No more big European contracts for West Midlands if Britain leaves the EU – Cameron
IT would be almost impossible for firms such as Birmingham-based transport group National Express to compete – and win – more contracts in countries such as Germany if Britain were to leave the EU, the Prime Minister has told TheBusinessDesk.com.
Visiting one of the group’s bus stations in Digbeth to talk to apprentices, David Cameron said free market opportunities open to the company now would be almost non-existent from outside the Single Market.
National Express is currently operating train services in Germany in a deal that will be worth £1.15bn to the business over the course of the 15-year contract. To put this figure into perspective it is around the same price Tata Motors paid to acquire Jaguar Land Rover.
Speaking to Mr Cameron, I asked him how easy it would be for the company to win similar orders if Britain left the EU.
He said: “I that that’s a very good point. Because we have a single market of 500m customers in Europe it doesn’t just mean that we can just make things and sell them or even come up with services like insurance and banking and market those across Europe, it means our companies can win business across Europe in areas of public procurement so National Express runs train services in Germany, bus services in Spain and other countries but if we were outside the Single Market then it would be undoubtedly more difficult, possibly impossible to bid for those services.
“Talking to the team here, they say it’s not just good for the company, it’s good for the employees, it means more jobs, more opportunities. The young people joining this company have opportunities to work, live and travel in other European countries which I feel would be cut off if we were outside the Single Market.”
The Prime Minister said Brexit would also have a bad impact on firms like Jaguar Land Rover.
“We need access to the Single Market of 500 million customers, which is what we have today,” he said.
“If we leave the EU and the Single Market then we will have worse trade terms than we do now. If we had a situation like the US has with Europe then we would pay a 10% tax on every Jaguar or Range Rover we sold into Europe and that would be bad for that business and that’s why when you listen to all the big inward investors into Britain then they all want us to stay in the EU because they think that is the best way to create jobs and investment and that translates to better lives for people in the West Midlands.”
