EU-UK Summit

Debate between Richard Tice and Meg Hillier

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey.

This week will go down in parliamentary history as the week of the greatest surrender. It was bookended by the surrendering at the beginning of the week of the valuable freedoms won from the European Union through the joys of Brexit, and by today’s surrendering of our valuable freehold of the Chagos islands, on which there will be a statement later. I think many members of the British public will be confused, because last week the Government were talking about the joys of the freedoms of Brexit—to be able to do trade deals with India and with the United States—but, all of a sudden, this week they have gone back to the fog of surrender by handcuffing us very closely to the European Union.

There is a rule in business that has been deployed many times by parliamentarians: nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Normally with the EU there is a last-minute drama, but this time was different, because little was agreed and everything was conceded. That is the bottom line. Little has actually been agreed, and everything has been conceded in an extraordinary act of surrender. To use another expression, it is the thin end of the wedge. The EU cannot believe its luck; it has opened the door and stuck the little wedge in there, and it has now got lots of things that it is still negotiating on. Every time, its representatives will say, “Well, you’ve got to agree this before we move on to the next one.” We have heard it all before, yet the Government have learned nothing.

The first surrender is very dear to my constituents in Boston. My fishermen are raging and furious because they assumed that after the end of this first-phase deal, more quotas would be negotiated back to the UK, they would be beneficiaries and we would take back more control of our waters. Instead, it is all been conceded—for 12 years. It is gone.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Are his fishermen not pleased that their export market, which was often turning fish back because of the massively complicated controls, is now open to them again? We were not eating that fish in the UK, and too often it was rotting.

[Richard Tice]

No, they have not mentioned that at all. Likewise, none of the major logistics firms in my constituency has even once mentioned the so-called delays at the border. This surrender of fishing is completely and utterly inexcusable, and nothing has been gained in return.

The second big surrender is that, apparently, we have negotiated theoretical access to some future EU defence fund, but we do not know how much access. We know that we will have to pay a whole load of cash, but we do not know how much—it all has to be negotiated in future. Little has been agreed and everything has been conceded.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

The UK has one of the best defence industries in the world. I am disappointed, as a fellow patriot, that the hon. Gentleman wants to downplay our ability to access that money and support UK businesses and jobs.

[Richard Tice]

I did not say anything about downplaying; I said that if the Government are going to agree a deal, they should agree the terms of the deal. They should not just say, “We’d like a bit of the action. Please tell us how much it’ll cost us later,” and have no idea how much of the action they will get. That is a terrible deal, and we all know that no deal is better than a bad deal.

The third surrender is about becoming a rule-taker. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) referred to agrifoods and the SPS deal, which all sounds very good, except that we now have to take a load of extra rules from Brussels that we have no input into under a process called dynamic alignment, which might mean that we cannot do any further trade deals with great nations such as the United States. That is instead of arguing for mutual recognition, which can of course exist between nations that have excellent standards of food and products, as we do.

We have gained nothing from those three great surrenders. Indeed, we will probably have to pay more if we want any more rules to be given to us, but why would we pay more when we have given ourselves the freedom not to have to pay? I thought we had done all of that.

If we are not content with that, what about the fourth surrender—the big one? Earlier this year, the Minister said, “Don’t worry, chaps—no plans for any form of youth mobility scheme.” It turns out that he was right, because some clever person rebadged it: “I’ve got an idea. Let’s call it a youth experience scheme.” Well, I am sure it is a lovely experience, but when someone is 30 years old, are they still a youth? Is it a middle age experience scheme? During the negotiation—because it has not been concluded —I can see that it will then become an old age experience scheme. Then, someone will say, “Hang on, if it’s an old age experience scheme, we don’t have the workers to look after the old people from the EU who’ve come over to our glorious care homes.” So then we will have to have more freedom of movement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Tice]

The hon. Lady implies that we are unable to go to the EU; of course, people can travel to the EU. What I am saying is that people want to get a good job with good pay prospects in their neighbourhood —near home. At the moment, that is not the reality, and that is what people are focused on.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Tice]

The hon. Lady may have forgotten that it was thanks to our intervention that British Steel and the blast furnaces have been saved. We stood there six years ago, and I said, “Don’t sell British Steel to the Chinese,” but the Conservative Government ignored our advice. British Steel has consistently said to me over the last six years that the cost of energy drives up the price of steel. That is why the quantity of steel that we have produced in this country in the last decade has plummeted—because of our high energy costs due to the ever increasing cost of renewable energy.

The key problem is the cost of energy, which has driven down the production of steel by about half in the last decade. That is why British Steel is so cross about the cost of energy. We have an opportunity to manufacture and sell more steel internally, in the UK, but the tragedy is that the Ministry of Defence, for example, does not use either of our key steel producers—Tata Steel or British Steel—as a critical supplier, which it should do. Why does it not do that? Because those producers are uncompetitive. Why? Because of the cost of energy in our domestic market. The fifth surrender is the EU emissions trading scheme, which will be a serious handicap and handcuff over the next few years.

The sixth surrender is on the use of passport e-gates. I know it caused some interest, but the reality is that, once again, nothing has been agreed. It is supposedly the great benefit, yet it turns out that it is not agreed. We have no idea when it might commence; it might be this year or next year. It also turns out that no country is obligated to sign up to our supposed access through the e-gates—no, it will be a voluntary process. Actually, we have not agreed the benefit that we have all been told is the deal’s greatest opportunity.

In other words, once again, little has been agreed and everything has been conceded. Interestingly, even before the deal, nations such as Portugal already allowed us through e-gates. We already have the opportunity that is supposedly the great benefit of this deal, so why do the deal in the first place?

The deal has been done, despite all of these great surrenders, because we have a Prime Minister who did not want us to leave the EU. More than that, he did not want to trust democracy; he wanted to do it again by having a second referendum. One week, he says that he wants freedom of movement and more immigration, and the next week, he says he wants less immigration. It is hard to keep up.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I am disappointed that we are hearing, from the hon. Gentleman and others on the Opposition side of the Chamber, words such as “surrender”, “sinister” and “stupid”. They are nicely alliterative, but let me give him some other words: “cheaper”, “faster” and “more opportunities”? They are what the deal brings to the young people of Boston and Skegness, as much as to the people of Hackney South and Shoreditch.

[Richard Tice]

I am absolutely certain that nothing will be cheaper as a result of the deal. Indeed, we have already seen that the carbon price has gone up, which gives us the first indication.

I do not think that the deal will be a great opportunity. It was a catastrophic surrender. We worked so hard to give ourselves freedom of control through Brexit.