Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993
Debate between Graham Stringer and Philip Hollobone(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Graham Stringer
The EU is not only a thin-end-of-the-wedge organisation but absolutely not a learning organisation. It is ideologically committed to ever-greater and closer union. It will not listen to arguments, however sensible they are, and however well this economy has or has not done over the past five or 10 years, and it will not take empirical lessons because its ideology is different from that. I will not repeat my previous points about starting the process of this sovereign Parliament’s reporting to the EU.
Mr Hollobone
I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with great interest, and he has evident expertise in matters European. Does he share my concern that one of the problems with our so-called convergence with Europe is the impact on our trade deficit with Europe, which, I understand, is large and growing? That might well be partly a consequence of the tremendous economic recovery in this country and competitive devaluation in Germany, but, given that we are meant to talk about convergence today, my concern is about the growing deficit in trade with our European partners.
Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Programme
Debate between Graham Stringer and Philip Hollobone(11 years ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is unlikely that Rouhani has any serious differences with the Ahmadinejad regime? The fact that he was one of six chosen from 3,000 potential candidates by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei indicates that he is probably completely at one with them. Is it likely that somebody who wanted to execute demonstrators campaigning for freedom shares any of the values of democracy or of the west?
Mr Hollobone
The hon. Gentleman speaks a great deal of sense and makes some extremely pertinent points. I hope the Foreign Office has taken note of his intervention. I suspect that, going back to the 1930s, the default position of the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence is to try to arrive at an agreement to solve our problems through international accord. Of course, all of us see a lot of sense in that, but it must be stated in this case that no deal is probably far better than a bad deal. A bad deal will not solve anything. In fact, a bad deal will allow the Iranians under their present leadership, with all the other people behind the scenes, to cross that nuclear finish line. Once Iran has a nuclear weapon, the negotiating stance of the Foreign Office and the international community will be blown out of the water. This is our best chance to stop nuclear proliferation in the middle east.