UK’s Exit from the European Union

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to wind up the debate for the SNP. I do feel for our Minister today—he has been the thinnest of blue lines, and I look forward to hearing his response. As much as I do not necessarily have a great deal of hope for the substance of it, I do have much respect for him personally for the position he finds himself in today.

I pay tribute to the organisers of the petition and the 178,000 people who have signed it. My hon. Friends the Members for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan), for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson), for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) all made very solid contributions to the debate, as did a number of colleagues from all parts of the House, except perhaps those on the Government Benches, though we look forward to hearing from the Minister.

On brass tacks, the SNP supports this petition. We want to see evidence-based policymaking. If we are to plot a way forward to a solution, it is important to find out how we got here. However, I voice that support with a wee note of caution. I hope I can gently express some reservation over the perspective that the petition’s wording reveals. It refers to

“the impact that Brexit has had on this country and its citizens.”

For the avoidance of doubt, my country is Scotland. The United Kingdom is not my country. The United Kingdom is a state. It is a Union comprised of four countries. Perspective is not a synonym for difference of opinion. We see this from a different place. Scotland has a very clear European perspective. My party is the most pro-European party in this Parliament.

I also have a particular neuralgia with the phrase,

“this country and its citizens.”

To my mind, the people who were most affected by leaving the EU in the way that we did were EU nationals resident in these islands. They had their lives turned upside down. They had the right to come to these islands to live, work, study and marry into our communities. They had those rights taken away and they did not even get a vote in it. I am deeply proud of my party’s ethos that if someone is in Scotland, they are one of us. It is not obligatory but people are very welcome to be one of us if they want to be.

I am deeply proud of the fact that the Scottish Parliament has legislated to ensure that voting eligibility in Scottish elections— the ones we control—is based on residency rather than nationality. That is a queer sort of nationalism in a continental, historical, European sense, but Scotland’s tragedy for 250 years was that we exported our people. It was freedom of movement from the European Union that started to get it back up again. I am deeply proud that anyone who lives in Scotland is one of us, as far as the Scottish Government are concerned. That was not the case in the EU referendum.

In the independence referendum of 2014, the Scottish Government quite specifically chose the European franchise for voting entitlement in order to broaden eligibility as much as we legally could at the time. We have since broadened it further. In the EU referendum, however, despite SNP amendments proposing to broaden the franchise, the UK Government chose quite specifically to say to 2.6 million people living in these islands, who are a part of our communities and our families, and who pay taxes here—it is demonstrably true that EU immigrants pay far more in taxes to the UK Exchequer than they take back in services—“The UK had a debate about your place in our community, your position in our economy and your role here, but you’re not getting a say in that because you’re foreign. You’re not one of us.” That is a deeply ugly, exclusive politics, which I hate. I am sure that the petition’s wording is unintentional, but I think there should be a wider perspective than

“this country and its citizens.”

I would also have liked to have seen mention of the fact that the UK’s exit from the European Union has damaged European solidarity. It has damaged sincere co-operation. The arguments for exit were based on the exclusive idea that, somehow, the UK was subjected to EU laws that we had every part in producing. I therefore support the petition, but with some reservations about the wording.

The SNP is the most pro-EU party in Parliament. I am the party’s Europe and EU accession spokesperson. Those words were chosen deliberately because it is our mission to get an independent Scotland back into the European Union. We have a clear constitutional agenda and I believe that we will thrive as an independent state in the European Union. I also say to our UK audience and those taking part in pro-European campaigns in every community up and down these islands that the SNP also wants the UK to do well. I do not want to see the UK have a bad time. I believe that the UK should be as close as possible to the EU, if not part of it, with all its programmes and all its forms. I want the UK to have a functioning relationship with the EU that secures peace in Northern Ireland and that secures trade. The UK should also be part of the EU’s research intensive industrial policy, but it risks losing out. The UK will be our closest friend and our closest market—and vice versa. I want to see the UK do well. To those who do not believe me, I say that it would make our independence project easier because the EU we seek to join would, I hope, have a deep and relationship with the UK. I am not saying that just for its own sake.

I have been struck by how backward-looking some of today’s contributions have been. I do not think that the question how anyone’s constituency voted is relevant any more. Of course, Scotland voted massively to remain—that is a matter of fact. The UK as a whole voted to leave—that is also a fact. I think we need to talk about the democratic deficit implicit in the UK right now, which is demonstrated by how Scotland was removed, against our will, from the European Union. That is not about the battles of the past; it is about the discussions of the future. A backward-looking attitude impedes us from finding solutions to the problems that we are now experiencing. I have said repeatedly in debates in this House that I want to see the UK have a close relationship with the EU, and I will work towards that with anyone who wants to do so. The Windsor framework, which I pay tribute to, is a pragmatic step in that sort of direction. Let us, for goodness’ sake, see more of that rather than backward-looking attitudes.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am also not interested in rerunning the EU referendum. That was a long time ago; the world has changed. I am not interested in overturning the result. I respect everyone who voted leave, wherever they voted and for whatever reason. People who voted leave were entitled to believe the promises that were made to them. They were entitled to believe the good faith of the politicians and others who made those promises. However, to be frank, the reality is that the promises made have not been delivered. There may be reasons why they have not been delivered, so an inquiry would be useful in ventilating discussion.

Who can forget the greatest hits? We had:

“There will be no downside…only a considerable upside”,

and:

“Nobody is talking about leaving the single market”,

We were told that we would keep Erasmus and that

“we hold all the cards”.

In addition to all those things, we heard that the NHS would get £350 million a week. Who would not vote for that? It is remarkable that the numbers were not higher.

That needs to be ventilated, and that is why I support the aims of the petition. The vote was presented essentially as being risk free and consequence free. People were told, “Everything you like, you’ll keep. Everything you don’t like or don’t understand will recede from your life.” The reality has been really very different. I would expand the scope of the inquiry sought by the petition so that it also covers the techniques used by the leave campaign. I am concerned that we have an ongoing vulnerability to such recklessness. I would like to see a proper review of electoral law, data protection, campaign finance—in particular, the role of dark money—and the remarkable lack of a single leave campaign manifesto to hold the leave campaign to account. A variety of promises were made—some in good faith, some perhaps less so—but they have not been delivered. We also need a proper look at the powers of the Electoral Commission, and the role of broadcasters and internet providers in public information in future campaigns, because I think we have an ongoing vulnerability to recklessness.

We support this petition, but I add a word of caution. An inquiry of this sort would deliver a degree of truth, if it happens, and I would have to say that it is at the top end of expectation that it might. However, the people out there need answers, progress and solutions right now. We should establish truth—that is a good thing to do, in and of itself. We should also ensure that we fix any ongoing and future vulnerabilities. But people need answers now and I am not interested in a blame game.

The people struggling in my district, Stirling—an area bigger than Luxembourg that is the heart of Scotland—are suffering right now as a consequence of leaving the European Union. My farmers cannot get their crops planted or harvested, as we have a crippling shortage of agricultural labour; we have a crippling labour shortage in the hospitality industry, which is deeply relevant to my community; the NHS is short of staff; we have a lively music scene, but creative touring people are struggling; and young people on student exchanges are finding the process more difficult, more complicated and more expensive. Let us have specific sectoral visas for freedom of movement in and out of individual sectors to give them solutions to these problems right now.

For universities up and down Scotland and the UK that are suffering from the uncertainty over continued engagement in Horizon Europe, let us join Horizon Europe. It is on the table in Brussels right now. The Windsor framework has gone a way to building trust. Let us build it further, to everyone’s mutual advantage. I am not talking about reversing Brexit; I am talking about dealing with the problems that we have right now.

For our food importers and exporters, we need a veterinary agreement to make sure that the flow across the borders is as frictionless as it can be, and for our small and medium-sized enterprises we need single market membership to remove the barriers that have been put up by the recent events that we have suffered.

The SNP supports this petition. We support EU membership for Scotland as an independent state, but we also want to see the UK have a close relationship with the EU, because that will go a way towards not apportioning blame for how we got here, but fixing the problems that we are all experiencing. I view that as a common endeavour and will engage with anybody from all points of the compass to see it happen. We support this petition and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.