European Economic Area: UK Membership

Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Stephen Kinnock

Monday 6th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I agree that the financial services sector is critical to this debate, because passporting is required. There would be no passporting arrangements in a WTO deal, so the impact would be catastrophic. We must remember that the financial services sector is not just about the City of London; it supports 1 million jobs across the entire United Kingdom—in Edinburgh, Leeds and so on.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is not simply about lorries queuing? For example, it is also about shell fisheries. There would be lobsters sitting for days in tanks that would be unsellable at the other end.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Indeed, during our trip to Dover, we were informed about the impact in terms of rotting food and vegetables on the border. There are practical, tangible impacts that we must bear in mind when it comes to a no-deal Brexit.

The head of the EFTA court, Carl Baudenbacher, has been a vocal advocate of the UK’s joining EFTA permanently or at least as a short-term docking measure —an idea that the president of the European Court of Justice, Koen Lenaerts, similarly advocated over the summer. EEA-EFTA membership is emphatically not the same as membership of the single market or the customs union. The EEA is an internal market that is conjoined with most of the EU’s single market, but it is nevertheless a stand-alone structure with its own legal, regulatory, governance and institutional frameworks.