Iain Dale: There are plenty of Brexit benefits to be had

9 February 2022, 21:49 | Updated: 10 February 2022, 09:32

By Sam Sholli

This is the moment Iain Dale said that "there are plenty of Brexit benefits to be had, even if we don't see them evident at the moment".

Iain made the remark after the publication of a report which has found that Brexit has forced businesses to endure higher costs, more paperwork and border delays.

Iain said: "There are plenty of Brexit benefits to be had, even if we don't see them evident at the moment.

"And I don't just judge them in economic terms, I have to say."

Iain went on to list benefits of Brexit in his eyes.

He said that "we are now free to make trade deals with countries that the EU has failed to do".

Iain added: "You look at procurement rules. We can now do those ourselves. That's a benefit.

"Competition policy and state aid - we can now control that ourselves. That, I think, will be a benefit.

"We can control VAT rates. We've now taken VAT off tampons. We wouldn't have been able to do that as EU members.

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"We've banned the live export of animals. Again, we wouldn't have been able to do that as EU members."

Iain also said: "And the vaccine rollout, I think that has been a tangible benefit.

"Yes, we could have stayed within the European Medicines Agency - but we chose not do.

"I think if we'd still been in the EU, we would have almost certainly had to go along with it.

"We chose not to and our vaccine rollout was way ahead. And that meant that our economy has been able to open up in advance of most other European economies.

"That is a tangible benefit from not being part of the European Medicines Agency at that time...I fully acknowledge that we could have done that if we were still in the EU, but I think there would have been so much political pressure on us to conform to all of the other governments that I suspect we would have actually ended up doing that."