European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between John Hemming and Kelvin Hopkins

Friday 17th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming]

It is a question of buyers and sellers. Normally, selling something is a bit harder than buying it. People will sell things quite happily, but it is one thing to sell to Germans in German and another to buy them in English. There is some difficulty with the idea that our exports would simply be taken as read. I do not accept that people so want to purchase our exports that they would do exactly what we wanted. If we look at the EEA, we find that Norway contributes a lot of money to the EU through its EEA membership. The argument that not being in the EU would save us money is not necessarily a valid one. I do not take the view that suddenly everybody would bend over backwards to do exactly what we want, but that does not necessarily mean that we should go into the negotiations saying that we will swallow whatever comes out of this. The Opposition’s view that we should never stand up for anything because we might lose is not mine.

I was very pleased when the Government pulled us out of supporting the eurozone financial arrangements beyond supporting the International Monetary Fund. That was a sensible decision. In the dying days of the last Government, when Labour lost the election, they underwrote things, but doing so is actually taking on a big risk.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman mentions Norway. People make a lot of the fact that Norway collaborates substantially with the EU, but is it not more that its political classes are trying to get round the fact that they are not members of the EU by going along as far as they can with it? They have three very good reasons for not being in the EU: fishing, because they have their own fishing rights; oil, which they understandably want to keep and sell themselves; and agriculture, which they still protect for their own benefit.

[John Hemming]

Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland are members of the EEA but not of the EU. If we look at the pattern of different memberships, we find that some countries are members of the Council of Europe, but others are not. It is quite complex. The Vatican, for example, is a member of nothing, yet it can print euros. [Interruption.] Strange, isn’t it? But for whatever reason, Norway happens to be a member of the EEA, and we need to think about what the alternative would be if we had a choice about being or not being in the EU. That would be an important decision, but if we want to remain in it, it does not mean that no changes to how it works should be made.

Perhaps the error among some in my party has been not to drive for change. As I said, we cannot have a situation whereby people are encouraged to migrate here to be poor. That just cannot be rational; we cannot have that. When people started work on the treaty of Rome and other arrangements, nobody thought that that would be a sensible outcome. It involves using taxpayers’ resources to achieve a negative rather than a positive. Rather than rescuing people who have been marginalised, we create more marginalised people.

The Opposition raised concerns about the wording of the question. I am very supportive of it. I campaigned against having a directly elected dictator in Birmingham when such a role was proposed. About 5,000 people found that their votes had been disqualified because they wrote the word “No” on their ballot papers. I think that it is quite a good idea for there to be questions that allow the answers “Yes” and “No”, because these campaigns are always fought on a “yes or no” basis. I have not looked into how many ballot papers were spoiled at the time of the Scottish referendum, but there was a big problem in Birmingham. People were writing “No” on their ballot papers because they understood how they wanted to answer the question, but there were two boxes to be ticked, and it was not entirely clear which box they should tick in order to express their view. I think that the Electoral Commission got things wrong in that regard.

We are where we are today. We are exerting some pressure for the adoption of a time scale, and we are moving towards change and towards trusting the British people.