Okay. Thank you—diolch, Ddirprwy Lywydd. I formally move the motion tabled in the names of Neil Hamilton and myself.

The UKIP motion before you today reflects our belief that the European Union has shackled British business with masses of red tape and an industrial policy that has not been designed for our industrialists in the British manufacturing sector. The problems facing companies like Tata Steel in my region have been discussed here many times, but, until the British public voted to leave the EU, it seemed there was little we could do to save the steel industry, and every party represented in this Chamber today agrees that the UK has to maintain an independent production capacity.

When we joined the forerunner of the European Union in 1973, the UK was producing nearly 26 million tonnes of steel per year. Over the four decades of EU and EEC membership, this has fallen dramatically. Over the four decades of EU membership, our GDP per head grew by 71 per cent, the EU as a whole by just 62 per cent, whereas the GDP per capita in China grew by over 1,000 per cent and Singapore by over 500 per cent—a stark difference in the economic performance between east and west.

There are those who wish to continue to shackle the EU’s economy to the lacklustre economy of Europe, warning of dire consequences if we fail to remain part of the single market. We don’t need to be members of the single market in order to trade with the EU 27. We can still buy New Zealand lamb, Australian wine, Brazilian beef, American cars and Chinese electronics, despite none of those countries being members of the single market. In fact, the EU has monumentally failed to secure trade agreements with any of these countries.

In the last few years, the EU has sought to complete five key trade deals with the USA, Japan and India as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Mercosur trading blocs. Because of protectionism in other European countries, the EU has failed to get a trade deal with any of those countries or blocs. The EU’s own figures show that this has cost the UK nearly 300,000 jobs. Members, far from being the saviour of British jobs, the EU has been a barrier to job creation, a stagnant economy dragging down the UK with it. Thankfully, the people of the UK voted to reject continued membership of the EU. They voted to reject increasing red tape. They voted to reject an institution unable to deal with the rest of the world. But, above all, they voted to reject an institution at odds with our national interest.

At a time when our exports to the rest of the world are growing, we should be pursuing trade agreements, not leaving it to the European Union. The future of our manufacturing sector depends on our ability to trade with the rest of the world, but, more importantly, our steel industry’s future is reliant upon us leaving the EU. The global recession left China with an estimated 200 million tonnes of excess steel, which they proceeded to dump on the world markets. The rest of the world put up tariffs to prevent their markets being flooded with cheap Chinese steel. The US introduced 522 per cent trade tariffs on Chinese steel. The EU introduced tariffs of just 16 per cent. As a result, Chinese steel imports to the EU—