Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns]

We do not see these things as mutually exclusive. We are now going to be an independent sovereign nation, seeking free trade agreements around the world, liberating British business, with the opportunity to tap in to some of the fastest-growing economies around the world. We want a good deal with the EU and with partners around the world, to the mutual benefit and prosperity of all our citizens.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

4. What recent assessment she has made of the potential contribution of future foreign direct investment to the economy of each region of the UK.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

17. What recent assessment she has made of the potential contribution of future foreign direct investment to the economy of each region of the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Graham Stuart)]

Winning further foreign direct investment is crucial to the delivery of rising living standards and the levelling up of left-behind communities up and down the land. Companies such as Ferrero, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), which exports wonderful, quality chocolate all over the world, will potentially benefit, as will other UK chocolate producers, as a result of our UK-US free trade agreement.

[Nigel Mills]

I thank the Minister for that answer, and I join him in valuing the investment that Ferrero has brought to the old Thorntons factory. Most of the large employers in my constituency have had FDI at some point or other in their history, so what more can the Government do to ensure that that investment is spread out evenly across the country, and is not just focused in London and the south-east?

[Graham Stuart]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, because FDI is so important to the UK. Foreign-owned firms represent only 1% of businesses, yet they contribute 22% of economic output and deliver 15% of employment. My Department uses our regional teams right around the country, and in 110 countries around the world, to make sure that we get that message out. Only yesterday, I hosted a meeting with regional leaders from right across the UK at No. 10 to show the importance we attach, as my hon. Friend does, to sharing these FDI benefits right across the country.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

With regret, I cannot support this agreement, so I will vote against it tomorrow evening. That is not because I have ever been an ideological hard Brexiteer who advocated a clean break—I have always accepted that Brexit would lead to some compromises and a trade-off between a clean break and how close a relationship we wanted with the EU—but I do not believe that this deal is in the national interest, not least because I do not see or hear any sign of any commitment to what the future relationship for which we are trading our control will be.

This deal does not actually achieve any part of Brexit. The people who voted to leave in the referendum—as two thirds of my constituents who voted did —gave us an instruction to leave. Parliament’s triggering of article 50 and approval of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act took back control. The question before us in the withdrawal agreement is how much of that control we give away again in return for the sort of relationship that we want with the EU, but the problem is that we do not have that relationship set up. We are giving away whole chunks of control—for the next two years we are giving away almost all the control that we are taking back—and, more crucially, through the backstop that we are signing up to we are giving away our control over choosing the future partnership.

At the moment, we have a unilateral right to leave the EU. Once we approve the agreement, with that backstop in place, we will not have that choice any more. My fear with the backstop is not that we will not get a deal with the EU, but that the EU will only offer us a deal that involves much too close a relationship. It will almost certainly mean a stronger customs union than the backstop has, and more single market, and that will not be the Brexit that my constituents and this country voted for.

I agree with the Prime Minister when she says that we must deliver Brexit, and that not to do so would be a betrayal of the popular vote. My fear is that if we approve this agreement, we will not be able to deliver the Brexit that people voted for, and that is the real problem with it.

Two years ago, I would not have believed that this Government would bring to Parliament a deal for us to vote on that involved our paying £40 billion and giving away some of the control that we are taking back without having a future partnership in place. I would never have conceived of voting for that or of this House voting for that, and I suspect that, tomorrow, we will not. However, I recognise that we must find a way forward. To all those who will be in discussions over the next weeks on how to take this matter forward, I say that the only way forward is to reform the backstop so that we have an exit date, or to take the backstop out of the deal completely.

It is a ridiculous situation: something that is meant to be an insurance policy for the Irish may actually be the trigger for the hard border and the no-deal Brexit that they desperately do not want. Let us all be sensible about how we avoid whatever hard border that would be. I have been through the draft withdrawal document—all 500 and something pages of it—and there is still no definition of what a hard border is so that we can work out what we have to satisfy to get out of the backstop. I spent the early part of 2018, after the joint agreement, asking everybody I could to define the hard border that we had ruled out. Over the past year, I asked the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. We even went to Brussels to ask Michel Barnier to define the hard border that we were ruling out, and nobody would ever define what it was that we were guaranteeing not to have. That is the problem. How can we trust that we will ever get out of the backstop if we do not know what the requirements to get out of it are?

I say again that if this is meant to be an insurance policy, it would be a perverse situation if it brought about the calamity that it was trying to insure against. As I see it, the only way forward for us to leave the EU in an orderly manner and to avoid that so-called hard border is to fix the backstop or remove it. I urge the Government to try to negotiate that and the EU to agree to it, as that is the only way forward out of this.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

4. What steps his Department has taken to promote the merits of free trade to the public.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

11. What steps his Department has taken to promote the merits of free trade to the public.

[The Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade (Dr Liam Fox)]

The UK champions the opportunities created by free trade. As I said in my lecture at Speaker’s House last month, free trade increases prosperity, stability and, in turn, security. My Department engages businesses and the public to set out the economic and moral case for free trade: better UK jobs, consumer access to high-quality, well-priced goods and services, and lifting people in the developing world out of poverty.

[Dr Fox]

I agree with my hon. Friend that that provides enormous opportunities. Free trade has helped to lift more than 1 billion people out of poverty since 1990, and we will do all we can to continue to support the liberalisation of trade with developing countries. Indeed, we demonstrated that commitment by announcing £18 million to support the WTO’s enhanced integration framework in December at Buenos Aires.

[Nigel Mills]

A slightly surprising grouping, Mr Speaker. Does the Secretary of State agree that the public might be even more strongly in favour of free trade if they are completely convinced that the right remedies are in place for goods that come from countries that are perhaps not quite as keen on free trade as we are? The ceramics industry, for example, has a big base in my constituency, so will he ensure that, when we import products from countries that have a state-distorted market, the right powers are in place in the Bill?

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful for the support that my hon. Friend gives to the ceramics industry. It is, of course, necessary to have an international rules-based system. Where we have problems with that, it is our duty to try to improve it, not to try to break or leave the system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Should the Government intend to introduce legislation on this issue in the Queen’s Speech, we would want a consultative process so that stakeholders could make their views known. It is important that we do that in a very collegiate way, because that is, as he said, the way to maintain and maximise confidence.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

T4. The aerospace sector is of great importance in Derbyshire. What steps are the Government taking to promote the UK’s excellence in this sector around the world?

[Mark Garnier]

Our aim is absolutely to keep the UK as a leading aerospace—and, indeed, space—nation. We will continue to work with the industry through the aerospace growth partnership and to promote foreign investment, boost exports and grow high-value jobs here in the UK.