argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Government Operations
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, makes an important and authoritative point about the conduct of government. Opposition Members would do well to reflect on how they would wish to govern the country if, God forbid, the electorate should ever give them an opportunity to do so All of us in this House need to have an eye on the long-term functioning of our democracy and our constitution. With that in mind, I hear what my hon. Friend says. There is clearly a campaign to overturn the referendum result, and it can be seen at work in the media and in this House. We will certainly bear in mind what he says.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): That was quite a long question. There are two particular scenarios that are not modelled in this analysis. One is the policy choices that the Prime Minister rightly set out in her Florence speech, and the other is exiting in the unfortunate, and we think unlikely, circumstance of not reaching an agreement and how one might take the right policy choices in the event of trading on WTO rules. We will continue to take this analysis forward, and I look forward to the day when we are able to present appropriate analysis to the House before the meaningful vote.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I well remember "Project Fear" in all its manifestations. Most of us on the leave side thought at the time that those horror predictions would not come to pass after the vote and, happily, we have been proved correct. I look forward to continuing to prove economists wrong after they make horror story predictions.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful for that question, because I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman and the House that we will continue to develop and expand our economic analysis. We cannot control the timing of leaks, and were we to have chosen to publish an analysis, as we will when we approach the meaningful vote, it will of course contain the relevant information.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Stephen William Hammond (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is of course right that this analysis does not question the result of the referendum, nor does it model his desired scenario, but what it does show is that modelling a fully comprehensive free trade deal with the EU post-Brexit, combined with the benefits of new trade deals, shows a net effect on economic growth of 1.5%. Where does he hope a special and deep relationship will differ from a fully comprehensive free trade deal post Brexit?
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend may know that Michel Barnier tried to include financial services in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal, and we believe that we can go beyond what has been agreed in the past. The analysis does not include a comprehensive deal of the scope we would like to agree; it includes only an average based on past precedents. We believe that we can reasonably go further than we have before, and of course we are well apprised of the importance of financial services and of ensuring that the City flourishes.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): No, I am not able to name an accurate forecast. They are always wrong, and wrong for good reasons. [Interruption.] Members are chatting at me from a sedentary position. My long-standing views on the flaws in the epistemology of the social sciences and the consequences for econometrics are well set out in various forums, and I encourage Members to go and have a look at them. I am happy to recommend a reading list.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I encourage Members to google the hon. Gentleman’s name on The Sun website. They will find a wonderful picture of him, during the referendum, standing next to a poster proclaiming that the leave campaign wanted to leave the single market. He made the point at the time—[Interruption.] He certainly did, and anyone can go and find it on The Sun website. The point was made at the time, and the public chose It would not be possible to honour the decision of the British people if we allow the European Union to set the UK’s tariffs and if we become people in a political purgatory of perpetual rule taking from the European Union without any democratic say. It is the desire of this Government that our country should continue to be a democracy. For that reason, we will leave the European economic area and the customs union.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
David Ian Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend agree that our post-referendum experience illustrates the danger of publishing incomplete and inchoate economic analyses? We were told prior to the referendum by the Treasury that we would enter immediate recession if we voted to leave. The International Monetary Fund told us that the economy would contract by as much as 9.5%. Both were made to look extremely foolish.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is exactly right, and he might have added to that catalogue of failures of the economics profession the failure to see the financial crisis. It is time for economists to re-examine their methods, for the reasons I indicated earlier. I am grateful to him for putting those past failures on the record.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is entirely wrong; the sensible and pragmatic way forward, which honours the result of the referendum and ensures that this is a democracy with an independent Parliament able to ensure that control is exercised over the laws of this country, is to carry forward my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s policy, as she has set out in Florence and in the Lancaster House speech.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): Is it not about time we set up a charity called "Soothsayers Anonymous" for people who simply cannot kick the habit of predicting when conflicts are going to break out, when we are going to have opinion polls that are going to be accurate and when we are going to have economic forecasts regarding the EU that are going to be accurate, even though history has shown time and again that they are not worth the paper they are written on?
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady makes a sobering and important point, which the Government have heard. I say to her that in all scenarios in this economic analysis, there is economic growth—the question is only: how fast? It is this Government’s task to ensure we achieve the fastest GDP growth and indeed the fastest GDP growth per head, which is why we have brought forward a comprehensive programme on productivity. Of course we are most concerned to ensure the prosperity of the people, not only of Northern Ireland, but of the whole of the island of Ireland and right across Europe. That is why it is in our mutual interest to agree a comprehensive and deep free trade agreement.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Stephen Crabb (Conservative, Centre-right): Even though these forecasts do not look at the Government’s preferred outcome, does my hon. Friend not agree that the data they contain, however imperfectly, do underline the importance of building a bespoke deal around maintaining customs union-style arrangements and ensuring as great a level of access as possible to the single market?
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with my right hon. Friend on most of his points, but, as I said in an earlier answer, we do not think remaining in the customs union, so that the European Union set our tariffs on imports, would be the right thing to do. We think that would be the wrong choice for the UK. It would prevent us from operating an independent trade policy and plugging ourselves into the rest of the world’s growth, where multiple authorities, including the European Commission, have admitted that 90% of the world’s growth will come from. So on that particular point I disagree with him, but on the rest of his arguments and, in particular, on the need, in our mutual interests, for a good-quality trade agreement, he is right and I agree.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I simply do not accept the premises of the right hon. Gentleman’s question; he makes ludicrous suggestions. I consider myself to be an old English liberal and I think most of the Eurosceptics with whom I associate also consider themselves liberal in outlook, particularly on matters of trade and the economy. With that in mind, I cannot possibly accept his premise. The fact is that we are in a negotiation and no one seriously would expect us to go into—
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman says I should wash my mouth out, but I am happy to debate liberalism with him any time We are heading for an open, liberal, free trading future for the UK. Any suggestion of nationalism is quite wrong and quite ludicrous, and the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) should retract.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I must exercise some caution, Mr Speaker, because as you will know, Wycombe District, which is substantially larger than the constituency of Wycombe, did express the other view. However, what I think we need to do is come together to unite around the result as a country, and to choose for ourselves not to leave the EU because we must or because we ought, but to leave the EU successfully because we choose to abide by the democratic decision of the United Kingdom as a whole.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): It is very difficult to answer the question of how we can unite together when certain Members of this House, including, I am sorry to say, the hon. Lady, keep provoking as much division as possible. She represents a party claiming to be liberal and democratic, and which once offered a real referendum on Europe, but we have had a real referendum on Europe and it is time for her to get behind the result.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Marcus Charles Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): The gloomy pre-referendum Treasury forecasts led many of us to vote remain with a heavy heart. The public made their decision, and we stood on an election manifesto saying that we would follow through on that decision. Will the Minister tell me why we should believe part forecasts—these forecasts, which have apparently been published, are not complete—given that the initial information put out before the referendum was flawed?
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and "Project Fear" was mentioned earlier. It is most unfortunate that one fundamental tactic always used throughout the long and sorry history of misrepresenting the true purpose of the EU has been to demoralise the public. It is time for each of us in this House to take a lead in going forward in a spirit of buoyancy and hope.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): As I believe the record will show, I have said multiple times that in all scenarios in this economic analysis growth is forecast. So it is good news for the hon. Lady and for the country that in all of the forecasts—in all of the circumstances of the economic analysis—growth is forecast. She brings up the issue of the supply chain, so I also say to her that we are of course apprised of the imperatives of complex international supply chains, not just between the UK and Europe, but around the whole world. In particular, I draw attention to provisions in the Union customs code for inward and outward processing rules, which should assist manufacturers in her constituency.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Heidi-Suzanne Allen (Conservative, Centre-right): No one in this House should dismiss the referendum result—that would be overstepping the mark—but it is our role, as the Government have accepted, to scrutinise the deal and ensure that it is the very best it can be for all our citizens, regardless of how, or indeed whether, they voted in the referendum. The impact assessments were made available to parliamentarians in absolute confidentiality, and I went to see them. I fail to see why that same process cannot be extended for this most recent and any further analysis. This is a one-time deal only, and I for one owe it to my constituents to prove to them that I have exercised full scrutiny.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I cannot accept the premise of my hon. Friend’s question. We have gone to and fro in the House about the meaning of the term "impact assessments". What was made available to colleagues were sectoral analyses. I refer my hon. Friend both to the written ministerial statement setting out how meaningful votes will happen at the end of the process and to my previous remarks about the need to protect the integrity of our negotiating position. We will ensure that, when we reach the end of the negotiating period, parliamentarians are able to access appropriate economic analysis when we all take that important decision.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman said that there is no such model; the truth is that my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) referred to a model earlier. Economists for Free Trade are very clear about their modelling. Other models are available—at the time of the referendum, Open Europe did some modelling and found that the effect could be plus or minus 2%. The truth is that there are profound uncertainties facing not just the United Kingdom in this negotiation but all economies in the world. All face three big issues: the growth of technology; a new phase in globalisation; and, of course, the continuing aftermath of the financial crisis which, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, has left interest rates at levels the Governor of the Bank of England has described as extraordinary if not emergency. Those three issues mean that all economies are on highly uncertain paths. The Government will navigate their way through the future with confidence and boldness.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): Let us not pretend that there is no ideology among those who wish to remain in the European Union, even at the cost of overturning a democratic decision, remaining in the EEA and surrendering democratic control and power. The figure to which the hon. Lady referred is wrong—it is not as she stated—but I do not propose now to walk through what is in the analysis which, as I have said, is currently a provisional draft and is not yet Government policy.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Simon Richard Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): On Friday, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union was on Teesside to set up an optimistic free-trading vision for the UK after we leave the EU. Given that all estimates have consistently underestimated our economy, surely it is time to just get on with the job.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): It is time to get on with the job. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and his colleagues for their brilliant work agitating for free trade zones, which I believe should be an important part of the Government’s consideration.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (Conservative, Centre-right): It is in the national interest to get the best deal we possibly can. Does my hon. Friend agree that to do that we have to keep our cards close to our chest? These are tough negotiations, and to expose the goods and the bads in such negotiations plays right into the hands of an organisation that, let us face it, does not want us to leave anyway.
Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to make a statement on the Government’s analysis of the long-term economic impact of Brexit on the economy.
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I think the EU’s willingness to see us leave is increasing by the day as we go through this process. It is important that the House knows that key figures throughout the EU pay close attention to our newspaper headlines, so it is important and incumbent on us all to remain committed, in that spirit of buoyancy and hope, to carrying through the referendum result.