Tony Vaughan

I thank all hon. Members for turning up today and speaking in this debate. It is interesting that we have had one Conservative MP, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), a Reform MP—the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) is almost out the door, but I am going to acknowledge him all the same; he has left his colleague the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) in his place—and the shadow Minister speak up to defend the status quo. Their defence of the current Brexit rules referred to evidence that, I think it is fair to say, was selectively referenced and in denial of where the weight of the evidence is. I will start with the remarks of the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex, who challenged the idea that Brexit has damaged our economy and referred to the fact that the GDP of other countries is lower than ours. But that is not the point: the comparison is with the situation that we would have had if we had not left the European Union. That point was made earlier. The National Bureau of Economic Research has found that our GDP was 6% to 8% lower by the end of 2025 than it would have been if we had not left the EU. It also found that investment in the UK was 12% to 13% lower, employment was 3% to 4% lower and productivity was 3% to 4% lower; the OBR agrees. The hon. Member also minimised the significance of individual examples given by numerous hon. Members in this room about Brexit-related red tape and British exporters. But the evidence is clear: our trade volumes are billions less than before Brexit. For example, a study by the LSE found that in 2022, there was £27 billion less in goods exports, which is a 6% reduction compared with the no-Brexit counterfactual, and 14% of firms stopped exporting to the EU altogether after post-Brexit trading arrangements came into force. That research found that smaller firms were particularly affected by those arrangements, whereas larger firms were able to absorb the additional costs. That is what hon. Members are seeing all over the country.