National Spitfire Project

Debate between Alex Chalk and George Kerevan

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[George Kerevan]

I am happy to reinforce the sentiment to the Minister that the support comes from all over the islands. I want to underpin that with a little bit of extra history on the Spitfire, which I think all of us will do this afternoon.

The Merlin engines were largely manufactured at the Rolls-Royce shadow factory at Hillington, just outside Glasgow. Some 160,000 people worked at that factory and it provided the engines not just for the Spitfires, but for many of the other aircraft that served the RAF. That was part of what happened in world war two, and people did that selflessly. However, there is an interesting side to the Hillington experience of building the Merlin, because large numbers of the people making the engines were women. Initially, they were not paid the same as men; they were not even paid the same as the ordinary labouring workers were. That led to a lot of industrial unrest and, in 1943, to a major strike. Of course, that was a very difficult thing to contemplate in the middle of world war two. The feeling in the factory was that we were not just fighting against evil, but fighting for a new, democratic society, so they took industrial action—very regrettably, but they took it. The result was that for the first time in these islands a major engineering factory granted equal pay to men and women. We should weave into the Spitfire story the fact that the fight for equal pay began with the Spitfire, strange as it may seem.

I will not keep Members long, but I want to add another couple of Scottish contributions. I do so not to be sectarian, but to underline the fact that this would be a common monument and would represent all of these islands.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. His parents worked on the Spitfire, as did my grandparents. Does he agree that, without the combined resources and ingenuity of all the nations of the United Kingdom, the Spitfire would surely have never flown, and that the Spitfire is a powerful reminder to us today that we truly are stronger together?

[George Kerevan]

It is self-evident that we have to defend these islands together. What divides us at the moment and in times past is how we organise our democracy, and I think we are mature enough to have that discussion. What the SNP bring, and have always brought, to the table is the idea that we will share the common defence of these islands. That has never been in question. Indeed—my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) might say this in a brief moment—we often have discussions about defence issues because we do not think the Government protect these islands adequately, but that is a debate that we can have elsewhere. Our division on how we organise our democracy in these islands should not get in the way of the fact that we have a common interest in defending them. The history of the Spitfire and the second world war is an exemplar of that.

I will be very brief, as other Members want to speak. There is one other person who needs to be mentioned today with respect to the Spitfire and the battle of Britain: the man who was the head of Fighter Command, Hugh Dowding. We have all seen the film “The Battle of Britain”, which, for all its faults, I still love—when the music comes up I still get excited—and we have all seen Laurence Olivier play Hugh Dowding. There is just one slight problem—it is the same problem I had when Laurence Olivier played Earl Haig in “Oh! What a Lovely War”. Earl Haig was a crusty Scot, with a deep Scottish accent, which Laurence Olivier definitely did not have, and Hugh Dowding happened to be born in Moffat in Dumfries and Galloway. His father was a teacher at Fettes school in Edinburgh. The unity of these islands in the Spitfire story goes all the way to Hugh Dowding from Moffat, who was head of Fighter Command in those dark days. There is a large and very simple, but I think poignant, monument to Hugh Dowding, head of Fighter Command, in his home town of Moffat. That underlines the fact that the Spitfire monument in Southampton has been a long time coming.

I will finish with this. My wife was born and bred in Southampton—I know it well—and her image of the city is the bombed-out Southampton of the 1950s, so these islands are interconnected. We can have a serious debate about how we do our democracy. I grant no ground on that—Scotland will be independent—but we will all stand together in tough times. We share these islands; we will defend these islands together.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Alex Chalk and George Kerevan

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), who argued his case with his characteristic clarity and eloquence. I campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU and I do not resile from a single argument I made in favour of that position—I happen to think I was right—but I recognise that I lost the argument. I did not agree with the referendum result, but I respect it. I am absolutely clear that democracy demands that we vote to trigger article 50 and that to do otherwise would be democratically unsustainable. Let me take a few moments to explain why.

The first point to make is that our relationship with the EU had to be resolved. Wherever one stands on the question of whether we should have been closer to or further away from the EU, the reality is that the UK’s relationship with it lacked democratic legitimacy. The boil had to be lanced; the referendum had to take place. Some say that we should have not let the people have their say. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), whose speech was a masterclass that I was privileged to witness, set out his view that this is not a matter that the people should decide. That might have been right in 1970, 1980 or 1990, but the culture of our country has moved to the point—whether we call it the collapse of the deference culture or something else—where a decision of this House on something of such enormous constitutional significance would not have the currency that the British people required. It had to be them who made the decision.

I stood on a manifesto that promised to offer the British people the referendum and to honour its result. The manifesto clearly stated:

“We will honour the result of the referendum, whatever the outcome.”

To betray that would be unconscionable. If that were not clear enough, on Second Reading of the Bill that became the European Union Referendum Act 2015, the then Foreign Secretary said that that Bill

“has one clear purpose: to deliver on our promise to give the British people the final say on our EU membership in an in/out referendum”—[Official Report, 9 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 1047.]

How can anyone in this House who voted in favour of that somehow ignore the position now? How is that democratically sustainable? I say that as somebody who did not welcome the result, but I have to accept it.

During the campaign, I do not recall that it was ever suggested by anyone on either side of the debate that somehow the vote would or could be ignored. Everyone understood the vote’s significance, and not a single person I spoke to suggested that the result might not be respected. If there were any doubt about that, should we not reflect on the 72.2% turnout? The reason why the turnout was so great was because the British people recognised that they were being asked not for their advice, but for their instructions.

[George Kerevan]

Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a difference between voting to come out of the EU and coming out of the single market? Opposition Members are trying to argue that the Government are rushing to judgment on the single market.

[Alex Chalk]

I make two points in response to the hon. Gentleman. First, I am concerned that those who fasten on the point about the single market are using it as a fig leaf—an excuse to try to avoid the referendum result. Secondly, I am perfectly clear that I would have preferred to stay in the single market, but it has become tolerably plain over the past six months that that was never a credible option, because the four freedoms that the EU holds so dear—goods, services, labour and capital—are perceived to be utterly inviolable. There was never any flexibility on offer.

My personal view is that it would have been in the interest of the European Union to offer some flex in respect of the free movement of labour. Had that been offered to the former Prime Minister, we might have remained in. Indeed, had it been offered to our current Prime Minister, we might have remained in the single market, but that has never been on offer. Edmund Burke said:

“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its own conservation.”

The EU may, in due course, come to rue the decision not to offer some flexibility.