Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 29 June 2022
That is fine—I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you, Presiding Officer.
It has been a long six years since Scotland voted by the margin of 62 per cent to 38 per cent to remain in the EU. Indeed, polls have shown that support for rejoining the EU is now higher than that.
Let us remind ourselves of what the protocol does. It creates a border in the Irish Sea for goods passing from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, which remains in the EU’s single market for goods. We have already heard about the benefits of that for Northern Ireland. That removed the need for border checks on the Irish land border.
On Monday, Boris Johnson secured a 74-vote majority for a bill to rip up the Northern Ireland element of his Brexit deal. Remember: he authorised its approval. More than 70 Tory MPs either abstained or were excused from voting. They included Theresa May, the former Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland Julian Smith and Karen Bradley, and the former Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox. Theresa May led criticism of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, condemning it as “illegal” and warning that it would damage Britain’s standing in the world. She said:
“this Bill is not in my view legal in international law, it will not achieve its aims and it will diminish the standing of the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world.”—[Official Report, House of Commons, 27 June 2022; Vol 717, c 64.]
Simon Hoare, Tory chairman of the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, said that the bill appeared to be
“a muscle flex for a future leadership bid”—[Official Report, House of Commons, 27 June 2022; Vol 717, c 56.]
by Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary.
The EU has warned Britain against unilaterally ripping up the protocol, and said that it would respond to the bill by restarting legal proceedings against the UK and threatening to use
“all measures at its disposal”,
including a potential trade war, if London acts to unravel the protocol.
With regard to the impact of Brexit, the Centre for European Reform modelled the economic performance of a UK that had remained in the EU, using data from countries including the US, Germany, New Zealand, Norway and Australia, whose performances were similar to that of the UK before Brexit. The CER then compared that with the real performance of the UK economy since the referendum six years ago. The CER concludes that, by the end of last year, the UK economy was 5.2 per cent, or £31 billion, smaller than it would have been had the UK stayed in the EU. Investment by business and Government was 13 per cent lower, and goods trade was also 13 per cent lower.
Last year, the Prime Minister promised that the UK was on the way to becoming a high-wage, high-productivity, low-tax economy. The evidence suggests that, so far, Brexit is delivering the opposite.
John Springford, who is deputy director at the CER, commented:
“If the economy is 5% smaller than it would otherwise have been then we are all 5% poorer. It also means that taxes have to rise to fund the same quality of public services that we had before.”
He added:
“That’s the backdrop to the chancellor’s decision to raise the overall tax [burden] to levels that we haven’t seen since the 1960s”
In a report that was produced in collaboration with the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Resolution Foundation said that quitting the EU would make Britain “poorer” during the 2020s. The Resolution Foundation specifically highlighted the impact on the fishing industry. It noted that
“the fishing industry, which is largely based in Scotland, is expected to decline by 30 per cent and some workers will face ‘painful adjustments’.”
Brexit has proved to be disastrous for the Scottish economy, and now the UK Government is risking a disastrous trade dispute with the European Union. Scotland is in the midst of a Tory cost of living crisis, and the UK is hurtling towards recession. The total trade in goods and services—the trade deficit—has widened by £14.9 billion to £25.2 billion in quarter 1 this year, reaching the largest deficit since records began in 1997.
That is the devastating impact of Brexit. The UK Government needs to withdraw the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill and restart negotiations with the EU immediately. There is, of course, a solution on the horizon. Scotland will regain its independence on 19 October 2023, start negotiations to rejoin the EU and become part of the European family as an equal partner.