Britain's Place in the World

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

That means we should have voted for any deal. We might as well not have had the vote. We set out the sort of deal we would support, but the previous Prime Minister did not reach out to seek consensus across the House. [Interruption.] No, she did not. She did it after 29 March, and everybody knows it. I was in those talks, and both sides said they were held in good faith, but everybody recognised that those talks should have happened two years before they did. If they had, there might just have been a deal that could have been supported by this House. It was the policy of the last Prime Minister not to vote for it.

Let me complete my answer, which is important as it goes to the nonsense that the Act we passed to secure an extension in certain circumstances somehow undermines the negotiations. No measure was taken by this House to prevent a no deal until after 29 March. The negotiations therefore continued for two years without any safeguard against a no deal, and those negotiations did not produce a deal that could go through the House. It is nonsense to suggest that the Act undermines the talks.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that if the Government genuinely mean “do or die” and are committed to crashing us out of the European Union after 31 October with no deal, the Secretary of State, who earlier refused to answer the question put to him by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) about the impact on Northern Ireland farmers, which would be catastrophic, should come to the House to answer that question?

[Keir Starmer]

I hope the Secretary of State would come to the House to answer that question and the many other questions that go with it. My judgment call is that a no deal fundamentally affects not only that aspect of our economy but many others, and fundamentally undermines the Good Friday agreement. There are many Members on both sides of the House who would not want to put this country in that position under any circumstances. Even dangling the threat that we would still leave without a deal on 31 October if the negotiations were ongoing is therefore absurd.

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[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

May I say to the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) that, when she reflects on the referendum, she may want to reflect on why the 3.5 million people who will be most affected by that referendum were not actually allowed to take part in it and whether the will of the people therefore reflected the full will of the people in the country?

A debate on the place of Britain in the world cannot happen without considering the impact that Brexit will have on the UK economy. As a country, our place in the world will be greatly affected by whether we are weaker, poorer and more isolated following Brexit than we would otherwise have been. The Secretary of State for International Development would I am sure, had he been here now, have accused me of being negative. I suggest that his positivity often merges into delusion about all the benefits he claims he can see from Brexit. I want to focus on that.

It is certainly worth considering the forecasts that were made three years ago about where we would now be in relation to Brexit. I accept that some statements were made immediately before the vote by George Osborne and the Treasury that, frankly, I was not willing to go on TV and repeat because I thought they were outrageous. However, if we look at what has happened in the last three years and at the predictions made by the Bank of England, the Office for Budget Responsibility, private sector consensus and Economists for Brexit, asking which assessments or analyses hold up three years on, the one that is way out is of course the one made by Economists for Brexit. They predicted that the UK economy would have grown much more significantly than was the case. That is why the predictions made by those different organisations are worth bearing in mind and worth considering when we are trying to work out where we might be should we end up with Brexit, particularly with the Brexit proposals that our Prime Minister has been touting.

In the joint statement in 2016, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Centre for Economic Performance and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research predicted that the impact of leaving the EU might leave the UK economy 8% smaller by 2030 than if we had voted to remain. They predicted that the economy would be between 1% and 3% smaller by 2020. It is a fact that the UK’s economy is 1.5% smaller now than was forecast by the Bank of England back in May 2016. So their predictions seem to be pretty much spot on. If they are correct, the UK economy will be 8% smaller by 2030 than had we stayed in the European Union.

So when we have a Secretary of State who promotes the so-called economic benefits of Brexit, it is rather disappointing that they do not actually fit with what the analyses suggest will happen. I agree with the point made by Chris Giles, an economist who writes in The Financial Times, who summarises the impact of Brexit, even with a deal, as follows:

“It is not empty shelves and huge job losses, but a slow drip of lost opportunities, activity moved elsewhere and income disappointments. The correct analogy is Britain’s slow, 30-year, relative decline from victor in the second world war to the sick man of Europe, not the immediate pain of a recession or a financial crisis.”

Christian Schulz, the chief economist at Citi has worked out that

“The UK economy is already around £60 billion smaller than it would have been without a vote to leave the European Union”.

When people talk about figures on the side of a bus, perhaps the figure that they should bear in mind is a £60 billion loss to the value of the UK economy.

Other indicators are not exactly hunky-dory in the way that the Secretary of State indicated. So, yes, it is true that the number of jobs has increased, but it is also true that business investment is 20% lower, foreign direct investment is at a six-year low and there has been a 35% drop in manufacturing FDI. I tried to make that point to the Prime Minister, who was in receipt of a letter from five manufacturing sectors saying that his deal would cause them huge damage. When I explained that that was what they had written to him, for some reason he seemed to take that as an indication that I should support his deal. The key manufacturing sectors of aerospace, aviation, food and drink and chemicals have written to the Prime Minister saying that his deal will badly damage them, and he says that that is a reason to vote for his deal. Perhaps he was not listening or he did not understand what I said; I am not sure which of the two it is. All the other assessments, including the Government’s own, point to the Prime Minister’s deal leaving us between £2,000 and £2,500 worse off per capita every year.

The most optimistic scenario, even with no net contributions to the EU budget, is that we will be £16 billion worse off. That is why the only way out of this mess is for the decision to be put back to the people. Let us have a people’s vote, and then we can decide whether to proceed with what the Government want us to do or to stay in the European Union.

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[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Many speakers in the debate have made the point that this whole Queen’s Speech is unusual because this is a minority Government who do not have an automatic majority for their proposals—indeed that is arithmetically correct. However, when I was pondering the absurdity I just had to look at the Opposition Benches. First, we have Labour Members, who say that they want an election, that Parliament is not working and that we do not have a majority and yet they refuse to vote for an election. They say that they want to deliver Brexit, yet they will not vote for any agreement. They also say they are opposed to no deal, but they will not vote for a deal that would prevent that from happening.

Then we have the Liberal Democrats. They have bet the house, the car, the pension and everything on Brexit chaos, saying that they want to revoke the result of the referendum, which most fair-minded people inside or outside this place regard as illiberal and undemocratic.

[Tom Brake]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bim Afolami]

No, I will not.

Then we have the Scottish National party Members, who argue for a referendum on Scottish independence—that has been their long-standing position and it is a perfectly legitimate thing to argue for—but I do not know why they bother, because they refuse to accept the referendum that happened in 2014 and the referendum on the European Union in 2016. Why they think another referendum in Scotland would get them what they want, I do not really know, unless it were to be delivered, which they do not seem to like doing.

This is an unusual Queen’s Speech, and that brings me to Britain’s place in the world. I occasionally like to read, and I have been reading the recent book by Lord Waldegrave, from the other place, entitled “Three Circles into One”. I do not agree with everything that he says in the book, but he clearly outlines the narrative of this country’s post-war settlement. That settlement is that we have three circles of influence: the Commonwealth; our special relationship with the United States; and our relationship with Europe and membership of the European Union. That is a unique place for Britain; no other country has those three circles.

Lord Waldegrave, despite the fact that he is open about the fact he voted remain, as I did, at the referendum, says that one of the reasons that Brexit occurred is that the third circle—the European circle—was based around an untruth. That untruth, which was told to the British people for generations, was that they should not worry about the European Union—or the EEC, or whatever it was—because it was only a trading relationship, an economic relationship, and that it did not have a political narrative. People were told that we were not trying for a federal system, and that there was no such thing as ever closer union. Eventually, over time, the British public saw that narrative to be untrue. That is not to say that the narrative is illegitimate. There will be many people on both sides of the House who happen to think that Britain being part of a greater Europe is a good thing, and there is nothing wrong with that view. However, that was not what was told to the British people over the generations. In my judgment, Lord Waldegrave is right when he says that that third circle of Britain’s influence and place in the world has fallen away because of the Brexit vote.

If we accept the terms of the Brexit vote, as I believe it is incumbent on all Members to do, we need to have an alternative narrative—an alternative way of describing Britain’s place in the world. We need to use our unique strengths, including our legal system, the City of London, our language, our time zone and our welcoming and open culture. Those unique strengths could make us the world’s marketplace, the world’s souk, the world’s Speakers’ Corner.

We have spoken a lot about trade, but I do not believe that trade is the most fundamental aspect of this. Our political weight in the world is still strong, our soft power is still strong, and we are an aid superpower. We are not a superpower in all respects, but we are an aid superpower. Our relationships across the world are strong: our diplomats and our companies are respected all over the world. If we can be the place where the three circles—the Commonwealth, the United States and Europe—can interact to place themselves in the centre of the world in the welcoming, open, dynamic, forward-thinking, free-trading country that is Britain, that is a future.

I would like to finish by referring to the Secretary of State for International Development’s remarks around aid. Recently, I was in Uganda with a charity called Harpenden Spotlight on Africa, working to improve health and education in a particularly poor rural part of Uganda. I cannot express how positively they viewed this country or how much they respected the work that we do and the partnership that we have. We had the Ugandan Minister of Health coming to that small village to see the work we were doing. If only more people in this House and in this country could see that, they would realise that our aid relationship in particular can help to strengthen our three circles and Britain’s place in the world for many years to come.

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[Tommy Sheppard]

I very much agree, but I will move on to the wider global context. What has not been discussed so far in this debate is the fact that Britain is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. I wonder how much longer that can continue, because I would think that being a permanent member of the UN Security Council brings with it an obligation to provide some sort of global political leadership, yet that has been frighteningly absent from this country’s foreign policy for a very long time.

In fact, for far too long this country has played second fiddle to the United States of America. That might have been good in the past, but US foreign policy is in a hopeless state of collapse and incoherence that leaves the United Kingdom looking like a hapless bystander on world events, unable to command any moral purpose or argument. There are so many examples, but let us look at the one happening this week.

The Turkish Government are engaging in ethnic cleansing in the northern part of another country, and we are simply observing the situation. In fact, this country was one of the last to cut and suspend its arms sales to the Turkish Government—arms that are currently being used to kill people in Kurdistan. That is a shameful situation.

I was one of the Members who visited the Rohingya refugee camps on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border last month. As I stood on those hillsides, I felt a sense of dread that the camps will still be there in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time because, in order for them not to be there, we need international political action to stand up to the Government of Myanmar and to make them act. That is sadly absent, but it is the sort of political leadership this country ought to be giving to the world, rather than standing back and simply being an observer.

[Tom Brake]

May I add to the list of countries where we need active engagement from the UK Government? The Palestinian issue has also been completely neglected.

[Tommy Sheppard]

Indeed so, particularly when the whole middle east is about to descend into an even more frightening situation. It is an area of the world that this country was governing in living memory. If we do not have responsibility for doing something about it, who does?

I finish by thinking about what is happening 535 miles away in the city of Aberdeen, where the SNP conference is taking place. There have been a number of goads and jibes about our concern for independence, but the House should understand that when this party argues for Scotland to become a self-governing independent country, we do it not just because we believe we can make things better for the people who live there, nor just because we believe in the democratic argument that people living in Scotland, and no one else, should set their own priorities, but because we want to be able to determine our own relationships with other countries, particularly within Britain and Europe but also across the world. I assure colleagues in this House that when we get to vote on our independence, when we have an affirmative vote and when we begin to build a new country, it will be a country with open borders that wants to play its full role in the world and that wants to punch above its weight, as people from that country have done for generations.