Brexit: Benefits to Economy and Society

Lord Fox Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

As I said, in the last five years we have obviously had Brexit, but also there has been Covid, massive disruption to the supply chain in China and massive contraction in manufacturing around the world. We have Ukraine, energy prices; it has been an extraordinarily difficult period of contraction in all global economies, whether in Germany, France, Australia or the USA. Our economy is now set fair to grow fast. Like my colleague Minister Hands in the other place, I will be working very closely with individual EU countries. We are signing co-operation deals on financial services, we have resumed participation in the North Seas Energy Cooperation, the UK has rejoined Horizon Europe and Copernicus, and we have agreed to extend zero-tariff trade on electric vehicles. There is a whole list of co-operations with the EU that we continue to push through.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister, in answering my noble friend, dismissed the role of geography. If you are exporting goods, geography is very important; it is much easier and cheaper to sell to your nearest customers than half way across the world. Here is another list, that the Minister could perhaps consider, of issues that I hear about from people selling goods and the friction they encounter: customs declarations; safety and security certificates; evidence of origin of goods; VAT requirements; health certificates; and chemical certificates. Here is the friction that our people and manufacturers are facing every day. Will the Minister admit this is an issue and will he undertake to try to do something about it?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. Yes, this is an issue, and it relates to 24% of our pie chart of exports; that is, our manufactured goods exported to the EU. Some 41% of our exports go to the EU 27 today, and it is 49% if you make it the Europe 34, so this idea that we do not trade with Europe any more, when half of our exports go there, is simply not the case. On the matter of friction on trade, we are making massive strides with the single trade window, the Electronic Trade Documents Act, the new border target operating model, and the ecosystem of trust. We are moving into a new digital world where goods will move much faster, and we recently had a situation where we sent a batch of valves from Burnley to Singapore without any paperwork, thanks to the Electronic Trade Documents Act.