G8

David Nuttall Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman suggests, the two days of sunshine were a bonus, and not one that I was expecting. The point about the discussions with the Taliban is that they are taking place against the background of a statement by the Taliban that—I am paraphrasing—they do not want to see Afghanistan being used as a base for attacks on other countries. That is the right basis for them to start from, but clearly the whole aim of the process is to give people who thought that they could achieve their goals through the bomb and the bullet an opportunity to achieve them by political means. That is, I suppose, a parallel with the very painful process that was gone through in Northern Ireland.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on hosting such a successful meeting of the G8? Given the UK’s special relationship with the United States of America, however, does he not think that we could have made more progress on negotiating a free trade deal with America had we not left the matter up to the EU for the last 40 years?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Of course, if Britain wanted to leave the European Union, we could do so and we could then make trade deals with every country in the world. Obviously that path is open to us. The argument that I would make is that, as part of the European Union—the world’s largest single market—we have the opportunity to drive some quite good deals. Clearly we sometimes have to make compromises with EU partners with whom we might not agree, but I would argue that, on balance, membership of the single market brings clear benefits, as does the negotiating heft that we have. The whole point is that we are going to be able to debate and discuss this, not least in the run-up to a referendum by the end of 2017.