Daniel Hannan (ECR). – Madam President, the whole premise of this debate is wrong – the whole tenor of the arguments we have just been hearing from my friends in the Socialist Group about cheap imports, as though they are a bad thing. Think of what lower prices mean for people on low incomes! The countries that have done best are the ones who did not worry about cheap imports, about dumping if you want to call it that.

They took the view that, if foreign taxpayers wanted to subsidise their own consumers, that was more foolish of the foreign taxpayers and very nice for their consumers, and the Hong Kongs, the Singapores, more recently the Australias and New Zealands, all benefited by opening their markets without insisting on reciprocity.

Behind all of this talk about protectionism and anti-dumping lies the reality that protectionism is a way of transferring wealth from entrepreneurs to politically connected old companies, from start-ups to companies with unionised labour, from the many to the few, and frankly from the poor to the rich.