Leaving the EU: Customs

Ruth George Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I have already given way quite a few times, and I am conscious of the large number of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who have expressed a wish to participate in the debate.

Turning to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin), the candour of everybody involved, whether Ministers or officials, would be affected if they thought that the content of their discussions would be disclosed prematurely. Frankly, if details of discussions were routinely made public—

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

rose—

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

This Parliament, this country, businesses and the rest of the world are looking on in horror as our Government fight like cats in a sack over two unworkable proposals. No one can believe that a democratic country could put itself in this situation, doing so much damage to our businesses, our jobs and our future prospects.

The Government are refusing to release information on the advice they are getting from all sides, just as they whipped their MPs to refuse an economic impact assessment on the deal itself before we in Parliament have to vote on that deal. Anyone would think that the Government have something to hide: that they have no plan, that they have no strategy for avoiding the economic disaster that their own papers say they are heading for. They are doing everything except listen. They are not listening to those on their own Benches and they are not listening to British business.

Those of us on the Opposition Benches who have spoken to businesses in our constituencies have heard it loud and clear: they all want to be part of a customs union. It will be absolutely disastrous for our businesses if they are not part of a system of tariff-free borders and if they do not have regulatory alignment. Businesses in my constituency are already having to move abroad and set up offices and transfer jobs abroad, because they are being undermined by competitors in the European Union that are undercutting them and going to contractors, saying that UK companies cannot guarantee that they will be part of the customs union, that they will not have tariffs and that they will not have regulatory alignment. That is why we are losing business. It is happening.

The Government should listen to the Confederation of British Industry and the EEF, which said that

“the need for a post-Brexit customs union reflects what EEF and UK manufacturing have long called for… free and frictionless trade can only be achieved by comparable customs rules to those”

we already enjoy. That is why businesses in my constituency told me loud and clear at a Brexit summit that I held that they all need to be part of a customs union to carry on trading and to enjoy the preferential deals with the rest of the world that they enjoy as part of the EU customs union. We cannot seek to match that. Australia has just 15 such deals, as does Canada, and they are worse than what we get as part of the EU. The Government need to do the decent thing by this Parliament, this country and by our businesses and make sure that we have transparency.