Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) for securing this debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood). I noted his use of the term “take back control”, which I might use as well, but possibly running in a different direction. I would also like to inform the House that our Senedd in Wales is today holding the first ever debate on annibyniaeth—independence. In the light of the fact that we are also holding this debate here, and of the tenor in which it is being conducted, it is fair to say that the scaffolding of the UK is being strained to breaking by the unprecedented circumstances in which we find ourselves.

One of the dominant themes of our public debate since the 2016 EU referendum has been that power should lie closer to the people. The campaign was largely won on the emotional appeal of autonomy and control. “Vote leave and take back control” was the mantra that was repeated ad nauseam in debates inside this House and elsewhere. There was, and there remains, a clear emotional appeal to that message, and while I regretted Wales’s decision to vote to leave, back in 2016, I recognise that that vote reflected a genuine and justified dissatisfaction with our distance from where decisions are taken in our politics. Therefore, 2016 should have been a turning point and the beginning of a new process of truly bringing power closer to the people. We should have seen more devolution, not only to our national Parliaments but to local authority level. That vote should have started a process of bringing disengaged voters back into the democratic process, and of giving people real control over the decisions affecting their real lives.

The UK Government themselves acknowledged the need for that. The Brexit White Paper released in March 2017 proclaimed:

“As the powers to make these rules are repatriated to the UK from the EU, we have an opportunity to determine the level best placed to make new laws and policies on these issues, ensuring power sits closer to the people of the UK than ever before.”

Instead, what we have had is a centralisation of power—centralisation to these corridors here in Whitehall, standing in the way of powers that should have been in transit from Europe to our national Parliaments rather than empowering Whitehall further. If this were a true Union of equals, these former EU powers would have gone equally, naturally, to all our Parliaments. The process started with the EU withdrawal Act, which ensures that the only Parliament that will take back control is the one most removed from the lives of the ordinary people who many of us in the Opposition represent.

The UK internal market Bill threatens our powers further, by allowing Westminster to dictate trade, environmental, food and animal welfare standards and provisions and by giving Westminster control over state aid—a clear breach of devolution in spirit and actuality.

Westminster once again undermines our nations when it comes to an extension of the transition. The Welsh Government, as well as the Scottish Government, last month called for the transition period to be extended. They were ignored.

[Jacob Young]

The right hon. Lady mentioned the Welsh Government. Labour is in power in Wales, of course, yet Labour have not bothered to turn up to this debate. I congratulate the right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) on representing Wales on both sides of the House when Labour do not care.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

In these extraordinary circumstances, I will agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am deeply disappointed that where Labour are in power and when they have made a clear statement to an effect that is relevant to the title of this debate, they do not have people here to push that argument.

I turn back to the UK internal market Bill and beyond. The Westminster Government, in this matter and others, not only disregarded the approaches from the Scottish and Welsh Governments, but did not consult them when they gave official notice to extend the transition.

Now, of course, the coronavirus has affected every nation badly, Wales among them. A recent Office for National Statistics survey found that 46% of Welsh businesses have six months or less of cash reserves—the highest percentage among the UK nations. In just five months’ time, businesses that export to the EU will be subject to customs declarations regardless of whether or not a deal is struck, adding increased costs and immense red tape to businesses that are already struggling.

In 2018, HMRC estimated that each customs declaration form would cost an average of £32.50 to complete. The Government expect that about 400 million additional customs declarations a year will have to be made from next year. The 46% of Welsh businesses that do not have the cash reserves to see them beyond this year will simply be unable to afford the added costs, and we fear that Welsh exports will be deeply affected, even to the point of collapse.

Thousands of job losses have already been announced in Wales: in aerospace, manufacturing, media, and—most recently, today, with the announcement that 80 full-time jobs and 70 casual workers’ jobs are at risk—at the Urdd. The Urdd is a 90-year-old organisation that runs the largest youth festival in Europe. It is critical to Welsh cultural survival, and we have heard today that there is that threat to 150 jobs out of 320. That is deeply concerning.

[Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady mentioned the Urdd Eisteddfod, an important celebration of our Welsh language and culture. Another such example is the Royal Welsh Show, which has not yet received any support from the Welsh Government, despite the additional funding that the UK Government made available. Does she agree that it also deserves support?

[Liz Saville Roberts]

These cultural events are critical for us in Wales, but this year’s National Eisteddfod has been of course cancelled. Referring back, the Urdd is also one of the organisations that encourages our young people not just to learn Welsh at school, but to use it with each other and to have fun through the medium of Welsh. That support for the language is critical.

For a Government to be actively walking towards further disruption in January is reckless in the extreme, and I fear that it is all part of a plan. The disaster capitalists—those who profit from disaster—are now in charge, and they are gambling that the combined shocks caused by covid-19 and a destructive Brexit will allow them to reassemble the broken pieces into a radically different economic system. I urge the other Welsh Member here—I had to think ex tempore there—to consider the impact that a crash in January, on top of the covid-19 recession, will have on our constituencies and to consider the effect of the collapse in confidence on our fragile rural and tourism-dependent economies. We need that confidence, yet we see no confidence coming our way.

Plaid Cymru tabled a motion that gained the support of many Members on 13 March—right at the beginning of the pandemic—calling for an extension to the transition. The pandemic has changed everything, and we must now put all our energy into the recovery. The UK Government may have missed the deadline within the withdrawal agreement for a simple extension to the transition period, but that does not mean that we are bound to a January crash. There are other options, as other Members have rightly pointed out. I urge the Government to do the sensible thing—the common-sense thing—and to negotiate a real implementation period to protect our economy from the double blow of the pandemic and Brexit.