European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-06-13
Topic: Foreign Trade
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): Mr Speaker, an English Member may restore some of the calm that has not accompanied the Scottish exchanges—thank you very much for calling me. I will try to be as brief as possible. We have a ridiculous situation thanks to the programme motion—we have about three hours left to cover amendments on a whole variety of different subjects that have all been lumped together. In the interests of time, I will confine myself to discussing the future trading arrangements of this country with Europe and the rest of the world, and the Government amendment seeking to get rid of the reference to "a customs union". Obviously I will not follow all the Front-Bench spokesmen in being extremely generous in giving way. I apologise in advance, because I do not think I will give way much, if at all, because otherwise a large number of other Members will wind up speaking, as they did yesterday, with three-minute time limits and other absurdities that this House has inflicted on itself by accepting the programme motion I come to the issue that we are currently addressing most vigorously, although there are many, many more to come: our future trading and economic arrangements with the rest of Europe and the world. My views are well known, and I set them out in Committee. I wish to see absolutely no new barriers to trade and investment erected between ourselves and the rest of continental Europe. I do not think such barriers are necessary to fulfil Brexit. I certainly do not go along with some of the more extreme advocates, who seem to be positively relishing the idea that we should erect new barriers of all kinds between ourselves and 27 nation states on the continent, while having the most open and exotic free trade approach to the rest of the world, reducing barriers of every kind to other trading nations. In today’s globalised world and rule-based order, free trade is particularly essential to the British, and we have to minimise the damage that might otherwise be caused when we implement Brexit Let me deal briefly with the argument that is bound to be raised by some—"the moment you mention this, you are defying the referendum." Again, I shall not repeat what I said yesterday, but I do not think the referendum remotely addressed the important subjects we are debating today; it was a yes/no question on a very broad-brush issue. I took part in a lot of debates up and down the country, doing one or two against Dan Hannan MEP, whom I know well. He is a difficult man to debate against. In my opinion, he is one of the most articulate and informed of the Brexiteer campaigners. I disagreed with him, but I got the clear impression that Dan Hannan was not against the single market and the customs union—that was not his view at all. None of that came through in the debate Unfortunately, the national media reporting of the referendum debate was pretty pathetic; it was all about Turks and how much money was going to go to the health service and so on. All this argument about trading arrangements was brought to a head only after the referendum, when the Prime Minister was induced by her then special adviser, Mr Timothy, to give the unfortunate speech at Lancaster House. Suddenly, new red lines were introduced: we were leaving the single market, leaving the customs union and rejecting the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. I will not go further on that, as I made the same point yesterday I do not remember any ordinary member of the public asking me anything during the campaign about the customs union and the single market. To this day, when I go to my constituency nobody is quizzing me about the customs union and the single market. Nobody is following these debates, except when there is reference to the fact that if we get this wrong, we could do immense damage to the livelihood and wellbeing of very many people. If we do get it wrong and unintentionally create borders to trade, we will make the prospects for future generations even more difficult. In this debate we have heard great vehemence about the customs union and "the single market" and how appalling they are, but the arguments used against them are very narrow The Prime Minister has been absolutely consistent for months. She does not say, "Oh, we’re against the single market"—and not surprisingly, because it was the Thatcher Government who created the whole institution in the first place. Although the Prime Minister is not a Thatcherite entirely, on economic policy she and I both believe in open, free markets. There is nothing undesirable about the single market arrangement, except that it allows the freedom of movement of labour. That is the only objection to it that most Conservative Brexiteers ever raised, unless they are of the hard-line head-banging variety, who go much further than that. That is the only objection that they have.