Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship — House of Commons, 2020-07-15
Topic: Mixed Topics
Deidre Leanne Brock (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I want to start by talking about the catalogue of demonstrated Brexit costs, which grows almost unceasingly. I continue to be told by constituents of how it will cause massive damage to their businesses, and I am going to highlight just one of the most recent examples Leith and Edinburgh have a long association with the European wine trade—back as far as the 13th century—and it continues today. Raeburn Fine Wines, with premises in Leith, Edinburgh and London, has been telling me about the effects of the Brexit proposal on the wine trade. Perhaps surprisingly, the UK accounts for a large share of the world trade in fine wines, but that is under threat. Import certificates for EU wines will add business costs and near impossible bureaucracy to the uphill challenge of surviving the covid recession Wine is not the only high-quality sector facing an uncertain future. The recent announcement of the membership of the Trade and Agriculture Commission showed that the Government intend to break their promise to farmers to protect food standards post Brexit. The financial services sector also features heavily in my constituency, and it faces being locked out of EU markets or migrating to EU nations to protect its access. Universities face losing research cash. The health service faces losing access to essential supplies, including any new vaccine for the virus causing the current pandemic. Our fishing industry is about to be sold out by this Government, who will be handing out quotas with abandon. The list goes on and on Brexit was already a damaging prospect. Add the global pandemic, the trade negotiations going worse than anyone predicted and the OBR forecast of one in eight soon being out of work, and it is not clear to me and many others why anyone other than the blindest zealot would plough on unthinkingly. Now those zealots want to tie an unwilling Scotland to the handcart on the road to hell, with an internal market that once again renders the wellbeing of the people of Scotland secondary to the financial considerations of the south-east of England. No room for nuance or subtlety in the brave, new Brexit; no room for devolution in the sunny uplands of broken Britain The Government are so frightened of debate that the Minister for the Cabinet Office is in hiding and they have sent expendable cannon fodder instead. That points to the fact that Government Ministers do not seem to understand the four nations. Some of them famously think that there is no border. They think that wisdom rests in Whitehall and all must comply. They have lost even the limited vision that once embraced England’s northern powerhouse—that, too, will be ground down in the new Tory version of Mao’s long march. No dissent will be tolerated, no differentiation accepted. At a time when the best economic solutions for Scotland, Wales and for huge parts of England diverge hugely from the solutions offered in Parliament, uniformity will be enforced. Four legs shall be good and two legs shall be bad The proposed UK internal market is an infernal insult to nations that need different frameworks and support; to the people who will suffer the aftermath of the pandemic; and to those who aspire to something better than the fag end of British imperialism and exceptionalism. What has become breathtakingly clear during the coronavirus pandemic is that the UK Government are dysfunctional and incompetent. I shall give a few examples. Ministers and Spads who went roaming around England in flagrant abuse of the rules remain in post; confusing and inconsistent messages are sent out; financial help for those affected was provided at first, then withdrawn; figures on testing capacity have been massaged until they are meaningless It is a shambolic mess, much like the Government’s Brexit negotiations and trade talks. Failure mounts upon failure’s shoulders until the combined weight is too much to bear. The bluster and bravado is no substitute for clear thinking and proper action. The confusion and dither, the stumbling up cul-de-sacs and falling over kerbstones are not statesmanship—they are just bluster and bombast. It is a sad and embarrassing caricature of a Government who talk populism and serve elitism.