Caroline Voaden

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. People vote Lib Dem for lots of reasons—but maybe they do not think that we will betray them in the same way that the Conservatives did. Only last week, with many colleagues, I returned to the European Parliament as part of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly. While there, I heard the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), refer to research by Aston University that showed that exports to the European Union have fallen by 27% since Brexit. For a Government who want growth, that figure alone should be enough to change their attitude. That figure is no surprise, however, to anyone who talks to some of the businesses in my constituency. One shellfish exporter tells me that they have to have 17 pieces of paper signed by a vet for every consignment of mussels they export to the EU, making it impossible to trade efficiently with their biggest customer and hampering growth in their business. A small household product retailer has had to end trade with all EU customers because of the new GPSR—general product safety regulation. Delicatessens struggle to cope with the red tape involved in importing smaller shipments of wine and food for the UK, which is the kind of regulations that only big suppliers are able to manage—I am sure that is repeated right across the country. A precision engineering company’s exports have also been badly affected by Brexit red tape—on and on it goes. Apart from the impact on trade, the opportunities for our young people are being severely curtailed by Brexit. I will not revisit all the arguments that several Members have put forward in this debate, except to say that it is a tragedy that our children and grandchildren will not have the chances that we had—that so many of us had—to go to Europe to develop skills, including cultural understanding and language skills, and to bring all that experience back to the UK. It is high time that the Government agreed a youth mobility scheme with the EU. Last week, I welcomed the PPA agreement that said that the Government understood the need to establish a youth opportunity scheme, including apprenticeships. We all understand the need; let us hope that the Government will go further than that and address it. Our country has been impoverished by Brexit in so many ways—economically, culturally and politically. I am sure that I am not the only one to be absolutely demoralised by the millions of hours of negotiations that took us out of the European Union, and now, potentially, the millions more that will go into negotiating the piecemeal, bit-by-bit replacements for all the benefits that we lost.