EU Membership: Economic Benefits — House of Commons, 2016-06-15
Topic: Foreign Trade
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not need to add very much to that, but the point that I am making is in no way intended to incite the Scottish National party. I am simply saying that I believe we will restore our international reputation as a sound and stable nation by putting those two constitutional issues not to bed but to the margins, in the eyes of the investors and the people who matter most My second point concerns the terms of trade. Last year I was standing on the platform at Marks Tey station, on the main line into Liverpool Street, with a member of my Conservative association. A goods train passed, travelling from the Felixstowe direction towards London, and therefore its load was obviously from China. There was a container on every single wagon. A few minutes later, a chap looked at me with dismay when another goods train went in the opposite direction, with not a single container on it. I reassured him by saying, "Don’t worry: that’s what we mean by ‘invisible exports.’" [Laughter.] But actually, that is the key point. Because a few minutes later, on the same platform, herds of commuters—including many from my constituency —boarded the train to Liverpool Street, not to go and make widgets to be sent back to China, but to sell the insurance, to negotiate professional services, to do the finance That is where our comparative advantage lies. Trade is about comparative advantage—doing what you do best. If we leave, there is no way in which we can have a say in the attempt to complete the single market in services. I believe that if we stay, we will achieve that, and you cannot put a value on what that will add to our economy, given our expertise in the service sector. My third point is about inward investment. I find it absolutely astonishing that we keep hearing from Brexit campaigners about the deficit in European trade compared with trade with the rest of the world. Only one group of companies is doing all that trade, and most of those—the ones that are making the biggest dent in exports—are foreign companies: Japanese car makers, American banks, and French pharmaceutical firms such as Sanofi, based in Haverhill, which I visited recently. Its biggest export market is, by far, the United States of America, but it is based here in the United Kingdom because we have access to the single market. To pretend that European trade and global trade are somehow separate is complete nonsense I believe that if we vote to remain, we will drive inward investment far higher, and therefore drive our exports. Instead of worrying about trade figures as some negotiating stance, let us look at them as we should, and conclude that we need to do better—and one way of doing that is to vote to remain, to show that this country is open again for business from around the world My fourth point relates to what is said about the future of the eurozone. Those who want to leave the European Union say, "The glass is half empty: we should leave because the eurozone will collapse," and so on. Our flexible position means that if the eurozone gets into trouble, that will simply reinforce our unique status in that we alone, as a big country, have unfettered access and are not in the euro. If the eurozone strengthens, that will massively boost our exports and help with our trade deficit. We cannot lose, provided we play our cards right I would make one final, fundamental point. There are those who say that in this referendum on neither basis are we voting for the status quo, and they are right. If we vote to remain it will not be the status quo, because we will have made up our mind: after all these years of being held back by this interminable debate about whether to be in or out, if we decide as a country to remain, we are deciding to get stuck in in Europe, representing this country. I believe we will then have to stand tall, proud and prosperous in this great continent on behalf of this great country, and the only way to do that is to do the patriotic thing and vote to remain in the EU.