EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Danny Kinahan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)]

This is the last of my chances over the past few weeks to put the case as an Ulster Unionist that not all Unionists are for leaving—the Ulster Unionist party is for staying in, although it is a free vote for the others. I am proud to be part of the Northern Irish team that wants to remain, along with the Social Democratic and Labour party, the Alliance and Sinn Féin, although we all have slightly different views. As we have heard, we all need to pull together if we are to remain. The public are fed up with the battling, the bullying and the hyping; they just want—in so far as they can—to have the facts on the table, to know how they will be affected and to have a chance to vote. We have to let them decide, and then things fall to us.

I say, as a Unionist, that we all have to work together. My greatest concern in this whole debate is that the Union may fall apart if we leave the EU. If Scotland, as SNP Members have indicated today, does its own thing, Northern Ireland will be stuck out there in the north-west, with Ireland on a different set of rules and Scotland on a different set of rules. We will then be coming to England for help whenever we need it, although I do not want Northern Ireland to carry on holding out a begging bowl.

When it comes to the economy, I am proud to have been on a Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that produced a balanced document, given that seven of its members were for out, and all the others were for in, and I recommend that document to everyone. However, the key point for me was when an Italian hedge funder told me, “It’s all very well for everyone in the south and everyone who is wealthy. They’ll be able to bounce along and succeed on their own if you leave, but everyone else—those who don’t have the strong marketing teams and the funds to expand—will struggle. They will be the ones who suffer.” That is the north, Scotland and all sorts of other places. We need to pull together. The Union should pull together.

The last point I want to make is that, when we go to the Somme and see the countryside and all the graves, we realise that there was not just that war—there was Waterloo, Agincourt and all the other European wars. Our duty is to lead and to be in there, showing people how to do things, pulling them all together, changing what needs to be changed, and not having the bloodbaths we had in the past. That is why I want to stay in.