Dr Ellie Chowns

It is a pleasure, Ms Butler, to serve under your chairship. Clearly, Brexit has been a disaster for Britain—the sooner we acknowledge that, the better our conversations will be, because we will then be able to move forward. It has been economically disastrous. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) said, it has been a slow puncture; in fact, it has been a huge slow puncture, taking 4%, 6% or 8% off our GDP, which costs every household in the country enormously in real terms. It makes us all much worse off. In North Herefordshire, business owners have spoken about the additional barriers they face when trading with Europe and the admin created by the supposed reduction in bureaucracy. Brexit has been an economic disaster, but it is not just economic: environmentally, we are diverging from Europe, and in 28 areas of law, we now have weaker protection for our natural environment. Socially, politically and culturally, Brexit has been poisonous. It has catalysed and reinforced a toxic political debate, leading to polarisation, the proliferation of disinformation, political short-termism, and a discounting of the rights, opportunities and needs of young people in particular. The UK is now poorer, weaker and more isolated in a context in which we have a completely unreliable and unstable partner in the US President, and we have war on the eastern border of Europe with Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.