European Union: UK Membership

David Chadwick Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for introducing this debate, as well as everyone who signed the petition. We all know by now that, thanks to the Conservatives and their allies in Reform, the relationship between the UK, Wales and the EU has been severely damaged. Falling out with our neighbours is particularly self-defeating during this fracturing era of global politics, and Wales is paying a particularly heavy price for that fraying relationship.

We are a nation of manufacturers, small businesses and farmers, and those three sectors have been throttled by red tape, hindering our trade with the European Union. In my constituency, a small local business in Radnorshire that makes parts for classic motorcycles is heavily reliant on EU trade, yet over Christmas, with no warning from the Department for Business and Trade, it was told that it was now incompatible with EU directives. That is just one example of how Brexit-related bureaucracy is harming businesses and damaging trade with our neighbours.

Farmers and the food and drink industry across Wales are also waiting for the long-promised UK veterinary agreement. Studies show that such an agreement could boost UK agrifood exports to the EU by at least 22%, providing a vital boost to rural areas such as mine. However, we have still received no timeline from the current Labour Government on when that is likely to happen.

It is not just the economic impact, though, but the cultural and social loss for young people. I thank my good fortune that I had the opportunity to live and study at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Those sorts of opportunities broaden horizons and contribute to growth. One of the cruellest and most short-sighted decisions by the previous Government was pulling us out of the Erasmus programme. In Wales, the Liberal Democrats stepped up to reverse the damage. Former Education Minister Kirsty Williams introduced the Taith exchange programme that, unlike its English counterpart, has been praised for ensuring accessibility for students from less privileged backgrounds.

Ultimately, the Liberal Democrats want to see the UK back at the heart of Europe, which would mean rejoining Erasmus, tearing down trade barriers and signing a youth mobility scheme with our EU counterparts —something the Labour Government have so far refused to do. The arc of human progress should ensure that older generations pass on more opportunities to younger generations than they have themselves enjoyed. We are living in a time when that arc of progress has gone into reverse, and us pro-Europeans must now win the argument for a stronger EU with Great Britain at its heart.

I was concerned to hear the word “pragmatic” used several times in this debate, because it sounds like pragmatic reasons are being given as excuses for not making more progress in rebuilding our relationship with the EU. We should be concerned by talk about pragmatism and arguments made solely in rational language, because those arguments failed miserably in 2016, when arguments were built as to why we should stay in the European Union based solely on rational economic language.

The EU is a pragmatic project, but at its core it is also an idealistic one. It is a project grounded in ideals, and in the idea that the nations of central Europe should never go to war again. It succeeded in that mission, making it one of the most successful political projects ever in mankind’s history. When we are making the argument for rejoining the European Union, let us use the language of idealism, not just rationalism. Unless we build a case for the UK to rejoin the EU based on idealist language and get people to buy into the ideals on which the European Union was founded, we will not have long-term buy-in to the project among the people we need to convince.