Friday 28 September 2018

 

UKIP  Street Stand

South Oxhey

Saturday, 29th September, 2018

10:00am - 12:00noon
 
 
Prestwick Road (where the shop's are being demolished at the back end near the library).
 
Please come along to help with leaflets or just stop by and say hello

Thursday 13 September 2018

A Full English Brexit

 
 
 
Patrick O’Flynn MEP’s ‘Full English BREXIT’ Patrick O’Flynn MEP is pleased to be putting on a series of evening events across the region over the Autumn. Each event will hear from Patrick and guest speakers about BREXIT and the way
 
 
Theresa May is selling-out Brexit. She has conned the country and conned her own party too.
She plans just to rebadge our membership of the EU and carry on without proper control of our laws,our borders or our own money.
Instead, she aims to tie us to the EU’s rulebook permanently.
Come and join the fight to save Brexit from her deviousness and deceit.
Throughout the autumn Patrick O’Flynn MEP will be holding a series of public meetings across the East of England explaining:
  • Why Mrs May’s Chequers plan fulfils none of the key tests for a real Brexit that UKIP set in 2017
  • How a concerted fightback can make the Government ditch the disaster and instead be true to the wishes of the 17.4 million people who voted to Leave the EU.
  • What you can do to help at this vital time in our nation’s history.
As usual, Patrick will be joined by a variety of guest speakers during the meetings, which will take place in Downham Market, Great Baddow,
Bury St Edmunds, Peterborough, Bedford and Hertford.
Brexit is in danger. We are sending out an SOS. Please help us to save it.
YOU CAN FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE FIGHT TO SAVE BREXIT HERE:
SEPT 18th Downham Market Town Hall, 6 Market Place, Bridge St, Downham Market PE38 9DE, 7PM
OCT 8th Marconi Club, Tydesman, Great Baddow, Chelmsford CM2 9FH, 7PM
OCT 29th Great Northern Hotel, Station Approach, Peterborough PE1 1QL, 7PM
NOV 6TH Athenaeum, Angel Hill, Bury St Edmunds IP33 1LU, 7PM
NOV 19TH Harpur Suite, 3 Harpur Street, Bedford MK40 1LE, 7PM
NOV 26TH Hertford Corn Exchange, 39 Fore St, Hertford SG14 1AL, 7PM
All FREE Entry
For further inquiries, please call 01733 891640 or email Patrick.oflynn@europarl.europa.eu
 

Wednesday 12 September 2018

A World Trade Deal



Today Economists For Free Trade publish A World Trade Deal: The Complete Guide, namely a WTO-based exit from the EU. This has been made necessary by two things: the mess in our negotiations with the EU on the basis of Mrs. May’s ill-fated Chequers proposals and the widespread ignorance among our politicians – not to speak of the general public – about the WTO and its workings.

What we show in great detail in a series of responses to some two dozen frequently-met questions, is that a WTO-based exit from the EU without an explicit EU trade deal is highly advantageous to the UK’s economy, to ordinary people generally and also to the public finances, besides delivering a Brexit in line with the referendum result. We have called it a World Trade Deal to emphasise the fact that the WTO-based legal order already constitutes a ‘deal’ and is far from the concept of ‘no deal’, with all its implications of disorder.

The Chequers proposals subject UK farming and manufacturing to EU Single Market regulations and also agree to maintain social (including labour) and environmental regulations currently mandated by the EU, which govern much of the activity across the whole economy. This means that we cannot alter these EU standards, many of which discriminate against non-EU suppliers such as the US, when we enter into Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), with the rest of the world; we can reduce or eliminate tariffs but we cannot eliminate the protection created by EU standards.

The New Customs Partnership Mark 2 now supposedly makes setting lower or zero tariffs on non-EU FTA partners feasible; however, doubts remain about the practicality of this proposal too. Finally, some formula about enhanced EU migration in the proposals implies that there will also be free migration in some degree from the EU; the EU may well also ask us for a financial contribution to the ‘upkeep’ of the EU’s rule book.

Could Canada+ offer a negotiated EU trade deal?

There is a far better route to a negotiated EU trade deal: Canada+. To understand the World Trade Deal, it is helpful first to go through how the Canada+ deal would work.

Canada+ would mean we would have zero tariffs between the UK and the EU, and also zero non-tariff barriers, together with freedom to see whatever standards were best for the UK home market. Standards on EU exports would of course remain in place as those mandated by the EU; standards on UK imports would be free for us to determine as part of our domestic decisions on standards. If we liberalised these to permit goods from non-EU countries to be sold here, we would not discriminate against EU imports – they would be free to impose their own current EU standards, which would also meet our new liberalised standards which would be more embracing of variety from around the world.

What then of the threatened surge in barriers between us and the EU that the Chequers proposals are supposed to avoid? The simple point is that there is no such threat. Any such surge would be completely illegal under WTO rules. Border procedures must be seamless and effectively costless; if existing standards on both sides are met by industry, as they already are, then there can be no sudden withdrawal of trade permissions.

What has happened in our internal political debate is that extreme ignorance of how the WTO works has allowed Project Fear to take hold among industrialists and the Civil Service interacting with them. They have assumed that the WTO world is a lawless world in which ‘hostile governments’ can ‘make trouble’. Yet WTO law is plain – it mandates seamless border procedures and outlaws discrimination on standards. Furthermore, no-one in their right mind would claim that either the UK or the EU would defy international law: both make a particular point of adhering to it, given the centrality of international law to the Treaties on which both take their stands.
Canada+ delivers to us substantial economic gains over the long term: an extra 7% on GDP, the equivalent of an extra 0.5% annual average growth over the decade and a half after Brexit. These gains come: 4% from achieving free trade around the world, 2% from setting our own regulations and the rest from controlling unskilled immigration and eliminating our EU budget contribution. Because the Treasury’s revenues are boosted by 10%, there are further second-round gains to be had from ending austerity and bringing in tax cuts. Finally, all households gain directly from prices falling 8%, with the poorest households gaining 15% from both falling prices and the end of mass unskilled immigration.

Why a World Trade Deal is the best deal for the UK

However, it may well be that Canada+ deal will not be agreed, either by the EU or by our fractious government or Parliament. It is at this point that we strongly recommend the World Trade Deal where we have no EU trade deal at all but simply trade with the EU as we do with all other countries outside the EU’s ambit. In fact, this will occur by default if no EU trade deal can be agreed by all sides. As we will explain, it brings us all the same economic gains as Canada+, but with some helpful additions.

The reasons for these gains are the same as under Canada+: ‘access’ to the EU market for us and for the EU to ours is protected under WTO rules. The border must be seamless and as we each satisfy each other’s export product standards there can be no denial of recognition of each other’s standards without breaching the rules on non-discrimination.

The only impediment to our trade will be tariffs on goods each way. These are on average rather low, at around 4%. However they will have a negative effect: on the EU, not on us. To understand why, think about how when we leave the EU we will sign FTAs with many countries around the world from whom we will therefore buy at world prices with no tariffs imposed from our side. Apart from benefiting our consumers, this creates strong competition in our home market between all producers, whether domestic or foreign. EU producers are no exception; they will have to meet these prices to sell anything much here at all. So any tariffs we impose, they will have to absorb. As for our producers selling in the EU, they too will sell at world prices since their competitors here would quickly undercut them if they charged more. Therefore any EU tariffs on them will be paid by EU importers, who can easily do so as EU prices are higher because of their trade barriers on world producers.

What this all means is that if we leave the EU without a trade agreement, under WTO rules, and therefore with no transition (which is dependent on a trade deal), the EU carries the burden of paying about £13 billion a year tariff revenue to HM Treasury, it loses our £39 billion budget contribution for the transition period and the world competition from our FTAs kicks in two years early. The cost of all this when discounted to present value is around £500 billion. On the other hand, it gives us some useful extra gains, in the form of an earlier start to higher growth and higher Treasury revenues, amounting in present value to £650 billion.

Much nonsense has recently been talked about ‘no deal’ halting air traffic, upsetting pensions, derailing Northern Ireland’s electricity deal with Ireland and much else. However these matters have nothing at all with ‘no trade deal’ which is the issue here. They are the basic meat and drink of any competent government to resolve as they deal with the necessary separation from the EU under Article 50, which indeed was created for this very purpose. For these negotiations about practical matters to fail, one would need to assume that the EU and the UK were planning some sort of acrimonious divorce amounting to a level of implicit warfare. Since they are both allies in NATO, cooperating on security and supposedly maintaining friendly diplomatic relations into the future, this would be a serious failure indeed. It would imply that one would kiss goodbye to good cross-Channel relations indefinitely. It would not stop Brexit however; it would merely reinforce in the British mind the picture of basic EU hostility and strengthen the urge to leave at any cost. For this reason, it is reasonable to dismiss failure to agree these basic matters; indeed, it has been said repeatedly by both sides that 80% of them are already agreed.

A World Trade Deal is another matter and, as we have seen, it is an attractive option for the UK, even better than the Canada+ deal that we would naturally cooperate on with the EU in the interest of good neighbourliness. But so bad is the mess into which the poorly thought-out Chequers proposals have plunged the UK-EU negotiations that the default World Trade Deal looks ever more likely. As our new Guide shows, this will bring us the full gains from Brexit and by bringing them faster with no burdensome transition period and tariff revenues from the EU, provide an additional fillip on top.

Friday 7 September 2018


On non-EU immigration, the government is asleep at the controls

Article by Alp Mehmet - Vice Chairman of Migration Watch UK, former British diplomat.

The question is often asked as to why non-EU net migration has risen to 235,000 for the year to March 2018. That represents an increase of more than 50,000 on the previous year and is 36,000 higher than in the spring of 2010, when the Conservatives took office at the head of the coalition government.

All this despite a 2017 Conservative manifesto commitment to ‘bear down on immigration from outside the EU’ and repeated pledges to reduce overall net migration to the tens of thousands (from more than 270,000 currently).

A paper issued by Migration Watch UK, How to deliver a significant reduction in non-EU net migration, argues that the Government has failed to make serious efforts to reduce non-EU immigration despite having powers to do so.

A number of factors have been in play:

·         Despite strenuous efforts by Mrs May when Home Secretary, she faced firm opposition from the Treasury, which has long favoured continued immigration simply to boost the overall size of the economy regardless of the impact on wider society and despite the absence of evidence for the UK of any significant benefit to GDP per head.

·         Other government departments also opposed restrictions, often as a result of special interests. For example, where the NHS had shortages of staff even when, as the government’s own Migration Advisory Committee has pointed out, this was partly due to a failure to invest sufficiently in training.

·         During the coalition years the Liberal Democrats had no desire to restrict immigration control from anywhere in the world.

·         Meanwhile those who were benefiting financially, such as business and universities, pressed for continued high levels of immigration to their own sectors.

·         Since the election in 2017 Amber Rudd, as the Home Secretary, preferred to kick the can down the road, partly because she believed that immigration was good for the economy.

·         The present Home Secretary Sajid Javid has so far not demonstrated any willingness to tighten immigration policy; in fact his decisions since taking office have had the effect of loosening controls.

Some allege that recent polling points to a ‘softening’ of public attitudes on immigration. However, more positive attitudes since the Referendum are mainly the result of a feeling that Brexit has either already led, or will lead, to reductions, according to Ipsos Mori.

Nearly two-thirds of voters still consider the level of immigration to have been too high over the past decade. That YouGov poll also showed that more 18-to-24-year-olds say immigration levels have been too high than the combined share who say the level has been ‘about right’ or ‘too low’. Other research by the London School of Economics has shown that voters are particularly concerned about reducing the level of immigration from outside the EU.

The Migration Watch UK paper indicates steps that could and should be taken to reduce the level of non-EU net migration. They are summarised (by category) as follows:

·         Students – Interviews to obtain a student visa should be extended to all applicants and made more rigorous. Students who wish to transfer into work after their studies should be included in the Tier 2 quota (currently 20,700) and subjected to the Resident Labour Market Test.

·         Family – The English language requirement should be raised and the income threshold to sponsor a partner should be increased. It should also be easier for victims of forced marriage to report on their circumstances in order to block visas. Such straightforward measures would help integration and reduce the burden on the British taxpayer.

·         Work (general) – The English language requirement should be raised and applicants should be qualified in a relevant degree. The salary threshold should be increased and applied to students transferring into work from a student visa.

·         Work (intra-company transfers) – This route needs to be thoroughly reviewed to prevent exploitation. It should be subject to the Resident Labour Market Test. Salary thresholds should be increased to better reflect the going rate in the UK.

·         Illegal immigration – The government should devote a great deal more political will and energy towards toughening up border controls and ensuring the departure of those with no right to be here. Former senior officials in the Home Office have estimated that there may be more than a million illegal immigrants in the UK.

·         Resources – An increase in resources for border control will also be essential, particularly given the need to divert resources to register about three million EU citizens under the Withdrawal Agreement.

It is clear that the government has taken its eye off the ball, indeed it has been asleep at the controls, when it comes to non-EU immigration. Implementing the above measures would help the Home Secretary make progress in delivering on a major Conservative manifesto commitment.