EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Debate between John McDonnell and Baroness Keeley

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

That is an interesting point, and in this debate people have talked about our ageing population and just how much we need youth coming into this country to enable us to balance the population growth.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

We need to point out that one in five of the adult social care workforce in this country—230,000 people—was not born here. Greater London, in particular, is reliant on migrant care workers, with 60% of the adult social care workforce born abroad. Much of that sector would collapse without them, so those who talk about interfering with and restricting this have to remember that our care sector relies on these people.

[John McDonnell]

It is true to say that our care sector would collapse without the migrant labour we currently have, and that is a danger.

Much of the EU debate so far has dwelled on the past and immediate present, but as a country we need to look to the future. Many of the issues we face are transnational: climate change, tax evasion, tax avoidance and the refugee crisis. They cross country boundaries. The EU provides us with the vehicle to work in co-operation with our European neighbours to tackle these issues, but we have to recognise that people do care about what they see as a loss of sovereignty. A strong reform agenda is needed to ensure that where sovereignty has been pooled in decision making, there is democratic accountability. That means making decisions in the EU completely open and transparent, and ensuring that the Commission is effectively democratically accountable. It starts within the UK, by ensuring that we have more open and effective mechanisms for holding to account those Ministers and others who represent us in the EU decision-making process.

Britain takes the EU presidency shortly, which will enable us to lead the drive for reform. For the first time in a generation, there are parties and movements across Europe mobilising on an agenda of reform that we can share. There is the real and growing prospect now of a new European progressive coalition emerging that is willing to seize the agenda of the EU to end austerity, secure employment growth, tackle tax evasion and avoidance, confront climate change and of course co-operate to deal with the tragic humanitarian crisis of the refugees.

To conclude, in the overall debate on the EU I think I am where a great many British people are when it comes to making the decision next week. I did not vote to go into the Common Market, and I have been generally a Eurosceptic, critical of the frustrating bureaucracy of the EU. I am not a Europhile or a Europhobe. People like me are carefully balancing the prospects for my family, my community and my country. I think that, like me, many will take a pragmatic view that the leap in the dark of leaving Europe is a risk too far. For Labour supporters there is the added concern that needs to be taken into account: this would be a Tory Brexit. On 24 June, if Brexit goes through it will be a Tory Government who will be implementing withdrawal.