EU-UK Summit

13:30:00

I beg to move, That this House has considered the EU-UK summit. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey, for a debate on such an important issue. Let me start with what I believe is a truism in British politics: we can learn a lot from Disney and the films of our childhood. In this debate, the words of Elsa from “Frozen” are particularly apposite for those people who are still obsessed with the debates of 2016 and 2019: it is time to let it go. I suspect that many Members across the House would agree with that, because 2016 was a long time ago, and time has moved on. It was 2016 when President Trump was elected for the first time. It was the year that, sadly, David Bowie passed away. It really is that long ago. Russia was involved in a war in the Donbas, but no further. TikTok did not even exist—that was not until 2019, which is also now a very long time ago and was when we finally actually left the European Union with the deal struck under the trade and co-operation agreement. It was also, of course, the year of “Frozen II” and that famous song “Into the Unknown”, and it was the year that Greggs gave us a vegan sausage roll, Notre-Dame burned down, Boris Johnson was elected as Prime Minister and “Game of Thrones” finally finished—not the Conservative leadership challenges, but the television series. My point is that so much has happened in our history since the tired old debates were first rehearsed. Let us not do that today, because we have left the European Union. I stand here as chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, seeking not to prosecute an argument to rejoin but to look at the summit and the deal that was struck on Monday. Frankly, I do not believe this country has time to engage in the discussion around rejoining. We need a salvage operation, and I see Monday’s deal as the start of that operation to salvage a future following the impact of Brexit. Even if we disagree on that salvage operation, I hope we can convince the Minister that there needs to be more scrutiny of our relationship with Europe. We might disagree about the direction of travel, but we are bound together by a recognition that taking back control means that this place needs to have discussions about the deals and the opportunities and what they mean for our constituents. Perhaps, like Banquo’s ghost, the former Member for Stone still lives with us; but actually, we can all show today that were we to have European scrutiny formats in the House, it would be a positive and constructive contribution to the deal-making process. That is what is on offer today: the opportunity to take us forward, not back. We can now see the impact of the Brexit deal on our constituents. Our constituents need us to ask questions about what will happen next—about the 1.8 million jobs that we are missing as a result of the deal that was struck, the stagnation in the growth of exports and the 16,000 businesses that gave up trading as a direct result of the “benefit” of Brexit, which was paperwork. The EU is our biggest trading partner: it accounts for 41% of our exports and 51% of our imports. In comparison, the US accounts for just 22% of our exports and 13% of our imports. Clearly, this is a fundamental relationship for the future of British business and British jobs. The summit on Monday was an opportunity not just to look at the trade and co-operation agreement—what was written into the very details of the deal, five years on—but to do something that the public want. Two thirds of the public tell us that Brexit has been detrimental to the cost of living, 65% say it has had a negative impact on our economy, 64% think it has been bad for British business, and 60% think that a closer relationship with Europe is in our interests.

My hon. Friend will know my views on Brexit—I represent a constituency in which 87% of people voted to remain and I represent 22,000 EU nationals, who are part of the fabric of our community—but I want to ask her about young people, who she will probably mention at some point. The statistics show that there has been a 30% drop in the number of schoolchildren going to Europe on school trips, and that disadvantaged areas have been hit the hardest—

Order. I remind Members that an intervention is an intervention and not a small speech. Others have put in to speak, so can we get to the question please?

The UK is not part of the list of travellers scheme, which is why it is so hard for schoolchildren to go on trips. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should have better access to Europe, like we had when we were growing up?

As somebody who still remembers a powerful school trip to Ypres to look at the first world war sites, I know that the dramatic decline in school trips to Europe is harming our children’s education. I am sure the Minister will want to refer to that. The public are living in the world we are in now, which is why they want us to look at the deal. They recognise that Europe now has the highest employment rate since 2005, whereas elsewhere the second-term Trump Administration have brought tariffs and turmoil, just 121 days in; Putin has now invaded Ukraine itself; there is a horrific conflict in the middle east; and China and Iran now figure in our national security concerns, too. And as ever, technology overruns us all. There are now 159 million TikTok users in Europe, and it is predicted that within three years some 15% of our day-to-day decisions will be made by artificial intelligence. All of us will probably become redundant; I shall leave it to Conservative Members to decide whether that is a good or bad thing. Everybody else has moved on. It is time that we in this House do, too. In that spirit, let me fail to heed my own words and turn to perhaps one of the most damaging aspects of the Brexit debate. I welcome the Minister’s hard work and the deal that has been struck as a testament to the ambitions of the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and the concept of cakeism. It is truly incredible to see that, far from it being impossible to be pro cake and pro eating it, the new bespoke deal delivers for the UK in many ways that many people had suggested were not possible. I put on the record my support for the formal security and defence partnership, with the promise of exploring participation in a new defence fund while retaining our red line about not participating in the single market. I will, of course, take an intervention from any Conservative Member who wishes to apologise for the deliberate refusal of the previous Government to put anything about foreign policy or defence co-operation into the previous deal—a decision that has left us uniquely exposed.

As the Government say, NATO is the cornerstone of our defence, and that is how we co-operate with our European partners on defence. EU defence is an add-on that has been in the minds and the ether of the EU since the Maastricht treaty, but it has never come to anything substantial.

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will want to tell that to his constituents. Of course NATO is vital, but we are dealing with a new world. They see the aggression of President Putin and the need to stand up to address the situation in Gaza. They see the leadership being shown by our European colleagues and they wish us to be not playground generals, but grown-ups. That is exactly what the defence deal will mean. I also welcome the proposals for co-operation on foreign aid, because that is crucial not only to tackling poverty around the world but to preventing conflict. Conflict is driving many to flee persecution, proving how aid is often our best defence against the small boats, rather than the bluster of some Conservative Members. There has been a resolution to the risk of divergency in our carbon emissions trading schemes, which would have been a death knell for the British steel industry. Energy UK estimates that will mean around £800 million per year of payments going to our Treasury rather than to the EU. It is worth remembering that 75% of our steel exports, worth £3 billion, go to the European Union. Frankly, if we want to save British Steel, we need to save its market, which is what the resolution will do. The talks will allow us to use e-gates at the borders. Queuing might be a national pastime, but it is not a national sport that any of us enjoy. There will be co-operation with Europol and data sharing on fingerprints, DNA and criminal records. Again, I suspect that in future years many of us will realise how criminal it was that that was not part of the original deal, which made it easier for the people who wish to do harm to our constituents to evade justice by crossing the border.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is going to apologise to the British public for such an oversight.

Someone once said that the general rule in politics is never to apologise and never to explain, and I am certainly not going to break that rule now. The truth is that the hon. Lady is arguing for co-operation, and we all affirm that. Britain has co-operated with its neighbours, and with countries more widely, over the whole of our history. We began co-operating with Portugal under Edward III, as the Minister will no doubt confirm and speak about in some detail. It is not about co-operation; it is about governance. There is a fundamental difference between collaboration and co-operation, and government from abroad.

I am always pleased to see the right hon. Gentleman admit that he is in fact a rule taker, not a rule maker. It is noticeable that the co-operation that his Government did not pursue meant that we did not have access to EU databases such as Eurodac and the Schengen information system, which are critical to stopping cross-border crime and addressing illegal migration. The right hon. Gentleman talks about the fact that we have always co-operated; it was a conscious decision by the previous Government not to do so, and it is a conscious decision by this Government to address that to help to make us safer. Time and again, his Government rejected important security measures just because they had the word “Europe” in the title. This Government will not make that mistake. All that is before we even get to the basics that I believe most of our constituents will be interested in, including the sanitary and phytosanitary deal, which will see the removal of the vast majority of the paperwork and checks that were killing British food manufacturing and farmers, as well as causing inflation to costs here. Just the removal of export health certificates will save businesses up to £200 per consignment—a cost that was being passed on to our constituents. Again, I offer any Member who wants to defend the previous deal the opportunity to apologise to all those who work in logistics and have had to deal with Sevington, and the queues, delays and confusion about getting goods across the border. I hope that the Minister will confirm that along with removal of the export health certificates, we are looking again at how we can remove the border operating model that the last Government brought in, which put further charges on top of the export health certificates and meant more delays in getting seeds to British farmers and flowers to market for our British businesses. All our constituents will welcome an SPS deal, because it is a way to tackle the extra £6.5 billion that we have had to spend on food and drink as a result of the charges, on top of other costs, because of Brexit. Of course, we must talk about fish, because Britain’s fishing industry has indeed been battered by Brexit. Boris Johnson promised both prodigious amounts of fish to be caught and EU vessels out of our waters. He delivered neither—fishcakes, indeed. The new deal will start to address the damage done to our fishing industries. It is an honest and fair deal to secure no further loss of access and the restoration of a market for fish. The SPS deal will cut the Brexit red tape that has caused a 29% drop in fish exports to the EU since 2019. I am sure that Members read the words of Ian Perkes, a fish merchant from Brixham, who said that he had a catch worth £80,000 written off because of a dispute over the temperature it had been stored at, and another consignment rejected because the Latin name for Dover sole was spelled wrong. The deal done by the previous Government would have expired next year. If we want the investment that the industry desperately needs, the stability of terms matters. With 80% of our catch exported—70% of that to the EU—the new deal offers a chance for that stable future for our fishing communities. It is the same with energy. The deal done by the previous Government would have expired next year. As the Prime Minister pointed out, we have been aligning in practice since we left the EU; we just have not had any say in what happens. We have aligned because the standards are high, and because asking businesses to follow two different sets of rules is a recipe for more regulation, not less. Anybody who doubts that needs to look at the record of the last Government. I stand here as a red against red tape, welcoming the ruthlessness with which the Government have acted. The previous Government tried to introduce the UK charter mark, which they then admitted would cost British business billions of pounds to implement. They then promptly stated that if businesses had met EU standards, they had met British ones too. What a mess! The Product Regulation and Metrology Bill is currently going through Parliament, and I am sure that the Minister will want to update us about what the deal will mean for the Bill and its terms of trade. Conservative Members will decry the idea that we are rule takers. We were under them, but under this deal we will be consulted. We will have to abide by a dispute resolution system. Conservative Members act as if that is some new phenomenon—something we have never had as part of any other trade deal or, indeed, as part of their trade deal with the European Union. Thankfully, we can look to a non-mythical creature—but one that is certainly at risk—the puffin, to see what the reality might be, because last year the EU took the UK and Holyrood to court for banning sand eel fishing in the North sea and Scottish waters, as they wanted to protect that vital food source for the puffin. That is a noble aim that we can all get behind. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague had to decide whether the ban was a reasonable measure and, as a result, rule on our ability to determine fishing in our own seas. The courts upheld that decision to protect puffins and did so on the basis of the European Court of Justice—a process that the previous Government had signed up to already and that is part of the future negotiating deal. Conservative Members talk of sovereignty as if it is some lump of plasticine that we can hand out, but the truth is that the new deal upholds our ability to make our case and to work with our neighbours within a reasonable framework. It is five years since we left, and we are still talking about and affected by the decisions that Europe makes. We are just not in the room where they are being made.

One of the things still not agreed is getting back into the Erasmus scheme. The Turing scheme, which was proposed instead, cut out youth groups, which has had a big effect in my constituency and around the country. Does my hon. Friend have any further information —I hope the Minister is listening—about the pace at which we might get back into the Erasmus scheme?

That is a fair and central question. I was coming to the point that we must ensure that our young people do not bear the brunt of the obsession with isolation at the expense of influence. That is why it is right to negotiate a youth mobility scheme and to look at Erasmus. I urge the Government to ensure that the scheme prioritises apprenticeships and training opportunities, so that future generations can benefit in the way that many previous ones did by taking a job in Spain or Germany, as well as going there to study. Ultimately, this is just the start of the process—I am very aware that “Frozen III” is due to come to cinemas soon. There will be much more detail to work out, and I am sure that the Minister will give us a timeline for when decisions will be made and when we will get that detail.

Will the hon. Lady allow me to intervene?

I was about to conclude, but I will give way.

I want to correct the hon. Lady on a matter of fact. The dispute about sand eel fishing was resolved, under the trade and co-operation agreement, by a bilateral arbitration panel. It had nothing to do with the European Court of Justice. It is a normal trading agreement. There was no involvement of the Court of Justice of the European Union. [Interruption.]

I can only urge the Member to go and look at the basis for the decision-making arbitration panel. I can hear the Minister champing at the bit to correct him as well.

She has misled the Chamber!

“Misled” is a very serious term, and I hope the Member will withdraw it.

Would the hon. Lady like to correct the record, because what she said was incorrect? We can prove it afterwards, and she will have to correct the record afterwards if that is the case.

I refer to the point about the protection of The Hague and where The Hague takes its judgments from. Ultimately, the decisions were made in the Court of Arbitration. It relies on those rulings. That is part of the process. I suspect the fact that the Member has decried that speaks to the need for us all to have more time to scrutinise and do justice to this issue. I suspect that when he makes his speech, he will continue to make the argument that we do not want to work with the European Court of Justice. The truth is that his Government brought in mechanisms that used the European Court of Justice as part of their framework—[Interruption.]

Order. We must have just one person speaking at a time.

As the Minister says, the Windsor framework does as well. It shows where and how it works, and I think our constituents deserve the honesty of how the processes actually work and what the rulings are, rather than the fantasy. The puffins are very real; the puffery is not. Finally, I have some questions I wish the Minister to address in his summing-up, because there are questions arising from the summit and the deal that has been struck. He will be aware that many of us have been championing membership of the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention, because that is also about the rules of origin paperwork, which has been so harmful to our supply chains. Could he give us an update on whether there is an opportunity for us to be part of that mechanism again, to help British businesses with all that paperwork? We also need to understand whether any progress has been made on the mutual recognition of conformity assessments and qualifications. We know the latter is in there, but the agreement matters for both. Finally, can he say a bit more about what will happen to our financial services, which have not been mentioned yet but are the primary driver of growth in our economy? The new deal will help our constituents finally clear the fog of Brexit: the excessive paperwork, the partnerships that have been damaged and the personal opportunities lost. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to use these summits to keep working on our relationship with our neighbours. It is an honest recognition that we can fight many things in life, but geography is not one of them. Our constituents have paid the price of a bad deal, as have many of us—some Opposition Members literally bankrolled the Brexit campaign. It is no wonder the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) is not with us today; if I were him, I would not want to be here to admit what a botched deal has been done.

My hon. Friend has helpfully laid out a list of issues for the Minister. I would add: what do we do about touring musicians? It has had a really big impact that people are unable to tour in Europe because of the cost of cabotage, visas and so on, as well as the time delays. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be pushing that issue as well?

I do. We may be making Elton John unhappy in the main Chamber, but I hope that in this Chamber the Minister can make him very happy with progress on touring musicians. We welcome the chance to work across the House to fix this through proper scrutiny, debate and discussion. The world is a very uncertain place right now, and our constituents will consider the new deal to offer hope for their future. As much as there is chaos and confusion, we can be crystal clear that both cake and change are possible.

I remind Members that they should bob if they want to be called to speak, and that I will call the Front-Bench spokespeople just before 4 pm to allow Stella Creasy time to make a wind-up speech.

13:51:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And dependants.

And dependants, because the scheme is still open-ended. We do not know the age or number of people involved in the youth experience scheme, and we have no idea about its duration. I am hoping that I will still qualify at the age of 60.

I, too, share a burning desire to still be considered young—alas, I have to face the brutal reality. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has similar concerns about the 13 other youth mobility schemes that we have with countries around the world. Does he fear the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Canadians, the Japanese and the Uruguayans who come on such schemes in the same way that he fears the Europeans? Or is it that he thinks the Europeans are younger and fitter than him?

Well, the Europeans may well be younger and fitter than me, but the truth is that proximity makes a big difference to the concerns of my constituents. Boston has received a significant quantity of net immigration from eastern Europe, but it has not seen any Australians. There is a proximity issue, but surely it must be right that if the Government are going to agree a deal, they should agree the terms of the deal. We do not know the numbers, the cap or, really, the duration of the scheme—we know absolutely nothing. We are completely at the mercy of the European Union. I invite any hon. Member to spend a day with me in sunny Skegness and knock on a thousand doors. I promise them that not a single person who answers the door will say, “I want a youth experience scheme for Johnny or Judy.”

As with anything, when the terms are unclear there is a big risk of unintended consequences. Given that 60 million people in the EU are under 30 and that the scheme does nothing for the immigration issues we are already facing, does my hon. Friend agree that those unintended consequences could be quite severe?

That is the point—my hon. Friend is bang on. There is a sizeable number of people under 30: it may be 60 million or 70 million—who knows? We have huge pressure on our housing, a determination to increase wages for British citizens, and pressure on our healthcare. Just a couple of weeks ago, the British people clearly expressed their opinion in the local elections and backed Reform UK’s net zero immigration policy. They said, “Actually, we quite like that,” which is why, of course, we did so well. The ability to listen to the British people’s concerns may have been lost.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I would be delighted to give way to my neighbouring MP.

I can confirm that I have never met an Australian or a Canadian in Boston or in Spalding. Leaving that to one side, is not the real threat even more sinister than the hon. Gentleman suggests? We have, stubbornly, a huge number of young people who are not in education, employment or training—in fact, the trend is slightly up. It is a tragedy that those people are either trapped without jobs or not learning to get them. They will inevitably be competing with people from abroad for their early opportunities to work. We need to back young people. I fear that, unless we get absolute clarity on the length and character of the scheme, it will threaten those young people’s chances.

That is absolutely right. In my constituency, young people want better and better-paid jobs. They do not want wages to be suppressed.

The hon. Gentleman has talked a lot about European young people wanting to come to the UK, but what about the many British young people who want to go to Europe—to Berlin, Paris or Milan? What does he say to people from Boston and Skegness who would like to study overseas?

As I said earlier, the hon. Gentleman is most welcome to knock on a thousand doors with me in Boston and Skegness. I do not think any of those people would be rushing out to do that; that is not their primary aim. Their primary aim is to get a good job in that constituency, which they are very proud of.

I have spent quite a lot of time in Spalding and Skegness, and I would be very happy to knock on thousands of doors there, but that is not what I wanted to ask about. Is the hon. Gentleman absolutely certain that there is nobody in his constituency who would like to take up the opportunity of having an experience in the European Union?

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.

I am besieged by requests. I will give way to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake).

Also known as the hon. Member who wants to go back to Skegness seaside at some point to remember her childhood. The hon. Gentleman has not answered my question: is he certain that there is nobody in his constituency who could benefit from a youth experience scheme, even though that could actually enhance their employment opportunities when they come back to the UK?

The honest truth is that, yes, there might be some—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] But the truth is that they do not want 10, 20 or 50 times more coming into Boston and Skegness, taking their jobs and suppressing their wages. That is the reality for my constituents.

A moment ago, the hon. Gentleman said he is yet to see a Japanese, Uruguayan or Australian person in Boston and Skegness. What makes him think that European young people would be more likely to pitch up there?

It is on the basis of experience and history over the last 19 years. Since 2004, and the transition of eight countries, I think, Boston and Skegness has seen a huge inflow of tens of thousands—thousands and thousands—of eastern Europeans. Moving on to the fifth surrender, which relates to the much-vaunted emissions trading scheme, the reality is that it is, as we speak, driving up the price of carbon tariffs towards the EU’s carbon tariff. Why do we want these tariffs? I know: it is because of net stupid zero.

Will the hon. Member clarify whether he said that tens of thousands of Europeans were coming in? Is that an accurate figure?

Yes, I did use that figure. Within my constituency, it is probably more than 10,000—a very sizeable number. It is probably one of the greatest recipients of any UK constituency, so I stand by that number. The fifth surrender is on the EU emissions trading scheme, which will drive up prices. If we do not subscribe to net zero, however, we do not need any of these carbon tariffs, so that would drive down prices. What will happen now that we have linked and handcuffed ourselves to this EU carbon trading scheme is that the bureaucrats in Brussels will say, “In all these other areas to do with trading, they will have to comply with this, that and the other.” Every time there is something that they do not like, they will say, “No. Under the EU net zero trading scheme, you’re going to have to comply.” That is the thin end of the wedge that we are so concerned about.

The hon. Gentleman has not mentioned the many businesses and confederations of businesses that have welcomed the deal. He is talking about energy. One energy company, Octopus Energy, has said that it will bring down people’s energy bills, rather than increasing them. What would he say to consumers who would prefer their energy bills to be lower?

The renewable energy industry is receiving subsidies of tens of billions of pounds, which are added to all our household bills. The wholesale cost of energy is between 30% and 35% of the total cost of energy, so all the rest is subsidies, policy costs, transmission costs and profit. If we scrap net stupid zero, we drive down prices. Instead, the deal will handcuff us for evermore to higher bills; it will not reduce bills in any way.

As a proud member of the Community trade union, and on behalf of all the other trade unions who represent those who work in the steel industry, including many in the Scunthorpe steelworks, I want to ask the hon. Gentleman what he will say to them when they are campaigning for the deal. They recognise that, as I said, 75% of our steel exports go to the EU. If he cuts off their access to the EU market by making them pay an additional subsidy, he will kill the British steel industry. Does he have any words of comfort for them about where their jobs will go?

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.

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.

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.

Why does nearly every major supermarket disagree with the hon. Gentleman?

That is a good question. I know that in my constituency, not a single one of the big logistics companies or big farmers, or any of the supermarkets, who all know my position, has got in touch with me and said, “Richard, you’re wrong on this. This is a great deal,” so perhaps the Prime Minister and the Government have overstated that point. The great opportunities of Brexit—the ability to take back control, be a sovereign nation and make our own independent sovereign deals, which we got excited about under the Government’s leadership last week—have all now been given up. They have been strangled and handcuffed, and they have been handcuffed to a failing economic model where the biggest economy, Germany, is in recession—it is struggling; it has even more problems than our economy. I ask hon. Members: why would we handcuff ourselves to a failing economic model for evermore?

I did not put a time limit on speeches at the start of the debate, but we have had so many interventions and feisty exchanges that have eaten into the time available. I suggest that speeches should take a maximum of eight minutes.

14:13:00

It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Ms McVey, particularly in a week when the Government acted in our national interest by ensuring a deal that is good for business, bills and the security of our borders. By contrast, the one struck by the Conservatives was, as I put at the time, thin as gruel. It has been particularly catastrophic for our exports, which have crashed by 21%. The new agreement finally starts to set that right. The measures on carbon trading will boost the Treasury’s coffers while reducing businesses’ outgoings, and the commitments on defence will help to deliver for more communities the kind of once-in-a-lifetime reindustrialisation that we are seeing rightly take place in Barrow. The proposed measures on youth mobility are not a return to freedom of movement; they are a ladder to opportunity. I would urge the Minister, as they are developed, to particularly focus on ensuring that low-income and working-class Brits can benefit. I benefited from a brief period studying in France. I hope that the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) will not mind if I mention that I believe it is a matter of public record that he worked in France. I do not believe the ladder to opportunity that we both benefited from should be kept down on the ground for others. I am aware that many elements of this deal are still being worked on. I commend my hon. Friend the Minister for his endeavour in that regard. In the remainder of my hopefully brief speech, I want to underline two critical areas of additional focus for the Government. First—this has already been remarked on by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy)—it is important that the automotive industry’s concerns, given the integrated nature of its supply chain, are at the front of the Government’s mind. I understand the head of the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders has rightly said: “The EU remains the UK automotive industry’s largest and closest trading partner”. In his words, “progress…towards a deeper strategic partnership is significant”. As we move forward, I urge the Government to keep engaging with the SMMT, as I know my hon. Friend the Minister has been, and with the broader automotive sector—yes, on the critical issue of rules of origin, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow rightly mentioned, but also on the development of the battery value chain and the improvement of supply chain resilience. I hope those discussions can also include relevant trade unions, and I know that workers at BMW Cowley are rightly keen for that to be the case. Secondly, I have also already called in this place for the Government to consider undertaking a structured dialogue on tech regulation and the defence of democracy with the EU. That is not so we take on each other’s rules and regulations. We have distinct rules and regulations in this area; our Online Safety Act 2023 is not the same as the Digital Services Act, although they share many similarities. A dialogue would enable us to share information, particularly in the face of the kind of onslaught of disinformation and misinformation that our democracies have not seen for decades. The reality is that the leadership of many tech companies believe they are above accountability to democratically elected national Governments. I saw that painfully last week when I was in Moldova with a Conservative colleague for an Inter-Parliamentary Union visit; it has been subject to sustained Russian-sponsored disinformation campaigns. We have seen the same kinds of campaigns, albeit at far lower intensity, in many other democracies, including in our country and many EU nations. We have to recognise that the kind of free and fair elections that are the right of people in our country are also an essential element of our security, just like the other matters covered in this propitious deal.

My right hon. Friend is making a compelling point. In contrast to the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), she seems to be leaning into co-operating in order to protect. That does not mean rule-taking, surrendering or being stupid; this is leaning in and working with others to protect us all on our own terms.

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend; she is absolutely right that sadly we face the same threats from autocrats and those who seek to support them and disrupt free and fair elections. We need to ensure that we are sharing information, particularly given the speed of change. It has already been mentioned that, with the development of AI in particular, we are seeing increased threats to our democracies. We need to make sure that we are sharing information in that regard. I hope the Government will keep discussions on these matters open. I commend this deal.

14:29:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, and to take part in this debate this afternoon. Having been first elected to this place in 2019, I feel I missed out on the meaningful votes and the main Brexit wars of a few years ago. However, I had the privilege, for the whole four and a half years of the 2019 to 2024 Parliament, to be a member of the European Scrutiny Committee under the wonderful chairmanship of Sir William Cash. His choice to retire before the last election leaves this debate and indeed the whole House of Commons poorer. I am sure that he would have had many points to make in the debate. The reason that I refer to the European Scrutiny Committee is the detailed work that Committee did to truly understand the way that EU law pre-Brexit and indeed post-Brexit, and the involvement of the European Court of Justice post-Brexit, still pervaded our nation, our country and the way that many of our laws were made. After Labour won the election last July, the Government took the deeply regrettable decision to disband that Committee. We lost not just that parliamentary scrutiny, which would have been invaluable in considering the deal that we are debating today, but the expertise of the Clerks and the expert advisers who served that Committee, and who often ensured that parliamentary debate on all matters between ourselves and the European Union was well informed. If the Government do anything after this new deal has been struck—a deal that I do not support and that I believe sells out the decision of 17.4 million people in 2016—it should be to re-establish the European Scrutiny Committee, so that each and every one of those rules that we will now take is scrutinised line by line, and reported to the whole House and the relevant Select Committees. Then, whatever side of the Brexit debate we fall on and whatever our view of the world may be, we can all understand where those rules have come from and what they mean to our constituents and our country.

I am slightly perturbed that the hon. Member says, “whatever side of the Brexit debate we fall on”. As my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) said, Brexit has happened. We are now in the real world of today, in which there is a war in Ukraine and huge issues because of the energy crisis, and it is absolutely vital that we work with partners across the world, whether that is through the India trade deal or this one. Can he not acknowledge that we are now living in a different world and that the word “Brexit” is of no use to us any more?

I am grateful to the hon. Member for her intervention, but I am not sure that I fully agree with her analysis. This deal is relitigating Brexit. It is reintroducing dynamic alignment and a role for the European Court of Justice in many ways that we thought we had put behind us after the last Government delivered on Brexit, which meant that we left the European Union.

Inevitably, in any deal, you have to put something on the table in order to get the benefits of that deal. Could the hon. Gentleman give me an example of a UK trade agreement where the UK has not had to put something on the table?

Clearly, in any trade negotiation an agreement is made between two countries. The difference with a negotiation on, for example, our accession to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, or the trade deal-lite that the Government managed with the United States and the Trump Administration, or indeed the India trade deal, is that there is no dynamic alignment. No foreign court will be the arbiter of UK law, UK standards and our sovereignty. The principle on which I believe people voted for Brexit was that we would be in control. There was a very good reason why the Vote Leave campaign came up with the “Take Back Control” slogan; it resonated with the British people. However, that slogan will only ever mean something if we actually are in control. This deal, which we saw being announced with some glee by the Prime Minister the other day in the Chamber of the House of Commons, gives control in many areas—certainly on agrifood and the carbon trading mechanism—back to the European Union, and takes it away from this House and this Parliament.

The hon. Gentleman talks about control, but that result was mainly motivated by immigration. After the Brexit vote, annual migration tripled to 900,000. Does he call that control? Also, does he welcome the fall in net migration to 400,000 that was announced today? If he does, would he call that reasserting control on migration?

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was a leave voter himself, as I know many traditional Labour voters around the country voted for Brexit. I certainly voted for Brexit and campaigned for it. I think the hon. Gentleman is making some presumptions as to why people voted. My central pitch when knocking on doors in that referendum was the point around control and sovereignty, and that it would be this Parliament that set our laws. Dynamic alignment blows a huge hole in that. I will touch briefly on a couple of other factors that have come up in the debate. There is a point that is made that somehow Brexit has been economically damaging. In the Government’s own rationale—[Interruption.] It is always good to have an audience laughing, but I am going to quote from the Government’s own rationale. They talk about declining trade and so on from 2018. I hate to break it to them, but we had not left the European Union in 2018. The withdrawal Act did not come into effect for years after that. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2018, for example, UK food exports were £10.6 billion. Guess what had happened by 2024? They had gone up to £11.34 billion. We need a little greater clarity in this debate where we get the dates right and compare apples with apples, rather than apples with pears.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I have given way several times. I may well come back if time allows, but I am aware of the time limit that you have set, Ms McVey. My constituency could pretty much not be further from the sea, but we do enjoy a lot of fish in Buckinghamshire. I am very much aware of just how angry fishermen around the country are, particularly Scottish fishermen. Yesterday, I debated with SNP Members on the BBC, who confirmed how angry fishermen in Scotland are at this deal. Once again, it is important that we look at some facts. The crude trade gap for fish is actually about 274,000 tonnes in the EU’s favour. The key point I make to those who argued that the deal is somehow good because it means we can export more fish to the European Union is that we cannot export that which we have not been allowed to catch in the first place. I would invite hon. Members that have made that point to reflect on it a little more.

“Angry, disappointed and betrayed” are the words that the chairman of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations used to describe the Brexit deal that the hon. Gentleman voted for. Why did he vote for that deal?

The hon. Gentleman is trying to relitigate the past again. The deal that the last Government did would have seen us able to take back full control of our waters in a year’s time. Instead, we have a 12-year deal that gives the EU rights to our fishing waters. That is the point to be angry and dismayed about, not a deal that could have returned total control of our waters next year. This is not a good deal for the United Kingdom and it is not a deal that honours the referendum result. I invite the new Government to reflect, reverse course—they have managed it on winter fuel and they can manage it on this—and think again. If they cannot do that, at the very least they should reintroduce proper scrutiny of EU law having direct effect in this country through a full-time Select Committee.

14:28:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) on securing this important debate. I am delighted to join my parliamentary colleagues in celebrating the new agreement that our Government have confirmed with the European Union. While the Opposition try to figure out why, all of a sudden, they are against the fishing deal they wrote, working people such as my Tamworth constituents are relieved that they have a Government delivering on what is important to them—cheaper food in the supermarkets, better policing of our borders and less needless bureaucracy getting in the way of free trade. As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, I am doubly heartened to see that the Government’s work is in line with many of our published recommendations. In feedback submitted to the Committee, the Agricultural Industries Confederation stated: “An SPS veterinary agreement has the biggest potential to positively impact UK agricultural supply chains businesses.” The Government’s phytosanitary agreement will enable our farmers to trade and shave pounds off every weekly shop. In collaboration with the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, I am actively investigating avenues for reducing commercial energy costs. National Grid estimates that bringing the European and British energy markets into closer alignment could save the economy £350 million a year. I therefore commend the announced link between our emissions trading systems as a positive first step towards reducing consumer and business energy costs. After years of unreasonable Governments embarrassing us abroad and stifling business at home, Britain is back as a proud, sovereign, free-trading nation. While some in this place try to spin a £360 million investment in our seaside communities as bad for fishing, my constituents and I will be celebrating cheaper food in our supermarkets, more efficient energy markets and shorter queues at the airport.

14:31:00

I am grateful to be able to make a short contribution to this debate. I will not repeat everything I said in last week’s debate, but I want to make this point. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) said that we do not want to go back to the old arguments we had about Brexit at the time of the referendum and while we were negotiating the trade and co-operation agreement before we finally left, but that is exactly what the Government are doing. Who is trying to turn back the clock? Who has decided that we should rejoin the single market for food and agriproducts, having promised that we would not rejoin the single market? It is this Labour Government. The idea that the Government should be able to wash their hands of their responsibility to voters for honouring the referendum result is an absolute absurdity. Let us remind ourselves that these are the same people who hated the idea of leaving the EU, who campaigned passionately to stay in the EU for ideological reasons, who refused to accept the referendum result, who desperately tried to pervert the referendum result or get a second referendum, and who, in their hearts, have never really accepted the referendum result. They long to rejoin. That is the motive behind this: they know they cannot rejoin the European Union because they know the voters will not have it, so they are rejoining by stealth. That is what they are doing. They have rejoined the single market for food and agriproducts, which means we are effectively back in the European Union as far as the regulation of food and agriproducts is concerned, only we do not have a say on the new laws that will be made and imposed on all British food businesses.

On that point, I invite the hon. Gentleman to elaborate on what he thinks it might mean that the Government scrapped the European Scrutiny Committee.

The House of Lords still has a European Affairs Committee, which held an inquiry in the run-up to the reset. There has been no inquiry into the reset by any Select Committee of the House of Commons, apart from the Business and Trade Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (James McMurdock) are absolutely right that we need to reinstate the European Scrutiny Committee, because there will be a flow of new regulations coming out of the European Union that should be scrutinised in the proper way, as they were when we were a member of the European Union. Without that, there is no proper scrutiny in this House at all. I will now move on briefly to the question of how bad Brexit really was as an economic event. We were told that the British economy would fall off a cliff, that the housing market would collapse, that interest rates would rocket—actually, none of those things occurred. When we left the European Union at the beginning of 2021, the dial hardly moved. Our economy was growing at roughly the same rate as other economies in the European Union.

I am interested in the hon. Member’s economic analysis. Does he really think that the economic consequences of Brexit could only have started in 2021, at the moment when we actually left the European Union, and not when the decision was made?

We were told by the Office for Budget Responsibility that there might be a 4% reduction in what our GDP would otherwise have been. That has not occurred—the OBR was wrong. Our economy has continued to grow at roughly the same rate as the other EU economies. Of course, there have been adjustments because the economy has a different trading relationship with the EU. We now have a very deep and comprehensive trading relationship with the EU, as opposed to being in the single market, but there are swings and roundabouts. There have been gains in other areas. The other big advantage is that our contribution to the European Union, which used to be very substantial, pushing up to £20 billion a year, is now right down, which is a huge advantage. Given all the exaggeration about how bad Brexit was going to be and how bad Brexit is, how seriously should we take what the Government are now saying about the huge benefits of this so-called reset?

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way once more, because I need to be brief.

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and I want to ask him specifically about goods exports—this relates to the comments made by the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith). I just looked at the House of Commons Library analysis, which states: “Goods exports to the EU exceeded £215 billion in 2017, 2018 and 2019 but have not done so in any calendar year since”— that came out in April 2025— “and were £177 billion in 2024”. Our goods exports to non-EU countries have not recovered, either. Does the hon. Gentleman recognise those figures?

The Library does not say that Brexit is the cause of those declines. [Interruption.] It does not say that, and there are all sorts of factors. For example, we are closing down the North sea and exporting far less fuel. We used to import a lot of uncut diamonds and then export them to the EU, but we do not do that any more. That was worth £1 billion a year.

Will the hon. Member give way?

I am not giving way again. The basis for recalculating our trade statistics has changed. There is also what was known as the Rotterdam effect. The point is that our underlying economic growth is broadly the same. In Tuesday’s statement, the Prime Minister claimed: “The deal means that British goods that have long been off the menu in Europe can regain their true place, including shellfish”.—[Official Report, 20 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 890.] He went on to say, and he mentioned this several times: “Under the Conservatives’ deal, shellfish was locked out, but it can now be sold back into the market”.—[Official Report, 20 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 897.] So what are the statistics for shellfish exports to the EU? They declined very substantially between 2019 and 2021, from 32 million tonnes to 25 million tonnes, largely because of covid, I suspect. In 2022 they declined a little bit more to 22 million tonnes. That is not off the menu —22 million tonnes of shellfish exported to the EU. They went up in 2023 to 23 million tonnes and have continued broadly at that level. They were not locked out. That is just not true. The fact is we have a different trading relationship. Yes, the EU puts up lots of stupid and time-wasting barriers to trade, but that is because it knows this Labour Government are suckers and have fallen into this trap. The Government think they are going to get rid of all these checks. Well, under this new arrangement, we are going to have EU vets inspecting British farms and British food producers without any authority from the British Government, except through some kind of agreement. We also know that the agrifood SPS agreement has not yet been agreed. And why has it not been agreed? There is no start date given by the Government. We have not seen the small print. There will have to be legislation, and we do not know how much we will have to pay the EU for this so-called privileged access. It begs the question, given that shellfish was not locked out, and given that our shellfish exports to the EU remain substantially the same, what else are the Government saying about this deal that is completely untrue? I suspect that, just as they exaggerated and continue to exaggerate the disadvantages of being outside the European Union, they are also grossly exaggerating the economic advantages of this deal. I come back to the point: if the referendum decided one thing, it was that we should no longer have our laws made in the European Union and that we should no longer have to contribute to the EU budget. Both of those commitments, which the Government made in their manifesto, have been betrayed. We have rejoined the single market in food and agriproducts, and we are going to contribute money to the European Union once again. This will have a sting in the tail for the Government. I am afraid that all those so-called red wall seats are now vulnerable to a sense of betrayal among the voters that this Government cannot be trusted on even the most fundamental thing. I remind the Chamber again that 17.4 million people voted leave, which is a good deal more than the 9.7 million who voted Labour, giving them such an extraordinary majority on such a paltry share of the vote—less than 34%. The idea that this is a superior mandate and that the Government now have the right to overrule a referendum result is very dangerous territory. It is playing into the hands of the Reform party, which is the very thing that Labour fears. It is vital that we have the European Scrutiny Committee back. Now that European regulation will be created and applied once again in the United Kingdom, even though we do not have any say over it, we should be able to scrutinise it properly through a proper scrutiny Committee. I would be grateful if the Minister would address that point.

14:41:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) for securing this debate. I welcome this chance to move on and let it go, and to test and reflect on the outcome of the EU-UK summit. That foundation is also a chance to look to the future. The Opposition have done their best to make me rack my brain back to the 1990s and the last but one time the Conservatives tore themselves apart over Europe, when they were fighting over whether we were rule makers or rule takers. But I will spend a tiny bit of time talking about the 2016 referendum, and how it uncovered and exacerbated division in our country. It is fundamentally regrettable that the Opposition have used such divisive language: “surrender,” “stupidity,” “hate,” “suckers” and “dangerous.” That really is not a sensible way to talk about how best to work with our partners in the European Union, which is our largest trading partner. In stark contrast, the EU-UK summit that finished earlier this week was grounded in a pragmatic approach to moving forward. It reached out across our country to do the very best for the whole UK. In terms of testing and reflecting on the outcome of the summit, the first question for me is whether it sticks to our red lines. In response to the most recent remarks from the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), the outcome absolutely sticks to those red lines. There is no return to the single market, the customs union or freedom of movement. Does it support this Government’s missions, which were clearly voted for by the country in an election called a year ago today? Our missions are to secure growth, to support opportunity, to get our country healthy, to tackle climate change and to make our country safer. It addresses each and every one of those missions. Does the EU-UK summit agreement work for the whole of the UK? Looking around the Chamber, I am proud of how many nations and regions of the UK are represented on the Government Benches, and every single one of us has been able to talk about how the EU-UK summit has benefited our own constituencies. I have been thinking about why the summit is so important for me: I represent an area with a vast number of small businesses that rely on the impact of the summit to reduce the cost of energy and the cost of working in the hospitality sector. That is significant for my constituency, one of the great engines of the UK economy. As I look across the Chamber, there are ways in which the summit will help the constituents of all Members present. I would like to know whether there is really nobody in Spalding or Skegness who will benefit. Are there really no businesses—haulage businesses, for example—that will see the opportunity for reduced red tape as a result of the summit? I strongly doubt that. The next test for me is whether the agreement fixes the foundations for the future. Has it put us in a good place to build on for some of the other businesses and areas where we need to see a bit more movement? I think it does; it is a strong first step. Does it make sure that we can get ourselves and our pets on holiday faster? Yes, it absolutely does. I have spent several minutes on the past and on the present, and now I will look to the future. In another area of important vitality—[Interruption.] Is there an intervention?

That is for you to say.

If I may say so generously, I choose to go for my holidays in north Norfolk and Whitby; I do not need a passport to go to there. It is very pleasant. I think the hon. Lady would be enriched by that kind of experience.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman has a wonderful time on his holidays. I will be spending much of the upcoming recess in the UK at the seaside, and I hope that other people who want to take their holidays in other places will be able to benefit from the EU summit. I am sure that businesses in the UK tourism and hospitality industry will strongly welcome the benefits from tackling the red tape in that sector. I will probably unite the whole room when I say that I look forward to more detail on the youth experience scheme. I want to know how our young constituents across the country will be able to go to places in Europe to learn about their culture, economy and history as part of their own education. It is important to see some detail on that scheme. I also want to hear more in future summits about how cabotage and carnet will be made easier—which, again, will help the haulage industry. I hope that they will be discussed at future summits, to secure the vitality of our touring orchestras, many of which are based in my constituency, and to ensure that touring artists get over to Europe and that the west end remains a thriving centre of culture in the UK. I am grateful for the chance to reflect on the summit. I look forward to hearing from the Minister, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness, who secured the debate, on how we might move forward.

14:48:00

Joseph Chamberlain, one of my great political heroes, said that in “great deeds, something abides”. Perhaps the greatest deed of my parliamentary lifetime was our decision to leave the European Union, made greater still by the fact that it was a decision taken by the British people against the advice of most of their political leaders from across the spectrum. Suddenly the people spoke—and they spoke clearly—about their intentions, contradicting the long-standing prejudices of most of the British establishment. What endures of that deed is our right to self-government, which lies at the heart of our short debate today. It is the affirmation of parliamentary sovereignty. That matters, as we all know, because our legitimacy is afforded to us by the choice that people make to send us here, and the fact that we are answerable to them in a way that those who exercise power in the European Union are not—they have never been directly accountable. It is true that we elected MEPs, but almost no one knew who they were. I did not know who the Tory MEPs were, let alone those from other parties. Former MEPs will often say that they had little contact with the people in their constituencies and that their postbag overall was a fraction of what we receive in a single week, let alone over a longer period. Interaction is at the heart of the legitimacy that I have just described, but with MEPs it just was not there. Of course, much of the governance of the European Union was not done by people who had been elected, for the character of the way rules are made there rests on a very different connection between bureaucrats and elected people. The sovereignty secured by the referendum result is something precious, something that should be valued by every single Member of this House, regardless of their party. What does this deal do in respect of that sovereignty? I have reservations about the youth mobility scheme, not because I do not think that there are people in Lincolnshire who want to take advantage of it— [Interruption.] I did not say that, by the way; I did not say that. I will not defend the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), other than on this basis: the exact figures for his constituency show 13,596 people living there who come from eastern Europe, central Europe or further afield—Bulgaria, Romania and so on. The influx of those people over a short period of time has had a dramatic effect on the character of that part of Lincolnshire. On immigration more generally, free movement had a devastating effect on this country. It displaced investment in domestic skills, without doubt, and it also changed workplaces—I think it drove down wages, for example, because many people who came were not unionised and were not able to make their case to their employers with the same confidence that domestic workers rightly do. It also stultified our economy by fixing it in a labour-intensive, low-skill profile. That was bound to damage productivity and make us less competitive. What we needed to build was a high-skill, high-tech economy to compete internationally, and free movement damaged that prospect. The fear about the youth mobility scheme or the youth experience scheme—it keeps changing names, which in itself leads to a certain degree of scepticism; I will not put it any more strongly than that—is that it will bring people here who will want to work and to compete with our young people in Lincolnshire and across the constituencies represented in this Chamber today. That may be in seasonal jobs, part-time jobs or first jobs for people getting into the labour market. So I have profound doubts about it. We wait to see the detail, because it may be that the Government share my view; I hope they do, but I can understand entirely the reservations of my neighbouring MP, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness, about it. Indeed, as I have said, they are reservations that I share. I will not speak about fishing, because others already have, except to say that fishing is always a bargaining chip in these negotiations. It was Edward Heath, allegedly a Conservative Prime Minister, who sold out the fishermen when we first joined. You will not remember that personally, Ms McVey, because of course you are a very young person—we are back to talking about young people, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) and others did earlier—but you will know of it, and know that that too was a last-minute deal. Edward Heath was so desperate to join the European Union that he was persuaded at the last minute, as we were about to enter it, that he needed to trade off our fishermen’s rights. Fishing is certainly a concern, but so too is this issue of regulation, because—

14:54:00

15:05:00

[Martin Vickers in the Chair]

I call Sadik Al-Hassan.

I was still speaking, Mr Vickers.

Sorry—I was told you had finished, Sir John.

Sir John was just getting started!

Well, none of us would want to deny ourselves the chance to listen to Sir John. Back to you.

I wondered whether the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) was going to finish my speech for me, Mr Vickers, but I am not sure it would have been quite in the same vein as that in which I intend to continue. We have talked a bit about the youth mobility scheme, or the youth movement scheme or the youth experience scheme—call it what you will. Of course, it is true that some young people want to go abroad, but many more young people from abroad will want to come here, and we spoke a little before you came, Mr Vickers, about the consequences of that. Things have changed since we left the European Union. The principal change internationally has been the greater need for national economic resilience, epitomised in the covid pandemic and then the European war in Ukraine that followed. Never has it been clearer that Britain needs to become increasingly resilient, and that means protecting our industries to some degree. It certainly means manufacturing more of what we need and growing more of the food that we consume in this country. Shortening supply lines will have many benefits, environmental and other but, fundamentally, it is about taking a national view of our economic interests. Of course Britain co-operates and collaborates with others; but, as I said to the hon. Member for Walthamstow when she opened the debate, there is a world of difference between co-operation and governance. In a sense, that has permeated considerations of this subject since we started them back in the late 1950s. For a long time, many of those who favoured European governance pretended that it was a matter of logistics rather than principles, of details rather than essentials and, as we heard again in this debate, of co-operation rather than governance. Fundamentally, however, it is about the difference between supranational Government and collaborative measures—treaties and so on—between sovereign nations. That is at the heart of this debate. It is unfortunate that when we joined the European Union—as you will remember, Mr Vickers, because you were a campaigner against it even in those distant days—it was labelled the Common Market. There was no sense there that we would be giving up our sovereignty—no sense that it would have any effect on our political structure or system of Government. It was just a trading association. How things have changed. I know the hon. Member for Walthamstow welcomes that change, because she fought the Brexit referendum result in an honourable, but none the less stubborn way, if I might say so. I wonder whether she is as stubborn now.

It is always flattering when people talk about imitation. The right hon. Gentleman’s argument was about the difference between co-operation and governance. What is it about Europol and our ability to share information and work together to tackle crime and hold to account those who harm our constituents that he finds distasteful enough that to support not working with Europol? His Government chose, on his argument, not to work with Europol. I believe that that has damaged our ability to tackle crime, and this summit will address that. What was so distasteful about that body that he could not co-operate with it?

I say to the hon. Lady—not in a way that is patronising or pompous at all—that I can speak with a bit more authority about that than she can, because I am a former security Minister, currently a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and I was once responsible for countering serious organised crime in Government, so I came across a lot of the need to co-operate and share data. The hon. Lady will remember that we were never part of the Schengen arrangement, although we did have access to the Schengen database. We were never part of European governance over security, although we did share information with European partners. She will also know that the key security relationship for us is the Five Eyes relationship with countries beyond the European Union—America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. That is the core security partnership but, of course, we co-operate with other countries across the globe. To be frank, that is not really about governance, is it? That is about exactly the kind of collaboration that, as I described, has always been part of the way that this country has dealt with its affairs internationally. [Interruption.] I am not going to take another intervention because I know that even you, Mr Vickers, are beginning to tire—even of me. I will therefore move rapidly to my concluding remarks, which concern this issue of trade and regulation. It is undoubtedly true that, in my constituency—I think a Member who is no longer in their place asked me to offer a balanced view of this—exporters in the horticultural sector will benefit from smoother transitions at ports. However, it is also true that there is a risk that that will encourage us to import more food at a time when we need to export less. We need to grow, make and consume more of our own food. Yesterday I was at a meeting with the all-party parliamentary group on the UK fresh produce network, which I chair, and a major haulier, farmer and grower said that he feared that that was the problem with this deal. I meet farmers, growers and hauliers in my constituency every single week, such is my diligence, and they are most concerned about the possible impact of that additional ability of the Europeans to flood our markets with foreign food. I will end with this: Joe Chamberlain also said that we should “carry on even to distant ages the glorious traditions of the British flag.” In the end, this is about just that. It is about how one sees the nationhood, and how one regards the national interest. There are those on the left—although I do not say that they are in this Chamber—who are affected by doubt about nationhood, and some even afflicted by guilt about our past who do not see the national interest in the way I do. I do not think that that includes the Minister, by the way, as we will no doubt hear when he speaks. But in the end, we do have to come to the logical conclusion of Brexit and all that has happened since: the national interest ought to be the supreme consideration of any Government.

15:13:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. After eight years of delay, and no small degree of chaos brought upon us by the previous Conservative Government, we should all be proud of this Labour Government and the strides that they are making to heal the wounds of the past and to start the long and arduous journey of rebuilding those bridges. I am a strong believer in a closer relationship with our nearest neighbours, and welcome further work on this in the future. The agreement reached at the UK-EU summit contains progress on many areas, which will be welcome to my constituents in North Somerset. From closer co-operation on defence to greater opportunities for farmers and making life easier for holidaymakers, there is much to applaud. The previous deal, haphazardly slapped together at the last minute by Boris Johnson, worked for no one. It left our businesses scrambling to cope with delays and excessive red tape. As we embark on undoing the damage he did, I know that many businesses in my constituency based around Bristol port will welcome the progress that this Government are making to reduce friction in trade and reopen opportunities to export to Europe. The SPS agreement, in particular, is a good first step and will be welcomed by many farmers across the fields of North Somerset. However, we must now build upon this momentum, and take care not to forget the other issues, such as zoo animal transfers, which, for zoos such as Noah’s Ark in Wraxall, are a vital part of their conservation efforts—a cornerstone of their identity. Such transfers have declined by 80% since 2019, greatly impacting international conservation and breeding programmes and unnecessarily endangering a great number of species. The opportunities in this agreement are particularly striking for UK defence companies. As Europe rightly comes together in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, we must seize the moment and embrace our position as one of Europe’s leading militaries, linking arms with our friends across the channel. That will be good not just for our security but for our economy. Our long and prestigious military history has given us a wealth of supremely talented defence companies, not least a plethora of small and medium-sized enterprises in Portishead, for which access to EU defence funds could be transformational. Whatever way we voted in the referendum, it is fair to say that Brexit has increasingly become a case of buyers’ remorse, with many of us wishing we had kept the receipt. I applaud my colleagues and friends in the Government for finally getting the ball rolling. Like many of my constituents, I eagerly await the details of what will come next.

15:15:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Members for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) and for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) for securing the debate and for giving me the opportunity to make some comments. As usual, it feels as though the Northern Ireland situation is front and centre, yet the Government do not appear to have managed to get it right. I cast my mind back to the 2016 referendum. I know exactly how I voted, and the majority of my constituents in Strangford voted: to leave, yet that was overtaken by the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 and modified by the Windsor framework of February 2023. We have been put in Euro limbo: we do not know where are. The fact is that we did not get the Brexit we voted for, and that is really disappointing. The Democratic Unionist party has been urging the Prime Minister to unashamedly make the case for the primacy and integrity of the United Kingdom and its internal market in the discussions with Brussels. For too long, communities and businesses throughout Northern Ireland have been in the Euro limbo zone, paying the price for daring to leave Europe—daring even to think it. This deal will hopefully reset that, yet I am not convinced that that aim has been achieved. Although I welcome some of the Prime Minister’s objectives in the negotiations, I am not convinced that Europe is determined to finally do the right thing by this nation, and particularly for Northern Ireland. In both Westminster and the Assembly, my party will take the time to scrutinise in detail what has been agreed. We will make our judgment solely through the prism of how it impacts on Northern Ireland’s businesses and people and our place within the United Kingdom, as is our role and responsibility. Members on both sides of the House have been doing that throughout the long Brexit process. We believe the Government should be radical in moving on from the Windsor framework. Tinkering round the edges does nothing but make the water muddier. The Prime Minister cannot on the one hand suggest that this deal restores trust between the United Kingdom and the European Union, edging us towards closer co-operation, and on the other continue to build oppressive border control infrastructure at Northern Ireland ports. The limitations on products shipped or parcels posted to Northern Ireland still boggle the mind and test the patience of my constituents, who regularly contact me about them. Yet the fact is that we are hammering away at infrastructure that should not be necessary within this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. On behalf of my fishermen, I want to express deep disappointment at the Government’s decision to grant EU vessels 12 years of continued access to UK waters. That is a real blow for our fishing communities. I speak for places such as Portavogie in my constituency of Strangford and, through fish producer organisations, for Ardglass and Kilkeel too, because their MP does not bother coming here and therefore can make no contribution to this debate. That Short money has amounted to some £10 million over the last number of years, but those places have no representation in this Chamber. On behalf of them, I want to speak up for fishing, which is a vital economic lifeline. This move will create uncertainty. Sadly, it appears that the needs of our fishing communities have not been uppermost in these negotiations. We have once again yielded to EU demands. The Prime Minister could have done more to protect local fishing businesses, but instead handed over continued access to UK waters until 2038. That must not be allowed to stand. The 12-year deal means foreign vessels continuing to compete for limited stock, more pressure on small operators and another blow to coastal communities already struggling to survive—I cite those in Portavogie, Ardglass and Kilkeel as examples. Therefore I am asking the Government and the Minister urgently to explore how they can support the industry in other ways to alleviate the consequences of that 12-year deal. To be fair to the Prime Minister, in answer to my question on Tuesday about the trade deal, he did mention that £360 million would be available for fishing communities. Perhaps the Minister can say how much of that will come to Northern Ireland. If it is within his remit to do that, it would be helpful. The SPS agreement may help to ease the flow of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but it will not be a silver bullet for the host of problems created by the application of EU laws in Northern Ireland only, because that is what is happening to us. I know that I am the only Northern Ireland representative here today, but I am speaking on behalf of many others who do attend debates in this Chamber and make their contribution. For example, the agreement does not address issues around customs—particularly business-to-business movements—and other barriers to trade, not least in relation to manufacturing, product standards and the supply of veterinary medicines. The problems that have been created for veterinary medicines are absolutely unbelievable. I hope that the Minister can give us a response to that particular point. I know that this Minister always tries to be helpful and I genuinely appreciate that. These are questions that we are seeking to ask all the time on behalf of our constituents. A body was supposed to be set up to address the veterinary medicines issue, but it never really got off the ground, with the result that we are no clearer about where we are in relation to this. We are only able to receive certain veterinary medicines in Northern Ireland; there are many others that we cannot. The same thing applies to medications for human beings. The whole thing is quite incredible. We will assess what progress has been made, but we will also assess whether there remains in place architecture that puts Northern Ireland in a different position from the rest of the United Kingdom. The work to see such architecture removed must be a priority of the Government if they are serious about solving what we refer to—not in any funny way—as the hokey-cokey Northern Ireland situation. We are in; we are out; and we have been truly shaken all about. It is time for the dance to end and for us to return to our solid position within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. When I came to this Chamber in 2010, I made a point of reiterating the position of Northern Ireland. It is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I know that it means a lot to you, Mr Vickers, and it means a lot to us on the Opposition side of the Chamber. I hope that it is equally important to those on the Government side of the Chamber. Time will tell whether that is the case. Full restoration of Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom of course includes removing the application of EU law in our country and the internal, Irish sea border that it creates. I ask the Minister to outline how and when that can take place. I know that the Minister really does try. I genuinely mean that; I am being honest and sincere. I know that when I ask him questions in the Chamber, he always comes back, trying to address the question—I appreciate that; I want to put that on record—so I look forward to hearing what he will say in response today. The Prime Minister and his Cabinet have a vision for our European co-operation. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) referred to this: co-operation is okay, but not when sovereignty is lost, as it seems to be. This vision must have the Northern Ireland scenario in firm focus, with no more double vision: one nation, one relationship, one way forward and one solution that fits the people of Portavogie, Perth, Portsmouth and Pontypridd equally. That is the way it should be.

15:23:00

As I said in an intervention, the chairman of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations used the words “angry, disappointed and betrayed” to describe the previous Government’s Brexit deal. That was a deal that many of the Conservative Members here voted for, so I am rather bewildered as to why the biggest criticism of the new deal with Europe is that it continues a deal that they voted in favour of.

Many of us on these Benches were not happy with the direction of travel of previous Conservative Governments—let us put that on the record. We did not support the EU. I have never supported the EU; I first campaigned to leave it when I was a student, when we had only just joined it. The hon. Gentleman is right that we did not agree with that situation, and this deal perpetuates it for 12 years. If it was bad then, it is worse now.

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s candour, and I share his views on the previous Conservative Government. I would say, however, that to have a grown-up negotiation, we have to put something on the table to get something in return. Clearly, the previous Conservative Government felt that putting that on the table was a price worth paying for some greater benefit. The new deal puts nothing extra on the table.

It has been reported in the media that a very senior president of one of the biggest regional fisheries committees in France said: “We couldn’t have hoped for better…We are very satisfied and relieved. This changes a lot of things. If we no longer had access to British waters, we would have suffered a significant loss of revenue.” In whose interest does the hon. Gentleman think the deal was actually struck?

Those people are clearly delighted that the situation that the hon. Gentleman previously voted for has continued. That is how international trade works: we buy things and we sell things. Supermarkets such as Asda, Morrisons, Marks and Spencer; producers such as Salmon Scotland, the British Meat Processors Association and Dairy UK; the defence sector such BAE Systems; British Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Confederation of British Industry are all lining up to say this is a good deal for the economy, so I think many people are confused by Opposition Members, who have nobody backing their side of the argument. Deep down, I think they know that this is a good deal for their constituents.

May I point out that supermarkets tend to be interested in their balance sheets and profits, and not in democracy and accountability, which this debate is really about? Can the hon. Gentleman explain to the House what concessions the EU made in this deal?

As has been said already, there is increased access for British goods into the European markets. I will come on to some others.

There needs to be some cold hard reality about this situation. The previous Government seemed to be suggesting some kind of cod war where our Navy might have been deployed to maintain the idea that nobody else could fish. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the benefits of the deal that has been struck now is around removing the barriers to selling the fish that we catch? The reason why there has been such a fall—of a third in the exports of fish from the United Kingdom—is the market that there is for our fishery. Our fishing communities face many challenges, not least the myths of the last Government, and we need to give them a market. This deal will do that.

That is 100% correct. I do not think that there is any Member in this place who has not met businesses in their constituency that previously exported to Europe and heard the tales of woe as a result of the deal that the previous Government negotiated. That is why so many people are lining up to say that the deal represents a good deal for them. When my constituents voted for Brexit, they voted for two things: to be better off and to control immigration. I do not like the word “betrayal”, which has been bandied around in this debate, but in the last five years we have seen a betrayal of the promise that was made to them. In 2010—the year that the Conservatives took office—annual asylum claims were just 18,000; barely anybody arrived in the UK by a small boat. That remained relatively constant up until Brexit—so, what happened? First, because they told people that co-operation with our friends in Europe was the problem, they pulled Britain out of the Dublin agreement, meaning that we could no longer return people to the first country where they claimed asylum. Do not take my word for it; let us hear what the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), was found to have said in a recording leaked this week: “Because we’re out of the European Union now, we are out of the Dublin III regulations, and so we can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum. When we did check it out, just before we exited the EU transitional arrangements…we did run some checks and found that about half the people crossing the Channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe…and therefore could have been returned.”

Why were they not returned?

I was not in the previous Conservative Government, so I cannot answer that, but it is absolutely clear that what people voted for actually got worse.

According to the House of Commons Library, in 2018, out of more than 5,000 requests under the Dublin III regulation, just over 200 were granted. That is not the silver bullet—and never was—that the hon. Gentleman imagines it to have been.

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is disagreeing with the shadow Home Secretary, because I was quoting his words. Is it not also the case that Brexit ended our co-operation on policing and ended intelligence-sharing? I welcome the fact that, with this deal, the Government have negotiated access to EU facial imaging data to help to catch people smugglers and dangerous criminals, and to increase co-operation to track down rapists, murderers and drug lords. Is that not also something the European Union has put on the table that Britain benefits from?

The National Crime Agency and the security services work co-operatively with our neighbours in Europe, and always have. That co-operation has perpetuated since Brexit, as it did before. A lot of it, of course, happens under the radar by its very nature, but it is not true to say that we do not have that kind of collaborative relationship with other nations where our national security—and theirs—is concerned.

I am sure the Minister will answer that point in his summing up, but it is my understanding that we do not have access to facial recognition technology, which is really important to help us to better police our borders. This is the simple reality: the Brexit that we were promised did not do the things that people promised it would do. That is why we need a reset in relations.

I wonder what the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) might say to apologise to my constituent, who has now been waiting, I believe, for over 12 years for justice to be done in the case of her son’s murder in Greece, and for those responsible to be extradited. The abolition of the European arrest warrant under Brexit has made that harder, which is a real example of the damage done by the previous Government’s approach to crime and security.

The right hon. Member is shaking his head. I invite him to meet Sharon Matthews—she is an extraordinary woman who has fought for justice for her son, Tyrell. Brexit has made that harder.

It is so obvious that improved co-operation with all the countries just 20 miles off our shore can benefit our security and trade. That is what the reset is seeking to do. It is not dragging us back into Europe—I think that is nonsense, and I am not hearing any credible person say that. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) says that he holidays in north Norfolk, and I will be joining him there this summer—[Interruption.] Not personally, I hasten to add; I mean that my family will be there this summer too.

We should meet up.

Perhaps we could rehash this debate. We are not here to represent just our own interests; we are here to represent the interests of our constituents. I have constituents who will benefit from the new arrangements, such as on e-gates, and I am also grateful that the measure on pet passports has been negotiated, particularly for those who rely on guide dogs. In conclusion, it is time to stop playing the greatest hits of 2019. That made people popular at the time, but we have moved on; we have left the European Union, and now it is time to have a mature, sensible and co-operative relationship with our neighbours. That is what will protect British jobs and help our constituents to enjoy cheaper food and a better quality of life.

15:34:00

I pay tribute to the Members who secured the debate: the hon. Members for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) and for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice). It is a case of singing the greatest hits of the past—singing the old songs—in a beautiful duet, presaging some appalling coalition. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Lady; I recognise her expertise and her interest in this topic. Speaking of greatest hits, she invoked Elsa in “Frozen”, and I recognise the self-identification. Of all people, her soul is spiralling in frozen fractals, but she has a warm heart underneath. Of course we do know that, at the end of that film, Elsa returned to the castle. That is the ultimate purpose of some Members speaking in this debate; they want to return to the embrace of the EU. I honour that, and I accept that some people were not happy with the result of the referendum. I would not have been happy if it had gone the other way, and I would not have given up campaigning to leave. Nevertheless, I wish there was more honesty from the Government Benches in recognising that what is being debated here is the first step to rejoining. That is the underlying purpose, because all the arguments that have been made against the previous deal were really arguments against Brexit, and all the arguments that are being made in support of this arrangement are arguments for rejoining. As it was eloquently put by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth), the case for co-operation in Europe is really a case for rejoining.

The point is, if people are prepared to compromise on dynamic alignment for food and agriproducts, what issue of principle will act as a barrier to prevent them extending that co-operation to other products or other fields of European law where they think it is ideologically convenient to do so? The only problem is that, if they think they are currying favour with the European Union by doing so, they will be disappointed, because the EU will simply ask for more concessions without making concessions of its own.

My hon. Friend is right. I will cite a very good article in The Spectator last week by Oliver Lewis, who was the deputy negotiator for the Brexit deal and the trade agreement. He wrote rather wearily about recognising the terms that had been agreed by the Government, because they were the terms that the previous Government continually resisted in negotiations. His point, which echoes that of my hon. Friend, was that the way the EU works is to force agreement on headline principles, which, over time, are translated into concrete policy. Where a thin end of the wedge can be driven in, as it can be with this agreement, more and more follows. That is what we should anticipate. It is worth pointing out how thin the terms of the agreement are and how much detail remains to be worked out. We have conceded a set of principles that will allow ever closer alignment and submission to the regime that we painfully left some years ago. We see coming submission to the European Court of Justice, an agreement on rule-taking, a return to the single market in agribusiness, as my hon. Friend mentioned, and paying money into the EU budget. Those were the explicit things that all parties in this House committed to ending when we agreed the outcome of the referendum. In 2019, both main parties agreed to abide by them, and in 2024, they agreed to abide by them and explicitly ruled out submission to the European Court of Justice, paying money and returning to the single market, all of which has now been agreed in principle by the Government. It is only a set of principles, but they are bad principles; they represent the betrayal of Brexit and of our manifestos. I will not go through the specifics, because other Members have done so very well, but I will quickly point out how thin these agreements are. On e-gates, there will be some benefit for the Dordogne-visiting community that some of us have in our constituencies, but it is not a great achievement. Indeed, it is not even an achievement for this summer, so although I hope the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) is enjoying his holiday in France, I do not think he will have benefited from the deal. He will probably have gone through an e-gate anyway, however, because there are already many e-gates that British citizens can use when going to and fro. That arrangement will still need to be negotiated, with each member state operating its own independent policy. We have discussed food, and I will not go on about that other than to say that we have agreed to take the EU’s laws but we do not have any detail yet. Because we export so little, any benefit from a reciprocal arrangement will greatly benefit the EU at the expense of our exporters.

To illustrate that point, looking at the figures the UK is the EU’s biggest export market. We receive about €51 billion of goods from the EU and return about €15.4 billion, so there is no doubt about where the balance lies. To emphasise the point made by my hon. Friend, the problem is that so much of this is smoke and mirrors. When we hear about realignment being dynamic or about subsidiarity, as we used to hear, those are terms that are used to disguise exactly the kind of pernicious detail that he set out.

I absolutely agree. I am afraid that the argument against EU membership, which was the trade imbalance, remains and has only grown with time. I will not talk about our unhappy fish; we hear enough about those poor creatures. On defence, there has been no detail in the plan other than an expectation of that new procurement arrangement and that we will be financially contributing to that. There is also no detail on the carbon trading arrangement other than a clear expectation of higher taxes and rule-taking through the emissions scheme. On free movement, we are still unclear. The statement talks about terms to be mutually agreed. What those terms might be—how many people will be coming, what commitments of support there are for them on housing, public services and benefits, and what happens if they refuse to leave—all remains unclear. I am very worried about the direction of travel. The good news, to conclude, is that none of that is real. Those are all headline principles. Although the expectation is that the EU, having forced our famously legalistic Prime Minister to sign up to a set of agreements, will then induce him to believe that they are binding commitments and that he will have to honour them in practice, I implore him not to. I also implore the Minister to consider that we do not have to fulfil those terrible terms. Lastly, on the economy, although people talk about the decline of trade since Brexit, trade was declining substantially long before. The EU is a declining corner of the world’s economy and the direction of travel has not changed much. The fundamental point is that Brexit has economically been largely a non-event. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) said, the underlying realities have remained largely untouched by it. Obviously, our economy was badly hit by covid, the Ukraine war and subsequently by the very bad Budget, and I admit, by some economic mistakes made by the last Government—let us be honest—but fundamentally the problems have not been related to Brexit. To invoke some heroes of the last Parliament—particularly John Redwood, the great economic prophet of recent times—John Redwood shrugs at Brexit but Bill Cash rejoices because, fundamentally, it was not an economic decision that the British people made: it was about the restoration of sovereignty. It restored the possibility of good government to our country. I am afraid we did not get good government immediately after Brexit, and we certainly do not have it now. Many mistakes have been made and continue to be made, particularly by this new Government, but we now have the opportunity to govern ourselves in a way that will bring about the prosperity of the British people. To quickly acknowledge the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), we still have not fixed the ongoing saga of Northern Ireland, and I deeply regret that the arrangements there persist in that most unsatisfactory way. The new agreement is clearly a declaration of intent to move back within the orbit of the EU and ultimately to rejoin. I end by echoing the call from many hon. Members on both sides, and I honour the hon. Member for Walthamstow for her support. It is very important that we restore the European Scrutiny Committee and I hope that the Minister will agree.

15:44:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) on securing this important debate. I represent a city that has phenomenal ties to Europe. Edinburgh was made by Europeans and continues to be a big European player, but that predated our membership of the EU, and it endures after Brexit. I am in my late 30s, staring middle age in the face, and throughout my adult life there has been a continual movement of increasing confrontation, aggression and mistrust in the relationship between the EU and the UK. I hope that this summit marks the point at which that movement stops, and we stop the continued degradation of this most important relationship. Let me be clear: I am not saying that the pendulum should swing back towards rejoining the EU, no matter how much everyone says that. There are people out there who say the pendulum should swing that way, but I and my party say to those people that they should not fall into the trap that the Brexiteers do: to become too nostalgic, and long for something in the past rather than facing the future. We do not need to go back to our previous relationship with the EU; we need to reset it for modern times. That is what the announcement from the Government and the EU does. Whatever the structures of our relationship with the EU, on the big, global issues of our time there is huge overlapping strategic alignment. Whether on the role of technology and data, on when we talk about confronting climate change and the energy transition, on the rise of China or on the menacing role of Russia, we very much share strategic interests with the Europeans, and need to work with them to achieve our goals. That is why I welcome these important steps to reset that relationship, particularly on defence and security but also on agrifood, SPS and energy. As other hon. Members have said, it is fantastic to see those steps, and they are particularly important for Scotland. I am delighted to deliver on the promises that I and the Labour party made to my constituents at the election. It is perplexing that there are no SNP Members at this debate to discuss our relationship with Europe, because they have spent the last 10 years arguing for greater access to the energy market for Scotland, for a youth scheme, for access to Erasmus, and for greater access to EU markets for Scottish food and drink, and those are exactly what this agreement stands to produce. This is exactly what they have been calling for all these years, so of course they have called it a surrender. People say that Reform deals in grievance; let me tell you, it has nothing on the SNP. In the brief time I have, I want to talk specifically about border security and home affairs. As a member of the Home Affairs Committee, I think that there are some significant steps in the announcement that will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) said, be central to the Labour Government’s mission to make the streets safer. Dealing with things such as upstream migration and practical solutions to returns, record sharing and cybercrime are utterly critical. Let us be clear: assertions of national sovereignty mean nothing to cross-border criminals. We have to deal with the problem at source. International crime, especially immigration crime, is by definition a cross-border phenomenon and so requires a cross-border response. That means co-operation with neighbouring countries that face the same issues. Ten years ago, before being elected, I was the justice and home affairs attaché at the British embassy in Paris. We dealt with things such as Europol, European arrest warrants and data sharing on criminals, having a massive impact on the people represented by the House of Commons. I know the importance of those concrete measures that do not grab headlines but that make a real difference to people’s lives. We dealt with the UK-France channel and in those days, 10 years ago, we did not have small boats—they were not something that we had to worry about—but we obviously do now. Something changed in the interim. We need to work out what that was, and address it. I argue that, as we have discussed, the lack of the Dublin convention makes it structurally much harder to deal with the small boats crisis. Nobody in this room would argue that our constituents are not demanding that we deal with that crisis.

The hon. Member is right that there are all kinds of existential threats that face this country and other countries too, but the Government’s job is to deal with the effect of those threats as they alter life here in Britain. Co-operation is part of that, but in no way does it absolve national Governments from taking responsibility for those threats in relation to national and local priorities. Mass migration is a good example; I regard it as the greatest existential threat, among many. That has to be dealt with in this country.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the point of a Government is to deal with the challenges that the country faces at the time. That is why I would argue that it was insane to stand like King Canute on the shores of this country asserting that a Rwanda scheme was going to work, when it clearly, patently would not—as all the expert advice said. If we want to deal with the issues that migration brings, access to Eurodac—the fingerprinting scheme—the Schengen information system and the Dublin regulation would make a concrete difference to the immigration threats and challenges that we face. I would argue that simply asserting that we are losing sovereignty any time anyone tries to deal with the issues constructively and substantively does not achieve the point that the right hon. Gentleman was trying to make. We are running out of time, so, to briefly sum up, we cannot assert control and crackdown on crime without those kind of instruments. I am pleased to see that the agreement deals with that. Can the Minister give us any information on what the plans will be on SIS 2 and Eurodac, and specifically on the Dublin convention? As we have heard, I may be joined in asking that by the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who clearly wants to see us join it too. As a Member for Edinburgh and the Edinburgh festivals, I have to raise the point that touring musicians and actors contribute massively to the economy and the creative industries, which are one of the UK’s greatest strengths. The city of Edinburgh puts on the biggest ticketed event in the world after the Olympics, every year, with the Edinburgh international festival and fringe. As a beneficiary of Erasmus, I add my support to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). There is a situation in this country where middle-class children get to do international travel. As a languages graduate, I absolutely support that, but we need to spread it. There are many children out there who want those opportunities, and we should be facilitating that. So can we make sure that it is as broad as possible?

15:52:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) for arranging this debate. Maybe it will be the start of cross-party working on the EU. The people of Halesowen voted to leave at the Brexit referendum of 2016 because they believed the promises that were made by the Brexit campaign, but what they got from the last Conservative Government was a botched Brexit deal, half-baked and deeply damaging. I am proud to come to the debate as we welcome a landmark trade deal with the European Union, one that delivers real benefits for British businesses, workers and families. Labour promised to fix the damage left by the Tories’ failed Brexit deal, and this week that is exactly what we are doing. For years, Britain was held back: 21% fewer exports, rising food prices and businesses drowning in red tape. But this week, that changed. The deal marks a new chapter, ensuring that Britain is stronger, fairer and more competitive on the world stage. It is a game changer for the west midlands, and for my constituents in Halesowen. Nowhere will the benefits be felt more than in the Black Country, an area built on industry. The deal cuts red tape on over 1,500 products, slashes costs, and secures greater certainty for local businesses. Manufacturing makes up 14% of jobs in my area. It is a massive employer, but in the last 30 years the Black Country has lost over 30,000 jobs in the sector. We were once the engine room of the British economy, but while promises piled up, investments passed us by. This deal, on top of the deals Labour has secured with the US and India, will get our economy turbocharged once again. It is about supporting British steel, protecting jobs, and our future as a manufacturing powerhouse. Labour has cut £25 million a year from tariffs, which will help our steel industry to compete on the world stage and will save steelmaking jobs. It is about bringing down energy costs because we know how critical that is for households and businesses alike. This deal dodges a £7 billion carbon tax, and Octopus Energy tells us that it will bring down household bills and provide relief to normal consumers.

I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) to talk about the imbalance in food exports and imports. The EU sells us far more than we sell it. Are we not moving to a less globalist age—a post-liberal age—in which countries will need to be more economically resilient, as I described earlier? We need to shorten supply lines and so on. On that basis, why would we want to make it easier for people from abroad to sell goods to compete with our farmers and growers?

We have been talking in this debate about some of the advantages to British agriculture and the British fishing industry of access to the European market. Of course, it will be fantastic for the people who have been welcoming this deal, and the deal will also be very much welcomed by the many consumers in Halesowen who will see prices on their supermarket shop fall as a result of it.

What about the extra costs of regulation?

If the hon. Member wants to intervene, he may do so. As a former military man myself, I should also talk about the benefits to defence, including access to £150 billion of defence contracts. Many defence contractors in Halesowen have been cut out from European contracts since Brexit. They are very keen to be involved in this deal. We should also be talking about the benefits to families. The deal means lower food prices on supermarket shelves in Halesowen, which will put money back in people’s pockets. For young people who deserve more than a future limited by bad decisions of the past, the deal gives them back the right to work, study and live across 27 countries. For too long, we have closed the door for young people. This deal opens it up once again. For those asking whether the deal undermines our independence, let me be clear: we remain in control. We are outside the single market and the customs union, and Britain makes its own laws. This is about making Brexit work—not revisiting old fights but delivering for today. While Labour delivers, the Tories and Reform continue to stand on the sidelines offering no answers and only more chaos and division. This deal does not bring us backwards; it pushes places like Halesowen forward. We are fixing what was broken by the last Government, and we are making Britain stronger, fairer and ready for the future.

15:57:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing time for this debate. The Liberal Democrats were clear about our ambitions for the summit. We repeatedly pushed the Government for a youth mobility scheme between the UK and the EU, we called for a defence and security pact with our European neighbours, and crucially we urged the Government to be much bolder on trade and the economy by seeking a bespoke customs union with the EU. The Brexit deal was a betrayal. The leave campaign promised that businesses would be able to trade more freely, that farmers would benefit from a new approach to their payments, and that fishing communities would thrive once again. Instead, businesses are caught up in red tape, farmers have seen their payments slashed, and the deal on fishing was a total sell-out. In fact, it has been amusing to hear Members berate the Government this week for an extension on exactly the same terms as the deal that Boris Johnson agreed.

Would the hon. Lady clarify whether she believes the deal is a good thing for fishing or not? She seems to be bashing it, but also remarking on the 12-year extension.

I am assuming that the Conservative Government were happy with the terms that they were able to negotiate, so what is the problem with extending it? I simply reflect on the comments of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who is no longer in her place: the new agreement enables so many more opportunities for exporting to the EU, and that is something that will be very much welcomed by many of our industries, not least our fisheries.

It is quite extraordinary that the hon. Lady does not understand the different between a bitter concession that was forced out of the previous Government, wisely or unwisely, that we deeply resented and was time-limited to five years, and an extension of 12 years, which is at least 2.2 times worse, for something freely given away. I remember when the Labour party used to deride the common fisheries policy as an ecological and social disaster. Now it is embracing it, and so is the hon. Lady. I can only assume that she does not represent any fishermen in her constituency.

I am so sorry to hear about the resentment that the hon. Gentleman feels at the deal that his Government negotiated. However, he must accept that that is the basis on which the new deal has been struck. That was the starting point for the negotiation. I am sorry to hear it was so terrible, but that was the starting point. The betrayal by those who advocated for the opportunities of Brexit did not end there. Of course, it was not just the Conservatives, but the leader of the Reform party. The public were promised that immigration would fall. Instead, it has risen to record levels. Far from the economic liberation that the Brexiteers pledged leaving the EU would bring, the OBR has estimated that barriers to trade with Europe will reduce the output of our economy by 4% over 15 years. More than that, we know how much public opinion has shifted on this issue, as many have come to realise that the promises of the leave campaign were so detached from reality. The leave campaign promised £350 million a week to the NHS, but the truth has become painfully clear. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) gave the game away in an interview in December. Speaking about America, he said that “it’s got cheap energy, because it ‘drill baby drills’, they’ve got lower regulations and they’ve got lower taxes.” That is the real Brexit agenda: environmental vandalism, stripping away regulations that keep us safe and cutting taxes for the rich. I hope Members will acknowledge the extent to which that campaign misled the public.

We have heard lots about reducing bills, but the hon. Lady has just confirmed that the greatest bill, which affects so much, is the cost of energy, and America enjoys energy prices that are a third of ours because it uses its own domestic energy treasure.

I am so glad that the hon. Gentleman raised that point, because what he will need to accept in time is that the way forward for cheaper electricity bills in this country is to invest in renewable energy. That, more than anything else, is what will reduce the cost of energy for consumers and businesses. The more renewable energy we have, including from wind farms off the east coast, the quicker we can get to reduced bills for our constituents. The Liberal Democrats welcome many parts of the new agreement. It marks a distinct and positive step towards reversing the damage caused by the Conservatives’ pitiful negotiations with Europe, and I welcome the progress on those issues. I am sure that the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) will welcome the fact that the Liberal Democrats would echo his call for a return of the European Scrutiny Committee; I agree with his comments on that. According to a recent study from the London School of Economics, the Brexit deal reduced goods exports by £27 billion, or 6.4%, in 2022. Smaller firms were the most affected. The Government say that the new deal will add £9 billion to the UK economy, and we welcome the decisive step to address the disastrous damage that Brexit brought to our economy. However, ahead of the last general election the Labour party drew itself some self-defeating red lines. The timidity in negotiations with Europe seems to be driven more by a fear of the Reform party than a commitment to bring forward proposals that would benefit the British people. Joining a new customs union with the EU is one such line. However, they are acting less like lines and more like chains weighing down on UK growth and prosperity.

It seems that the deal is both too much and too little. Perhaps if it were porridge, it would be just right. Does the hon. Lady agree?

I disagree; it is too little. Whatever the Government have said, it is too little for the Liberal Democrats. We would have gone further, although I certainly welcome the progress that has been made. Times change. We know that joining a customs union would unlock vital new opportunities for British businesses and boost our economy in a meaningful way. In fact, even a deep alignment deal would boost growth by 2.2%, which could result in a £25 billion windfall for the public purse, and that would fall short of the benefits that a customs union would provide. In the years 2020 to 2024, the net change in the number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK decreased by 25,495. Since 2019, UK businesses have also had an average closure rate of over 12%, outstripping the rate of new businesses starting up. I have heard about the challenges that businesses have experienced due to Brexit red tape, which is a direct impact of the Conservatives’ pitiful negotiation. Successful high street businesses that have operated for four decades tell me that the last 18 months have been the hardest period that they have experienced, due to the exponential increase in import duties and registration fees. I have also been told time and again by small businesses in my constituency about the damage of Brexit. Far from seeing the freedom promised by the Brexiteers, we have instead seen an exponential increase in bureaucracy, resulting in business-owners spending many arduous hours sorting through additional paperwork, including complex regulatory differences for animal products such as wool. Those are not isolated cases. Over a third of surveyed UK businesses have reported extra costs that are directly related to changes in export regulations due to the end of the EU transition period. We are glad that some of these issues will be addressed with the new trade agreement. However, the Government must be bolder. We will continue to urge them to be much more ambitious with regard to trade and the economy, and we will ask them to use this agreement as a first step in seeking a new customs union with the EU. While we know that the long-term wellbeing of the UK is about being back in the heart of Europe, that requires strengthened trading agreements and a customs union. Closer ties with Europe are also key to our national security. We have long argued for closer alliances on defence in the face of Putin’s imperialism and Trump’s unpredictability, and we welcome the fact that the Government have committed to a defence agreement. However, I hope that the Minister will agree that that must be just the beginning, and that we must be far more ambitious in strengthening our economic and security ties with our nearest neighbours. The Liberal Democrats have also repeatedly pushed the Government for a youth mobility scheme between the UK and the EU, so we are glad that the Government have seen sense and will look to introduce a similar scheme, whatever it might be called. We know that a youth mobility scheme is good for business, good for education and good for opportunity. Polling shows that two thirds of the UK population are in favour of a youth mobility scheme. Red tape at the UK-EU border has prevented schools and children across the country from taking part in overseas educational trips. I think many Members would agree that such trips are a memorable and enriching part of a school career; however, according to the School Travel Forum, between 2019 and 2023 such opportunities reduced in number by 30%. There are so many reasons to welcome and champion a new programme for young people. Given that the scheme the Government have indicated they will support would mirror existing capped arrangements that the UK already has with 13 countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada, I urge them to move with more urgency and to bring forward details and a timeframe for the implementation of such a scheme. The Minister and I both know that a youth mobility scheme is not a return to freedom of movement. Will he confirm that the Government, who have shown good intention in introducing such a scheme, will not be sidetracked by scaremongering from the Conservative party and the Reform party, and that he will give his full commitment to the introduction of the scheme? When I asked the Prime Minister on Tuesday for a timeline, he assured me that the Government will move quickly. However, given the thousands of students who hope to travel to Europe to study, the thousands of small hospitality businesses in this country that are struggling to recruit short-term staff and the musicians burdened with huge levels of bureaucratic paperwork, I reiterate my call here today. Will the Minister set out a timeline for the introduction of such a scheme, which will ease travel?

I believe in British jobs for British young people. Should the hospitality industry not first be looking to employ the very large number of young British people who are not in education, work or training?

That is an excellent point; the issue is that the hospitality industry frequently seeks to recruit people for short-term work, which is often seasonal. Those jobs are not the kind of jobs that young people who are looking to build a career are necessarily interested in taking up, because come September or October they would be out of work and would have to look for something else. That is the barrier to young people in this country taking up some of those roles. There is no doubt that those industries are experiencing huge shortages of workers and a youth mobility scheme could go some way towards addressing that, thereby helping to ensure the viability of businesses in those industries and keeping them going, and keeping the jobs that they provide in our local communities. Over the last five years, the empty promises spouted by the leave campaign have become increasingly clear as the damage caused by Brexit has unfolded. The Liberal Democrats welcome this step towards reversing some of the damage caused by the last Conservative Government, and we will continue to urge the current Government to go further and to be bolder in their ambitions for our country.

16:09:00

It is a pleasure to speak on behalf of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, Mr Vickers. The more that we learn about the reset, the clearer it becomes that far from being the win-win that the Prime Minister promised, it is little more than a bundle of missed opportunities wrapped in hollow rhetoric and enfeebled by untenable concessions. The Prime Minister heralds this agreement with the EU as a monumental win, but in reality it shackles us once more to the whims of Brussels and undermines the very principles underpinning the genuinely historic decision of 17.4 million voters in 2016 to take back control. Instead of taking back control, these agreements entwine us within the jurisdiction of a foreign court. They mean we are beholden to decisions made elsewhere about the quality of British food. That is the very antithesis of taking back control. It is no wonder the Government were so reluctant to let Parliament know what the Prime Minister was planning to concede. We support efforts to reduce unnecessary trade barriers that clearly damage both sides and to reach an agreement based on mutual recognition between partners that respect each other and their sovereignty, and that work together for mutual benefit. Instead, we are presented with a one-sided deal that sees us forgo rights that are enjoyed by virtually every other independent country in order to sign up to EU schemes on EU terms. Ahead of the summit, we set out five tests against which we would judge whether the Government’s deal actually respected the referendum result, as they promised. There obviously could be no return to free movement, no new payments to the EU, no loss of our fishing rights, no compromise on NATO’s primacy in European defence, and no dynamic alignment with EU rules. From the details published so far, it is hard to see how the agreement can possibly meet all five of those vital tests. On the first test, there is little detail about the youth mobility scheme. We support limited youth mobility schemes with effective controls—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”]— as we agreed in government with countries such as Australia and Canada, but they have to be done right and they need controls. Without controls they could become the back door to free movement. I hope the Minister will be able to help in his summing up, because the briefings from the Government and the European Union are worrying. It is clear that the two sides have different ideas as to what is on the table, and the common understanding does absolutely nothing to clear up that ambiguity. Will the Minister fill in some of those gaps? Will participating EU nationals have to pay the NHS surcharge, or will British taxpayers be left to foot the bill? Will EU students pay the overseas rate or the home student rate for higher education tuition fees? If the latter, will the Government recompense universities for the lost income? Crucially, what does he expect the cap on those numbers to be? Does he expect the number of EU participants to be around the 10,000 mark, as for those who come to the UK under the Australian version of the scheme, or does he expect a higher number?

There is another question. A truly bilateral youth exchange arrangement would be fine. It would be like the trade and co-operation agreement, with no reference to the European Court of Justice. Or is this going to be an extension of the withdrawal agreement arrangements involving EU citizenship, which is subject to the European Court of Justice and temporary and time-limited? The real question that the Minister has to answer is: what will be the involvement of the European Court of Justice in overseeing this arrangement?

That is an important question for the Minister to answer. This should not come as news. The Leader of the Opposition was quite clear on Tuesday that of course we support the principle of mobility schemes. After all, we negotiated so many of them, which the Minister did not support when he was shadow International Trade Secretary. The Government’s deal clearly also fails the tests on payments to the EU and on fishing rights. Our fishermen stand betrayed. Instead of the four-year transitional arrangement they had under the previous agreement, they have been lumbered with French, Spanish and Dutch mega-trawlers being handed long-term access to their waters. That will become the new permanent state of being, and it will have to be negotiated away from. From Cornwall to Tobermory, fishermen find themselves devastated by a Government prepared to sell them short. That is not what they were promised, and certainly not what they deserve. Again, it is difficult to judge from the information published on Monday whether the security and defence partnership could undermine NATO. There is clearly a need for western Europe to take greater responsibility for the security of the region and to improve its collective capability. There is no question but that closer co-operation can bring benefits for Britain—particularly for contractors able to bid for projects funded by safe loans—but of course none of that is ensured in any of the material published so far. It is surely true that our partners will benefit at least as much from the incredible contribution that the British armed forces will make to that security so, given such mutual benefit, there should be no case for additional payments or concessions.

To my mind, the core of the issue is the sense of suspicion. No one disagrees that trade barriers are a bad thing and that clearing them is a good thing for trade, but there is an awful lot of suspicion about the exact details and about how much the benefits are real benefits, not just the removal of punitive hurdles.

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point. There are clearly barriers that it would be in both sides’ mutual interest to remove. That should not be difficult to do, but the fact is that it has been difficult. I speak as someone who spent seven very happy years working in a European institution before deciding, on the basis of that experience, that Britain could do better. Sadly, after Brexit, the European Union’s negotiating position seemed determined to treat the United Kingdom less favourably than most other third countries, with which it did not have such a strong trading relationship. That brings me to what is clearly the greatest betrayal of all in these documents, which is the effective surrender of this Parliament’s right to decide what laws apply and do not apply in this country. Last July, the Prime Minister promised that he would not accept any deal that meant laws being introduced without the consent of Parliament, but it is clear that he has found a way round that promise by agreeing that the UK will immediately adopt new EU laws in a range of areas, but after the pretence of a vote in which no is not a genuine option. Worse, judgments about whether Britain complies with those new EU laws will be adjudicated by the EU’s own European Court of Justice, so the key difference between this and the puffin case that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) referred to is that cases involving dynamic alignment would, by definition, be matters relating to whether the UK is complying with an EU law. As the ECJ is specifically set out as the arbiter on questions of EU law, it will be able to rule on those matters, so it will become the arbiter.

My hon. Friend comes to the nub of the issue, which I described as the debate about governance —it might be said to be a debate about jurisdiction. There is a kind of schizophrenia on the Government Benches: some Members want to say that this is a fundamental change, and a step back towards where we once were—that is clearly what the Liberal Democrats want—while others say that it is a matter of detail and simply a different kind of agreement. Essentially, however, the issue of governance and jurisdiction lies at the heart of this debate. I simply invite my hon. Friend to affirm the fact that on the Conservative side of the Chamber, whatever we have said in the past, we are now absolutely clear that the national interest will always be the supreme consideration of this party and a future Conservative Government.

My right hon. Friend is clearly right, and the national interest cannot be served by a dynamic alignment that effectively requires us to automatically take on other people’s rules. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister either could not or would not tell us what measures would be open to the EU in the event that Parliament chose not to adopt a new EU law under paragraph 27 of the common understanding. Can the Minister do better? Would remedial action be restricted to suspending parts of this agreement, or could it result in a broader trade dispute? Labour fought Brexit at every turn over the last nine years. The Prime Minister backed a second referendum; he stood on platforms calling for us to stay in the EU, and demanded we entered into a customs union that would have made the trade deals reached since Brexit impossible. Now he says that he wants to make Brexit work, but his version of making Brexit work is about dragging Britain backwards. This deal is not about fixing Brexit; it is about reversing it and undermining it. Let us be absolutely clear: this deal resubmits the UK to foreign courts, foreign laws and foreign control. We will pay into EU budgets, follow EU rules and even have our food standards determined by Brussels. We will be paying into EU schemes with no say on how those funds are spent, and taking EU laws with no say over what they are—the worst of both worlds. No vote. No veto. No voice. Taxation without representation. The Prime Minister complains—[Interruption.] Sorry, is the hon. Member for Walthamstow trying to intervene?

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. We have talked about the puffin case; the previous Government, which fought the puffin case, relied on European law in making their argument, and cited it in their own submissions. It was good enough for the previous Government to look at European law and at questions about proportionality, as they did in their submission. The idea that moving to an independent arbitration system, which is what this summit will do, is somehow surrender is misplaced.

No, I think the hon. Lady misses the point completely. When we are being taken to an international court by an institution such as the European Union, it is a perfectly sensible and effective legal strategy to cite its own rules as evidence that we have not broken either its rule or the international rule that it is citing. Now, the Prime Minister complains about us doing exactly what we were elected to do—holding this Government to account and calling out where they are getting things wrong. On this, the Government are getting things wrong, and we will not make any apology for doing our duty, which is to oppose these concessions, to honour the will of voters and to retain our sovereignty. It is time to stand firm for the integrity of our democracy and for the ability of our sovereign Parliament to make decisions in the interests of our great nation.

16:24:00

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate, and pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) for securing it. We are here at the end of three weeks in which the post-Brexit independent trade policy that Conservative Members spent so long arguing for has been exercised. We have been exercising our sovereignty. We have agreed a trade deal with India; hon. Members may recall that a previous Prime Minister promised a UK-India deal by Diwali—to be fair, he did not say which Diwali, but none the less, we know he did not deliver it. This Government did. What about an economic deal with the United States? The Brexiteers promised it year after year. Did they ever deliver one? No, they did not. This Government did. Now, for the hat-trick, we have the improved deal with the European Union. After all their years of arguing for an independent trade policy, one would think that, when a Government successfully exercised one, Conservative Members would have something positive to say about it—but sadly not.

Will the Minister give way?

I will certainly give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I want to make some progress first. I did enjoy the shadow Minister’s speech. After hearing his comments in the middle about both the youth experience scheme and working in Europe, if he wants me to go and see his leader and put in a word for him to keep him in his job, I am more than happy to do so. I am not sure that the Back Benchers here got the memo about the line he was going to take, but I am sure they will become a bit more coherent in due course. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow quoted the “Frozen” song “Let It Go”, but I am afraid, looking at the Conservative party, it is more a case of “Let the storm rage on”—that is clearly what they are doing today. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness said what a significant week it was in parliamentary history, and I entirely agree with him. Whenever we have these debates on UK-EU relations, people with a real interest in and passion for it turn up. My sparring partners are here: my good friend, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), whom I frequently spar with on these matters, and the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), who I will give way to in a moment once I have made some progress. He often intervenes on me, and he is always here making the case—but, in this significant week, where is the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage)? In a supreme irony, he is in the European Union. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness also spoke about youth mobility. For me, what makes the difference are the experiences that I hear about from people whose lives have been transformed by having a year or two overseas. I want hon. Members to listen to the story of a young man and what he went on to do, because he spoke about two exciting and challenging years he had spent in France. He had really engaged while there. He said this: “Living in Paris and working in Paris, taught me a lot”. That young man became the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness. Given the amount of time that both he and the hon. Member for Clacton spend abroad, I am astonished that they want to deny the same opportunity to everybody else. I know that the shadow Minister is at heart a sensible, pragmatic man. The Conservatives and Reform have made a decisive choice in the last week. We have secured a deal that will lower household bills—hon. Members need not take my word for it; they can take the word of most major supermarkets and retailers. I do not hear their voices in support of the position of the Conservatives or Reform. Energy bills are coming down—here hon. Members can take the word of Octopus Energy, which is saying just that, and the support of the major energy firms for the Government’s position. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings is right about the Five Eyes relationship. Nobody could deny the additional tools and information that we will get from this deal to tackle the boats in the channel and to deal with serious and organised crime. That is the deal this Government have secured—good for jobs, borders and bills. Both those parties will go into the next general election promising to reverse it, and they will have to tell each and every one of their constituents why they want to erect trade barriers, put prices up and make our borders less secure.

I very much admire the Minister’s confidence. The Government have already guaranteed that energy prices will be £300 lower by 2029. Given his confidence that this deal will further lower energy bills, how much lower can we expect household electricity and gas bills to be in 2029 than the £300 reduction they have already promised?

I look forward to that debate in 2028 or 2029 with the hon. Gentleman, and indeed with the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness. Let me come to the other speeches. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who also benefited from a year abroad, quite rightly spoke about the importance of the automotive sector. The hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) talked about scrutiny, an issue also raised by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex. On that, the SPS agreement will require primary legislation; I am sure I will have a continuing debate with Opposition Members during its passage. My hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) spoke about the wide business support for the Government’s position. When the Conservative party used to win general elections, it used to claim to be the party of business; it most definitely is not any more. Now let me come to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex. I should start by saying that I am getting slightly concerned about him, because not once in his speech did he talk about increasing Conservative votes. He talked about increasing Reform votes. He referred to the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (James McMurdock) as his hon. Friend rather than the hon. Member. Are we to see this as a new political direction for the hon. Gentleman? I do not know—but his speech certainly leaned in that direction. The hon. Gentleman also asked about a democratic mandate. The democratic mandate for what has been agreed with the EU comes from the Labour manifesto. It respects the result of the 2016 referendum: no return to the single market, no return to the customs union and no return to freedom of movement. That is the basis on which this Government have negotiated. People said, “You need to have a Norway deal. You need to have a Swiss deal. You can’t negotiate a bespoke deal for the United Kingdom.” But that is precisely what this Government have delivered within 10 months.

Where in the Labour manifesto did it say that we would start contributing to the EU budget once again? How much are we going to have to pay and when will we know?

We will not be contributing to the general EU budget. We will be contributing on a value-for-money basis in specific areas, just as the last Government did when they started contributing to the Horizon research programme. I supported that when I was in opposition. I do not know whether that was one of the bitter things the Government did that the hon. Gentleman could not stomach in all those years. Where there is a value-for-money case and it is in Britain's interest, that is precisely what Britain would do. It is not about ideology; it is about a ruthlessly pragmatic approach, and that is what we will pursue. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) spoke about the deal working for the whole of the United Kingdom. She is absolutely right. The Government have secured, for example, the removal of steel tariffs, which is just one example of how different parts of the country will benefit. The SPS agreement on agricultural products, food and drink will benefit constituents up and down the land, as will the work on energy bills.

To prove that he is so confident the agreement will not mean a return to freedom of movement—given that the vast majority of those who moved under freedom of movement were under the age of 30 and could therefore qualify for a youth experience scheme—will the Minister give us an indication of the sort of number the cap is likely to be set at? Is it 30,000, 50,000 or 200,000 per annum?

The scheme will be time-limited and capped. I will make two points on that. First, it will be introduced in the context of the Government’s pledge to reduce net migration over the course of this Parliament. Secondly, I see it in the same way as the 13 schemes that already exist and are working perfectly well. I do not detect from Conservative Members—although one or two Back Benchers might have a different view—any particular desire to undo those agreements. Nobody is remotely suggesting that because we have a youth mobility arrangement with Uruguay, for example, we have freedom of movement with Uruguay. That would be absurd. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings knows I respect him. We often spar across the Dispatch Box in the House. As ever, he put his finger on a fine historical parallel when he quoted Joseph Chamberlain at the start of his speech. Over a century ago, at the start of the 20th century, Joseph Chamberlain began a debate about trading arrangements that the British public thought would increase the cost of food. That led to a landslide Conservative defeat in 1906 and no pure Conservative Government for 16 years afterwards. Joseph Chamberlain’s campaign on trade caused absolute havoc on the right of British politics. Does that sound familiar?

Let us save Joseph Chamberlain’s reputation, if we can. Joe Chamberlain was an almost legendary figure in the city of Birmingham. In the first half of his life, he gave that city slum clearance, clean water and unparalleled welfare standards. Later, when he came into Parliament, he began as a radical and ended up as a supporter of the Tory Government. In his age, Chamberlain represented was the defence of what he saw as the national interest. I cited him because, as I said, I believe that the national interest should be supreme. May I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I suspect that is what the vast majority of his constituents and mine think, too?

I would not disagree at all when it comes to Joseph Chamberlain’s record in Birmingham. The right hon. Gentleman knows that I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of his belief in the national interest, but I am sure that he respects the sincerity of my belief as well. We take a different view as to what actually constitutes the national interest. My hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) talked about the huge benefits of the deal for the farming community. I am sure that the reduction in trade barriers will be welcomed. I have been passed a note written by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer in his place. I will make two quick observations. First, the SPS agreement will be of great benefit in reducing the level of checks across the Irish sea. Secondly, I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman on the other method issues he raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) raised the issue of fish. First, we have stability; and secondly, 70% of our catch is exported to the EU market, and that will be able to be done far more easily. To make sure that our fishers have the opportunity to take advantage of that greater market access, £360 million will be made available to upgrade the fishing fleet. I give credit to the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) for his candid assessment of the previous Government as having made a lot of mistakes. On that, he and I agree 100%. But as I said to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex, the red lines—not rejoining the single market or customs union, and on freedom of movement—have very much been observed. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) that this should not be about nostalgia. It is about making a forward-looking, hard-headed and ruthlessly pragmatic assessment of what is in our national interest now.

Will the Minister give way?

I will, but as we are running out of time it will be the last time.

As the Minister is talking about pragmatism and the national interest, perhaps I can set him a very brief maths test. On dynamic alignment on carbon trading, the EU’s carbon price today is £58.84 per metric tonne, while the UK’s price is £38.13. Does that increase or decrease costs on British business?

If we are not part of the emissions trading system, we will not be able to get an exemption from the carbon border adjustment mechanism, which would cost British business £800 million. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that he wants British businesses to pay those taxes, he should be honest with the electorate about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) spoke about bringing down costs. Things such as the export health certificate—£200 per consignment —were meaning that we were talking about thousands of pounds to get some lorries to move. Those are the kinds of things that we can sweep away. It must be said that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), speaking for the Liberal Democrats, provided a measure of balance to what was said by those sitting to her right. Nevertheless, I have to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset that if the Conservatives and Reform are in one position, and the Liberal Democrats are in another, it suggests that we have got the balance absolutely right. I will conclude because I am conscious of the time. I know that we have gone over the allotted time, Mr Vickers, and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow needs to sum up the debate. We have made our choice—a ruthlessly pragmatic choice in negotiation. Our choice is that we are going to lower bills and have a situation that is great for jobs. We are getting more tools and information to secure our borders. If Opposition Members wish to be against that, good luck to them.

Before I call Stella Creasy, I point out to the Minister that he referred to the Member for Clacton by name.

Forgive me, Mr Vickers. I will forever reference the hon. Member for Clacton.

I am sure he will not take offence.

16:40:00

Thank you, Mr Vickers, and Ms McVey for your able chairing of this afternoon’s debate. I am probably going to show my age and why I am definitely not available for a youth exchange scheme, not by quoting Disney but by making an older reference. Dan Quayle’s words about surrender spring to mind when I hear the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and other Opposition Members talk about Brexit. He said: “My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.” Dan Quayle’s method of surrender is the approach of Reform and the Opposition making. Today’s debate has shown why we need a salvage and not a rejoin operation, given the impact of Brexit. We now hear Opposition parties opposing any co-operation at all—moving the goalposts. I am old enough and have been in this place long enough to remember when Opposition Members used to push for some kind of Swiss-style deal. They wanted some form of co-operation; now they seem to want no deal at all. They want to ignore the Shellfish Association of Great Britain, which criticised the impact on Brexit deal shellfish markets. They want to ignore not just the supermarkets—a bad form of reference according to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin)—but the British International Freight Association. I the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness to go and speak to the association, which talks about that deal as eliciting “a sigh of relief” regarding the practical changes for its members. I understand that we are now no longer to go to Spain, France or even Italy on holiday—only Norfolk. Let me reassure the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) that I will be in Norfolk this summer, but I do not want to deny my constituents the ability to travel all because of the right hon. Gentleman’s obsession with isolation. I do not think we will see no French people go to Skegness. I am sure that if they did come, they would get a very warm welcome. I certainly do not think we want the Henry Ford-approach to arbitration, which says, “Our way or no way at all.” This debate has shown the value of a debate on this issue. I hope that the Minister will take back if not the ideas, then the idea that we can talk about these issues in this place once again. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards), my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth), my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (James McMurdock), the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray), the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) and the Minister.

Does the hon. Lady share my regret that the Minister did not recommit the Government to introducing the Scrutiny Committee? Does she agree that we should continue to work to that end?

Yes, I do, and I know the Minister knows that. It is healthy for us to have these debates and I hope that we can continue to have them. As I said, I am concerned and interested to see the future possibility of joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention and tackling the rules of origin paperwork. Mutual conformity will be an issue. I know there are more concerns about security and defence. This is such a big issue with such a potential impact on our future. The deal that the Minister has done this week shows that, because of the benefits it will bring. It is right that this place has that debate so that we can move on from Opposition Members appearing like Prince Hans and wanting to take us back to Weselton, rather than thinking about the future that we could offer to everybody. I finish by again urging Opposition Members to let it go. “Frozen III” will offer us many new opportunities to revisit Olaf’s story and to see what happens to Anna and Elsa. Of course, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire will know that Anna saves Elsa through love. Let me offer some love, so as not to go back into the castle, but to move forward together, because things really will look good when we are older. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the EU-UK summit.

16:44:00