Hunt was careful with the words he spoke - and he was not lying when he stated that the duty changes he made were not possible under EU rules. But he also wanted the inference to be that the resulting cut in duty on some beers, the cut itself rather than the duty categories, was what was not allowed whilst in the EU. This had the pro-Brexit bonus of making many believe that the EU was preventing duties being cut. Which is misinformation. But then the pro-Brexit camp has been excelling at such misinformation for decades.
The youtuber whose video I saw (and who showed the part of J. Hunts speech in the HoC) claims otherwise. I cannot check and/or prove which is true. However, if you also say that this change could not be done while in the EU then this could be named a Brexit benefit I guess.
Just not a very big one. 
The duty has been cut on Ponces Beer, what is this country coming to?
I believe the term applied here is: clutching at straws
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Hi
You beat me too it Muddy.
Our idiotic Politicians have and still are turning Brexit into a right mess.
There was absolutely no need for this to happen.
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This retreat from aspects of Brexit that are sheer madness is welcomed all round. It was utter insanity to make UK businesses adhere to a UK standard of conformity, with all the associated paperwork, and also to a EU standard of conformity. Unless that business wanted no exports to the EU, our biggest trading partner. And any UK company wanting to import goods or components from the EU would have to demand that the EU supplier added this new UK standard of conformity to their goods and paperwork. Deluded stupidness that was never going to anything other than add costs and reduce trade. Hardly a benefit.
But, as has been predicted, this common sense shelving of additional UK specific standards means we start moving away from the Brexit ideas that are destructive and hopefully another step in getting back to a sensible and fruitful relationship with Europe.
Who is “fruit picking” here at the moment?
With the B awful weather we are having I am amazed there are any fruit to pick .
Must be Brexit’s fault:
Are we there yet?
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# Remainer myths are crumbling as GDP beats expectations
Real world data is undermining the doomster ‘Bregret’ narrative. There is little reason to now believe Britain is the sick man of Europe
What fun Britain’s rearguard Remainers appeared to have on 31 January when the IMF predicted that Britain was going to be the only major economy to shrink in 2023, the projected 0.6 per cent slide in output even worse than forecast to be suffered by sanctions-bound Russia.
Never mind that the UK had just finished 2022 as the fastest-growing economy in the G7; it was of course Brexit which was condemning us to poverty. “The effects of Brexit run through Britain’s last-in-class economy because they also run through its divided, exhausted politics,” declared the New York Times’ London Bureau Chief in a piece titled Brexit Turns 3: why is no-one wearing a party hat? “Brexit is the dark thread that, to some critics, explains why Britain is suffering more than its neighbours.”
According to The Observer, “Bregret” was now stalking the land. The OECD and CBI added their own ha’porth of wisdom, both independently echoing the IMF claim that the UK economy was headed for a grim 2023 relative to other European countries.
What an object lesson it has turned out to be in waiting for real-world data rather than reacting to what economic models are telling you, biased as they all are with the prejudices of those who create them. The Office of National Statistics this morning reported that the UK economy grew by 0.2 per cent in the second quarter, following growth of 0.1 per cent in the first quarter. It is not yet impossible that the economy could end up shrinking over the course of 2023, but it would take a pretty miserable autumn. Truth is, the UK economy has consistently outperformed forecasts over the past year – not least those worse-than-useless bulletins pumped out by the Bank of England which, from the vantage point of last autumn, had Britain in recession throughout 2023.
Meanwhile, economic life has turned a little sour in Germany, which was supposed to outgrow Britain this year. The past three quarters have seen growth of minus 0.4 per cent, minus 0.1 per cent and zero per cent. The Netherlands, too, had a wretched first quarter, with the economy shrinking 0.3 per cent; we don’t yet have figures for the second quarter. Italy grew by 0.6 per cent in the first quarter but shrank 0.3 per cent in the second. One of those three is looking likely to win the wooden spoon for Europe’s worst-performing economy in 2023.
Real-world data won’t stop the rearguard Remainers, of course. They will continue to insist that the UK economy is smaller than it would have been had we not left the EU. An outfit called the Centre for European Reform recently claimed that the UK economy would be 5.5 per cent bigger than it is now had we remained. The beauty of forecasts expressed in that manner is that they can never actually be proven wrong because we can’t compare reality with a parallel universe where Britain is still a member of the EU. Yet every time the Remain lobby makes a forecast that can be measured against real outcome it seems to then, somewhat amusingly, go wrong.
The New York Times was right about one thing: there is no justification for donning a party hat. We may not be in recession but we are stuck with anaemic growth, held back by a miserable failure to improve productivity, especially in the public sector.
But there is no shining example to be found across the Channel, and no reason to believe that we would be better off still pegged down with the sclerotic EU. One of the purposes of Brexit was to try to escape the low orbit of Europe’s over-regulated, over-protected economy. We can’t say that we have done that yet – though the potential is still there. But what we need is a government prepared to exploit our new-found freedoms.
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Is this a benefit ?
Snake Oil sales have gone through the roof 
Back in 2008, the EU economy was slightly bigger than the U.S. - as indeed it should have been, since the EU (plus Britain) has about 500 million people, compared to about 330 million in the U.S.
Today, the U.S. is leaving Europe bobbing in its wake. The EU plus Britain had a total GDP of $19 trillion last year. The U.S. has soared ahead to $25 trillion.
That means that the U.S. is now nearly 50 per cent bigger than the Eurozone! And with around 100 million fewer people!
The difference is so huge that it has become embarrassing and, of course, different people will come up with different solutions.
In Brussels the Commission officials will say that we need to ‘complete’ the EU single market. If only we had more ‘harmonisation’ and more regulation then we would produce European ’champions’ on the scale of Microsoft and Tesla and Apple.
What phooey! Does anyone still believe this stuff? One of the main reasons I backed Brexit so hard was precisely because I believe that Britain must escape this tired and failing European economic model, with its ill-thought-out regulation and vast non-wage costs.
Well, folks, seven years on and - partly thanks to Covid - we have still not achieved escape velocity; we are still being held in the gravitational pull of the EU, and (I might as well say it) agreements like the Windsor Framework don’t help, because they make it more difficult for the whole of the UK, including Northern Ireland, to be different from the EU’s regimes.
But we have made a start. We are diverging on biosciences and financial services, and we have the potential to go much further and faster. We need to show that Brexit Britain is radically different now, a place where you can invest and grow faster than anywhere else in Europe.
As I have suggested before, we shouldn’t be raising corporation tax. We should be undercutting the Irish, making this place - let’s be clear - more American in our attitude to personal and business tax, and to wealth creation.
We need to show that we actually admire and appreciate the madcap spirit of adventure that has propelled these cage fighters to their billions. We need to unleash in this country the originality and energy that has created these American giants - including the willingness to say or do the unthinkable. Because if we don’t we will end up in a woker, duller, poorer country, still magnetically linked to a woker, duller, poorer Europe.
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How is that a Brexit benefit? A shrinking European economy helps neither the UK nor any other European country. You are all just getting poorer.
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Lots of Migrants walk all the way through the almighty EU and then risk their lives trying to get across the Channel to the UK.
That must mean they they don’t view the EU as better, for them, in many ways?
Perhaps there should be a topic “If the EU is better than the UK, why do so many walk right through it to get here.?”
Hi
They come here because of our stupid system of benefits and the ability to disappear and work in black economy.
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I just read that they only get a tenner a day (for food) & are not able to work in a period of, up to, a year before their docs are all checked.
Wonder where our Gov thinks they all go when they’re not looking?
Hi
They disappear into the black economy and on the few occasions they are caught staff are instructed to release them on Bail.