No, the right hon. Gentleman has had his chance.
A year on, what has been achieved? It took Donald Trump’s Administration seven weeks to produce a trade policy paper. This maladministration has failed to do so in an entire year. I have now been asking the Secretary of State to produce a trade White Paper for seven months. How extraordinary it is that the Department for International Trade has existed for a year but has completely failed to set out its mission and vision in a White Paper so that British businesses can have some clarity about their future.
Nor was there any clarity in the Conservative manifesto. It was scant on detail and peppered with vague promises, such as:
“We will work to forge a new culture of exporting”
and
“We will take a more active role in supporting British consortia to win…contracts”.
Of course, we were promised a trade Bill, which has now been confirmed in the Queen’s Speech. The accompanying notes actually state that one of the main benefits of the trade Bill will be:
“To meet the manifesto commitment to ‘introduce a Trade Bill”.
Well, yes, but it is something of a tautology.
I am heartened to note that the Secretary of State clearly read our manifesto, because since the general election his Department has adopted Labour’s manifesto pledge to guarantee market access for the least developed countries to the same level they currently have with the EU. Since the general election the Government have also agreed with Labour’s manifesto pledge to address trade remedies. If only they would agree to publish a trade White Paper that integrates industrial strategy with international trade policy, that creates a network of regional trade and investment champions to promote exports, that promises full transparency and scrutiny of future trade deals, and that builds human rights and social justice as a key strand in trade policy, perhaps our encounters at the Dispatch Box would become a lot more consensual.
The challenges we face in leaving the EU are not insurmountable. Ours is a great and proud country and we are an enterprising people. Our goods and services are among the best in the world, our economy is a dynamic and attractive marketplace for investment, and we will be a thought leader in the next wave of industrial growth. However, if we are to rise to these challenges, we need more than the patriotic flag-waving we have seen from the Government Front Bench; we need clarity and careful planning, which we have not had.
We are setting out to leave our major trading partner. Where is the road map? There is no White Paper. Where is the estimate of costs? That appears to be what the Chancellor has now started demanding. Government Ministers appear incapable of presenting anything approaching a unified view on the matter. The Prime Minister repeatedly tells us that
“no deal is better than a bad deal”,
and her Chancellor says that actually
“no deal would be a very, very bad outcome for Britain”,
while her Brexit Secretary tells us that he is “pretty sure”, but “not certain” and “not 100% sure”, that there will ever be a deal.
The truth is that no deal is not a trump card to be thrown on the negotiating table in some macho gesture; it is actually the procedural outcome of article 50, because if we fail to negotiate a deal within the two-year period, we will be ejected from the single market of the European Union and put on World Trade Organisation terms. Far from being a trump card to be played, no deal is actually a cliff edge over which we would be pushed.