National Referendum on the European Union

Debate between Douglas Alexander and Graham Stuart

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to speak after the Foreign Secretary. This debate takes place at a time of great peril and uncertainty for the British and European economies. I am sorry that the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, for whatever reason, have felt unable to join us in the Chamber for the debate, which has already revealed, no matter what the result in the Division Lobbies this evening, the scale of division on the Government Benches.

I urge opposition to the motion because I do not believe that Britain’s national interest would be served by spending the coming months and years debating the case for Britain leaving the world’s largest single market. Recent figures have revealed that there has been zero growth in the economy since last autumn. Unemployment is rising again and has reached a 17-year high. Almost 1 million young people are unable to find work. Amid all the passion generated by this debate, no one can dispute the enduring significance of European markets to Britain’s economic prospects.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Alexander]

I will make a little progress, then I will be happy to give way.

Let me share with the House the description of Europe’s economic importance to Britain given to me in a recent parliamentary answer by none other than the Foreign Secretary:

“European markets account for half of the UK’s overall trade and foreign investments and as a result, around 3.5 million jobs in the UK are linked to the export of goods and services to the EU.”

He states that those markets provide

“the world’s most important trading zone, generating total GDP close to £10 billion in 2010”.—[Official Report, 12 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 256W.]

In what I hope was a drafting error rather than an economic forecast, he of course got the size of Europe’s GDP wrong by a factor of 1,000. It actually had a GDP close to £10 trillion in 2010. The importance of the European economy to the British economy is none the less clear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alexander]

The global financial crisis that was suffered in 2007 is hardly news to anybody in the House. Indeed, it seems to me that there is a broadening consensus that international economic circumstances affect the performance of the British economy. We are increasingly hearing that line from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The House has only recently debated the circumstances in which it judged it appropriate for a referendum to take place, and tried to formalise the process by which to decide what is significant and what is not. The current Government legislated for that in the European Union Act 2011.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept his role in the corrosive state of public mistrust in politics, after promising a referendum on the European constitution, aka Lisbon, and then breaking that promise, and of course after agreeing to the bail-out in the dying days of the last Government? Have the billions of pounds of public money that have been spent on that helped jobs in this country? I suggest to him that they have not.

[Mr Alexander]

First, the inconvenient truth for the hon. Gentleman is that there is no EU constitution. It was rejected by the Dutch and French voters. Secondly, if I recall properly, the newest member of the Cabinet, the Transport Secretary, is on record as having written a letter confirming the cross-party nature of support for the steps that were taken. In that sense, the hon. Gentleman might be better directing his question to the newest member of the Cabinet.