Leaving the EU: Customs

Debate between Simon Clarke and Vicky Ford

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

This is the same “Project Fear” prognosis that we heard in 2016, which has been comprehensively rubbished and which nearly 70% of the hon. Lady’s own constituents rejected—and she continues to lecture me about listening to my constituents and acting in their interests.

The Labour party is unreconciled to Brexit, unwilling to deliver it and unfit to run our country, but the Leader of the Opposition should be thanked for giving us another opportunity to point out the many reasons why Labour’s policy on the customs union and Brexit is so absurd. First, depending on who we ask and on which day, Labour has committed to staying in “a” or “the” customs union, but at the same time says it wants the UK to have a say over future trade deals and arrangements. The whole point is that if we are in the customs union but out of the EU, the UK will have no formal role or veto in trade negotiations, and the EU will have no incentive, let alone legal obligation, to negotiate deals that are in the UK’s interests.

Secondly, Labour’s U-turn towards stay in “a” or “the” customs union clearly breaks a manifesto commitment on which its Members all stood. That manifesto said:

“Labour will set out our priorities in an International Trade White Paper…on the future of Britain’s trade policy”.

We now discover that that White Paper would simply read: “Priority No. 1: give trade policy back to Brussels”.

Thirdly, the EU’s customs tariffs hit the poorest in this country the hardest. The highest EU tariffs are concentrated on food, clothing and footwear, which account for 37% of total tariff revenue, so the poorest British consumers are paying to prop up European industries.

Fourthly, the customs union not only hurts the poorest in our own country; it also supresses the economic growth of the developing world, because EU trade policy encourages cheap imports of raw materials from developing countries, such as coffee, but heavily taxes imports of processed versions of the same good. This means that poorer countries are stuck in a relationship of dependency, whereby there is no incentive to invest in processing technologies, which could lift them from their status as agrarian economies.

Finally, the House should be reminded that during negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, about which Opposition Members made so much fuss in 2015 and 2016, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) gave an impassioned speech to the House in which he concluded that, in negotiating TTIP, we were

“engaging in a race to the bottom”.—[Official Report, 15 January 2015; Vol. 590, c. 1108.]

As Leader of the Opposition, he is now proposing a policy that would completely abrogate the UK’s ability to veto such arrangements in the future, let alone influence their negotiation.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is utterly two-faced that Labour MPs in this House are asking our Government to publish all their negotiating positions but that their friends in the European Parliament are not asking the European Commission to publish theirs?

[Mr Clarke]

I cannot improve on that point, other than to say that it goes to the heart of the matter, which is that this is not about our national interest; it is about the Labour party’s domestic political interest. It is shameful and wrong.

The Labour Party, in supporting a customs union, has gone back on the principles of a lifetime, broken a manifesto pledge and sided with corporations over consumers. It would punish the poorest in this country and abroad and subject the UK, one of the largest economies in the world, to a Turkey-style relationship of dependency in which the EU has complete control over our trade and customs. It is desperate for any opportunity to bring down the Government and has chosen to put power before principles and party before country. Millions of its own voters will be watching very closely indeed.