Exiting the EU and Transport

Debate between William Cash and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

Indeed, and I know where the hon. Gentleman—my next-door neighbour—has got that figure from. It is from paragraph 6.2 of the Library note, which I can see he has been reading. I am glad that he has been so assiduous. The principle is that, despite the fact that we are an island, we compete with continental ports for certain types of traffic. Those in the ports industry are therefore concerned by a lack of a level playing field between the UK and continental ports.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman will have probably seen the report published on the front page of the Financial Times perhaps four, five or six weeks ago that the UK might have some difficulty carrying out customs checks at ports and other such points. At the moment, we carry out 35 million checks a year. We as the UK would need to carry out up to 240 million checks a year, but the new system has the capacity to handle about 100 million checks. If this situation emerges, it will cause a huge difficulty post-Brexit and inevitably damage trade, because the infrastructure is not there to do customs checks at ports.

[Sir William Cash]

My response is quite simple: if we do not continue to have an efficient ports system because of the effect of the port services regulation, nothing that the hon. Gentleman says will make any difference to the fact that our ports will be put not only at a severe disadvantage, but in a dangerous situation vis-à-vis the other continental ports. However, despite the fact that there was an attempt to get state aid rules imported into the regulation, the ports employers believe that

“it is essential that legislation aimed at regulating less commercial ports on the continent does not cause unintended damage to the UK’s thriving commercial sector.”

On that basis, there is a matter of principle that affects our whole import and export business that goes through the ports.

The effect that the proposal will have is so obvious that I need not even attempt to explain it. It aims to regulate market access to port services, port charges and financial transparency. The ports employers say:

“The text as a whole”

—this is some time ago, but I will catch up in a moment with what they have said most recently—

“even if heavily amended, cannot deliver on its states aims. Instead, it will create severe legal uncertainty, reduce investment and will ultimately be detrimental to the safety standards and working conditions which currently exist in EU ports. EU ports may have different ownership structures, but all require a high level of confidence in a stable legal and policy framework in the long term if they are to operate safely”,

which is for the benefit of the workers,

“and contribute to the EU agenda for jobs and growth”,

which is vital to everyone, whether they are employers or workers in the ports.

The UKMPG goes on to say:

“The Port Services Regulation proposal does not provide such confidence and risks leaving a legacy of legal and practical difficulties across the EU.”

The UKMPG

“supports a return to the previous EU ports policy approach based round application of the general provisions of the Treaty reinforced, where appropriate, by guidelines on state aids.”

We now have Brexit so, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) suggested in relation to the great repeal Bill, are we going to reach a point, as I think we must, where we transpose the legislation into UK law but then, through statutory instruments and our own decision within the framework of this Westminster jurisdiction, as a result of the decisions taken by the people of this country, including Government Members and Opposition Members—with the exception, I suspect, of SNP Members, but they will pay a price for this in their ports areas—[Interruption.] They may find this amusing, but there are people in the ports of Scotland who do not like the proposal and will resist it if they can. They will not be allowed to do so if the SNP can get away with it.

The bottom line is that this is an issue of great national interest. The European Scrutiny Committee has been following the matter for several years. We first recommended it for debate on the Floor of the House in July 2014—over two years ago. On 19 October, I wrote to the Minister:

“We understand that it is intended that the European Parliament will adopt this text for a First Reading Agreement at its 12-15 December plenary and we presume that this will be followed shortly by Council agreement.

You will understand, therefore, that the Committee expects that the Government will finally, after a disgracefully long delay”—

which I underlined several times—

“schedule the floor debate on the proposal which it and its predecessor have recommended.”

In fact, there have been two debates, which have been aborted. One of them, I can assure the House, was so shambolic that the Chairman of the Committee had to suspend the sitting. I will not go into the details of that—they are all on the record.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between William Cash and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman’s concern is partly due to the behaviour of José Manuel Barroso, the former President of the European Commission, during the Scottish referendum, and whether that model is what he envisages seeing, in amplification, in the European referendum.

[Sir William Cash]

It certainly is. I have heard over and over again in this debate claims that, “We all want fairness. We all want transparency. We all want to be sure that the British people are treated fairly.” The fact is that with European Union money there is not the slightest chance of that happening, and the purdah arrangements, by bringing the civil service into the equation, will have exactly the same negative effect.

[Mr MacNeil]

By extension, the logical conclusion of what the hon. Gentleman has just said is that the Scottish people were not treated fairly last September.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir William Cash]

This is vital territory. In a nutshell, we will have to get it right. Opening the floodgates on that money would be devastating, especially if it were to be employed alongside the lifting of the restrictions in section 125, which would bring the whole panoply of the civil service into play. That would be a nightmare scenario, but it is a genuine possibility. I am not convinced that the European Union is not a foreign source, although I will look into that. We passed an Act of Parliament, the European Communities Act 1972, under which we absorbed into our legislation all the treaties and all the functions of the bodies in the European Union. Because they became part of our constitutional settlement—for the time being, I trust—I believe that it would be an uncertain, if not a dangerous, assumption to make that the European Union and the European Commission would not be construed as being based in the United Kingdom as well as in all the other EU countries, in other words, as not being a foreign source. This matter will have to be looked at very carefully. I shall consult and confer with my colleagues as to what we do about these amendments.

[Mr MacNeil]

Part of the difficulty that the UK has is the way that countries such as Ireland, Cyprus and Malta are to be treated. We also have the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; we do not consider Commonwealth citizens to be foreign but do consider some European Union citizens to be foreign. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office itself is anomalous because the Irish Republic is neither in the Commonwealth nor is it considered legally foreign in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom’s own mess is contributing to some of the arguments that the hon. Gentleman is making.