EU Council

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I would not put it like that. The point that I have always made is that I think we should have a sense of what the net migration should be. In a modern advanced world and a modern advanced country such as Britain, often well over 100,000—many hundreds of thousands—British people and EU nationals here move to Europe and elsewhere, and European nationals come here. Measuring the net number, which is obviously imprecise and difficult, because people leave Britain for all sorts of reasons, is a good way of measuring the pressure on public services. As recently as 2008, the number of people leaving the UK and the number arriving from Europe was a little bit negative. That is why I have always focused on the net migration issue, but the overall numbers should be measured at quite a large level, because the gross movements can be much bigger than the net figure at the end.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the Prime Minister recognise that whoever becomes the next Prime Minister will have no mandate to negotiate on behalf of the people of this country, not least because the leave campaign failed to set out any serious plan for what Brexit looks like in practice, and so the fairest, clearest thing to do would be to go for an early general election?

[The Prime Minister]

I would argue that we are a parliamentary democracy, so the new Prime Minister and the Cabinet should draw up their negotiating mandate based on the work that is going to be done over the next few weeks and months to set out all the alternatives, and then they will have to bring it here, explain it and defend it in this House. That seems to me the right way forward.