My Lords, as this month we are likely to see the UK economy moving from recession to stagnation, I can imagine that there were briefings in the department a few weeks ago to show some of the trade figures. There will probably be a collective view from Ministers, saying, “We don’t like those facts and figures; bring us some different ones”, so I am grateful for the alternative facts and figures of the state of British trade to be presented to Parliament.

Unfortunately, as I read the Statement, it had a degree of pathos. It is quite sad that Ministers keep banging on about Brexit, and have not got over some of the grievances they had before and immediately after the referendum. It is rather a pathetic sight to see them making a Statement such as this, with very few people listening.

Many people in some of the key sectors of our economy are looking for action, not rhetoric and Parliamentary Statements. Many of our exporting partners in our key markets are looking for reduced barriers and burdens. I shall come to that in a moment. Primarily our businesses are looking for reduced costs, less bureaucracy and the Government knuckling down to ensure that what has been claimed to be “the world’s best border” actually functions as just a decent one, not one with its processes 20 miles from Dover for likely checks, for whose introduction there has been delay upon delay upon delay.

Any good news about British trade is good news, and I welcome it. I seek the best for our exporting businesses. However, that will not come about through rhetorical Statements such as this. For example, we are told that the UK economy has grown faster than those of Germany, Italy and Japan—without the obvious context that we fell the sharpest and the deepest after Brexit and as a result of Covid. Any recovery at all over that timeframe would be faster. The question is not the speed, but the totality of whether our economy is likely, at the end of this decade, to be bigger than it was before the referendum, or would have been if there had not been a referendum. Every indicator, including the Government admitting this to the OBR, says that on a compound basis, after 4% a year, our economy will be considerably smaller. To say that is not to do down our country; that is just, as the Government might put it, a fact.

The Government have issued a Statement. It would have been useful to have some footnotes with links to the documents. I commend the officials for scouring the UN and UNCTAD, as well as our official government statistics. As the noble Lord said, they have done a grand job of cherry-picking. The UNCTAD trade briefing for the UK shows, for example—this is one indicator—that since 2015 exports are up from £467 billion to £533 billion. That is good, and the Government refer to an increase in exports. What they do not say, however, is that UK imports have gone up much more, from £630 billion to more than £823 billion. The United Kingdom trade deficit in goods has gone up—and not only gone up, but doubled as a percentage of GDP. UNCTAD says that in 2015 it was 1.59% of GDP, whereas in 2022 it was 3.01% of GDP.

The Minister might say that talking about trade deficits is old fashioned, and that our economy is a service-sector economy. However, the trade deficit is very important when we analyse who that deficit is with. It is primarily with China. Yes, that is an indication of the growth in the economy of Asia, but the UK now has the biggest trade deficit with a single country ever in our history. The deficit with China is more than £40 billion. The Minister heard me refer to that.

That puts all the individual references, such as to access to the Mexican market, of £18 million, in perspective. Access to the Mexican market of £18 million is good; I welcome that. But I am more concerned about the fact that the UK has not done a resilience analysis of our key sectors, with an enormous trade deficit of £40 billion—that is £40,000 million—with China. In the context of President Xi visiting Europe, but also Hungary and Serbia, UK trade in the world is now a geopolitical consideration.

The Government have indicated that, as the Statement says:

“We are tearing down the barriers to trade”.

The Minister will probably not be surprised to hear that I disagree with him, and I will not be surprised that he will disagree with me, so we might want to settle with regard to the independent Regulatory Policy Committee, which advises Ministers on this very issue, and its analysis since the period referred to in the Government’s Statement. We can take one example from the 2017-19 Parliament, and I quote directly from the committee. It said:

“For the 2017-2019 Parliament, the relevant government set a … target of a £9 billion reduction in direct costs over the length of the Parliament, however the final position was an increase in costs of £7.8 billion. Similarly, the government has set a holding target of £0 for the current Parliament”— zero was the holding target for the Parliament we are in—

“but in the first year of the Parliament, there was an increase of £5.7 billion (excluding the very significant impacts of temporary COVID-related measures)”.

This Government have presided over the biggest single increase in business burdens—bigger than any of their predecessors—and the fact that some have been removed, without any reference to the totality of the sum of the 500 referenced in the Statement, is pointless to put in.

My final point concerns what Governments can do to reduce burdens. My noble friends Lord Fox and Lady Randerson have raised repeatedly the increased costs now per British business, of £145 per consignment. This is, I remind the House, “the world’s best border”, and it is a typical cost per business of £100,000 since the new measures have been put in place—but it is also about friction of trade, when it comes to safety and security certificates, customs declarations, evidence of origins of goods, VAT requirements, health certificates and chemical certificates. These are all barriers. I hope the Minister can give an indication now of what the estimated net reduction in British business for trade will be. We have seen that the increase has been £100,000; what is the trajectory down? As I started, British businesses are not looking for boosterism, they are looking for bureaucracy and costs to be reduced and, unfortunately, nothing in this Statement would suggest that they are.