North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson blasts Brexit deal on visit to US
North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson said it was time Britain 'emerged from behind the wall' and carved its own niche as a country prepared to trade with the rest of the world.
During a visit to the United States, the leading Brexiteer accused the EU of using the excuse of the Irish border to bully Britain to remain in a customs union, and said it was ridiculous that the Prime Minister had said there was no alternative to her own Brexit plan.
He said the £39 billion the Government had agreed to pay the European Union under the terms of the deal would pay for thousands of teachers, nurses and soldiers. And he warned that once Britain had entered the proposed temporary customs arrangement, it could be very difficult to leave.
Sharing a platform with former Brexit Secretary David Davis in an address to the Heritage Foundation in Washington, Mr Paterson said the agreement proposed by the Prime Minister had to be halted in its tracks.
"It's so bad it can't be allowed to proceed," he said.
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"We will be locked into the regulatory regime, as our share of trade with Europe goes down. It was over 60 per cent at the Millennium, it's now 45, it's going to be like 35. The European Union itself, the Commission, says that 95 per cent of world growth is going to be outside the European Union."
He said Brexit presented an exciting opportunity for Britain to re-establish itself as a country that traded with the whole world.
Mr Paterson said: "This is a wonderful opportunity for us to emerge from behind the wall of the customs union and retake our place on all the world bodies, and really drive through reform of world regulation being pro-technology, because the European Union is quite extraordinary hostile to modern technology, and also to propose policies at world level that are pro-competition and pro-free-trade.
"The tragic thing for us is it's all got snarled up with the excuse of the Irish border. President Tusk made a generous free-trade offer to us back in March, which foundered on the issue of the Irish border, because no-one looked at how it could be solved apart from bullying the UK into staying into some form of a customs union."
Mr Paterson warned that unlike the Lisbon Treaty, which gave Britain a clear framework for leaving the EU, the draft plan had no such mechanism, meaning the UK could be trapped for decades.
"It's also very expensive, we are going to cough up £39 billion for the privilege of participating. This is real money; if you've got a billion sterling that buys you 20,000 nurses, 20,000 teachers, well over 20,000 soldiers, and we're going to spend £39 billion on just being participants in this whole operation."
