Exiting the European Union and Global Trade

Vicky Ford Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

Will the Minister assure us that companies that want to invest in the UK will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) says, be able to continue recruiting people with the right skills both from the European Union and from across the world? One of the benefits of the single market is that for a person recruited from the European Union, having their partner and family members able to come here to work is a huge incentive.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I fully respect that we will be leaving the single market and will need a new deal. At the moment, a company selling, say, a cancer scanner to a Spanish hospital needs to have a maintenance service contract. It can send an engineer to service the scanner under a posting of workers arrangement, and there is mutual recognition of the engineer’s professional qualifications. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in our new trade agreement, it is important to be able to easily trade not only goods but services, with the ability to send workers flexibly from one jurisdiction to another?

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend makes a fantastic point. She was an incredibly effective MEP and she certainly would have turned up to Juncker’s speech in the European Parliament; she worked tirelessly and I very much hope the Government will listen to her as we negotiate Brexit, because she has experience that is unparalleled in this House. The point she makes is pertinent to my constituency, where MRI scanners are made at Oxford Instruments.

I was going to talk about Euratom, but I have run out of time—luckily we have a Westminster Hall debate on Wednesday. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) will be speaking in that debate, but we all want to make our points on Euratom then.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I begin, of course, by congratulating the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Dockerill) on her maiden speech. She demonstrated how attached she feels to her constituency, and that really is the best start for being an effective Member of Parliament. It also shows what progress we are making when a Member can stand up and say that they are the second woman Member in their constituency.

This is the first time I have spoken since the general election and, of course, I want to begin by thanking my constituents for taking part in the election—especially those who voted Labour. The majority of my constituents voted to leave the European Union in the referendum last year, and when I discuss that with them they tell me that they want a Brexit that controls immigration but boosts exports and secures long-term jobs, particularly in manufacturing. What they like about the European Union is the social chapter, the common market—what we call the customs union—the environmental protections, co-operation on research and development, and the European arrest warrant.

Their views on migration mean that I have to say that I think that it is inevitable that as part of leaving the European Union, we will have to leave the single market, but I think the issues on the customs union are rather different. I was pleased by the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and the remarks made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) about keeping the customs union on the table. I do not know why the Chancellor was suggesting the other day that there are legal difficulties with that; Turkey belongs to the customs union and not the European Union and that was the position that this country was in between 1975 and 1992. It offers not just tariff-free trade but barrier-free trade.

When I went to talk to the North East England chamber of commerce, its members were particularly worried about how firms would handle the rules of origin if we were to leave the customs union. It is not enough for HMRC to have a computer system. That does not deal with the bureaucracy, because each individual firm has to apply to get the status they need to use the system. That is immensely bureaucratic and time-consuming, and the OECD has found that that increases costs by about 25%.

Another very important thing is what we will do about all the European agencies—the Government have not been clear about that at all. In my constituency there is a Glaxo plant that employs 1,000 people and produces half a million packs of drugs a day. I have been working with Glaxo, both locally and nationally, on what kind of Brexit deal would be good for the pharmaceutical industry. It wants a level playing field with the other drugs manufacturers across Europe, and that means staying inside the European Medicines Agency. The agency has been located in London because Britain is one of the best producers of pharmaceuticals, and we helped to draft almost all the rules that the agency applies. Glaxo has sent me its paper on priorities for the UK’s exit, in which it said:

“Any UK withdrawal from the EU that ends or damages the UK’s ability to benefit from the EU framework”—

the medicines agency framework—

“could significantly impact patients, and hinder GSK’s operations in the UK and across the EU. Any future regulatory processes…must avoid introducing delays, significant new costs or unpredictable outcomes.

It is critical that an agreement is reached early in negotiations between the UK and EU that the European regulatory framework will continue to apply to medicines, vaccines, medical devices and cosmetics that are already authorised or undergoing clinical trials, to ensure that supply or development of these products is maintained without disruption.”

[Vicky Ford]

I am interested in what the hon. Lady says about medicines and vaccines. Yes, the mutual recognition principle is extremely helpful in allowing British companies to work with others across Europe and a single market for medicines, but I understand there are issues that make it more difficult for those same pharmaceutical developers to share data with, say, American counterparts. Under the comprehensive economic and trade agreement, which as I have said before in the House is not perfect for the UK, there are potential benefits to mutual recognition not only with Europe but with other countries. Does she not agree that we want both types of agreement if possible?

[Helen Goodman]

What we really want is minimal regulatory costs on businesses. That means that we should stay in the European Medicines Agency. If we leave and have to set up our own, we will be imposing a third regulatory system on them, and as I am sure the hon. Lady knows, that would be immensely expensive. We have a lot of exports and jobs in the sector. I tabled a lot of parliamentary questions to the Department before the general election and got content-free answers. I now want Ministers to be clear about what they will do not just about the European Medicines Agency but about the 40 other agencies we belong to, ranging from aviation safety to plant health, all of which facilitate trade on a level playing field for British businesses.

The second group of people I am concerned about, as I pointed out in my intervention, are hill farmers—I have 400 hill farmers. After Brexit, it seems that three things will matter for them: the new trade rules; the support systems; and the regulations on food safety and the environment. Again, we have had no clarity from Ministers. If they agree to the import of meat with lower animal welfare and consumer safety standards and lower prices, they could decimate British agriculture, which would be a disaster for farmers and a disaster for the environment.