Sir John, Lord Redwood is a former MP for Wokingham and a former Secretary of State for Wales.
There are some in the Conservative party who do not want us talking about Europe, and a few who still regret the decision of the public to go for Brexit. The government is going to make us talk about it through the King’s speech debate and its attempt to complete negotiations on a so called re-set. It is our constitutional duty to do so.
We need to point out how joining the EU’s carbon taxes and emission trading schemes will mean dearer energy, a further cost of living squeeze and more closures of industrial plants with job losses.
We should call out the bad Erasmus student deal, the unhelpful acceptance of many more EU laws, the big increase in cash payments we will need to make them and the foolish giveaway of our fish.
The government’s view of Brexit is totally negative. They see Brexit as the underlying reason for poor growth in recent years, ignoring the poor growth 2007-16 pre the vote which continued to 2020 when we finally withdrew. They give the public false hope that if they can tweak the Brexit settlement and put us back under many EU laws and taxes in a range of sectors there will be some miraculous acceleration of growth to their promised best in the G7. Dream on. That is not going to happen.
They repeat the claim that Brexit cut our GDP by 4 per cent, implying they could easily get 4 per cent back if only they could rejoin in all but name. The OBR analysis they base this on was a forecast out to 2035 of us losing 0.25 per cent of productivity growth each year, accumulating to 4 per cent less productivity gain by 2035. They did not forecast a sudden 4 per cent loss or indeed any actual loss of output. There was of course no fall in output from Brexit. Just look at the reported GDP figures and see the UK path was very similar to France, Italy and Germany with no negative Brexit effect.
The more alarming claims of Remain that immediately after the vote house prices would fall, unemployment would rise and GDP would drop did not occur. Our trade with the EU performed similarly to trade with the rest of the world, with a welcome surge in services exports. During our time in the EU trade with non EU grew faster than trade with the EU. Their laws and taxes boosted their exports to us, not ours to them.
The reset is a comprehensive attempt to get us much more aligned and engaged with EU rules and schemes. The replacement of Turing by Erasmus will cut the number of UK students who benefit, exclude UK students from non EU overseas universities, and will cost taxpayers ten times as much from the second year of the scheme after a first year “discount”. A Youth Opportunity Scheme could turn into freedom of movement for young people, implying many more claims on our housing, jobs and benefits from younger EU visitors. Because the EU has so any more people than the UK schemes like Erasmus and Youth Opportunity will always give them much more than us.
The government is particularly keen to do a deal on agricultural products. They forget we are heavy net importers, with a very small export base in meats, dairy, fruit and vegetables. So far there has been nothing offered which will lead to a surge of our exports in these areas. Will we have to allow transport of live animals again which we have banned? Will our high welfare and food safety standards be maintained? As an EU rule taker this will all be out of our control.
Looking at our trade we see that the 55 per cent with non EU is growing faster than our 45 per cent with the EU. The EU trade is heavily oriented to imports, with a large deficit, whilst the rest of the world is much better balanced. More than half our imports come from the EU. To get economic growth we would achieve more if we concentrated on import reduction from Europe including the EU by making and growing more at home. Let’s start with oil, gas and electricity, and move onto backing our farms and market gardens to grow more of what we need to cut the food miles.
The government does not seem to be aware that increasing trade only adds to GDP if you increase exports more than imports. If you just increase imports, they are taken off the calculation of GDP as it is not work and value added in the UK.
The government has not completed its renegotiation. So far it has offered more money for various purposes with no obvious benefits coming to the Uk. It needs to set out more clearly what it wants to gain and then only agree to the prices of those improvements if it makes sense and it is a good deal. The Erasmus deal is dreadful. Large quantities of our fish for years to come were needlessly given away with no UK benefit.
When it comes to Chagos, to Gibraltar and to the EU this government sides with the overseas interests against the interests of Uk voters. We end up overtaxed, over regulated, and with slower growth in our economy. The last things we need are more laws, more taxes, and more low and no income migrants.