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Global Britain

I welcome the chance to wind up this first debate of 2021 for the official Opposition. We have heard powerful speeches from the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), and from my hon. Friends the Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), for Newport West (Ruth Jones), for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Liverpool,

Riverside (Kim Johnson), for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). Also notable were the speeches from the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe). It was difficult to disagree with the right hon. Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) that cutting our aid and abolishing the Department for International Development is hardly going to build confidence in the global Britain brand.

The International Trade Secretary’s speech was, sadly, not quite so encouraging. She and the rest of the Cabinet spent 2020 putting up barriers to trade. She unsuccessfully chased Donald Trump for a trade deal—indeed, it was striking that not once in her speech did she mention President-elect Biden. Vital markets in Asia and important allies in Africa were neglected or treated poorly last year. The one advantage that Ministers in the Department for International Trade start the year with is that expectations of them are not high.

The deal with the European Union that the Prime Minister negotiated, while better than no deal, is proving already to be very thin gruel. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton noted, 80% of our economic output depends on services. We might reasonably have expected Ministers to fight harder to maintain our access to EU services markets, but there is nothing on, for example, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and the Prime Minister’s claim that his deal means certainty for financial services—one of the industries where Britain leads the world in jobs and skills—will surprise many who work in that industry.

Never has any party embraced with such enthusiasm a trade deal that is set to generate unprecedented levels of red tape and form filling—new red tape for farmers, new plant and animal health checks, new red tape for manufacturers, new rules of origin checks, and new safety and security checks. Businesses will have to get used to an estimated 400 million new forms. Not surprisingly, one of the fastest growing areas of employment in global Britain is in handling all the new red tape.