EU Referendum Leaflet

Gavin Robinson Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Trevelyan]

Indeed. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I think that value for money was not given a great deal of consideration when the document was published.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

Two hundred and one of my constituents signed the petition, as did 214 constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). The leaflet has not been sent to the people of Northern Ireland yet, and yet the anger grows. Since the arguments for the Government’s proposition in the leaflet have been shot through so convincingly, does the hon. Lady believe that the Minister should at least take the honourable step of saying, “Enough is enough; we recognise we made a mistake and we will not send it to the devolved regions”?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I hope the Minister takes note of that and perhaps saves the taxpayer a little bit of the money that the Government have so unscrupulously chosen to spend.

I want to look at one section of the leaflet—the wider issues have already been raised by other hon. Members and will no doubt be covered in more detail. The heading on page 7 is, “What happens if we leave?” That is clearly an open question—it sounds like an A-level question. One would expect the answer to cover both sides of the argument, presenting the for and the against, and giving a bit of detail and a concluding position, but it is clearly from one side of the argument. Apparently, voting to leave would create uncertainty and “potential economic disruption”. “Potential” leaves a little uncertainty. I think we have had definite economic disruption forever. Economies go up and they go down. Anyone who suggests that staying in a particular bubble will maintain some kind of economic stability has not been looking out of the window much.