Leaving the EU: Implications for Scotland

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Gibson]

That is quite an interesting point. I hope to maintain a respectful dialogue in this debate. I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that the former Tory leader and Prime Minister, John Major, has called the handling of Brexit “bad politics” and a “grand folly” dictated by “ultra Brexiteers”. He has also said:

“Many electors know they were misled”.

How people voted in the EU referendum, therefore, is beside the point. I want to focus on the damage that is being done to Scotland, because a lot of people have watched the unfolding of the Brexit process with horror and alarm.

The UK Government’s own leaked analysis has shown that Scotland’s GDP could face a hit of up to 9%, with analysis from the Fraser of Allander Institute showing that a hard Brexit could cost Scotland up to 80,000 jobs. The final figure could be higher or lower—we have no idea at the moment. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has revealed that Brexit has already cost each household £900.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point: we do not really know at the moment. That is true of all forecasts in any context. We do not really know. What we need to do, however, is pull together our Governments, countries and peoples, to make a success of what will inevitably happen, given the passing of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. We are leaving the European Union, therefore we need to work together. No one knows what will happen, but we are responsible for making our own future. We are the masters of our own fate.

[Patricia Gibson]

The hon. Gentleman is correct. We know that until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed. In that context it is hard to make final predictions. I say to him, however, that we have experts whose minds are more academic on this issue than his or mine, and their opinions matter. Independent forecasters, the UK Government’s own analysis, the Fraser of Allander Institute, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Economic and Social Research Institute and the National Farmers Union have all expressed real concern about what Brexit means for Scotland. I direct the hon. Gentleman to those sources, not to what I am saying.

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[Patricia Gibson]

I will simply respond to my hon. and learned Friend by saying that that is why the Lib Dems are increasingly irrelevant in UK and Scottish politics.

[Stephen Kerr]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Patricia Gibson]

I will make some progress. We in the SNP believe that the Government should negotiate to stay in the single market and the customs union, not least to protect the exchange of citizens’ rights between the EU and the UK.

Another area of huge concern is the importance of the single market and the customs union to protecting our social, trade and investment partnerships with EU businesses and Governments. The Scottish Government’s impact analysis has shown that a failure to remain in the single market and the customs union, or to secure a free trade agreement, would see Scotland’s GDP around £12.7 billion lower by 2030 than it would be under continued EU membership. That would mean a loss equivalent to £2,300 per person in Scotland. In addition, the impact analysis shows that a so-called Canada-type deal with the EU would still leave Scotland’s GDP £9 billion lower by 2030, or £1,610 per head.

Scotland’s food and drink exports have reached £6 billion—the highest level ever—with the EU being the largest market. However, the Economic and Social Research Institute reported that a hard Brexit would result in up to a 90% fall in exports to the EU from Scotland. Those are important voices from industry, and everybody who cares about Scotland’s economic prospects should listen to them. A hard Brexit would leave the UK isolated on the world stage and expose the country to a regulatory race to the bottom, compromising our trading relationships and consumer standards.

The right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) has said that Brexit was an opportunity for widespread deregulation. The Foreign Secretary has said, “Scrap social Europe”. Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP, said that all contracts between employers and employees should be “free contracts” with no statutory protection. There is no question but that Brexit will see a bonfire of British workers’ rights, given that those words come from the governing party. I do not claim to speak for the people of England, and nor should I, but we in Scotland are alarmed by those comments, which go against the values and beliefs that the people of Scotland hold dear.

The Secretary of State for International Trade is on the record as being “relaxed” about the diminution of food standards post Brexit, although the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said he is opposed to it. The Prime Minister simply responded that the questions were “hypothetical”. Food standards that are currently banned across the EU may become permissible in the UK post Brexit, which precipitates concerns about the proverbial race to the bottom. More relaxed standards have implications for animal welfare and raise potential environmental and public health concerns. Will Scotland really have to endure such standards post Brexit? Is that what was meant by taking back control?

The UK will seek to pursue new trade deals, particularly with the US. Since we already know that procurement and public contracts are important objectives for the US in negotiating a trade deal, as demonstrated by the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations, Scotland’s public services are at risk of being bargained off in new agreements. For the people of Scotland, that is simply unacceptable. Hon. Members across the House will know that, because they, too, will have received countless emails from constituents about it. If any hon. Member in the Chamber has not received any emails about the issue, they should feel free to intervene now.

A growing number of people in Scotland are bewildered. In Scotland, we had a referendum on EU membership, which there was no evidence that Scotland wanted. We in Scotland voted to remain in the EU by a convincing majority, but we are now being removed against our will from a family of nations of which we wish to remain part. To add insult to injury, Scotland’s voice in the UK negotiations has been summarily ignored. We all witnessed the farce on 12 June. Despite the implications of Scotland being dragged out of the EU, we were allocated a mere 19 minutes. Not one Scottish MP from any party was permitted to speak and there was no protected time for the debate. We witnessed an unprecedented ripping up of the devolution settlement, with Scotland’s voice silenced.

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[Patricia Gibson]

I am dealing with this intervention—one at a time! The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) will find that the Prime Minister’s Cabinet has also expanded as she tries to hold together an unholy coalition of Brexiteers and people with a bit of sense, of whom there are increasingly few in the Cabinet.

[Stephen Kerr]

I have a simple question for the hon. Lady: if there has been a power grab, why did Nicola Sturgeon expand her Cabinet? Is it not factually correct that it was because there are new powers now and there are new powers coming?

[Patricia Gibson]

It is that kind of attitude that has seen my party’s membership soar by 10,000 people in a short period of time. The hon. Gentleman says “if there has been a power grab”, which suggests there has not been one—[Interruption.] If you make an intervention, you have to let me answer. That is how the game works. It appears that this is a game for some people, but it is about your country of Scotland and the people you represent. If you let me speak, we might get somewhere.

To dismiss the fact that there has been a power grab shows a breath-taking contempt for devolution and the Scottish Parliament. Under the Scotland Act—

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[Stephen Kerr]

You’re in charge.

[Patricia Gibson]

It doesn’t stop people shouting.

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[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

There is a Scottish comedic character, made famous by Rikki Fulton, by the name of the Reverend I.M. Jolly. He is famed because he is miserable. He can never bring himself to be upbeat, positive or optimistic. I am afraid that that caricature is one that the SNP seems to have voluntarily adopted. It is being so cheerful that keeps it going. It fits the SNP’s narrative to spread doom and gloom and to talk down our country’s future. As a Scottish Conservative, I insist that our best days lie ahead of us as part of the United Kingdom, the world’s most successful political and economic union.

The SNP wants to create an air of constitutional crisis, but Scotland is not buying any of that talk, and people are sick and tired of the SNP’s obsession with a second independence referendum. Keith Brown MSP, who was sacked last week by Nicola Sturgeon as Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, was only recently elected deputy leader of the SNP. He now claims to be focusing all his energy on building up readiness for a campaign for a second independence referendum as early as next April. Yet at the weekend Andrew Wilson, the former MSP who produced the so-called growth commission report, the SNP’s blueprint for independence that promised only a generation of misery, said that he was interested only in the softest possible form of independence—presumably in name only. He recognised that people in Scotland were not interested in another independence referendum.

[Patricia Gibson]

The hon. Gentleman is once again trying to make this out to be some kind of SNP plot. What are his views on the fact that the SNP, the Labour party, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament also withheld consent for Brexit? Are they involved in the SNP plot?

[Stephen Kerr]

I can only imagine that Scottish Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats regret deeply ever getting into any kind of alliance with the Scottish National party, but it is not for me to speak for them.

What is important to Scotland and Scottish business? Liz Cameron, the chief executive of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, has said:

“The ability to trade freely between the constituent parts of the UK without additional compliance measures is absolutely vital to a large proportion of businesses, and we need to see both Governments co-operating and making decisions together, enabling the private sector to create jobs and grow the economy.”

To underline the importance of the UK single market to Scotland, it cannot be said too often that Scotland exports four times as much to the rest of the United Kingdom as it does to the EU. That is £46 billion going to the UK, and only £12 billion going to the EU. No one on the Government Benches is saying that trade with the rest of the European Union is not important—it is vital—but just because we are leaving the European Union does not mean that we are going to cease trading in any scenario. Other countries that are outside full EU membership, the single market and the customs union trade successfully with countries that are members.

We need to forge a new, deep and special relationship that is founded upon the principles of free and fair trade. That will inevitably include an arrangement on customs. Only in the minds of the obsessive and negative SNP is the answer to leaving the EU to break up a Union that is four times more valuable to Scotland. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) said, just last week we saw that UK exports to India have grown by 31% year on year. That is just a sample of what we can achieve once we leave the EU in March 2019 and have the chance to strike our own trade deals. He also mentioned the Scotch Whisky Association and the opportunity there. In India, Scotch imports account for just 1% of total whisky consumption. There are massive opportunities.

Brexit is seen by too many as only being a challenge. We see it as an opportunity too. Leaving the EU will give more powers to Holyrood and Westminster, yet we have seen little imagination and creativity at Holyrood on how the powers will be used. Indeed, the Scottish nationalists would rather see those powers kept in Brussels. As was said earlier, why on earth would Nicola Sturgeon reshape her Cabinet and add Ministers if it was not to handle increased powers? Leaving the European Union needs to be treated as an opportunity.

In closing, I will quickly mention one thing. If there is one area of professional activity that can change the productivity landscape and enhance our prospects as a nation exporting to the world, it is sales productivity. We need to uplift our commercial proficiency and effectiveness in professional sales and be a nation that values its salespeople. I feel strongly about that. A few weeks ago I had the privilege of welcoming the Secretary of State for International Trade and his ministerial team to Stirling, alongside the Secretary of State for Scotland and other Government officials, for the first meeting of the UK Board of Trade in Scotland for hundreds of years. A reception was held that evening in the great hall of Stirling castle. The room was abuzz with anticipation and excitement for the export opportunities that lie ahead for businesses in my constituency and throughout Scotland as we leave the European Union.

In Stirling we have some fantastic businesses that are ready to take up the challenge and the new opportunities, including Fallen Brewing, which I will be visiting later this week. This brewery in the town of Kippen has been exporting across the UK, and like so many other local businesses, it needs only the slightest encouragement to push into the significant overseas markets for British beers. A great national effort is required to sell our products and services around the world. To summarise, I believe that Scotland’s professional sales talent and capability will be key to a prosperous post-Brexit global Britain.

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[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am pleased to begin the summing up in this debate. It has certainly been interesting. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) on securing it and on the well-informed and comprehensive way in which she set out the social and economic impact that leaving the European Union threatens to have on our country. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) commented very knowledgeably on the potential legal and judicial impact and correctly pointed out that the UK Government have simply refused to acknowledge the issue.

We have had some interesting contributions from the Scottish Conservatives about Scottish independence; somebody forgot to tell them that we are actually talking about the European Union. I did not hear a single word from the Scottish Conservatives about why ending the free movement of people is a good idea for Scotland. We heard a lot of words about why the SNP is bad, why independence is bad, why the SNP is still bad, and why independence is even worse, but there was not a single word of justification for what the UK Government keep telling us was the single biggest reason for people voting to leave the European Union. I wonder why that might be. I wonder why they are scared to talk about the impact that ending the free movement of people will have on our nation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) made an excellent contribution about the huge benefits that the free movement of people creates for all of us. Those benefits cannot be measured just by counting how much people pay in tax or generate for the economy. The free movement of people and the exchange of beliefs and ideas is probably more important than the movement of labour, workers or anything else. People coming here from other places and cultures enrich our place and our culture. It will always be a negative, backward and regressive step to try to prevent people from doing that by asking them to pay to exercise rights that they already have, or by putting in place some completely arbitrary, picked-out-of-the-sky number to limit who is and is not allowed to come here.

The single biggest impact of Brexit on Scotland is the one that my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran referred to her in her introduction. The Scottish Conservatives will try to hedge around it with the creative use of statistics, but it is an inalienable fact that 62% of people in Scotland voted to stay in the European Union. The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) was muttering at one point, “Have you seen the opinion polls?” I have not seen an opinion poll since then that puts support for EU membership in Scotland at less than 62%. I have seen quite a few that put it significantly higher—75% in some places.

[Stephen Kerr]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) said, we were elected last year on a manifesto commitment to take our country, the United Kingdom, out of the European Union, the single market and the customs union, and to do so in a way that protects jobs and our economy. That is why we are here. The hon. Gentleman can quote statistics about the cumulative referendum vote in Scotland until the cows come home, but we were elected on that manifesto and are here to see that the interests of our constituents in our part of Scotland are well represented and protected as we leave the European Union.

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point on a United Kingdom basis, but I gently remind him that we were elected with a substantial overall majority of Scottish seats in this place. As has been pointed out, the Scottish Government were elected on a manifesto commitment as well, which they will put into practice. Incidentally, his party was elected in 2015 on a manifesto that said it would keep us in the single market, so I do not know what its manifesto will be in next year’s general election.

As I said, 62% of the sovereign people of Scotland voted to remain in the European Union. We ignore that at our peril. If Scotland votes a different way from other parts of the United Kingdom, or if the Scottish Government and the UK Government, or their Parliaments, disagree, that does not create a constitutional crisis. It might create a political crisis, but a constitutional crisis happens only when those in power refuse to accept the will of the people. Clearly the UK Government intend to ride roughshod over the demand—not the desire, request or plea—of the people of the Scotland that our voice will be heard and that our links with our European partners will not be sacrificed on some altar of far-right ideology in a vain attempt to keep the Conservative party together.

[Peter Grant]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has noticed, but we are in the United Kingdom Parliament. That is a kind of acceptance that, for now, Scotland is part of the United Kingdom. However, there is a legal principle that subsequent legislation always trumps previous legislation if the two are incompatible. What about the mandate in 2016 for the Scottish Government to give the people of Scotland a choice if Scotland is threatened with being taken out of the European Union against our will? Nobody forces the Scottish people to do anything. The Conservative party want to deny the people of Scotland the right to set our own future. They want to deny the people of Scotland the right to remain in the European Union, which 62% of us have demanded. In percentage terms, the majority to stay in the European Union was almost 2.5 times bigger than the majority to stay in the United Kingdom.

The Conservatives do all this fancy footwork—I call it the Maradona trick. They take the vote on one side in one referendum, and to back up their argument they compare it with the vote in a different election on a different day on a different question. I call it the Maradona trick because it would mean that Argentina were still in the World cup—Argentina scored three goals and Brazil scored only two, so Argentina stay in the World cup and Brazil go out. Totally ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than the attempts of the Scottish Conservatives to set one part of the electorate against another based on an election or referendum held on a completely different day.

The fact that the Scottish Conservatives turn up to a debate about Scotland’s place in Europe and spend most of their time arguing for the lost cause of Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom says it all. They cannot argue the benefits to Scotland of leaving the European Union, because there are none. The damage done to Scotland by being forced to leave the European Union against our will is even greater than the damage that would be done if we left on our own terms and with the will of the people.

The people of Scotland are our masters; they are our sovereigns. There is no absolute parliamentary sovereignty in Scotland. There is no absolute sovereignty of the monarch, nor will there be of anyone who replaces the monarch in the future. The people are the absolute sovereigns, and our sovereigns have told us what to do. Brexit threatens to deny the people of Scotland the right to have the country that they have decided they want to have. Anyone who ignores the people in that context does so at their peril, because the people of Scotland will not be kept silent.

The hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) shakes his head, with that smug smirk that he is so fond of.

[Stephen Kerr]

We are so used to your threats.

[Peter Grant]

It is not a threat to say that the people have spoken and will ensure that their voice is heard. If the Scottish Conservatives are afraid of the voice of the people, what are they doing here?

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[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) on securing this debate on what is a fundamentally important issue.

We are leaving the European Union—that much is clear. The discussion that we should be having now—although it has not been entirely possible due to the inability of the Tories to come to an agreement in their own Cabinet—is how we leave, on what terms we leave and how we ensure that when we leave, we do not suffer economically or socially as a result.

Before we get into the detail of today’s debate, I would reflect on one thing: if Brexit has taught us anything at all, it is just how difficult it is for the UK to leave a political and economic union that we have been part of for just 40 years. That should be cause for concern for not only Members of the Scottish National party here today, but also the Scottish Government and the First Minister. As the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran said, she and her colleagues have a desire for Scotland to leave a political and economic union that we have been part of for more than 300 years. I can only begin to imagine the difficulties that would be thrown up were people in Scotland to decide that they agreed with that proposition—thankfully, they do not. The SNP’s own confusion over the matter is laid bare by its recent growth commission, which ironically proposes to leave the UK but to surrender all control of interest rates, inflation and capacity to introduce fiscal stimulus in Scotland. What an absurd, worst-of-all-possible situations that would be.

There are three main areas I want to focus on: the constitutional, social and economic implications. It is undeniable that there are constitutional implications for Scotland arising from the decision to leave the EU. The Scottish devolution settlement was written in 1998 and our membership of the European Union is integral to it. A couple of weeks ago, we saw the UK Government shut down debate in the Commons, leaving a mere 15 minutes to discuss devolution. Not allowing one single Scottish Member of Parliament to speak was disgraceful; it showed nothing but contempt, not only for Scottish Members, but for those we represent.

[Stephen Kerr]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Luke Graham]

rose—

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[Mr Sweeney]

I give way to the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr).

[Stephen Kerr]

I point out to the hon. Gentleman that it was the insistence of his Front Benchers on holding 11 pointless votes that led to that 19 minutes of debate. We agree that it was shameful, but it was because the Labour party—his party—insisted on those 11 stupid votes.

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. It is important that we scotch that myth once and for all—

[Stephen Kerr]

It is not a myth.

[Mr Sweeney]

It is a myth. Labour proposed to extend the time allowed under the programme motion to provide ample time to discuss all the amendments. I tell the hon. Gentleman that all 11 votes were necessary and vital. He might dismiss them as ridiculous, but they were essential.