Jamie Stone
Main Page: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)Department Debates - View all Jamie Stone's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 day, 20 hours ago)
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Mr Kohler
It is damaging to our businesses, workers, communities and relations—and to the EU, of course. It is damaging to everybody. That is what Putin and Trump knew.
In south Wimbledon, a local Italian bakery La Bottega del Pane faces endless form filling. In Wimbledon village, the florist Gardenia of London faces similar hurdles. A small error in complex documentation can leave crucial deliveries tangled in red tape. Stale bread and dead flowers—a fitting epitaph to Brexit. It is not only businesses that are being harmed. A generation of young people is set to miss out on the life-changing opportunity of working abroad, from a winter season in the French Alps to a summer in Greece. Those are the formative experiences that our young people are currently being denied.
The time has come for a clear and pragmatic road map to rebuild our ties with the EU, as the Lib Dems have been calling for since the last election.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
May I take my hon. Friend to the far north of Scotland, which I have the honour to represent? The EU helped to pay for harbours, roads and all sorts of infrastructure. We have the signs still—they are fading, but they have all the stars on them, and we were damned grateful for it. We do not have that money any more. What does that mean? Opportunities are going and young people will start to think about moving away—the old curse of highland depopulation.
Mr Kohler
I agree entirely. Sadly, the EU did not shout enough about all it did. It was forgotten or not seen by many. Those were crucial things that we should have shouted about more, and we must shout them about now.
I urge the Prime Minister to go to the forthcoming EU summit with a plan to not only agree a youth mobility scheme but begin negotiating a growth and defence partnership, a customs union and the terms under which we might join the single market. The negotiations will not be easy, but the UK has much to offer and even more to gain. Let us proclaim loudly that the aim of this re-engagement is to one day, in my lifetime, become full and active members of the EU once more.