Global Britain

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

The title of this debate seems to be shorthand for the United Kingdom taking up its separate and equal status among the nations of the world, and everything that that means. As we approached this debate, people might have been asking, “What would it look like if Brexiteers had thought in advance about Britain’s global future? What would it mean if we had had a comprehensive analysis of every area of relevant policy that would change as we left the EU? What would it mean if we had actually drawn a picture of what Britain’s future would look like if it was global?” What if we had set out:

“Why the EU needs to Change

The Change we need

How Britain would gain influence outside an unreformed EU

How Britain would prosper outside an unreformed EU”?

What if we had then brought it together in a substantial conclusion.

I do not suppose, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you will allow me to read 1,030 pages into the record, but for anyone who thinks there was no plan, and that Brexiteers had not thought through what it would mean to leave the EU and where we wanted to go, I encourage them to Google—or use their preferred search engine to search for—“Change, or go” by Business for Britain, which was published before the designated period of the referendum began. I am very proud of that document. I recently revisited it to see what it said about trade policy, and I think it stands the test of time. I am sure it contains something I will not agree with, something outside the boundaries of the manifesto, but anyone with a fair, objective mind should understand that we have always been clear about where we wanted to go.

This really matters, because ideas inform action, and both ideas and action are guided by values. At the heart of the difficulties we have faced recently is the fact that too many people have not understood our values. Brexiteers, people like me, are liberals of the old kind: open and tolerant, and believers in a diverse society, one that makes progress. For a long time, I was in favour of the European Union as it was, including, at one point, the euro. Why did I change my mind? It was because of Gordon Brown going off and signing that Lisbon treaty on his own, trying almost to hide what he was doing. I came to realise that democracy was under threat. When I recall how I felt at the time of the Lisbon treaty, watching the European constitution being hammered through, positively against democracy and with a refusal of a mandate, I remember fear and anxiety. I remember that I was concerned for the future of the country.

I therefore listened to the concerns of our opponents—the opponents of Brexit—expressed in the past few years. I have listened to them with considerable sympathy. Today it is incumbent on all Brexiteers to manufacture consent for what we are doing, to recognise that we have won: we have the Prime Minister we wanted and the policy we wanted, and the majority in the House of Commons necessary to give the Prime Minister the power necessary to put that through.

The Prime Minister is a centrist. Anyone objective, looking at our manifesto and our programme for government, will see that he is willing to intervene in the economy, that he wants to be outside the EU but that he is open, liberal, tolerant and turning to the world. I am therefore making an appeal today for grace and patience, for people to be kind to one another, particularly as we approach this celebration. It is difficult to be kind to people when they have been trying to delegitimise election results and referendum results, including the recent election: I heard people talking about first past the post, seeking to delegitimise the result. It will not do to be trying to delegitimise the constitutional arrangements that have served us very well. It is difficult to be graceful to people when they are demonising you, in one case saying that Brexiteers—indeed, the European Research Group—were worse than Nazis. That is a ridiculous comment, yet demonisation has been common. It will not do for leaders of our society to be constantly seeking to demoralise the public, but that is what we have seen. No more—no more demoralisation, no more demonisation of opponents and no more attempts, please, to delegitimise legitimate results.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the reason he is so right is that the outcome of the general election, which endorsed the result of the referendum itself, is a tribute to the British people, who made the decision that we should be returned to this House in the numbers that we see?

[Mr Baker]

Absolutely, and I shall come on to the question having been asked and answered.

Currently, journalists are asking me how I feel about tomorrow, the day of our leaving the European Union. It is, after all, the conclusion of what I have worked for for a good 10 to 12 years of my life—I got into politics because of that fury about the Lisbon treaty—so I should be elated. I should be rejoicing, but I am reminded of Wellington:

“Believe me, nothing except a battle lost is half so melancholy as a battle won.”

I approach tomorrow in a spirit of some considerable melancholy. I very much regret the division that this country has faced. I very much regret the cost of coming so far—the things we have had to do in British politics to get to this point. I very much regret the sorrow that my opponents will feel tomorrow as some are rejoicing on the streets.

I know that we are going to celebrate. I will celebrate—I will allow myself a smile and that glass of champagne and I will enjoy myself—but I will celebrate discreetly and in a way that is respectful of the genuine sorrow that others are feeling at the same time. That means not that I am giving in—it does not mean that I am turning away from what I believe—but that I recognise that all of us on the Government Benches who have won the argument now have a duty to be magnanimous. I urge that on everyone, inside and outside the House, even as we press forward. There are some who take an attitude of “no quarter” after the events of the past few years, and I say to them no, enough. We have to forgive and turn away from what has happened in the past, because we need to create the future that we can all enjoy and be proud of in this country. It is not a future based on past grievances; it is an open and expansive future that embraces the infinite value of every other person, even when we disagree with one another.

I do not wish to make a speech about disagreeing gracefully—perhaps on another occasion—but I do want to pick up on what the Secretary of State said about the battle of ideas raging around the world. She is absolutely right. It is a subject about which I have talked before, and if anybody is interested in my analysis, it is in the pinned video on my YouTube channel. A true conflict of ideas is going on right now—a widespread crisis of political economy—and when we listened to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) talk through his ideas, some of the difficulties and conflicts about how we go forward in the world were evident in what he said.

I am not going to be critical of what the hon. Gentleman said, but one point that I shall draw out is that so many people, including him, have made a plea for us to comply with the rules-based international order. I want us to do that. I want us to build up the World Trade Organisation—a great multilateral organisation that does not involve having a supreme court with wide-ranging powers to deliver free trade—but I say gently that if we comply with the World Trade Organisation rules, we cannot discriminate against food that is safe to eat, yet there are Members of this House who make both pleas: they plead that we ban American food that is safe to eat at the same time as making a plea for complying with WTO rules. People will have to make up their minds as to what they want to do. I want to respect international institutions—the things we have carefully built up to pursue human flourishing through liberty under the rule of law, not only nationally but internationally.

[Mr Fysh]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that we work together as a House to make sure that we do not take tariff reduction off the table, because if we are to achieve some of the ambitions that the Opposition outlined earlier, we need the ability to do deals with others, which requires us to be less protectionist in our own markets?

[Mr Baker]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, before I came to the House—before I expected to get into the House—I started a think-tank called the Cobden Centre. I consider myself to be an old English Cobdenite classical liberal. I believe that human flourishing will be best advanced by the policy on which my hon. Friend and I agree—one of liberalisation of both tariffs and non-tariff barriers. We should be promoting human flourishing through that deeply rooted sense of liberty that I know the Secretary of State fully believes in.

The battle in which we are engaged is, in a sense, the same old battle we have always faced. It is a battle between a belief in managing the lives of other people and a belief in liberty. Are we to be merely conservative, clinging on to the institutions of the past, or are we going to be what I would consider to be genuinely liberal? While respecting traditions that have worked, are we going to be genuinely liberal and progressive, recognising that human progress comes not through state planning and foreseeing every possible difficulty well in advance? That has never worked. It might sometimes make a contribution, but as a general principle it has not worked. Or are we going to recognise that everyone errs? Like entrepreneurs, are we going to recognise that things can and do go wrong? Are we going to have good-quality error correction mechanisms, which mean that in government, as in the market and as in science, when errors are made, they are rapidly corrected? Not only will progress in the world happen fast, but it will keep accelerating. We need the mechanisms to ensure that errors are not entrenched—not entrenched across the whole of Europe and the world—but corrected fast.

In concluding, I wish to turn to a speech made by Ronald Reagan in 1964 called “A Time for Choosing”. It is always a time for choosing. He talked about the long journey that mankind makes

“from the swamp to the stars”.

He said that

“this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.”

He went on:

“This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

The question has been asked—not just once, but four times. It was answered in a referendum; in a general election in which both main parties had leave manifestos; in European Parliament elections in which the Brexit party came first with, for want of a better term, a harder proposal for Brexit than the Government had adopted; and the question has just been asked and answered in a general election with a result that none of us could have foreseen. It is time for the whole country and the whole House, magnanimously on the part of those of us who were victorious, to accept that it is time to move forward gracefully, to believe in ourselves and our capacity for self-government, and to go forward and flourish.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

Well, it was a fine speech, in parts, that the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) just made, and I say that with all sincerity. He ended—I can tell—with a quote from President Reagan, who I can only assume is a hero of his, and, indeed, of many of the colleagues who surround him on the Government Benches, but I prefer what the German Federal President Steinmeier said, which was that the politics of the European Union are based on the revolutionary idea that one’s opponent has a point. The hon. Gentleman brought that to this debate, because he did have a point, of sorts. What he said about how his side owns the victory is important; indeed, as a party that advocates Scotland’s independence, that is a lesson for us as well. These things do matter.

I remember that the day after the referendum, on Parliament Square, outside this building, a young girl held up a sign with the Europe flag on it that said, “I want my country back”, a phrase often used by people on the other side of the Brexit divide. There is a feeling of loss, and I will take at face value the way in which the hon. Gentleman extends the hand, but that does not mean that I have to accept everything that he asks the House to accept, because the clash of ideas does matter, and only a fool would not understand that there is a Scotland dynamic in this. Indeed, a Unionist should understand that better than anyone else.

I accept that the Prime Minister and the Conservative party have received a mandate to take England out of the European Union, but it is an arithmetical fact, adumbrated in all the electoral events that the hon. Gentleman just outlined, that that mandate does not extend to Scotland. I can accept that we had the referendum on independence in 2014, but facts change, circumstances change, and people’s minds change, too. I ask the hon. Gentleman—in all seriousness because he clearly has some clout on the Conservative Benches—to ask his colleagues in Government to engage their brains more fully than they have done to date in the Scottish dynamic of the constitutional conundrum that we are in and that will only intensify.

[Mr Baker]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making so much of my speech his own. What I say is that I hope I am not asking anything of him that I would not give myself. I said that I would accept the referendum result. I would have stood down in the general election of 2020, and I would have left politics. He is entitled to fight on, but I just say to him that the Prime Minister was right to say that there was a referendum in Scotland and that it should be accepted. It was stated that it would be a once-in-a-generation referendum. Of course, facts change. That is, I am sorry, to add nothing to the debate. I just ask him to accept his own referendum result.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I would not be in this House if I did not accept the 2014 referendum result. There would not be this huge number of Scottish National party Members of Parliament if we did not accept the 2014 referendum. As Ruth Davidson herself said, it is entirely right, honourable and indeed expected that the Scottish National party should continue to advocate for the very policy that it is in existence to try to deliver. There is nothing undemocratic or dishonourable about me and my colleagues advancing that cause.

None the less, even with accepting that the Brexiteers in the House have won—I can accept that—who, no matter what their Brexit position, can fail to have been moved by the scenes in the European Parliament yesterday, when parliamentarians from across the continent joined hands and sang that great Scots music hall poem, “Auld Lang Syne”. It is a song and a poem of friendship and of solidarity across the continent of Europe. What a contrast to the high hand of UK Unionism that we have seen just this week. This is what I mean when I say to colleagues on the Government Benches to please engage their brain.

The Scottish Government published a very serious document, seeking to alleviate the pressures on that part of the United Kingdom with regard to the movement of people. Scotland’s problem is people leaving, not people coming. It is inconceivable that the UK Government could even have read that proposal before they rejected it out of hand. I feel like they are doing my job for me, because in parts of my constituency—admittedly, it is a yes voting constituency, but it has always had the highest Tory vote in Glasgow—the people on whom they are relying, who are part of the coalition they need to keep the Union together, have not necessarily painted their faces blue and run into the forest declaring support for independence, but my goodness they want to have a conversation with my party in a way that they did not in the 2014 referendum. I ask colleagues on the Government Benches just to reflect on that, and on the fact that every single compromise that was offered by the Scottish Government and by the Scottish National party in this House over the past four years has been rejected out of hand—every single one of them.

I accept that the European Union—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), whom I am coming to, is yawning at this point. I accept that the European Union is the great devil for some people, but we just do not see it like that. The European Union as a project was created as Europe stood at the gates of hell and all of the history that went before it. Where there was Nazism and communism, it displaced those ideas and opened up economies and opened up markets. It allowed the clash of ideas in free and fair elections to take place all across the European continent. It still has a job to do in some parts of it.

The Secretary of State prayed in aid the Government’s trade strategy. The European Union, a place in the world where once there were warring navies in the waters and warring air forces in the sky, now has trading, shipping and exchanges of ideas and of commerce that I thought Conservatives would have welcomed, but perhaps I am at risk of re-running the old argument.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), and I will be following up on some of his points. [Interruption.] Is he right honourable?

[Mr Steve Baker]

It’s only a matter of time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to respond to this important, wide-ranging debate. The Opposition welcome the opportunity to discuss Britain’s place in the world at this critical juncture for the future of our country. Although we formally leave the EU at 11 o’clock tomorrow, there are still a great many unanswered questions about the UK’s future relationship with the EU and with countries all around the world.

In the Labour party, we of course want to see Britain as a globally influential country, trading with partners as equals and fulfilling our obligations to the poorest people in the world. We are optimistic and ambitious for our country, but we believe that we face a great many challenges, too, and it is not doing Britain down to be clear-eyed about that. We should all expect some frank and detailed answers from the Government.

Let me congratulate those Members who made their maiden speeches today. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Stuart Anderson) spoke extremely movingly about his journey to this place and the adversity that he has overcome. I am certain that his experiences will allow him to make an important contribution to our debates. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) spoke about the global nature of his city of Aberdeen, and made a powerful case for fairness in the face of injustice. The hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) spoke movingly about the sacrifices that his mum made, and I am sure she is very proud of him. We do not thank our mums enough. His point about spreading opportunity throughout the country was well made. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) spoke powerfully about the need to fight racism and injustice at home and abroad. She is exactly right that our country’s trade must be fair as well as free.

I wish to make a few points and pose some questions to the Government about exactly how prepared they are for the opportunities and challenges ahead. First, the Government must be clear about their priorities and capabilities as we seek to strike trade deals around the world. The Government have already said that they intend to carry out negotiations with the EU and US simultaneously, as well as moving ahead with the Australian and New Zealand deals. A number of important EU trade deals must be renegotiated, including those with Japan and Canada. Altogether, that will require significant resources and expertise to achieve.

The significant task facing the Government comes against the backdrop of a broader challenge: as the UK takes responsibility for trade policy for the first time in 40 years, we face a severe shortage of the skills and experience necessary to negotiate on the global stage. In a submission to the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Foreign Office has already acknowledged that it will be a challenge. It said:

“The UK has not had to operate on the frontline of trade policy and negotiations since it joined the EEC. The scale of the UK’s challenge in building trade capability from a very modest base is unparalleled amongst developed economies.”

When he responds to the debate, will the Minister tell us just how modest a base we are dealing with? What progress have the Department for International Trade and the Foreign Office made in training officials to an expert level in trade policy and negotiations? Put simply, just how many fully trained trade negotiators do we actually have?

On the subject of Government preparedness for trade negotiations, we are in the quite extraordinary situation of not knowing which Department will be responsible for the negotiations. The Government have said that the EU trade talks will be run from the Cabinet Office, but we still do not know whether the Department for International Trade will be merged into another Department or stay as a stand-alone entity. Can the Minister shed any light on that?

Whoever conducts the negotiations will have to think carefully about our priorities. That means engaging seriously with businesses and civil society about the potential benefits and costs of trade agreements. So far, we have had a lack of clarity from the Government about the trade-offs involved in a deal with, for example, the US. Instead of rushing into a deal for political purposes, the Government must engage fully and consider our national interests.

The UK is taking control of its trade policy at precisely the point that the global rules-based order is under great pressure and openness to trade is declining globally. We can no longer rely on the WTO to settle trade disputes, because of the US refusal to appoint new members to the appellate body. We must be a strong voice for free and fair trade and work with partners around the world to further those aims.

[Mr Steve Baker]

Is it the Labour party’s policy to abide by WTO rules, as they have been committed to by the UK? Is it the hon. Lady’s intention to build up the WTO, or does she envisage some other way of establishing free trade? I am delighted to hear, by implication, that she is open to free trade around the world.

[Judith Cummins]

I welcome that intervention. I will answer it very, very bluntly: we do want reform of the WTO rules.

I turn now to a couple of specific challenges that we face over the coming years. The Government’s announcement on Tuesday regarding the role that Huawei will be allowed to play in delivering our 5G network is an example of the global pressures that we face. The Government have given assurances about the security of our critical national infrastructure, and it is vital that these assurances are matched with action. The crucial question must be: why do we not have our own domestic tech and manufacturing capacity to deliver this technology and meet our own security needs? We must not allow ourselves to be held hostage in a geopolitical tug of war.

Global Britain must surely be underpinned by a strong and dynamic domestic economy, with good jobs and prosperity spread across the country. As we leave the EU, the Government must set out exactly how they will attract overseas investment into all the regions of the UK and help to grow our export base, particularly in manufacturing.

One of our most important industries is the British steel sector, which, as the Minister will know, faces acute global challenges. We are still waiting for a steel sector deal, and we need urgent action from the Government on the prolonged dumping of Chinese steel.

--- Later in debate ---

[Conor Burns]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have no doubt that as well as being a vocal and articulate champion for Peterborough, he will promote the service sector in the UK economy, as he has just done so effectively.

I will endeavour to reply to the specific points raised in the debate. The shadow Minister criticised the Government for our interaction with Parliament in future agreements. We are going to publish an outline for each negotiation that includes objectives and scoping assessments, as well as an explanatory memorandum. The shadow Secretary of State constantly talks about us having an ineffective trade remedy system. The simple repetition of something does not make it true. We are going to have a tough regime, learning from international best practice.

I promised to come back to the shadow Secretary of State on the situation in Western Sahara. The UK-Morocco agreement will apply in the same way as the EU-Morocco agreement, having been amended to comply with the European Court of Justice judgment on the issue; that is a critical point. He also raised the question of bribery and corruption in the provision of UK Export Finance. UK Export Finance always carries out anti-bribery due diligence before providing any support at all.

I promise that I did not put him up to it, but my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) said that we needed greater resource and more trade commissioners. He made that point very well indeed, and I hope it is heard. It would be inappropriate for me to endorse it, but—what is the old saying?—“He might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.”

[Mr Steve Baker]

May I impress upon the Minister that with so many trade negotiations going on simultaneously, it is very important that he has another Minister of State in his Department?

[Conor Burns]

My hon. Friend will doubtless have been heard as well.

I pay tribute to those who made maiden speeches. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) gave an accomplished performance. I disagreed with almost every word of it, but he delivered it very effectively indeed. I thank him, from many of us on the Government Benches, for his kind words about his predecessor Ross Thomson.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) spoke of his conversation with the noble Lady Boothroyd. We on the Treasury Bench understand the need to deliver, and having listened to him, I am certain that we will deliver for him and that he will not let Baroness Boothroyd down.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Stuart Anderson) gave the most moving and deeply personal speech of the day. I salute him for his courage in speaking in that way in the Chamber. It was a genuine privilege to be on the Front Bench to hear his contribution.

The hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) gave an amusing and engaging speech, and spoke of her predecessor, Chuka Umunna. We all have things to learn from our predecessors. I learned much from Sir John Butterfill. I continue to learn much from the right hon. the Lord Eden of Winton, who first came to this House in 1954 and still provides me with excellent advice. The one piece of advice that the hon. Lady perhaps should not take from her predecessor is to join the Lib Dems—however tempting a prospect and however desperate they are. It would not be a career-enhancing move.

My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) gave an absolute tour de force of a speech, in which he spoke a lot about fishing and ports, and then more about fish. I would say there is absolutely nothing fishy about my hon. Friend, which is not something that we could always say about his predecessor.

There are many who are worried about us leaving the European Union. They seem to think that we are going to cut all ties and walk away. The EU will remain our closest and largest market, and the Government are committed—as we committed with the EU in the political declaration—to signing a free trade agreement by the end of this year. But there are massive opportunities for the United Kingdom to exploit outside the European Union. According to the IMF, 90% of global GDP growth in the next five years will come from outside the EU. The trade deals we seek to negotiate, alongside those with the EU, represent a raft of exciting new trade agreements with other priority countries, our aim being to cover 80% of our trade with FTAs within three years. The United States, our largest single trading partner, is the obvious place to start—which is why we started there—but we also look to like-minded partners such as Australia, New Zealand and Japan. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already made enormous strides in this regard, along with engaging positively on our potential accession to the CPTPP—heralded, again, by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow).

As I travel, I see enormous interest in what leaving the European Union means for other countries in their relationship with the United Kingdom. When I listened to the speech by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), I concluded that she must have been supping from the cup of pessimism. If what she was saying in the House today is what she is saying to people overseas, no wonder they think we are in a bad way. I find when I go to Chile, to Brazil, to Morocco, to Algeria—