Mike Martin

Marvellous! Ladies and gentlemen, that was a perfect example. I could list example after example of small business owners who say, “You know what? We have had to stop 20% of our business. We are no longer able to turn a profit on it because of the time we have to spend filling out forms.” I will move on from the direct effects of Brexit on our trade with the European Union to its wider effects. One thing we see in the current geopolitical moment is the threat of tariffs. If we are honest, we probably thought we had seen the back of those in the early 1930s. But we are in this new world, which includes the United Kingdom becoming a target for tariffs from our supposed closest ally. We have seen a supine response from the British Government to the setting of tariffs against our steel industry. We are a market of 70 million people and the sixth largest economy in the world, but were we part of a market of several hundred million people—the largest trading area on the planet—would we be so supine? EU membership is about not just economics but security, which Brexit has damaged in many small ways. I speak, of course, of intelligence sharing and access to databases—the sharing of data across borders. We used to have the Dublin convention, which allowed us to negotiate the return of refugees, in a way that is not open to us now. However, damaging our relationship with Europe has damaged us in a more profound way, which is being exposed by the actions of the Trump Government, who are withdrawing the American security guarantee for Europe. We can quibble about whether that is happening, but the comments this weekend from Steve Witkoff should certainly give us pause for thought, and we should at least consider it a significant possibility. The Americans’ removal of that security guarantee exposes us all, and I will give hon. Members a very real example that happened just last week. The EU set up a defence fund that put money into European defence industries to pump-prime them and get them building equipment and munitions, but the UK has been excluded because we are not a member of the EU. We can quibble about the politics of that fund and about whether France’s role in it was right for European defence, but 20% of the European defence industry—the UK’s defence industry—is separated from the money that will buy all that kit. I will conclude by focusing on the economy and security, which are interlinked: a strong economy enables us to build strong defences, and the stability created by security and defence, appropriately deployed, allows economies to grow. It is also true that the money invested in defence helps our economy to grow, and Brexit is stopping us doing that. We must forge a closer relationship with Europe so the UK can start to shape the future, rather than have the future shape us.