Liberal Democrats
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Lib Dem MP calls for closer EU relationship to boost UK economy
Posted
January 16, 2025
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1:42Now PlayingSpeaking on Question Time, Calum Miller says:
"The challenge we have, as Liam is correct in saying, is that the budget has done nothing to promote growth.
And what I hear when I'm speaking to businesses in my part of the world, they are being clobbered from every side.
They don't see a way in which they're going to be able to develop, to grow, to create new jobs.
One of the biggest barriers to that is a self-inflicted one, because we have deliberately cut off our access to our biggest market, the European Union.
Well, I'm happy to answer your question and say that the solution to growth is having a much deeper and tighter relationship with the European Union over the next five years, so that we can get back to a position where businesses like those in my constituency are not tripping over the new red tape that is stopping them trading back and forth with the European Union, adding costs to their businesses and preventing them from growing.
And we hear far too often from opposition politicians from the Conservative Reform Party that we should be seeking trade deals in India and the Pacific area.
It's thousands of miles from us.
The European Union is on our doorstep.
We do 40% of our trade with them.
That's this opportunity we should be taking in the country.
People voted to leave the European Union, that decision needs to be respected, but there were ways of leaving the European Union, the relationships we can choose to have with the European Union.
The last Conservative government went for the hardest form of departure.
They botched the negotiations, they came up with deals that carved up the UK and Britain, Northern Ireland.
There's a sort of almost ideological opposition to anything with the European word in it, whether that's European air traffic control or the European pharmaceuticals regulator, things that could ring real benefit if we harmonised.
So it's not about going back into the European Union.
It's about having a constructive and deep relationship and getting on with that.
And that's all the more important when Donald Trump is threatening us from the other side of the Atlantic.
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