have not yet come into being, and I hope that they will not, because frictionless trade is important to our constituencies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers]

Needless to say, I strongly disagree with my hon. Friend. The people voted to leave the structure of the economic union, and they wanted to slam the door closed. They wanted a clean break. They were not thinking about our future relationship; they said, “We’ve had enough of the existing relationship.”

[Mr Baron]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I am sure he will agree that in addition to the emotion the people were proved right, because despite the predictions of doom and gloom in 2016, the economic reality since is that we have had a strong period of growth, and those investment decisions have been made in the full knowledge that we could be leaving with no deal on WTO terms.

[Martin Vickers]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

They made that decision to leave, and they expected us to leave—they certainly expected us to be leaving in a lot less than three years. It has been suggested that if we go back and rerun the referendum, people will change their mind because of the economic arguments and so on. The reality is very different. We should recognise, as I recall the Attorney General saying on one of his outings in the House on this issue, that this has now come down to a political decision, and the political decision should follow the result of the referendum. There would be an enormous backlash against not just the party in power but the political classes if we are not seen to walk through the door before us marked “exit.”

I urge the House to vote against Second Reading and to continue the battle. If we end up with no deal, so be it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I find it very strange, this condescending view that, “People did not know what they were voting for first time around, so we are going to give them a second vote. If we don’t like that result, we will give them a third and a fourth.” It is complete nonsense.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Baron]

No. Mr Speaker has told us to be brief, and I will be brief.

I ask the House to reflect for a moment and use moderation when it comes to this issue of so-called crashing out or falling off a cliff by leaving on no-deal WTO terms. I gently remind the House that in 2016 there were lots of dire predictions about what would happen if we voted to leave. We had predictions from the trade bodies, the business organisations and the Government—the Treasury Front Benchers. We had predictions of 500,000 extra unemployed by Christmas 2016, and the CBI came out with a figure of 950,000 extra unemployed within a couple of years. They all proved to be wrong, so much so that the Bank of England had to apologise.

What has happened since? We have had record low unemployment, record inward investment and record manufacturing output. I suggest to the House that the reason for that is that economic reality, trade and comparative advantage trump predictions. When we talk about comparative advantage, factors such as how low our corporation tax rates are compared with those in other countries, how much more flexible our labour markets are, our financial expertise, which is unrivalled—certainly within Europe—our research and development, and our top universities are more important, in aggregate, than WTO tariffs and leaving with no deal. The proof of the pudding is in the economic reality. We would all agree that a low unemployment rate is terribly important, as high unemployment is one of the social evils in our society, and our unemployment rate is nearly half that of the EU average. That is the issue in point. We trade with many countries outside the EU, very profitably, on WTO, no-deal terms, so I suggest to the House that if we want to respect the referendum result, the triggering of article 50 and our election manifestos, we should be leaving the EU on 12 April on no-deal, WTO terms if we cannot agree a deal before then.