Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

It is an enormous pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher).

It is obvious to absolutely everybody that this debate has absolutely nothing to do with covid and its impact on any EU negotiations and everything to do with the SNP which, true to form, just wants to do everything to stop Brexit happening. It must be galling for all Labour voters in Dudley and beyond to see not a single Labour Back-Bench MP stand up to speak on this matter. Not even the current Labour leader, one of the main architects of Labour’s remain stance, is present.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Where is he hiding?

[Marco Longhi]

He is indeed hiding.

As a new Member of Parliament, I have watched this place tear itself apart. I have watched it become an object of derision and despair. I have watched it lose the most fundamental element that differentiates our democracy from other Governments: this place acts on the will of its people.

Some Opposition Members might have more in common with people like the MEP Guy Verhofstadt. Just a couple of days ago he tweeted, with a delicate irony that so distinguishes his style and his deprecation of anything democratic:

“In 1988, Margaret Thatcher proudly declared that the barriers to trade in Europe were coming down”,

but, he thinks, with our leaving the EU, that the Conservative party—my party—

“is putting the barriers back up.”

So let us educate Mr Verhofstadt, shall we? We are quite happy to have a free trade agreement with the EU, just as the EU has with other non-EU member countries, and consequently there will be no border checks if that were to happen. However, we all know that the truth is that he, his European colleagues—and, it would seem, Opposition colleagues—want to make it as difficult as possible for us to leave and respect the democratic will of our people. He knows the truth, Mr Verhofstadt does, but he can’t handle the truth. As we forge free trade agreements worldwide, trade barriers will only continue to fall, whatever other patronising statements he might decide to make.

I should probably refer to the effect of covid on the negotiations, even though we know that that is nothing to do with the real merits of this debate. If we are to react quickly to the economic downturn caused by this pandemic, we must keep as much regulatory freedom as possible. We need to turbo-charge our free trade agreements and we need the ability to deliver services at pace. Adopting the so-called level playing field, or even continuing with the European Court’s jurisdiction in the UK, would put the brakes on our recovery as well as being utterly unacceptable, from a democratic perspective, to the people who voted. The people in my constituency of Dudley North overwhelmingly voted to leave the European Union. The general election in December last year proved yet again, at the fourth time of asking, that the United Kingdom wants to leave. Leave we shall, whatever agreement is reached, so let us just get on with it.