EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

A few moments ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) made a passionate and magnificent speech in support of our membership of the European Union. He and I have been on the same side on this matter for many years, and I endorse every word that he said.

Let me begin by referring, like the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), to matters that particularly affect my constituents. The largest employment sector in Bromley and Chislehurst, in Greater London, is its business and financial services sector. According to the Office for National Statistics business and employment survey, 32.4% of my constituents and their families work in that sector. It is critical to their local economy—and that is leaving aside all the jobs in the supply chain that result from the income that it provides. It is crucial to the London economy, which benefits the whole of the United Kingdom. Leaving the European Union would, without question, damage the interests of the financial services industry, in which Britain is a world leader. This is an issue in which I have taken some interest in my capacity as secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on wholesale financial markets and services.

We have a winner here, and we have an opportunity not just to make it survive, but to make it better and stronger in a reformed European Union. That is why, when I intervened on the Foreign Secretary’s speech, I wanted to stress the importance of the Prime Minister’s renegotiation achievements. There were two key achievements. First, there was the commitment that British financial firms based here in the UK, and therefore outside the eurozone—of which we will never be members: we will never be subject to its internal governance rules or their bail-outs—will none the less have the significant advantage of being able to trade freely within the eurozone and the rest of the single market. That puts us in a unique position which no other free trade agreement replicates.

If we add to that the commitment in that renegotiation to completion of the capital markets union, that gives us a double opportunity to push forward in this area, at which we excel. It would be lunacy to walk away from that opportunity. Of course the Prime Minister is right to say we could survive outside the EU; London and the financial services industry, and my constituents, would survive, but I believe there is a real risk that they would be impoverished and I see nothing patriotic in running the risk of impoverishing my constituents or the people of this country.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech and makes an important point about patriotism. Does he agree that key to Britain’s national security is our economic security, and at a time when as a nation we are still borrowing as a nation more than the entire defence budget we need every single penny of public revenue to ensure our economy is strong, our finances are strong and our country is strong?