My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She knows from her experience as a north-east Member of Parliament that Europe has been very good to the north-east of England as far as trade is concerned and in the investment we have had into the region from the EU.
The coal industry once dominated the north-east of England. Today, all the pits have closed, but they did not close overnight. The dozens of collieries that closed did so over several decades because their reserves were depleted and because of the lack of investment.
My father was twice made redundant because the collieries he worked down closed over the space of a decade. Just like Nissan today, and probably more so, back then everyone knew somebody who worked down the pits or at the National Coal Board. With the closure of the coalmines, communities were left behind. Some have not recovered, and the resentments they harbour played into the Brexit vote. There is a message in that for the decisions we are making now on the post-Brexit world. My region has seen industrial extinction in the past, so we have to make sure it does not happen in the future. Therefore, with 62% of our trade being with the EU, it would be a catastrophic mistake to put up barriers to trade if we can avoid it, and I believe the EEA amendment would help to avoid it. The vast majority of Labour MPs in the north-east knew what the economic consequences would be, and the majority of us campaigned to remain in the EU. The vote went the other way, but the economic consequences of leaving remain the same, as do the grievances in some of our communities.
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The Government’s own economic impact assessments for the north-east portray a major reduction in our region’s GDP and economic growth in the coming years, whatever the deal. I do not know how making people poorer will lift the grievances felt in some of our communities. Surely they will stay, and I fear that our communities will look for even more simple answers to complicated issues when Brexit turns out not to be the panacea that people believe it to be. The Government have estimated that the difference in public borrowing between an EEA-type agreement and from a free trade
agreement is about £38 billion a year. If we are prepared to borrow that much every year, why can we not be in the EEA and use that money to invest in our communities that we love so much? I will be supporting Lords amendment 51 today.