European Union (Referendum) Bill

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Friday 17th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

The greatest threat to British business would be the return to government of the hon. Lady’s party. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] My constituency contains many business people and many people who work in the City. I would not always take the voices of the big battalions as being representative of the people who are running the firms out there in the country and the people who are on the trading floors of the City of London—the people who are bringing the wealth into this country. That is what really matters.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Bill. His entire argument is predicated on putting trust in the great British people, and this party is willing to do that. Is it not telling that the Labour party could probably have turned up in a taxi this morning, given that so few of its members are present? Is it not obvious that they do not trust the British people to decide?

[Robert Neill]

It has been observed by wiser people than I that it is sometimes best not to try to fathom the unfathomable workings of providence, and the same applies to the mind of the Labour party.

It is precisely because of that step change that has taken place in our relationship with the European Union, which affects all aspects of our economic and social life, that the renewal of consent is required. My Bill has exactly the same format as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South: it proposes that the British people should be given a simple and straightforward choice in the form of an entirely comprehensible question. The one exception, which was accepted by my hon. Friend, is that my Bill includes the people of Gibraltar, because of Gibraltar’s particular status as an overseas territory which, effectively, is physically within the current European Union.