Mary Creagh
Main Page: Mary Creagh (Labour - Coventry East)Department Debates - View all Mary Creagh's debates with the Cabinet Office
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberMoreover, if one were being really pedantic one would have to say that the hon. Gentleman’s question did not contain a main verb.
It’s certainly not “Love Island”, is it Mr Speaker?
The G7 summit was a fiasco rescued only by our EU allies and friends who filled the vacuum of leadership created by President Trump’s tweets. Does his abandonment of the international rules-based trading system not reveal how important it is for us to stay in a customs union and in the European single market, not least for the environmental and social protections that any bilateral trade deals with third countries receive?
If we were in a customs union, we would not be able to negotiate our own trade deals and we would not be able to have an independent trade policy. We want to have that independent trade policy, so that we can negotiate trade deals around the rest of the world in our own interests. If we were in a customs union, we would be giving responsibility for our future trade deals to Brussels while not being a member of the European Union. That would mean it would have no incentive at all to negotiate trade deals in our interests. We need to have that independent trade policy and that means being outside a customs union.