Outcome of the EU Referendum

Michael Dugher Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

If everybody is to get in, the questions now need to be much shorter. Otherwise, I warn people, they will not get in, and then they will be upset.

[Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that there are profound lessons to be learned at the Government Dispatch Box, and indeed at the Opposition Dispatch Box, about how we listen to and responsibly address the perfectly legitimate concerns that good, decent working-class people have about things like unskilled immigration, and the consequent self-evident alienation they feel from their current political leadership?

[The Prime Minister]

Immigration was a key issue in this campaign. I was hoping that the welfare restrictions I had negotiated would help to address that, because people in this country feel a very clear sense that someone should not have something for nothing—that people should pay in before they take out. But clearly that was not enough to reassure people. Also, there has been a lot of immigration from outside the EU over many, many years. People want to see the system brought under control and management, and that is what needs to happen. We need to have a rational debate about it—I think there is a quite a lot of common ground between the two parties—and that is what we should get on with.