Off Topic Political Debate

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A very informative article from Peter Lilley, a former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

The past has returned to haunt some of my Conservative colleagues recently – a relationship with a dominatrix, an offshore company, an inheritance…

So I was alarmed when a journalist called to discuss “two events in my past”. Mercifully it was a reference to negotiating the Uruguay Trade Round and implementing the Single Market as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

Trade and the Single Market are key referendum issues yet I am the only MP with first-hand experience of either. Sadly, when politicians debate issues of which they have no experience they seize on any plausible argument which supports their case, even arguments that are the reverse of the truth.

Let me bring some facts to bear on claims made by those who want us to remain in the EU.

How important are trade deals? It pains me to admit – their importance is grossly exaggerated. Countries succeed, with or without trade deals, if they produce goods and services other countries want.

Tariffs between developed countries now average low single figures – small beer compared with recent movements in exchange rates. The most worthwhile trade agreements are with fast-growing developing countries which still have high tariffs.

Is our net £10 billion contribution to the EU a price worth paying for tariff-free access to the EU market? If we left the EU with no trade deal – inconceivable given the tariff-free zone from Iceland to Turkey – our exports would face EU tariffs averaging just 2.4 per cent.

But our net contribution to the EU budget is equivalent to a 7 per cent tariff. Paying 7 cent to avoid 2.4 per cent costs is miss-selling that dwarfs the PPI scandal!

Does EU membership help us negotiate free trade deals with the rest of the world? Tariff-free access to the fast growing, protected markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America would be worthwhile. Unfortunately, EU membership prevents us negotiating free trade deals – and the EU has negotiated few deals for us: none with China, India, Australia, Brazil.

Does the EU’s size mean it gets better deals than we could alone? This is the reverse of the truth. The more countries involved in a trade deal the harder, slower and worse the result.

All 28 EU members have a veto on their negotiations which is why EU deals take so long and exclude so much. Bilateral deals are simpler, quicker and more comprehensive.

Hence Chile has deals covering countries with collective GDP five times the EU’s deals. Even Iceland – population less than Croydon – has a trade agreement with China – as does Switzerland.

Watch | EU Referendum: what is the European Union and how does it work?

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Would Britain have to renegotiate from scratch the EU’s existing trade deals? Under the “principle of continuity” in international law we can adapt existing EU treaties to the UK. We should start that process before leaving the EU.

Would negotiating continued free trade with the EU take many years? Trade deals to remove tariffs involve complex trade-offs between differing tariffs on thousands of products and facing up to the vested interests they protect.

Negotiating continuing tariff-free trade between the UK and EU simply means keeping zero tariffs.

Do only European Economic Area members have access to the Single Market? The Single Market is talked about as if it were some inner sanctum accessible to a privileged few.

In fact, every country has access to the Single Market – with or without tariffs.

The Single Market, involved harmonising product rules – sensible, since businesses can now make one product range for the European market, not 28. But that benefits American and Japanese exporters as much as German or British firms.

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People assume Britain benefits from participating in setting these rules. But rules provide a framework within which all companies operate – not an advantage to any individual country.

Britain set the rules of tennis but rarely wins Wimbledon. British exports to the EU have grown less rapidly since the Single Market than they did before, less than our partners’ and much less than non-EU countries’ exports!

Maybe that is partly because we suffer EU regulations on 100 per cent of our companies whereas non-EU firms need only comply with EU regulations on activities carried out within the EU.

Our shops are full of goods from countries with which we have no trade deal. They are not essential now tariffs between developed countries are so low.

But outside the EU we will be able to negotiate speedily the really worthwhile deals to access fast growing protected markets such as China, India and Brazil which the EU has ignored.

And we can retain free trade with the EU without paying our current entry fee which costs more than the tariffs we avoid.

Peter Lilley MP was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 1990-92

 

Since when did childish goading qualify as political debate?

 

Since the Tories 'welcomed' the SNP to Westminster?

 

This statement is complete fantasy sh
will do eye watering deals that the rest of the EU can only marvel at

The same sort of side of the bus BREXITEER claims ...

No evidence and not likely that GB on its own will get a better deal than GB as part of the EU.... I see no evidence for this at all.... and all the Brexit troops now in Govt and working for this very goal are so much more careful and tentative at this time....

 

It's not only fantasy, it's also dangerous thinking if enough people in the UK. think that the USA. is going to ride to Britain's rescue. We are likely to end up as a dumping ground for gene manipulated rubbish if that happens - not to mention becoming the fracking capital of Europe. The USA is so far behind Europe in terms of safety and environmental standards that a reinforcement of this 'special relationship' rubbish (or some kind of unilateral TTIP) sends shivers down my spine.

 

After the Labour Party's dreadful showing in the last two by-elections the knives are out again for Corbyn. Even left wingers are predicting a wipe out for Labour in the next general election.

 

What is purpose of this post ? Is it meant to be an invitation to debate ? What the last 2 by-elections have shown is that in both cases the 'winner' was the one who was closest to the constituency vote on Brexit - bearing in mind that both were safe Tory seats and only one remained that way it would be better to concentrate on your own party's woes.

 

This is a topical subject on a political forum. The state of the government's opposition is hugely important especially with Brexit in mind. It is not for you to decide on the content of subjects to debate, I would have thought the recent poor showing of the LP should concentrate the minds of left wingers on how to improve its showing.

By comparison I cannot see many problems for the Tories at the moment. 42% approval rating, during a difficult period, is more than satisfactory.

 

They need to first look at why 11 of our 49 States members are unelected. When the last elections took place, 11 of the 12 Parish Constables were unopposed and I hate to say it, but St. Helier was one of them and I can't stand Connetable Simon Crowcroft. St Helier was twinned with Bad Wurzach in Germany in 2002, and they sent a marching band to the island to participate in the Battle of Flowers the next year. As the boys were at their grandparents in France, my then wife and I hosted a couple of the younger members of the band, so were invited to a function at the Town Hall. He tried to use it to get people to vote for him at the next election but he soon stopped talking to me when I told him that I lived in St. Clement and was hosting the youngsters because a family friend who was on one of the parish committees asked us to! http://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2016/12/12/new-bid-to-axe-deputies/

 

The people you are about to meet are invisible. Politicians don’t mention them. Much of the media ignore them. I can see why. To say such folk exist is to admit that much more is wrong in Britain than the gatekeepers of our national conversation will allow. It’s to accept that some of our prized insights about the economy are junk, and to understand, however fleetingly, how little stands between the rest of us and complete disaster.

For all that, they are as real as you or me – and they are fast growing in number. They are people who are homeless, even though they are working.

I met some of them last week, at an emergency night shelter in the centre of London. Their jobs are with some of our biggest companies and local councils. At the end of a working day, they come back to this warehouse unit to sleep in a metal bunk bed alongside 42 others. The men share one toilet, women the other. Among the homeless, this counts as a good ticket: Shelter from the Stormprovides dinner and breakfast.

Around one in three of the people bedding down here are in work. The night I went, the charity’s co-founder, Sheila Scott, looked down the list of guests and identified their employers. It was a roll call of Britain’s consumer economy: Starbucks, Eat, Pret. A woman who travelled three hours to work at a Co-op grocery. Pubs, McDonald’s, a courier for Deliveroo.

The former Tory minister George Young described the homeless as “what you step over when you come out of the opera”. No, Sir George: today’s homeless deliver your takeaways and pull pints at the local. Then they kip on park benches. Martin, who works for Islington council taking disabled children to school, told me how he’d spent a month sleeping either in Hampstead Heath or by the canal near London Zoo. “I was exhausted all the time,” he said. Some mornings, he’d knock for the children still clutching the bag that held all his belongings.

This month, the charity Shelter calculated that over 170,000 Londoners are homeless. Its researchers pieced together the data for how many were both in a job and in temporary accommodation: it amounts to nearly half (47%) of all homeless households in the capital.

Figures like these, and shelters like Scott’s, neatly puncture many of the official boasts about work in post-crash Britain. The ministerial bragging about record employment? That economic miracle would include a third of the people dossing down at Scott’s place. The smugness with which David Cameron talked about the high-tech sharing economy? The Uber driver in that bunk over there might put him right on a few things. All the blether about how strong unions will destroy the economy? The casualised workforce in these improvised dormitories make a good argument for labour protection.

Most of all, it proves that two of the hardiest orthodoxies in British politics are now a lie. First, the notion that work pays. That is why Norman Tebbit told men to get on their bikes, why Gordon Brown fiddled about with tax credits, why George Osborne could get away with attacking “skivers”. But minimum wages, zero-hours contracts and a couple of shifts through a temping agency don’t pay. They certainly don’t pay enough to get you decent accommodation in one of the most expensive housing markets on the planet.

When that belief dies, so too must its corollary: that the homeless are always unemployed. “Why are beggars despised? For they are despised universally,” asked George Orwell in Down and Out in Paris and London. “It is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living.” None of the people I met were begging, but each lived within the shadow of the idea that by being homeless, they had become despicable.

“I’d always thought homelessness was for alcoholics and addicts,” said Liam. The twentysomething had been an engineer on the London Underground before his subcontractor moved on, leaving him short of work and burning through his savings. Now he does shifts in a pub, earning just above minimum wage. It’s not enough. Before coming to the shelter after each closing time, he’d wander the streets. When Euston station opened around 3.30am, he’d creep upstairs and lie down for a few hours.

Not that he slept much, for all the crying and worrying. The next day would be spent in a youth centre. His mum would ring. “All I wanted to do was to break down and say, ‘Mam, I’ve lost everything now, I don’t have anything left.’ But if she heard that, it’d break her heart.” Like all the homeless people interviewed here, Liam is a pseudonym. For him to talk to me is to relive his humiliations: his face goes red, he stammers and barely ever catches my eye. Yet for all the shame that laces his story, he did nothing wrong. He just turned up for work.

Post-crash Britain punishes workers even as it knights tax-dodging bosses. It applauds zero-hours contracts while it prosecutes begging. It starves those with disabilities into work, knowing the work won’t put food on the table. It trumpets poverty pay as an economic miracle.

To be poor in Britain is to be treated by public officials and private managers with jovial contempt. Another guest of Scott’s, Nicola, tells me how her landlady went bust and she was evicted in May. Rather than sleep on the streets, she spent nights sitting in a police station. If she nodded off, the officers would blast hip-hop to wake her up. When she sought funds from Haringey council, she says one officer told her, “You don’t even look homeless.” She claims another directed her to take out a payday loan (Haringey denies both allegations).

One job interviewer sussed she was staying in a shelter. He said he’d never seen a homeless person before and demanded: “Give us a twirl.”

Nichola works in a warehouse for Greggs, making cakes and cookies. After nearly two years there, she’s still on a temp contract through an agency. No regular hours, just a text when they want her to come in – to which she has to reply promptly or lose the work.

The shifts typically start at 6am, which means getting up at 3am and taking three buses. A few weeks ago she slogged across London only for the factory machine to pack up. She was paid for the 2.5 hours it was functioning.

When contempt is embedded in the contract, it feeds through to the workplace. At the end of a shift last week, the manager pointed at all the work left over and barked: “You’re not going anywhere.” Greggs says agency staff are generally only employed on a short-term basis. I’ve seen payslips that suggest otherwise. I’ve also seen the company report that boasts of shareholders being paid £43.7m in dividends last year.

Nichola, Liam and Martin will all be spending this Christmas homeless. I ask Nichola how she will spend the 25th. She replies: “Sleep all day. I have not had a proper sleep since May.”

 

I am afraid that this is the sort of life that many people are experiencing. The food banks are a way of life for some here as well as the UK, but at least there are laws here that help to make sure that people have a roof over their heads. Some will still fall through the net, but there does seem a willingness to help those both through well supported charities and government. You cannot be thrown out of your rented property at this time of year, and every small or large council must have some emergency accommodation that can be occupied when a need arises. I am afraid that England has lost a lot of it's ability to be socially aware, and rather than look in depth at the problems chooses to blame others, especially if they live across the Channel.

 

The main problem England has is uncontrolled immigration, many having rejected living in Europe to find a better life in the UK. It is impossible to provide all the services for this surge. Brexit will improve the situation once the UK has ultimate control.

 

Britain has 'ultimate control' over non EU. immigration but has failed to control numbers, so what makes you think it will be successfull after Brexit. Compare the numbers of Poles and Rumanians who have chosen Germany or France to live in rather than England and your 'surge' becomes a trickle.

 

Anything below 5% unemployment is generally regarded as full employment. Seeing as the UK falls into this magic number, it must mean that the migrants who have gone to the UK have found work and are contributing to the country's economy.

 

There is nearly a million Polish born people living in the UK. France has a very harsh attitude towards Roma, they deported almost 11,000 in 2013.

The UK has about 3.2 million people who were citizens of other European countries. There are 1.2 million UK citizens living in other EU countries. This is due to the abject failure of the Euro for many Southern European countries with over 50% unemployment for young people.

 

It is a pity that countries such as France, Spain and Italy cannot solve their own mass unemployment problems that particularly effect the young. There must be a whole generation that has never experienced work.

 

No answer again. Try to change the point of what has been said, then wonder why people take no notice. Very sad.

 

The reason that there are more EU. citizens in the UK. than the other way around is because of language. English is the first foreign language in many European countries - and people go where they think they can be understood. The English are lazy at learning languages and would, by choice, either live on English pensioner ghettoes in Spain, or go to Australia. Other facts - Germany has nearly 3 million Poles and most of the Roma population in the UK. were born there.

 

It is accepted by everyone, trade unions, the opposition and the government that mass uncontrolled immigration causes wages to be lowered by having a large pool of desperate workers. Even the basic wage is vastly more than many Eastern Europeans can earn in their own country. The EU freedom of movement was never designed for such large differentials.