Committee
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee 21 November 2024
21 Nov 2024 · S6 · Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Item of business
Review of the UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Mike Buckley
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I am afraid that I have to leave very shortly but, before I go, I want to talk a bit about youth mobility. It strikes me that there is a huge disconnect between the UK and the EU, which goes back to the disconnect that has been there the whole way along of the non-UK parts of the EU seeing the EU fundamentally as a peace project in bringing nations together, preventing war in Europe, creating mutual understanding and so on. Mobility, and youth mobility in particular, is an emotional thing for the EU, which of course it is not in the UK. The UK has pretty much always seen the EU and the single market as an economic issue—does it make us rich or does it make us poorer? For the moment, we have just made the assessment, “Well, it makes us poorer but we do not care because of the politics”, not wanting to go back to the leave or remain divide, and with the Labour Party not wanting to upset the red wall and give Nigel Farage a way in. Indeed, we see that in youth mobility. The whole youth mobility issue came up because the previous Conservative Government was running around Europe, talking to EU member states that it liked, particularly Germany and France, and trying to persuade them to do bilateral youth mobility deals. Although the Conservative Party will probably never admit that publicly, that is what was happening. That set the whole process off, because the EU Commission decided, “This is our competence, not your competence”. When it came out with its proposal in March, that was not really anything to do with the UK; it was simply saying to member states, “You need to get back in line because this is our competence, not your competence”. That is why it announced what it did back in March. 10:00 That had the effect, in the run-up to the UK general election, of making the issue public and giving red meat to the right-wing press, forcing the Labour Party and the Conservative Party to say they would not go near the issue in the run-up to a general election, and it made Labour state a position. Since the election, the EU has put forward different proposals, which are somewhat reduced from the ones that it proposed before. I have said to people from the EU many times that it is really unhelpful that this debate has become a notable, front-page issue in the UK. In the UK, the most difficult thing in the whole Brexit debate has been mobility and the perception that freedom of movement was taking people’s jobs and keeping their wages down. Regardless of how true that was, that was the perception and the story that has been put forward by Nigel Farage and others on the right. That story has never really been countered—or certainly not strongly enough—by people in the Labour Party or others on the left in the UK. Therefore, freedom of movement is the most difficult issue. Even though youth mobility is completely different to freedom of movement, it sounds too similar to too many people. When Maroš Šefcovic talked about it publicly in Brussels recently, he started talking about it as a youth opportunity scheme rather than a youth mobility scheme. I have advised multiple people to do that in the EU, because even just using a word that is not a long word that starts with the letter M is helpful when describing it. It would be good if they can continue on that basis. The other thing that I have said to people in the EU is to stop talking about youth mobility as a stand-alone issue and to just talk about it in the wider reset as part of a piece. They should not use the words “mobility” or “movement”. If they talk about it as opportunities or an exchange programme or something, they are much more likely to get what they want. On what Scotland can do, I do not know what freedom of manoeuvre you have to do anything, particularly when it comes to university education or exchange programmes. There is the slight workaround for school trips, whereby people can come in on their identity cards rather than their passports. Would it be possible for Scotland to do something similar for people who are at university age, even if only for a month or a term or something like that? I simply do not know, but you could investigate that. It is hard to say what the long-term impact will be on services, trade and GDP. Yesterday, or this morning, I read that we are losing somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 EU nationals from the UK, just because, over time, people who were here have decided to go home or somewhere else, and people are not being replaced, in part because it is much more expensive for someone from the EU to come to the UK than vice versa. There are fewer barriers for somebody here wanting to go to the EU on a digital nomad visa, for example, or to study, whereas people coming here are not allowed to bring family members or spouses, and there is also the national health service surcharge. We deliberately make it very difficult in lots of ways for people to come to the UK. It is understandable that a European person—Polish, Romanian, Portuguese, French or whatever—who is looking at different options of where to go will decide to go to Germany or Spain, because that is logistically so much easier than jumping through the many hoops to come to the UK. There might be things that the Scottish Government could do to remove some of those barriers. I do not know. I apologise for having to leave. Thank you for the invitation to join you today—it has been a pleasure to meet you all.
In the same item of business
The Convener
SNP
Under our second agenda item, we will continue to take evidence on the second phase of our review of the trade and co-operation agreement between the United ...
Professor Catherine Barnard (University of Cambridge)
Thank you very much for the kind invitation to be here. I am a lawyer, so I will leave it to Jonathan Portes to talk about the economics. The TCA provisions...
Professor Sarah Hall (UK in a Changing Europe)
Thank you very much for the invitation to be here. The Office for Budget Responsibility recently concluded that the data that it has seen on Brexit is broad...
Mike Buckley (Independent Commission on UK EU Relations)
I do not want to repeat things that have already been said. I am sure that you are aware that services make up the bulk of our economy—72.8 per cent of our g...
Professor Jonathan Portes (King’s College London)
I echo what Catherine Barnard and Sarah Hall have said. Clearly, there are some additional barriers to the services trade as a consequence of Brexit and the ...
The Convener
SNP
It will be a bit tricky to manage the meeting, given that all the witnesses are online, so I ask members to direct their questions to certain witnesses. If a...
Alexander Stewart (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)
Con
Good morning. You have all touched on the challenges that we have faced and that we continue to face in managing the processes for our sectors. Professor Por...
Professor Portes
It is very unfortunate that—as, I suspect, you know—the data on the UK services trade is considerably less timely than the data on its goods trade. We do not...
The Convener
SNP
Mr Bibby has a quick supplementary, and then I will bring in Professor Barnard.
Neil Bibby (West Scotland) (Lab)
Lab
I want to follow up on the points that were just raised about trade in services, although it is largely excluded from the TCA, holding up better than trade i...
Professor Portes
There is quite a lot of analysis but, as I said, it is slightly hampered by the fact that the data is far from ideal even at a UK level, let alone at a count...
Professor Hall
I totally agree with what has been said on other business services. It is important to set out that that is an area where future research is needed. It is an...
The Convener
SNP
I will bring in Professor Barnard on Alexander Stewart’s original question.
Professor Barnard
I will answer the first part of that question, which was about which sectors have been badly affected, so I am looking at the negative rather than the positi...
Keith Brown (Clackmannanshire and Dunblane) (SNP)
SNP
Good morning. I am a wee bit stunned by the diversity in the responses, which go from quoting the OBR talking about a 15 per cent drop in trade intensity ove...
Professor Hall
I do not have balance of payments figures readily available, but there are indications that the impacts have been different across the UK. I refer you to Pro...
Mike Buckley
On the difference between the OBR saying that there is a 15 per cent drop in trade intensity and other people saying that things are not so bad and are much ...
Keith Brown
SNP
Before I bring Professor Portes in, I note in response to what Mr Buckley has just said that the vast majority of the evidence that the committee has heard h...
Professor Portes
Picking up the original question about the difference between the OBR assessment and mine, I note that the answer is easy—there is no difference. The OBR sai...
Keith Brown
SNP
I will bring in our last witness. Professor, on that point, you said that, even with the best will in the world, the information is not available. There is n...
Professor Hall
I think that that was Professor Barnard. I do not have anything to add on your question.
Professor Barnard
On your point about goods versus services—you specifically mentioned seafood producers—you are absolutely right. We are mainly talking about services, but wh...
Stephen Kerr (Central Scotland) (Con)
Con
I would like us to try to get our arms around what we are talking about. We are exclusively talking about services here. The UK is currently the third bigges...
Professor Barnard
I am a lawyer, but it is clearly dominated by services.
Stephen Kerr
Con
Does anyone have a more definitive split?
Mike Buckley
They are not necessarily what you want, but I can give you some statistics that I have in front of me. They are on our services exports, but not necessarily ...
Stephen Kerr
Con
Those are global figures rather than being specifically on exports to the EU.
Mike Buckley
Yes.
Stephen Kerr
Con
Professor Portes, do you want to comment? You are speaking, but we cannot hear anything.
Professor Portes
The muting is happening centrally; it is being controlled from Edinburgh and not from London. The picture may be slightly misleading. Our exports to the EU ...