Leaving the European Union

Debate between Lisa Nandy and Graham Stringer

Monday 19th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer]

My hon. Friend makes a number of points. On trade unions rights, there is no doubt that in 1988, when the President of the Commission came to the TUC, he said, “Forget Thatcher; we can look after the trade unions.” Unfortunately, we moved from a social Europe to a global, much more free-market Europe. Since then—I do not know if my hon. Friend knows—the Viking and Laval decisions have undermined minimum wage legislation throughout Europe, and have damaged trade unions because they have changed the definition of a trade dispute. I do not accept that the EU is fundamentally good for trade unions, but I must move on.

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

I was not going to talk about Northern Ireland, because there are people in this room who know a great deal more about it than I do, but I do not think there is anyone else here who was present—the Minister could have been, but I am pretty certain that no one else was —when Croatia was accepted into the European Union. There were about three or four of us in the Chamber—there clearly was not as much concern about the EU then. Croatia has one of the EU’s longest borders with the rest of Europe. Across that border there is human trafficking and sex trafficking; it is unguarded a lot of the time and it is one of the main entry points of wickedness into the EU. Croatia was accepted by the EU, but it did not have the rule of law, and it protected war criminals after the break-up of Yugoslavia. The EU wanted Croatia in, because it was expanding.

Northern Ireland has had a troubled border. The EU had nothing to do with the Good Friday agreement. The basis of the Good Friday agreement is that all parties accept peace. The EU has been weaponising that issue; the United Kingdom Government have said very clearly that they will not produce a hard border, so the only people who might are those in the EU. They have used that as a control over the UK, which unfortunately the Prime Minister has accepted.

This is a huge debate, as I am sure you know, Mr Hollobone. The continued project fear accepts that somehow the EU has been great for the United Kingdom’s growth, and that the EU’s regulatory model is economically a good thing, but for the 10 years before the referendum, all other continents apart from Antarctica grew by considerably more than the EU—it was not a particularly vital area. There are some areas where this country is strong, such as in the biological and agricultural sciences, where we are world leaders, but the regulations coming from the EU damage our economy and cause job losses regularly. I do not believe in a completely free market—quite the reverse—but we can have regulations that are appropriate to our economy, and that will help us to create jobs at the cutting edge. The only future for this country is in high technology, which is restricted by the EU.

Although there are many more points I could make, I will finish by talking about no deal. It would be better if we had a deal. It is extraordinary, when our regulatory position is completely aligned with the EU, that the EU tries to keep control of this country’s laws. It is even more extraordinary that the Prime Minister has accepted that. The majority of our trade is on World Trade Organisation rules. The EU is a signatory to the World Trade Organisation. There is no reason whatever why the disruption if we left the EU without a deal would not be minimal. Are people here who support the EU saying that if we left without a deal, the EU would stop sending medicines to this country? If they are saying that, why would we want to be part of a body that would punish the child with muscular dystrophy that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan talked about? It would not happen by accident; the EU would have to stop medicines coming to this country. It would have to stop radioactive materials needed for the health service from coming to this country.

[Lisa Nandy]

We rely on our Government being prepared to go back to the EU to seek that ongoing co-operation to prevent that from arising. I have asked the Government to provide clarity on that. It cannot be right that we are asked to back something without absolutely no idea where it may lead and what the alternatives are.

[Graham Stringer]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I hope the Government will go back. I hope that those five Members in the Cabinet who say that this deal is simply not good enough have their way.