Oral Answers to Questions

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

There will always be data, forecasts, and the evaluation and re-evaluation of those data and forecasts. It is important for the House to know about all the good news that was missing from the right hon. Gentleman’s question. According to a PwC report, the UK will continue to be the fastest growing G7 economy until 2050. That is indeed good news. [Interruption.] It is a forecast. The right hon. Gentleman himself mentioned an OBR forecast.

Exports are up, including business services exports, and we are on track to reach our target of £1 trillion by 2030—and before the right hon. Gentleman jumps to his feet, let me add that 2030 is several years away, and I look forward to being on the Government Benches on this side of the House telling him, on that side of the House, how close we are to that target.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

13. What recent assessment she has made of the impact of her trade policies on food prices.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

21. What recent assessment she has made of the impact of her trade policies on food prices.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Nigel Huddleston)]

Our free trade programme helps to remove market access barriers for importers and exporters, making the UK more competitive and contributing to a greater choice of goods. The UK’s trade policy works to increase access to good-quality, good-value food from around the world, while the liberalisation of tariffs can help to lower food prices.

[Tommy Sheppard]

UK food price inflation is already significantly higher than that in France, Germany and Italy. This week William Bain, the head of trade at the British Chambers of Commerce, said there was a strong prospect that new Brexit regulations coming into force later this year would drive prices even higher. Is it not time that this Government apologised for their ideological obsession with Brexit, which is forcing ordinary-working class families into poverty?

[Nigel Huddleston]

The hon. Gentleman is being somewhat selective. The figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that food price inflation in the UK was 19.2%—and the EU average is 19.2%. As for apologising, I will not apologise for the fact that when we left the EU, we got rid of hundreds of useless tariffs that were doing nothing other than pushing up prices for British consumers. We liberalised tariffs on environmental goods, and we liberalised tariffs on goods that we generally do not produce in the UK, thus massively reducing the total number of tariffs faced by British consumers. That is a good thing, throughout the UK.