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.