European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting
Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, and I agree with him.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we only need to look at the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiation —a negotiation on the basis of a trade deal that has taken almost two years and still is not fully completed—to get an answer about how long it takes to negotiate a trade deal when one already exists and economies are already partly aligned?

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; he is right. I fear that the Government platitudes about the ease of negotiating this deal skirt over the real challenges that will be faced and the need for some flexibility and provision to avoid the cliff edge.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes the point very well. Why all the secrecy for what was available in that room, because there was certainly no assessment—or analysis, if we are playing with words—of the impact of the policy choices facing the Government and the country?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

The education section starts by saying, “We will not touch on the effects on Horizon 2020 or Erasmus.” It does not touch at all on non-higher education. There is no impact assessment on summer schools or language teaching in this country. Clearly, the work was not really done even with an internet search.

[Paul Blomfield]

We are probably straying on to dangerous territory if we start talking about the content, such are the rules surrounding the documents until such time as they are made public, but those of us who have been there know that they provide no analysis and no impact assessment. So it was no surprise when the Secretary of State told the Brexit Committee last Wednesday that the Government had undertaken “no quantitative assessment” of the impact of leaving the customs union—just one of the policy choices we face. Yet just a few hours later, in a room just a few yards away, the Chancellor told the Treasury Committee that the Government had

“modelled and analysed a wide range of potential alternative structures between the EU and the UK, potential alternative arrangements and agreements that might be made.”

The Chancellor’s answer was developed in oral questions last Thursday by the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who is in his place. He said:

“Our sectoral analysis is made up of a wide mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses examining activity across sectors, regulatory and trade frameworks and the views of stakeholders.”—[Official Report, 14 December 2017; Vol. 633, c. 588.]

Let us bear in mind that the Secretary of State had said that no quantitative assessment has been undertaken on the impact of leaving the customs union. So in this

“qualitative and quantitative analysis of regulatory and trade frameworks”

have the Government for some reason exempted the customs union?