This is no time for timidity. This is a time for boldness in purposeful action. That is why I was so delighted to hear the maiden speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who hardly mentioned pork pies. She spoke with courage, drama, wit, insight and dedication to her electors, and I was delighted to be here for her speech. Similarly, my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Imran Ahmad Khan) made a brilliant and charming speech, eloquently calling for strength, confidence and for us to be outgoing.
For about 50 years, the UK Government have been operating in the world within what became the European Union. That has had a profound effect on our outlook as politicians, people who commentate on politics and, indeed, people who make policy within officialdom. It is a major global event that the UK is emerging from the European Union in trade policy, security policy, diplomacy and a wide range of areas.
I am absolutely clear what kind of relationship we should negotiate with the European Union: it is the one in the political declaration on the future relationship, and I am proud of it. I am proud that this Government have set it out. It is broad and deep. I wish that it were more widely read. I, of course, take for granted that everyone in the House has read it, but it should be more widely read across the country, because if it were, many fears would be allayed. We have heard, for example, about Erasmus. Of course, the European Union would like us to continue sending our young people all across Europe, and I would like them to be able to go. But in
negotiating that broad and deep relationship with our great friends in Europe, it is time to change the dynamic. We desperately need to get up off our knees, end what I would describe as a timid Eurocentrism and start looking out seriously to the whole world, so I was delighted to listen to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary earlier.
I want to encourage the Government to start with trade, because all our ambitions are founded on a strong economy. It is the promises in our manifesto on trade that we must keep first. We have said, for example:
“We aim to have 80 per cent of UK trade covered by free trade agreements within the next three years, starting with the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.”
I take it, though it is not in the manifesto, that that means acceding to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, in order to do those trade deals with Japan, Australia and New Zealand. I am excited about that prospect, because I think that the United Kingdom, in emerging into this trading system, will be able to set a new standard for the world. It will be able to broaden that Pacific rim trade deal to be a new platform for the world, while doing important bilateral deals with the European Union and the USA.
I particularly want to encourage the Government to prioritise the United States of America. It is the biggest economy in the world. Only today, the US ambassador and the Secretary of State for International Trade met, and they have been tweeting about what a successful meeting it was. The United States shares our belief in liberty—the freedom to succeed. It instinctively understands that progress comes through trial and error. That is why we must reject regulatory harmonisation, because I am afraid that it is in regulators as much as it is in entrepreneurial activity that mistakes are made. We do not want to be harmonised if we are going to make rapid progress for the benefit of all people, and especially the poorest—the people who cannot game these enormous regulatory systems.
I encourage the Government to immediately begin negotiating with the United States of America on 3 February, the first working day we are out of the European Union. In doing so, we will break the myth that we have to harmonise with one system or the other. Through mutual recognition and equivalence, we will be able to set out our own path. If we look at the United States negotiating mandate, all it is asking us to do on food, for example, as I understand it, is in effect to just keep to our WTO obligations, which are science-led. Of course, we will have our own requirements in the UK for what food we accept, but I am absolutely clear that American food is good food. We will have concerns about animal welfare standards and costs of production, but we should be clear that we are behaving in the public interest and trying to raise the living standards of the poorest—indeed, to enable everyone to flourish—through adopting, with the United States, a fundamental belief in liberty under the rule of law.
That is the fundamental thing we need to believe in as we leave the EU: boldly rediscovering our sense of self-government, our sense of liberty and our sense of service to other people, while championing justice around the world, as Palmerston said—not becoming some Quixote tilting at windmills, but standing up for our values in a way that we can all be proud of. I want to urge on the Government boldness, not timidity—no longer focusing in that Eurocentric way on the EU and no longer being subordinate to the idea that whatever
the Commission says is definitively true, but instead standing up as an independent nation and talking first to our US allies and negotiating with them a fantastic free trade agreement that can stand right alongside our EU free trade agreement as part of that broad partnership, and also our accession to that Trans-Pacific Partnership. If we do all of those things—it is a hard ask, but life is tough—my goodness, what a nation we will be, and we will completely defuse the great siren songs of despair that we have heard from Opposition Members. I wish my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench every possible success, and I am sure that Conservative Members will do everything to ensure that this nation succeeds.
8.11 pm