The hon. Gentleman may not have noticed, but I did give way.
Students should never have been part of our net migration figures, and immigration should be proclaimed loudly by every Member to be an important and hugely beneficial resource for our economy. Yes, free movement of people will end when we leave the EU, because it is a function of the treaties of the EU, but that does not mean that we should not operate a system of immigration controls with the EU that allows broad and reciprocal access to all our citizens in a way that maximises the benefits to all our economies. That is what our businesses need: access to skills.
For all that, however, some businesses are willing to accept the Prime Minister’s deal. They have expressed grudging acceptance of it, and some have even written to their Members of Parliament asking them to support it. Well, there is the proof that “Project Fear” works both ways. The Government are holding a gun to business’s head with the threat of no deal, and, given this Hobson’s choice, some have been blackmailed into acquiescing in the Prime Minister’s proposal. I am sure that their acquiescence will have been cemented by the cheery words of the Secretary of State this morning, when he advised the nation that he did not regard no deal as “national suicide”, and that, although he grudgingly accepted that it would “damage our economy”, he thought that it was “survivable”—and this from the man who once said that a trade deal with the EU would be
“the easiest in human history”.
It is so good that the Secretary of State and the Chancellor are sharing the debate. I had some little hope that the Chancellor might have sat with him and taken him through the economic analyses. With no change in migration, no deal would see the UK’s GDP 7.7% lower than it would otherwise be. According to the estimates of the Office for Budget Responsibility, that is £164 billion if translated into the current fiscal year. With zero net EEA worker inflows, no deal would
see the UK’s GDP 9.3%, or £198 billion, lower than otherwise. That is a heck of a lot of Brexit buses for the NHS: 565.
Unfortunately, during the first part of the debate, the Secretary of State told the House effectively to ignore all the Chancellor’s carefully prepared scenarios and analyses. Back in December, he said:
“It is not realistic to expect that there would be no potential shift, if necessary, in Government fiscal policy, or in the Bank of England’s monetary policy, or changes to what the Government will be able to do on tariffs. We have to be realistic and try to understand what those things are. To try to confuse forecasts and scenarios, intentionally or otherwise, is not helpful to the debate. ”—[Official Report, 6 December 2018; Vol. 650, c. 1203-4.]