Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

It is a genuine privilege to follow the contribution from the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), because I believe that in the six minutes or so he spoke for he did not once mention Brexit, nor did he once recognise the difficulties caused by Brexit. We can conclude only that the Tories do not care about the damage that Brexit has caused.

Let me start by asking: what do we know about Brexit? It was ill conceived and poorly executed, it was an act of political panic and it has turned into an act of economic self-harm. It was driven by a sense of jingoistic exceptionalism that was never going to stand any scrutiny, and all the rhetoric of bright sunlit uplands has wilted under the reality of the problems—all foreseen—that have subsequently emerged.

It was reported in February that Scotland’s salmon farmers had incurred losses of £11 million as a direct result of Brexit—unmentioned by the hon. Member for Moray. On 12 March, it was reported that fish and shellfish exports were down 83%—unremarked by the hon. Member. On the same day, the Food and Drink Federation found that food and animal exports from the UK to the EU had fallen by 63% in January, which is clearly an important matter in the hon. Member’s constituency—unremarked in a debate about Brexit, but then we should not be surprised. The UK Fashion and Textile Association said that it is

“cheaper for retailers to write off the cost of the goods than dealing with it all, either abandoning or potentially burning them.”

Research from Make UK showed that 74% of the 200 major industrial firms it surveyed were facing delays with EU imports and exports, and 24 of the largest City of London firms have moved or plan to move assets worth an estimated £1.3 trillion out of the UK due to Brexit. That barely scrapes the surface of the problems.

It is not as if the Tories were not warned. Every pre-referendum economic forecast—certainly the serious ones—predicted a loss of GDP in the minus 2% to minus 7% range. The Treasury said that a free trade agreement could see a loss of GDP growth of around 6.2%, and that was not even the worst of its estimates at that time. In 2018, the cross-Whitehall analysis said that GDP could be 7.7% lower in 15 years under a smooth WTO mitigated arrangement. The one thing we can say about the deal we have with the European Union is that it certainly is not smooth—even the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has belatedly conceded that. Finally, the UK Government’s November 2018 long-term economic assessment suggested a GDP fall of 4.9% on a modelled FTA, which worsened to a 6.7% fall, with net zero inflows of European economic area workers, which, of course, for many Tory Brexiteers was all this was really ever about.

The question is, how do we proceed? We should back the motion because, self-evidently, we should regret the damage Brexit has done and that Brexit ever happened at all, but we need to move forward and work out how to improve this situation. Time is too limited for me to give any prognosis in the next 12 seconds, but in short, it is time for the Government to stop the pretence that we have an “excellent deal”, fully recognise the scale of the problems, show some humility and start to fix them.