Exiting the EU and Transport

Debate between William Cash and Alan Brown

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry, but I am feeling a wee bit dizzy because I am not usually so high up the speakers’ list. It is also confusing that there is no limit on our speaking time. Clearly one of the reasons why I have been called so early is the real lack of Back Benchers in the Chamber. Given how many people have told us how bad Europe is and about all the wonderful opportunities that there will be following Brexit, I should have thought that Members would be queuing up to tell us about those opportunities.

[Sir William Cash]

I understand that the hon. Gentleman is about to become a member of my European Scrutiny Committee, so I simply say that I entirely endorse what he has said. Furthermore, many of the remoaners, and the doomsters and gloomsters, are not here defending the positions that they were taking before—I am not just referring to SNP Members. That is where a lot of the problems lie.

[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. Clearly we are part of the remainers, and we represent our constituents. The majority of our constituents across Scotland voted to remain, so we must represent them.

The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) made a bit of a play of highlighting opportunities, but really he highlighted some of the problems with the European Union rather than proper opportunities. He seemed to put a lot of faith in the myth that the Government will invest the money that will not be going to Europe. He trusts the Conservative Government to invest that money. He used the word “subsidy”, although he knows full well that no Tory Government ever volunteer to pay money for subsidies.

This has been a wide-ranging debate. I will focus on road transport, but just before I do, I want to go back to the open skies debate. Prestwick airport, which is in one of my neighbouring constituencies, is a big employer for my area as well as for the constituency it is based in. It would be good if the Minister confirmed that Brexit will not affect Ryanair’s flights from Prestwick and tell us what the Government will do to mitigate any effects. I will throw out one opportunity for Prestwick—to be fair, this is not to do with the European Union—which is its potential as a spaceport. It is high time the Government made a decision about that.

As I said, I will focus on road transport. The Secretary of State said quite correctly in his opening speech that road transport affects us all. Given the proportion of goods that are transported by road to shops, road transport is fundamental to the price of goods. According to Government figures, almost three times as many goods are moved by road as are moved by rail and water combined, which shows us that road is the transport king.

That brings us to the question: what has the EU done for road transport? Apart from the harmonisation of licensing, the harmonisation of vehicle design, European Union-wide regulations for the transport of goods, workers’ rights legislation such as the Working Time Regulations 1998, the Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005, the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 and the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002, and funding for road schemes in Scotland, the EU has not done much to help road transport.

What else has the EU given us? Apparently, as the guys who are not here continually tell us, the EU has given us endless red tape and regulation. Let us look at how the EU has actually meddled in the pan-European transport of goods by road—this point was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). In 1998, a lorry travelling from Milan to London required 88 separate documents. The EU got involved, and after much wrangling, the number of documents now required is one. The number has gone from 88 down to one—that is the red tape that the EU has created for the transport of goods across Europe. In the 1980s, there were 100,000 sets of technical regulations across the member states. Thanks to the EU, they have been consolidated, and there is now one set of EU-level regulations.

We heard about ports earlier. Ports are integral to the import and export of goods for road haulage. As we have heard, ports handle 90% of the UK’s trade. Leaving the EU means that there is a risk that instead of a seamless journey on and off a ferry, there could be extended customs checks, which will slow progress. As we have heard, the infrastructure is not geared up for that, which could mean that ports will require additional parking. Some of the checks need to be repeated for each country that a lorry traverses. Given that the World Bank estimates that the customs clearance process for a single freight container adds around a day to the import process, it is clear that we could face a massive cost and logistics nightmare. Will the Minister therefore confirm that he is fighting for access to the single market and the customs union?

According to the Treasury’s figures, EU membership is estimated to increase trade with EU members by between 68% and 85%. I know that there has been a whole debate about how inflated the figures might or might not be, but even if they are inflated, they still show that there is huge benefit from our membership of the single market.

Has the Secretary of State and/or the Minister discussed the customs union with the automotive industry? At the moment, car components criss-cross the continent before returning for use in final assembly at car plants, so the customs union is a major positive for the automotive industry. The industry is completely appalled by the lackadaisical argument that simply claims that no tariffs will be applied because of the importance of the UK market. It has confirmed that tariffs are its No. 1 concern, so will the Minister touch on that when he sums up?

Nearly 300,000 HGV drivers were employed in the road haulage industry last year. In April 2015, only 1,165 jobseekers recorded their standard occupation as HGV driver, so it is clear that a HGV driver qualification is a pathway to full employment. Even so—we touched on this earlier—the road haulage industry is having to take advantage of EU nationals, using licence harmonisation, to plug the skills gap. There is a predicted shortage of 40,000 HGV drivers by 2020 and the Government do not challenge that figure. That situation will only get worse unless there is a post-Brexit reciprocal licensing arrangement.

I have repeatedly called for the Government to implement a grant scheme to allow small haulage companies to train new HGV drivers. Such a scheme would pay for itself from welfare savings. To date, I have heard nothing from the Government. The Secretary of State said that the idea was with the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), who is responsible for skills in the Department for Transport, but it is time we started hearing some concrete plans.

The last key topic I will touch on is road funding, which is particularly relevant to Scotland. Another dividend of the UK Union that we suffered from in Scotland for many years was a lack of investment in our road systems. It has taken an SNP Government coming to power to really push that agenda, in particular with the new M74 and M80 motorways, and the ongoing £500 million M8, M74 and M73 upgrades. It is ridiculous to think that there has never been a continuous motorway connecting Edinburgh and Glasgow; the SNP Government are having to rectify that.