The Government's Plan for Brexit

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill).

I respect the vote in principle of the people to leave the EU, but they made that vote on three grounds: more money, market access and lower migration. What we are seeing, however, is that instead of getting £350 million to the NHS, it is going to cost us £300 million a week; instead of higher living standards, we have 5% inflation because of depreciation eating away at people’s incomes; and borrowing is going up, so everyone will be in debt with another £1,000 to pay back.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Is the hon. Gentleman essentially saying the people got it wrong on 23 June?

[Geraint Davies]

I am saying that people were misled, so basically now we are going to have another year of austerity.

On market access, everyone is talking about a hard Brexit. It is all very well Nissan, Tata and others being paid billions of pounds under the table to bribe them, to compensate for the tariffs they will inevitably face, but we will have to pay for that in the end, and we do not have proper market access.