EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK Debate
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Christine Jardine
Main Page: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)Department Debates - View all Christine Jardine's debates with the Cabinet Office
EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK
Christine Jardine Excerpts(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Stephen Gethins
I absolutely agree. That is the benefit of Ireland being a member of the European Union and why I cannot fathom why Labour and, I am sorry to say, the Liberal Democrats—I can understand the Conservatives and Reform—do not endorse rejoining the European Union. It is staring them in the face.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I tire sometimes of the hon. Member’s party in Scotland making this fuss about us not wanting to rejoin. If he looks back, he will see that the Liberal Democrats were the ones who desperately wanted not to leave. We campaigned for a second referendum. We want to create a new customs union. We desperately want to be closer to Europe, so, please, will the hon. Member kindly give the correct picture of the Liberal Democrat position?
Stephen Gethins
The correct picture is this—let us talk about the present. Do the Liberal Democrats want to rejoin the EU right now? My party does; does the hon. Lady’s? I will give way again—yes or no?
Christine Jardine
If the hon. Member can explain the contradiction between wanting to join one union and give up sovereignty and wanting to leave another.
Stephen Gethins
The hon. Member has fallen into the nationalist exceptionalism trap that I would expect more from the Conservatives or Reform. Why is it that the 27 member states of the European Union consider themselves independent and sovereign? The European Union is a club for independent states; the UK is not. That is the fundamental difference.
I will talk briefly about migration, because it is important—and I want to make progress, as a lot of Members want to speak. The UK left the Dublin regulation, which led to an explosion in the number of small boats—the Brexit boats, the Reform boats, the Tory boats. In the EU, irregular border crossings have gone down, but in the UK they have gone up. I know that the Government are looking at returns, but that is a desperate situation.
On the impact on devolution, Scotland voted to leave, but even within the deal we have the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020. I hope the Minister will revisit that Act—one that Labour cried out about previously, and the Scottish Parliament refused consent for. We have talked about Northern Ireland. Because we do not have the purest of pure Brexits, now the European convention on human rights is under threat. It is a bit like the purest of pure communism has apparently never been tried; the purest of pure Brexits, for the ultimate Brexiteers, has never been tried either. The threat to devolution continues under the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, and I hope the Minister will address that.
Finally, we are less secure. Today is four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and I know we are all in the same place on that. It turned the whole of Europe upside down. The EU is integral to our security, so will the Minister tell me why Canada can join the defence procurement scheme but the UK cannot? What progress is being made on that? It is a fundamentally important issue.