9. Debate on NNDM6985 — EU Withdrawal Negotiations

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:41 pm on 5 March 2019.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 5:41, 5 March 2019

Honda have said they're closing in Swindon—3,500 jobs. Of course they said they're going to leave. BMW has said it today. Unless you're saying that all those employers are lying, then somehow we are not to take any notice of what they say and it's all smoke and mirrors. Why would you stay in the UK when your market is Europe? Why wouldn't you just manufacture in Europe instead and treat the UK as a much smaller market, because the economy is not that big compared to the EU?

I know I'm running out of time, but I've taken some interventions, Llywydd. 

There are some who say we should have no deal. Have we noticed that those who are the strongest advocates of no deal are rich men? They are rich men. They are James Dyson, they are Jacob Rees-Mogg, they are people like Boris Johnson. They are people who can move their assets out of the UK—and have started doing so—if they think the UK is in trouble. They are the people with the money to go and live somewhere else. They are the people who argue for an unregulated free market economy that people certainly didn't vote for, particularly and not exclusively, in Blaenau Gwent. These are people, some of them, who argue that a deregulated economy is best: a Singapore in the north Atlantic, forgetting of course there would be no workers' rights, no regulations and human beings would simply be bystanders to an unregulated liberal free market economy—a form of economic totalitarianism, frankly, in my view. 

Finally, Llywydd, could I say this: let's send the message out today from here that this debate is not about Brexit, it's about no deal. Let's have a situation where we can sit down and say to each other, regardless of our views on Brexit, that what happens in the future should be governed by sense not speed, by a deal not disaster, and by agreement rather than staring into the abyss. No deal is no good for Wales.