Leaving the EU: No Deal Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateMadeleine Moon
Main Page: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)Department Debates - View all Madeleine Moon's debates with the Department for Exiting the European Union
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberI do agree. I am sure that Members across the House have had concerned constituents coming up to them in advice surgeries, or on buses and trains and in the street, expressing their concern about the state of politics, the place we have got to in these negotiations, and the prospect of no deal. It is not often that members of the public talk about politics in the way that they are doing at the moment. They are talking about it in a very anxious state because they realise just how badly these negotiations have gone.
I do not think the Government accept the level of chaos that this will provide. My Ford factory has 24 deliveries of parts a day. If one of those lorries does not arrive, the factory will have to stop production for a day, which means a loss of half a million pounds. Zimmer Biomet makes knee and hip replacements and sends all its products from the Netherlands, which arrive in our hospitals on the day of surgery. It cannot guarantee that if the lorries are not coming through. There will be chaos in every aspect of life in this country.
I am grateful for that powerful point, and it applies to the whole of manufacturing. In the last two years, I have tried to visit all the major manufacturers across the UK and see for myself the systems they are running. Automobile manufacturing is a classic example, with goods coming in from the EU all the time. Those goods are tracked, so that it is known to the hour when they will arrive. In some operations, the components arrive four hours before they go on the production line. That is why any interruption of the current arrangements poses a real threat to manufacturing and why what is said about Dover not being ready for years, not months, is significant for manufacturing.