LABOUR have been blasted by the Speaker after “telling MPs to go home” because they planned to delay an official statement on the UK trade deal with America.
Speaker Lindsay Hoyle fumed at Trade Minister Douglas Alexander after he tried to postpone giving MPs an update on the agreement struck with Donald Trump.
Hoyle said: “You’re going to come forward with a statement, because you converted an [urgent question] this morning to a statement, so a statement has to be made.
“I understand that people were going around telling people to go home as there would be no statement because Downing Street had decided. We don’t do business like this. It is totally wrong and given the benefit of the doubt, I’m sure you’d like to update the house on the position of where we are now and of course the details, I would expect them to come on Monday.”
Alexander said that he would “of course defer to your judgment” and tried to begin the statement before Hoyle interrupted.
The Speaker said: “It’s not my judgment, these are the rules of the house.
“A UQ was put in, it was converted by the Government to make a statement, so therefore it is on the government now to come forward with the statement.”
Tariffs on UK exports to America remain at 10%, while the UK’s tariffs on US imports now stand at 1.8%.
This means the baseline rate of 10% is in force across all sectors, with the exception of steel and aluminium which are at zero.
Car export tariffs have been cut from 27.5% to 10% on a quota of 100,000 UK cars, about the number which were exported to the US last year.
SNP MP Chris Law said that Donald Trump’s presidency meant the US was an “unreliable partner” and that the UK should move towards “trusted” allies in Europe instead.
He added: “Given Trump has previously described the EU as a foe, very nasty and an atrocity, can the minister provide unequivocal assurance that there are no conditions whatsoever attached to this deal that will constrain the UK’s relationship with the EU, which is the UK’s largest trading partner?”
Alexander pointed to past comments from Keir Starmer, in which the Prime Minister argued that Britain did not need to choose between good relations with the US or Europe.
The minister also said that Labour had succeeded in making sanitary and phytosanitary standards – which keep food free from disease – a “red line” in the negotiation, so that British standards were closer to those in Europe.
This means American chlorinated chicken is still illegal in the UK under the terms of the deal.
