Stella Creasy
Main Page: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)Department Debates - View all Stella Creasy's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 day, 16 hours ago)
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Alex Burghart
It is freedom of movement for young people, is it not? What we are asking for today is for the Labour party to set out what its clear position is. In a moment, I will explain why that is very important.
The fact is that up until this point, we have seen chaos in these negotiations. That will be easy for the Labour party to understand, because on 24 February, we heard the Home Secretary rule out a youth mobility deal—the Government were not going to do it and were not looking into it. At the beginning of March, though, the Postmaster General suggested in a Westminster Hall debate that he was open to such a deal, but then on 24 April, the Postmaster General ruled it out again. [Interruption.] I mean the Paymaster General—would the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) like to be Postmaster General? Okay, Paymaster General it is. He ruled it out on 24 April, but then at the beginning of May, he once again ruled it in.
This does not end with the youth mobility scheme. On 23 January, Labour Ministers ruled out joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean area. Three days later, the Chancellor said that the Government were looking at it, and then on 3 February, the Government ruled it out again. The Government do not know what they are doing; they do not know what they want to achieve, have no objectives, and have very blurred red lines. There is an emerging sense that this will be a good deal—a good deal for the EU, in which the balance of benefits will run against the UK. Despite the fact that the Government do not wish to give a running commentary —they are content to give a running commentary to the press—it seems that the EU’s demands are being met in this negotiation, but because the UK has no demands, its demands cannot be met.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman has referred to “Quantum Leap”. The point about Sam Beckett is that he kept leaping back into the past, because he could not cope with the future—that does seem rather apposite. I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees with many Labour Members that one of the important things about next Monday is that we will be able to move forward on the security and defence partnership. Given the threat posed by President Putin, can the hon. Gentleman put aside his blindness to the benefits to this country of co-operating with Europe and at least agree that that partnership would be a good thing to secure?
Alex Burghart
I am glad to be the one to break it to the hon. Lady that we already co-operate with Europe on defence, and have done so for a very long time. She will know that the cornerstone of our defence is—and always has been, since the second world war—NATO. Now is an apt moment to remember that, because today is the 85th anniversary of the first speech that Sir Winston Churchill made as Prime Minister, given from that Dispatch Box, or, rather, from the Dispatch Box that was there before the Chamber was bombed. It was his “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech.
It is obviously incredibly important that we co-operate with our European partners on defence, but that is why we do. We spend 2.5% of GDP on defence—and the Opposition would like to spend 3%, and more—largely to help defend Europe, and we know of no reason, because the Government have not given one, why NATO is insufficient for that task.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
May I start with a warning to my colleagues elected in 2024? Many of us who were here between 2017 and 2019 have been deeply triggered by this debate, which has rerun and rehashed the debates of old. We have the scars on all our backs. I warn hon. Members: do not go down that rabbit hole. No good can come of it. [Interruption.] I wager that the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) is laughing because he knows how much—
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I am grateful to my neighbour for giving way. If she wants to deliberately not go down that rabbit hole, she should be talking to the Government Front Benchers.
Ms Creasy
And lo, Bugs Bunny did appear. We have also heard from the man I started arguing with 33 years ago as a young campaigner about the merits or otherwise of working with Europe. It appears that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) was on the other bus in the debates about Brexit. That is exactly it: our constituents, who might listen to this, would be horrified to see us going backwards again, acting as if the last 10 years had not happened and there was no evidence about what Brexit means.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Who is it that is trying to take us back to the past? It is the Government. Brexit is giving this country its new future and the Government are trying to turn the clock back. That is what is wrong.
Ms Creasy
I hate to warn the hon. Gentleman, but I have a horrible feeling that if he were to compare the speech he made today with many of those he made between 2017 and 2019, he might find that he would lose “Just a Minute” on the grounds of repetition. That is going backwards. This country deserves better.
Let me start with a clear statement of intent. Brexit has happened; we have left. I am not here to prosecute the argument to rejoin. We do not have time for that. What we need is a salvage operation, because of the damage that has been done, especially in a world with so much uncertainty, where tariffs are now part and parcel of the everyday conversation and the damage that is being done to our constituents.
We can fight many things in life, but geography really is not one of them, however hard some Members on the Conservative Benches try. We heard from the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) the continued myth that somehow the isolation to our status that Brexit has brought would bring us strength. The last 10 years—indeed, the last six months—have shown how clearly that is not the case. In fact, we are uniquely isolated and at risk as a nation. That is why what this Government are doing is absolutely right. They are getting on with signing trade deals, trying to sort out the damage that has been done and, indeed, looking for that hat-trick.
I have to say to Conservative Members that there is no conspiracy here. Those of us who were here in 2019 remember exactly the details of that deal and the fact that a five-year review process was written into it. What we are going to see next Monday is not some secret negotiation; it is part of the trade and co-operation process—[Interruption.] I hear Conservative Members chuntering. Hang on, I can see their tin foil hats! I beg them to look at the details of the agreement, which said clearly that there would be a renegotiation point, where we would review whether or not it was working. I am sorry that the shadow Minister is not in his place. He tried to claim affinity with Sam Beckett but frankly I suspect he is going to be more like Jim Trott from “The Vicar of Dibley”. He will say, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no”, and then have to say yes. The summit is not the end. It is the start of the process of reviewing the trade and co-operation agreement, and looking at what is in the best interests of this country.
Let me be clear: I am absolutely committed to the idea that there should be parliamentary scrutiny. My colleagues on the Front Bench will know that I have been concerned that the European Scrutiny Committee was deleted, because I think we should be able to discuss these matters. However, I think there probably ought to be a summit first in order for us to have something to discuss. I hope that will account for me putting in an advert for the Backbench Business debate that the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and I were going to have after the summit on 22 May, so that we parliamentarians may properly examine what comes out of it. Sadly, he is not in his place, which is a shame because I know how strongly he feels about these things, and I am sure he would want to talk about the benefits of Brexit and other mythical creatures. The summit is the starting gun. It is not the final deal, and it is really important to look at it in that way.
This is the test for the motion today. Are the Opposition really telling us that the trade and co-operation agreement is perfection? Is there absolutely nothing in that agreement that they would not wish to amend, revise or refine? Is there absolutely nothing in what it has delivered in the last five years that they are troubled by? For example, there are 1.8 million fewer jobs in our economy because of the Tory hard Brexit, and the academics who have studied this recognise that that figure will rise to 3 million by 2035. Trade is down 27% with the European Union—a bloc that we do five times more trade with than we do with America. Over 16,000 businesses have given up trading with Europe all together, because the truth about Brexit is that it was just paperwork—reams and reams of it—and small businesses in this country have sadly had to up sticks.
I declare an interest as the chair of the Labour Movement for Europe. I am not standing here arguing to rejoin, but I am a red against red tape and what I see is the amount of paperwork—[Interruption.] I am loving the fact that Conservative Members are chuntering from a sedentary position, as if this was some sort of revelation. Perhaps they can borrow some tin foil from their fellow Members and talk about a conspiracy. They would do better to reflect on the impact of the border trading operating model—an entirely self-inflicted wound by the previous Government on British farmers and British food supply chains that pushed up inflation, because charging for pallets of food coming into the country created more and more paperwork. Unless Conservative Members are genuinely telling us that they think “chef’s kiss” for the trade and co-operation agreement, it is right for us to look at whether there are things we can do to deal with the problems it has created for our constituents—including the £6.95 billion of additional cost to households—and to account for some of the myths that have been created.
Again, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire—he will accuse me of being obsessed, but let us look at what he talked about—said that somehow being out of the European Union made our response to covid better. Well, he might want to talk to the UK covid inquiry, which found that it was the reverse. It found that our failure to prepare was increased by the fact that we were dealing with a no-deal Brexit; it harmed our covid response. He might even want to reflect on the words of the UK medicines regulator, which said we could have used the emergency processes to bring forward our own vaccine. I am sure that is what he was talking about.
The hon. Member also talked about Ukraine. He might want to reflect, as he thinks about the summit on Monday, on how hard it was for us to make the case about the importance of standing with Ukraine from outside of the room, and that those who were less convinced who were part of the European Union would have heard our message more clearly if we were inside the room, particularly when it came to gas imports. We championed Ukraine, but we had to shout from outside rather than being part of the conversations from the start.
This summit needs a strong agenda, and that is exactly what this Government are talking about. It is an agenda focused on fixing the problems that this trade and co-operation agreement has created. That is what the public want—they agree with us. They do not want us to spend five to 10 years on treaty renegotiation and the possibility of rejoining; they want us to salvage this country from the damage that Brexit has done. Two thirds of the country say that Brexit is bad for the cost of living, and 65% say that it has had a negative impact on the economy. Opposition Members might want to reflect on the fact that that is nearly twice the number of people who think that immigration is bad for our economy.
The British public are not daft; they are wise about what needs to happen next. They understand the value of a defence deal. They understand that, in a world with Putin at our doorstep, with the challenges we face and the uncertainty in other parts of the world, it is absolutely right and proper, and will complement NATO, to work more closely with our European counterparts, to increase investment in the UK defence industry and to collaborate on crime. Those of us who used to have constituents whose needs were served by the EU arrest warrants know the damage that the previous Government’s deal has done. Those of us who want to see us stepping up the way we collaborate on international aid know that we need to get round the table with our European counterparts. The best way to tackle those who might be stuck on a boat, fleeing persecution, is to try to stop the conflict at the source. That is what collaborating on international aid with Europe could offer.
The public understand the value of an SPS deal, which my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) mentioned, and the value of the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention, which deals with the paperwork about rules of origin. Thanks to the Tory hard Brexit, those rules mean that every time a tomato is brought into this country to make a pizza in the Wirral, extra paperwork comes with it. The public would want us to look at the VAT rules, because small businesses are now struggling with 27 different VAT regimes. They would also want us to sort out the carbon border adjustment mechanism; that is how we save British steel, which will be affected if there is a divergence. We need to look at how the emissions trading schemes can be linked, and we can save British business £800 million in charges.
The public want us to look at mutual conformity assessments to try to reduce duplication. They want common sense on regulation. The previous Government tried to bring in separate regulatory regimes and, understandably, British business said, “That is twice the cost.” British businesses want to be able to sell to their neighbours; they do not want extra pieces of paperwork. The previous Government tried to make us have separate regulations on airline safety—as if an aeroplane taking off in London would need to follow a different set of regimes if it landed in Berlin. That is bonkers. Understandably, we walked back from it, and we should not go back to those kind of arguments just because those on the Conservative Benches have a blindness when it comes to Europe.
This Government have got their head on. They are looking at what they can do to help the chemicals industry and supply chains, and of course it is looking at what a deal on youth mobility might look like. This is a summit; it is about having the conversation, looking at the details and looking at how we can support apprenticeships through youth mobility. Clearly, youth mobility is not freedom of movement, otherwise I would have heard complaints from Opposition Members about the fact that we have freedom of movement deals with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay—[Interruption.] I can see a Conservative Member saying, “Yes, indeed.” I presume they are going to call for the abolition of freedom of movement from Canada, then; that would be consistency.
We could also do more to help our creative services and financial services, and, yes, to resolve some of the tensions in Northern Ireland. Many of us feel deeply that the people of Northern Ireland have suffered the most as a result of the Tory hard Brexit. Yes, we could do a deal on fishing. We could acknowledge the fact that our fisheries industry felt sold out by the previous Government by supporting them to be sustainable. All those are issues that we can return to in that Back-Bench debate, but we cannot do that if we do not have the summit. We cannot walk into the summit saying, “No, no, no.” We need to walk in saying, “What gives? What are the opportunities here? How can we solve some of these challenges?”
Many, many years ago, one of my next-door constituency neighbours was Winston Churchill. We on the Labour Benches have become the defenders of his vision of ending conflict in Europe. Conservative Members spend all their time fighting with each other and fighting a ghost. We need to talk about the future. We need to get away from the fantasy that somehow Brexit will deliver and start getting back to the cost of living crisis in our communities and how we can help people.
Danny Kruger
The hon. Lady mentioned Churchill, so I cannot let her sit down yet. She talked about conflict within the Conservative party. Winston Churchill had a few battles in his own party, as she might recall—he was not averse to that. Sometimes one has to stand up for what is right, which is what Conservative Brexiteers did. Does she really think that Winston Churchill would have supported the EU in its current form? Does she really think that he would have supported what the ECHR has become? How can she possibly claim Winston Churchill for the politics that she stands for? Go on!
Ms Creasy
I think Winston Churchill would turn in his grave if he saw what the Conservative party and its libertarian wing have become, and how the proud defence of our ability to participate in international organisations, and to speak up for freedom, for shared interests and for the national interest, have been diminished as a result of the previous Government’s approach to Brexit, as well as that of Conservative Members today.
I will draw my remarks to a close. The world is changing. We are living in a world in which trade, security, co-operation and climate issues move at pace. Many of us could not have predicted—remember, it has been only 120 days since President Trump was elected—what would happen next. Never more have we needed good relationships with our neighbours. Monday is about being good neighbours. The world might be changing, but we have the same old Conservative party, on the same page as Reform—that is all they seem to care about. We care about the British interest. I look forward to hearing what comes out of the summit, and I look forward to the Back-Bench debate to discuss it. That really is taking back control.