The EU and Remain MPs always thought  the argument in the U.K. was all about trade. They denied in the U.K. but not elsewhere that the true quest was for ever closer Union  including full monetary, economic  and political union. They tried to turn crucial arguments about democracy and national accountability into profit and loss items on trade account. They tried to ignore the  high cost of belonging to the EU which was more than the likely cost of tariffs to trade on  WTO EU terms as a third country. They insisted on a lop sided view where a free trade arrangement with the EU was crucial but a free trade agreement with many other important trading countries was impossible as a member of the EU.

Since we left they still presume to lecture us with these views even though we rejected them many times as contradictory or untrue. They now seem to want to belittle or disrupt any trade agreement we negotiate with others, to validate their nasty view that we would not be able to do this on our own.

I remember all too many meetings or meals with leading representatives of continental members of the EU when they lectured and hectored me for daring to oppose first the Exchange Rate mechanism and  then U.K. membership of the Euro. More recently they have done everything  they can to rubbish Brexit, instead of conforming with their Treaty which requires them to seek positive and friendly relations with neighbouring countries.Why didn’t they respect our referendum decision and seek to keep our import market?

What a contrast with Australia and New Zealand. The U.K. left them in  the lurch when we joined the EEC/EU , imposing EU tariffs against them and substituting EU food for the food they sent us. As soon as we voted to leave the EU the High Commissioners of both Countries  made it clear to MPs that their countries harboured no grudges and saw this as a great opportunity to develop closer relations and free trade with each other again. Why shouldn’t we switch  more of our attention from the angry , legalistic and negative EU  to friendly allied countries that wish us well?

The Department for Work and Pensions has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (12056):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to train more people to fill shortages in (a) HGV driving, (b) farming, (c) construction and (d) other areas with labour shortages. (12056)

Tabled on: 08 June 2021

Answer:
Mims Davies:
The Department is continuing to work with the Department for Education, Devolved Authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as other Government Departments to fill vacancies in construction, logistics, farming and other sectors, offering training for those who need it, and securing jobs directly for those ready to move into roles.

DWP’s Sector-Based Work Academy Programme (SWAP) helps employers to fill job vacancies in sectors with a high demand for workers. In the haulage sector we have been running SWAPs in partnership with employers and trade associations, including the Road Haulage Association (RHA) and Eddie Stobart Logistics, to deliver tailored training to our customers so that they can obtain their HGV licence and the skills they need to enter the logistics sector as a HGV driver.

In agriculture we have worked with DEFRA and key Trade Associations, including the National Farmers Union, to develop a regional recruitment strategy that utilises DWP’s Jobcentre Plus network, fosters strong local links between employers and Work Coaches, and gives jobseekers the skills and knowledge they need to enter the sector.

In construction, DWP support the Construction Skills Delivery Group to improve and promote the existing range of training offers which include new occupational traineeships, T Levels, flexible apprenticeships, Skills Bootcamps, and free L3 qualifications for adults who do not already have A levels or equivalent.

The answer was submitted on 17 Jun 2021 at 15:54.

It is time to trust people more. It is time to control people less. I would like to praise Ministers and officials, and particularly all the scientists, medics and researchers, who have worked so hard to ensure that the UK is a leader in vaccines—supplying one of the best vaccines to the world, getting it out early and making it available for all of us, and ensuring that we had bought in other vaccines that became available so that we were in a position to protect our population well and relatively early compared with other countries. I pay tribute to all the work by the NHS and the medics to understand how to treat the disease better and how it is transmitted so that we can take better actions to give people greater security.

I say now to all those experts, the NHS and the Government, “Share what is relevant with the rest of us—the public—and let us make more of our own risk assessments.” We are now saying to people that there are two major ways in which we can all protect ourselves against the possibility of getting this disease, or a bad version of it. First, we are making two jabs available to all adults who want them, and the figures so far show that that gives them a much better probability of not catching the disease at all and very strong protection against a serious case of it, which is what we are mainly worried about, as we are trying to stop people dying or struggling in intensive care, and to stop that pressure on the NHS and all the suffering that it produces.

We are also saying to people, “If you’re still worried about the residual risk or if you really don’t like vaccines, you can self-isolate.” I hope that the Government will continue, as an employer and as the Government, guiding others in the economy to say that we should be generous and supportive of anyone who really does feel that they need to protect themselves against the virus by self-isolation, but I think that we are now well beyond the stage where we have to isolate practically everybody else to some extent when so many people now have protection, are making their own risk judgments, and want to get on with their lives.

In the room, when assessing the data, it is important that we look at all the data about jobs, livelihoods, incomes, family stress and mental health pressures, because this policy is creating all of those. The Government can do more. They should be helping the private sector to manage air flows, air extraction, ultraviolet cleaning and so forth to make it safer for many more social contact businesses to reopen and have a reasonable number of people enjoying their services. I think that more could be done on ensuring that all our health settings have really great infection control, because we do not want any more slippages from health settings themselves.

I urge the Government to think again about an idea they looked at early on but did not develop, which is in the large populated areas, particularly the conurbations, to have isolation hospitals that deal with covid and other variant infectious diseases well away from general hospitals. We add to the pressures and the likelihood of cross-infection if we have a general hospital taking in a very infectious disease.

There is now huge scope to get a really good economic recovery to save jobs, create new jobs and get pay up, to have many more transactions in the economy. To do that, however, we need to relax and to trust the people more. I think my constituents are ready to make decisions about their own lives again and many are very frustrated that they are not allowed to. We have all this great advice and knowledge. Let us not get too gloomy and let us not lock everybody up again.

I will post this morning the text of my speech yesterday in Parliament about the planned extension to the lockdown. I joined with others to vote against the measures, and spoke in favour of an alternative approach.

Yesterday with full Opposition backing Parliament voted to delay the return of a full Parliament. All the time we are encouraged to join remotely, all the time seats are very limited in the chamber, all the time you need to bid for a speaking slot in advance and find your name on a published list, the scope for spontaneity and more challenge to government is limited. Parliament thrives on the  momentum of causes, on the noise of support and opposition, on the heat of the moment remark or intervention. Much of this is lost with a largely remote Parliament.

The Opposition parties supported the government and most Labour MPs did not bother to join the debate. The few who did just wanted to exploit the latest  Cummings Revelations. It fell to Conservative MPs to question the policy and to make the case for a restoration of Parliament.

Now the government has said we will have to live with the virus, and has stated it cannot be completely eradicated, the question is why not start doing that now? We accept all sorts of other risks in our lives. We all know there is no guarantee of immortality, and no government can protect us from all harms. Every time we cross a road, drive a car, fly in a plane, prepare food, stay in a railway carriage or on a bus with people with flu we run a risk of harm. It is important to let people decide for themselves how much risk of this virus they want to run, and offer them several ways of minimising that risk.

We n ow want to get on with our lives. We now need to let people go to work and rebuild our prosperity.

When President Macron said that sending supermarket supplies from Toulouse to Paris was different from sending them from Liverpool to Belfast because in the first case they were in the same country he revealed a common international misunderstanding about the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Fed on a diet of EU and Republic of Ireland spin they all see the issues in Northern Ireland from the Irish Republican  viewpoint. They ignore or simply do not understand the majority community in Northern Ireland who are strongly of the  view that Northern Ireland must remain an integral part of the UK, as much a part of the UK as Toulouse is part of France. There are quite a lot of Americans who also need to be told this. They sometimes seem to think the UK is holding onto some colony in Northern Ireland against the will of the people. As the Good Friday Agreement makes clear Northern Ireland is fully part of the UK by virtue of popular majority support. It could be changed by a referendum or border poll. Recent polling shows an insufficient level of support for any such change showing there is no need to hold a poll.

When challenged by the UK view that the current arrangements over trade between GB and NI are not working, the EU argues two contradictory soundbites. They say the UK entered into an international Agreement called the Northern Ireland Protocol, and that must be fully enforced and can never be changed. They also argue that the Good Friday Agreement is central to the wider issues of good peaceful government on both sides of the border on the island of Ireland.

The truth is the EU’s aggressive and excessive approach to implementing their view of the Protocol is undermining the Good Friday Agreement. Their actions have alienated the majority community in Northern Ireland, who see the EU trying to force them into dependence on the Republic, severing important links with their own country, the wider UK.

Nor is it true to say that the EU’s view of the legal requirements of the Protocol are correct. The Protocol, like the Good Friday Agreement, seeks to balance the interests of the UK and of the Republic/EU .It is meant to uphold Northern Ireland’s s full membership of the UK’s internal or single market, yet the EU is doing everything  it can to stop goods, animals and plants passing from GB to NI. The UK government needs to set out its legal view of the EU’s need to respect the UK single market  to comply with the Protocol, and its various suggested fixes for the restrictions and frictions deliberately placed in the way of GB/NI trade by the EU.

I did not myself vote for the final UK/EU Agreement, fearing bad faith by the EU especially on fish and Northern Ireland. The Withdrawal Act I did vote for contained the crucial sovereignty clause  which gives us the legal basis to act unilaterally if the EU refuses to negotiate a sensible compromise. We also have such rights under the Vienna Convention on Treaties should we need to renounce the Protocol. The EU/UK Agreement also gives us the right to suspend the Protocol if it is not  being fairly and sensibly enforced. It is time to take control of our own internal trade and demonstrate that is legal as well as right.