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The UK government should say “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” in its ‘reset’ talks, to avoid being pressurised into conceding giveaways without securing its objectives. Here is a list of the main areas where the UK government is already reported to have made concessions without securing a full deal.
1. Surrender of £6 billion worth of fish quota over 12 years to 2038 to get talks. This is fish we could let UK boats land in the UK and process here.
2. Surrender to EU demand for a discount on student fees for EU students at UK universities. Who pays, taxpayers or UK universities? Why should we allow such a big concession when overseas student fees are such a big part of UK university finance, supporting the best universities in Europe.
3. Higher carbon taxes putting up energy prices will follow from joining the EU emissions trading and carbon scheme.
4. Introducing a UK CBAM (a border tax on high energy content goods from outside the EU) to align with EU tariffs on imports from non-EU countries will push up business costs. This will lead to more industrial closures and consumer prices will also rise.
5. A big increase in the cost of student support by switching to the Erasmus scheme from Turing. Erasmus will cost £800 million compared to £120 million for Turing. We will be paying for many more EU students to benefit where Turing just helps UK students. Turing allows UK students to study in many places around the world whilst Erasmus is EU institutions only.
6. A planned Youth Mobility Scheme is part of the way to open borders, placing more strains on housing and jobs in UK for young people. We are already short of homes and jobs without inviting more to come?
7. The planned SPS Agreement will prevent some of our advanced research and innovation in food and farming.
8. Regulatory alignment will burden the big majority of UK businesses that do not export with new costs and rules for no good reason.
9. AI linkage will stifle our faster growth rate in tech by applying very restrictive EU rules to our faster growing and larger industry.
10. The proposed contribution to their solidarity fund and being made to pay the costs of their excessive regulations will saddle UK taxpayers with another big bill they cannot afford. Shouldn’t the EU be paying us for trade as they sell us so much more than we sell them?
11. The trade changes are likely to boost EU goods exports to us more than our exports to them, so reducing growth not boosting it. The UK government seems unaware we run a big deficit with the EU. It misses the point of their tariffs, rules and imposed costs that they are designed to get us to import from the EU rather than from better and cheaper suppliers from the rest of the world where these are available.
12. Linking more into their electricity system will make us more dependent on continental power and drive up prices. We need more of our own capacity, not more links to a continent which is itself very short of energy.
This piece was first published on John Redwood’s website and is reproduced here with permission
