Draft Consumer Protection (Enforcement) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

John Baron Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 General Committees

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Sir David. It is with deep regret that we find ourselves in a situation in which we are even considering leaving the EU with no deal—a decision that would have enormous political, social and economic impacts on the UK. There is no majority in the House for such a course of action. With 40 years’ worth of intertwined regulation and policies, the proposals introduced by the Government risk cutting the vital cross-border work that is so fundamental to the protections that our citizens enjoy.

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

Will the hon. Lady give some concrete evidence, rather than speculating, that leaving on WTO terms, on which we trade profitably with the rest of the world, would mean us being unable likewise to trade profitably with the EU, given that all the projections of fear and economic gloom predicted when we simply voted to leave have transparently been proved to be wrong?

[Gill Furniss]

I think it has been made clear by many experts, including at the Bank of England, that, should we crash out with no deal in a few weeks’ time, the economy will shrink by about 8%. We are here today to look at spending many millions of pounds.

[Mr Baron]

This is the same Bank of England that predicted economic woe if we voted to leave the European Union, suggested there would be 500,000 extra unemployed people by December 2016, and then had to apologise very publicly for getting it so wrong. I would caution against the hon. Lady quoting the Bank of England, because it got it so wrong last time.

[The Chair]

Before this continues, I remind Members that this is not an opportunity for a general debate on whether we should be leaving the European Union. The circumstances of this delegated legislation are very tight, so I remind hon. Members to keep their remarks specifically to the legislation we are discussing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelly Tolhurst]

The statutory instrument before us talks about UK enforcement, and that, through our UK enforcement agencies, which are already registered under EU law, will be retained under UK law. As always, this Government and our enforcement agencies are committed to the protection of consumers in this country and will do whatever they can, in the event of no deal, to ensure that the relationships with our European neighbours will be maintained as far as possible, but obviously a lot of that will rest with the EU and how it wants to deal with us after EU exit.

[Mr Baron]

The additional point, in answer to the SNP, is surely that we will have control over our own laws more and therefore can even enhance consumer protection within these shores—rather than following on the tails of the EU—and no doubt there will be many areas in which we do that.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comment; he is quite right. There are examples of where UK consumer law is superior to EU law in some elements, and this Government are committed to doing that. We will be able to maintain and, obviously, change our laws. Any EU provider selling into the UK market—whatever the product or services—will still have to comply with UK law and therefore be subject to UK enforcement agencies.

Question put and agreed to.