EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Mark Hendrick Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The forthcoming referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union will say a great deal about how we, the British people, see ourselves as a nation. Are we a nation at peace with ourselves, internationalist in outlook, confident of our place in the world and comfortable in the belief that by working closely with others we can govern our peoples to the benefit of everyone? Or are we fearful of the outside world, feeling that the European Union is doing Europe to us rather than us being a part of Europe, and fearing the threat of immigration, because the concept of free movement of European citizens has been conflated with free movement of refugees, economic migrants and legal or illegal migrants from outside the European Union?

We face a whole host of problems: illegal migration, people trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, environmental pollution to our rivers and seas, and so on, and none of those things respect national boundaries. Working together in the most successful multinational organisation that the world has ever seen, with its own single market, is a solution to our problems, not a problem in itself. Yes, we have our differences with our European neighbours, but they are settled on conference tables in places such as Brussels, Strasbourg, London, Berlin and Paris; not by bloody wars on European soil as they were for hundreds of years—indeed, in the last century, those problems escalated into two world wars and resulted in the deaths of millions of people.

The real response is for Britain to admit that those problems are also our problems. We cannot shut ourselves off politically and economically from the rest of Europe, and we must recognise the geographical and political fact that we are part of a union of nations that share common interests, values and goals, and that our neighbours’ problems will soon become our own unless we work with them to help solve them. If we did not already have the European Union, we would have had to create something similar to deal with those problems, and many others.

History, solidarity, and common sense are good reasons for staying in the EU, but let me be a little more hard-headed and talk in terms of costs and benefits—I have said little about the benefits of the EU and many of the things that we take for granted. The anti-Europeans and xenophobes who say that Europe is a threat totally disregard decades of successful membership that have contributed to making Britain the world’s fifth largest economy. Yes, we could “survive” and “manage” outside the European Union, but at what price? The benefit of being a member of the largest single market in the world has a cost, which is why we pay contributions for membership as we would when joining any club. We do so because we accept that the benefits outweigh the costs.

Let us consider what the UK’s largest business organisation, the CBI, has said, as well as the UK’s largest workers’ organisation, the TUC. We have access to a $16.6 trillion a year single market of 500 million people, which is a key benefit. The single market goes beyond a standard free trade agreement. The EU has eliminated tariff barriers and customs procedures within its borders, and it has taken strides towards removing non-tariff barriers, such as goods regulations, across the board. The UK’s contribution is a small net cost, relative to the benefits, of around €7.3 billion, or 0.4% of GDP. It is clear that the UK’s largest business organisation is in favour of our remaining in the EU.

The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, says:

“Working people have a huge stake in the referendum because workers’ rights are on the line. It’s the EU that guarantees workers their rights to paid holidays, parental leave, equal treatment for part-timers, and much more…These rights can’t be taken for granted…And without the back-up of EU laws, unscrupulous employers will have free rein to cut many of their workers’ hard-won benefits and protections.”

Without remaining in the EU those protections could well disappear. Vote remain.