If any of my constituents are watching this afternoon, I think they will be wondering what on earth is going on. “Why,” they will ask, “are MPs banging on about Brexit again? Isn’t that what the general election last December was meant to end? Didn’t we leave the EU in January? Wasn’t there meant to be an oven-ready deal?” They will ask, “Is this really what you should be focused on today?”
Right now, some of those constituents will be sitting at home feeling ill, anxious that they might have coronavirus but unable to get a test. Or they will be trying to work from home while looking after their son or daughter, who cannot go to school because they have a cold—or maybe it is coronavirus, but they do not now because they cannot get a test. Or perhaps they are on furlough because the business they work for has not yet fully reopened, or has not got everyone back yet, and they are anxious about whether they will have a job when the coronavirus job retention scheme ends next month.
People who work for one of our east midlands manufacturing businesses will be especially worried about the Prime Minister’s bluff and bluster earlier today; they, more than anybody else, require us to secure a deal, because their jobs depend on it. All those people will be asking why we are arguing about Brexit again when the top priority should be tackling the pandemic that threatens lives and tackling the resulting economic crisis that threatens their livelihoods.
Agreeing a trade deal with the EU is vital, but the Government need to get on with it rather than making it more difficult with the sort of posturing that we have heard today. The protocol contains a mechanism for dealing with disputes. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster himself said that
“the effective working of the protocol is a matter for the Joint Committee to resolve.”
Surely they need to get back round the negotiating table, stop posturing and reach an agreement on how the protocol should operate.