argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): That is an excellent suggestion. We could almost add new clause 54 to the copy-and-paste process, given that it is based on the Prime Minister’s own words. Obviously, I personally would like to go further, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I tabled the new clause in the spirit of compromise New clause 48 serves to highlight the important but often overlooked question of mutual recognition agreements. MRAs are another series of international obligations between countries. The UK has obtained rights for notified bodies to undertake conformity assessments to make sure that standards across the EU are complied with and that UK firms can certify assessments of conformity across that market of 500 million people by virtue of the process that they undertake in the UK. If we lose that MRA process, it could cause immense disruption to many businesses and sectors in the UK.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): I entirely agree and my hon. Friend is completely correct to stand up for her constituents and local businesses and to make that point, which is too often overlooked. We need mutual recognition arrangements like the REACH regulations. It is often said that big corporations want to get out of such regulations, but in this case they want to stay part of that framework because it allows them to access markets. If we sacrifice that access, they will lose out and jobs will go as a result On a related issue, new clause 59 concerns the recognition of professional qualifications throughout the EU. I have been talking to the Royal Institute of British Architects, which is very worried about British graduates in architecture and those already in practice who often have services to sell across that wide range of 28 countries—as it is currently—and it is deeply concerned about whether its professional qualifications will continue to be recognised for the purposes of its ongoing business in that wider market. This is really serious stuff, and I hope that the Minister will address the matter when he has time to respond to these amendments New clause 11 is about how Parliament should be able to keep track, even after exit day, of regulations that are being made in the European Union. When we leave, we will obviously have our own jurisdiction and the EU will have its own jurisdiction, but if the EU continues to evolve its regulatory practices and to make new changes to rules and laws, we need some device to keep us informed in the UK Parliament so that we have the choice over whether to contract with those rules and stay in alignment or to ensure that we have regulatory equivalence. This is really more of a procedural new clause, but it is just asking the question of how we will keep in touch given that these are our near neighbours and the markets with which we have to remain aligned.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is proposing a whole series of amendments that would certainly improve the current dire situation of this Bill, but is not a simple solution to all these amendments to stay in the single market and the customs union?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Transportation
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Yes, and we all presumed that some of the £3.7 billion of preparations money would be spent on tarmacking fields around those areas in preparation for lorry parks and the overflow from the possible queues on the motorways.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Angela Christine Smith (Labour, Centre-left): May I turn my hon. Friend’s attention to Ireland? Freight traffic to Dublin has enjoyed a growth rate of 700% since the establishment of the single market, but the control zone of the terminal is no bigger than it was in the 1980s, thanks to the fact that it has enjoyed the dismantling of customs control and port health control. Is he aware of any preparations or investment to deal with this potential problem if we do abolish the customs union?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) are right to focus on supply chains. The tariff could be a problem. Who knows what that would be—3%, 4% or 5%—if we fell back on the World Trade Organisation? Think of the disruption to business planning. A lot of firms would almost need to have an insurance policy at their disposal for the warehousing just to cope with the flows. We could be on the brink of many manufacturers fundamentally having to move away from the just-in-time business models that they have developed; it is almost like "RIP JIT" in this circumstance. We could almost see a whole new business model—we could be stepping back into the 20th century and earlier—if we get this wrong.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): We must not take these arrangements for granted. Many of our constituents have taken them for granted for decades now and thought, "Oh, well, this is all seamless," so they would not understand, as the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said It is worth just walking through what happens when we do not have this sort of seamless arrangement. If a country is outside the customs union, this is what happens to goods that are destined for elsewhere. Before departure, people have to complete an export declaration, which is often lodged with a freight forwarding company. At the port of exit, the goods need to be cleared by the authorities, who decide whether inspection is needed. If so, the goods are possibly placed into storage and checked. Then, once they have left and travelled to the port of entry in the destination country, they are presented to the authorities via another declaration process, and potentially placed in storage again. Then there are country-of-entry checks and risk assessments; there is revenue collection; there could be checks for smuggled, unlicensed goods; and there are things such as hygiene, health and safety measures, labelling, consumer protection checks, the administration of quota restrictions, agricultural refunds, and trade defence checks to ensure that things are not being dumped unfairly in the country. All these administrative processes will absolutely add to the export process for goods.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Agriculture
Melanie Onn (Labour, Centre-left): Great Grimsby is well known for its fish and fish processing. We have discussed extensively some of the issues around delays to things such as automotive sector products, but we also have fresh products, such as fish. Fish is caught in Norway and imported to Grimsby, and it is an essential part of the fish processing industry. Any additional delays to that product will mean that supermarkets will not buy it—they will not want it—and the quality will reduce. That will have a really serious impact. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the issues around the delays and to make sure that the Government understand that reducing those delays in any way possible has to be at the forefront of their considerations.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): The delays will probably be of great concern to the companies involved in those shipments, because those goods have to be fresh and delivered on time. However, if we fall back on to WTO arrangements, there is also the potential 8% tariff for fish and crustaceans.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman will know that there are concerns. He said Norway was a "vassal state"—I think that was his phrase. I do not think the Norwegians would see it that way, but they have had to simply take instructions, in many ways, in terms of the European Union arrangements on a lot of these questions. With many of our products, particularly in the manufacturing sector, the customs union has given us great opportunity to thrive, and we have done particularly well in recent years on the back of that.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): I agree that we want to have a tariff-free relationship with our European neighbours—that much we can all agree on. However, the hon. Gentleman should look at the circumstances where we export to third countries outside the European Union that are not part of the free trade agreements that we have accrued over the 40 years of our membership of the European Union. Those free trade agreements are there for a reason. As we heard earlier, the reason people want out of the pure WTO arrangement and into an FTA is precisely that they want to minimise many of the transactional barriers and the inertia that can be there Let us take the car industry as an example. The chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the car industry’s own representative, is now voicing concerns about investment in the sector gradually beginning to ebb away, partly because of the uncertainty of this whole situation. The level of investment in the industry in the UK was £2.5 billion in 2015, then £1.6 billion in 2016, and it is heading to less than £1 billion this year. Car companies are "sitting on their hands", according to the chief executive of the SMMT.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): I want to take my hon. Friend back to what he was saying about the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We had evidence this morning at the Brexit Committee on this. As he knows, in their recent agreement with Brussels, the Government committed to having no infrastructure at the border, and, if necessary, to our providing full regulatory alignment with the internal market and the customs union in order to achieve that. Is he encouraged by that commitment, even though the Government’s current policy is not to stay in the customs union, because if it stands, it looks very likely that we will have to, in effect, stay in the customs union?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Absolutely. If we can maintain full alignment, which was the phrase used in that agreement, that is essentially the same thing as a customs union arrangement. However, there was a caveat in that Ministers said that it would apply unless specific solutions can be found for divergence that they might want to see. That is a bit like the European negotiator’s way of saying, "Come on then, do your best—let’s have a look at what you can dream up." The worry that I had when the Prime Minister returned was that her interpretation of full alignment was to reference the old list within the Good Friday agreement that merely talked about areas such as agriculture, energy and tourism but excluded trade in goods, which is a pretty big part of the issue at the border. I do not think the European Union signed up to this thinking that there was an exclusion for trade in goods. It is a question of "watch and wait" until the situation unravels.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Transportation
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): I have not seen that information, but there are all sorts of bits of infrastructure involved. There are separate roads and lanes for the processing of different things. As I have said, I am sure that the Minister will have solutions for all those problems.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): I will come to the US situation in a moment. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that the inward investment figures are massively inflated because of mergers and acquisitions data. When we consider the buy-outs of some of the large technology companies—[Interruption.] Well, I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman should necessarily interpret the stripping out of British ownership of such companies as a great British success. If he digs beneath the statistics, he might see a slightly different picture Our mythology about the UK’s potential to strike a great and bountiful set of trade deals if we could only rid ourselves of the shackles of the customs union is becoming a bit of a joke across the British economy.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): I will give way in a moment. Our justification for leaving the customs union has to be more than simply to keep the Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade in a job. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who is keen to intervene, took evidence on some of these questions this morning I think that the potential United States deal that the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) referred to is being kiboshed as we speak. The US would want an agricultural basis for any trade deal with the UK, but there is a reason why the Americans dip their chicken in chlorine: they have entirely different and lower animal welfare standards than do the UK and the EU. If we were to do an agricultural deal with the US on the basis of those lower standards, it would undercut our farmers, abattoirs and food producers, who would have to chase each other down to the level of the lowest common denominator. It is contradictory to hear the Environment Secretary saying that he does not wish in any way to reduce safety standards or animal welfare standards, and he may well be killing off the idea of a US trade deal with his pronouncements.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Angela Christine Smith (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way again. This morning, the Secretary of State further entrenched his position, which will make it very difficult to complete a US trade deal involving food and food products. The other evidence that we have received in the Select Committee has indicated, week after week, that many parts of the agricultural sector believe that the UK Government over many generations—not just this Government, but previous ones—have never done the political or diplomatic brokering work necessary to build our export trading position with third countries outside the European Union. What on earth makes us think that we can now pull off this magic trick of building trade around the world to replace that which we have had with the European Union?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): It is possible that our civil service will eventually gear up to do these things, and I would be the first person to say that we of course want to do new trade deals to repair some of the damage caused by this whole process, but it is not going to happen overnight. In fact, as you will remember, Sir David, Vote Leave promised during the campaign ahead of the referendum that we would be negotiating trade deals the day after the referendum and that they would all get going straightaway, but we are yet to see any of that actually kick off.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) can speak for himself; he has done in the past and will do so again. I take the view that we should not shilly-shally on this issue, but stand up and say that there are risks to business and to our borders from our ports and airports being clogged up. We should also say that there is an economic cost—revenue costs for the Treasury—that could mean years of Brexit austerity ahead. All hon. Members, whichever side of the House we are on, need to recognise that some of the responsibility for these things will fall on our shoulders if we do not stand up now and say that staying in the customs union is the right way to proceed.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Absolutely. The right hon. Lady has taken the words out of my mouth. I would love to see the Government’s draft free trade agreement with India. I hope that there are fantastic manufactured goods or widgets that the British want to sell and could sell to India, but I suspect that the Indian economy is quite adept at producing widgets of its own and probably at quite a low cost. If the Indians are going to buy anything from us, they will buy services—services are about people; they are people-to-people businesses—and the Indians will naturally say, "Well, we’ll do you a deal, but it has to involve the movement of people." All hon. Members will need to think about the downstream consequences of that and about how our constituents might respond. Such an agreement would be perfectly reasonable, but this is a much bigger question.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): Before my hon. Friend moves away from India, may I draw his attention to the Scotch whisky industry? I am sure we will all partake of some of that industry’s goods during the next few weeks of the festive period. The Scotch whisky industry has flourished on the basis of free trade deals done through the EU, such as the one with Korea, but this Government are planning to walk away from those 57 EU bilateral trade agreements and try to reach free trade agreements with countries such as India, which will want to maintain its 150% tariff on Scotch whisky.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes his point well. The idea is that we should turn a blind eye to the trading arrangements we have with our nearest neighbours—50% of our markets—in pursuit, as an alternative or substitute, of some deal with far-flung countries a lot further away, but Australia accounts for 2% or 3% of our current trade and a deal with Australia will not offset many of these problems. It is not just the 50% that we have directly with our nearest neighbours. All those free trade agreements that the European Union has worked up and signed, to which we have been a party, over the past 40 years add up to a further 14% of our trade. So going on for two thirds of our trade is tied into the customs union process—36 bilateral free trade agreements with 63 different countries. How shall we ensure that they continue the day after we exit?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): I will not give way; other Members want to speak The Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade has said, "These can be grandfathered; they can be cut and pasted and we will just sort all those out," and junior Ministers at the Department for International Trade have said in the past, "Those countries have all agreed to roll them over." That is not the case. Maybe a bit of dialogue has begun, but those other countries might want to take the opportunity to reopen some of those long-standing agreements—who knows? The Minister will give us the answers when he winds up the debate.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): I want to conclude my remarks because others want to speak. I simply want to make a final point about why the customs union is such a crucial issue, and why I urge my hon. Friends on the Front Bench and hon. Members across the House to think about the consequences of not staying in the customs union If this country ends up with hard borders again, there will be big consequences. Our ports could grind to a halt. Lorries will clog up our motorways, with, potentially, vast lorry parks near the ports. The expensive, wasteful spending on bureaucratic checks will hurt our industries, and we ought to be evaluating the economic impact of industries, potentially, gradually relocating elsewhere because it is easier to do business in a different jurisdiction. Think of the jobs lost, particularly in the manufacturing sector, if we get this wrong. Bear in mind that we will not have any say on what happens on the EU side of the border after this whole process. There is no guarantee about what happens at the other end of the channel tunnel or in Calais The reason I have pushed new clause 13 as I have, is to do with the austerity that we risk in this country for the next decade—a decade of Brexit austerity that will potentially befall many of our constituents because of the lost revenues. Unless we stay in the single market and the customs union, we will have that austerity on our conscience, and I urge hon. Members, especially all my hon. Friends, to think very seriously. We have to make sure we stay in the customs union.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick Bosco McFadden (Labour, Centre-left): If the European Communities Act 1972 is abolished on 29 March 2019 and that is the legal basis for following the European Union’s rules at the moment, what does the right hon. Gentleman think will be the legal basis for following the European Union’s rules during the transition period?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): We have heard many times from Conservative Members that the date of 29 March 2019 cannot be moved because we have triggered article 50 and the process has a two-year limit. Will the right hon. Gentleman set out for the Committee what he thinks would happen in practice if the powers under amendment 400 were used by the Government?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Paul Farrelly (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that services are so important to our economy that if we want to negotiate something that has not been negotiated before, it is likely to take far longer than two years?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman accept that this would not be a second referendum? People are saying, "This isn’t what I voted for." They voted to go out in principle. They were told they would get more money, but they are getting less money. They may get restricted market access. They have a right to vote on the terms of the deal. This is quite separate from whether they in principle wanted to go out. Surely, he should think again about this, and rather than just banking his previous result for Scotland, he should think of the UK.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): Could the Minister set out for the whole Committee—not just the Conservative Members sitting behind him—what will happen if the legislation provided for in amendment 7, which we passed last week, is not passed? The Minister, using amendment 381—whether or not it is itself amended by amendment 400—will still have the power to set the exit date and withdraw, irrespective of what has gone on. Is that not right?