4. Statement by the Counsel General and Minister for European Transition: The End of the Transition Period

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:43 pm on 15 December 2020.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 3:43, 15 December 2020

I thank Rhianon Passmore for that question. She is right to say that Wales has a larger percentage of our exports to the European Union than any other part of the United Kingdom. In order to support our exporters in the months that lie ahead, the Welsh Government has contracted the services of a cohort of international trade advisers, who will be available to support exporters to navigate the new red tape, which the United Kingdom's negotiating position will effectively be introducing on our businesses. 

Many exporters, of course, will have already taken into account the fact they face a whole slew of new customs-related export documentation requirements, which obviously will load significant additional costs on to their businesses. But they won't yet have been able to quantify the question of tariffs or how the products that they export are taken into account, how components in those products are treated, how standards are recognised mutually across the Channel. So, all of those are very significant questions in the minds of many business that export, at this point in time, and, I just repeat, that we have 16 days to to before the end of the transition period. So, that's why it's so important to give, even at this late hour, the clarity that businesses need in Wales to support their prosperity and support the livelihoods that depend on them. 

I do think it's right to say the CBI and other business organisations are clear that a deal is in the best interests of the UK economy and the Welsh economy. Our most recent academic analyses of the long-term impact of a 'no deal' scenario on the Welsh and the UK-wide economy is of an economy that is about 8 per cent less than it would have been over a 10-year period. Now, that's at the same time that businesses are suffering the impacts of COVID and plainly will take a significant period of time to recover from that. We think it's unconscionable to add to the involuntary damage of COVID the voluntary damage of leaving the transition period without a deal.