Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Business and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

It is a pleasure to respond to this crucial debate on TTIP. We must set the debate in the context of Britain’s great trading history, from the wool trade of the middle ages and the spice routes of the 17th century to the Pax Britannica in Victorian times, which saw the Navy deployed to keep the lanes of trade open around the world. As a nation, we are deeply committed to free and fair exchange, and with remarkably few exceptions that was the consensus in today’s debate. With the abolition of the corn laws by a Conservative Prime Minister, we were the first country in the world to open ourselves up to foreign competition. Peel knew that one tackles the cost of living not by fixing markets but by setting them free, and that is a lesson that holds true today.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (UKIP)]

Is—[Interruption.] Is TTIP really about setting markets free, or is it about having a single regulatory system across the Atlantic whereby people will be forbidden from selling things unless they comply with those regulations?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before the Minister replies, if the hon. Gentleman has not been in the Chamber for the debate, and I judge by the mood of the House that that might well be the case, he should think carefully before intervening on the Minister and taking up time.