UK Parliament / Open data

Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill

I do not wish to be rude to my hon. Friend, but that really is the stuff of madness. Of course we need to export more, but here is the real question

that he should be asking. At the moment, a lorry that comes in from the European Union through Dover will take, at the most, two minutes to go through. If it comes from outside the European Union, the process takes 20 minutes at the least, and at the most—and more typically—it takes two hours. How does that transpose to the manufacturing sector and to the Toyota workers outside Derby—some 3,000 people, with three to five times as many in the supply chains?

I say to my hon. Friend that this, Sir, is the real world. In the real world, when Toyota makes an order for car seats, they are delivered absolutely ready on to the production line within four hours of the order being placed. If we do not deliver frictionless trade, either through a customs union or some magical third way that the Prime Minister thinks she can deliver—good luck to her on that—thousands of jobs will go, and hon. Members sitting on the Government Benches, in private conversations, know that to be the case. What they have said in those private conversations is that the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs will be worth it to regain our country’s sovereignty—tell that to the people who voted leave in my constituency. Nobody voted to be poorer, and nobody voted leave on the basis that somebody with a gold-plated pension and inherited wealth would take their jobs away from them.

5.30 pm

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

645 cc82-3 

Session

2017-19

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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