Trading Relationships with Europe

Michael McCann Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Our country has been and is being turned around, but it will prosper whatever the institutional arrangements of our relationship with Europe. We are a brilliant country with the most enterprising and innovative people in the world, and it ill behoves anyone, least of all the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, to compare Britain’s future to a brutal dictatorship such as North Korea. For him to compare Britain to North Korea shows a perverted sense of reality. Indeed, he loses heads and hearts when he makes such a comparison

There is nothing God-given about the prosperity of our nation or our continent, but with the right policies there is nothing to stop us becoming the most successful major nation upon earth. That cannot be done, however, without reform.

Those who argue against a referendum make the following case. They speak of the risk to investment, which the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned. However, since my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced our policy of a referendum before the end of 2017, investment to the UK has increased by 14%. We have attracted the most inward investment since records began in the 1980s and business investment has risen by 6.8%.

They speak of the dangers of uncertainty, but this referendum does not bring uncertainty. That uncertainty already exists, because we live in a democracy with an unhappy relationship between the British people and the European institutions. Many of us have never even had the chance to vote on the question. The uncertainty is there because in the past politicians repeatedly signed over yet more powers to the EU and repeatedly refused to ask the British people for their consent.

Just as we were left in 2010 on the verge of bankruptcy, so our credit with the British people on the issue of Europe had run out; and just as we on this side of the House are turning around our nation’s economy, so we plan by this renegotiation and referendum to restore trust in our relationship with Europe by putting the final decision to the British public, whom we are here to serve. The referendum does not create uncertainty; it will resolve it and give the British people the say that they have been for so long denied.

The right hon. Gentleman speaks of jobs, but there are record numbers of jobs, and unemployment has been coming down at a record pace. He speaks of British influence in Europe, but our influence is strengthened, not weakened, by taking a clear-eyed view of the British national interest. I ask this: where was the influence in Europe in the past when red lines were printed in such faint ink that they were stepped over again and again, when rebates were surrendered and powers handed over with so little in return?

[Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)]

The Minister speaks of red lines. Is he in a position to outline tonight the Government’s red lines in the European renegotiation?

[Matthew Hancock]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman what we do with red lines. Shortly after his election in 2010, the current Prime Minister threatened to veto a proposal that would have damaged Britain, and our European partners were so used to those threats being made and then abandoned by previous Prime Ministers that they did not believe he was serious. But he was serious and he vetoed the proposal. Now when Britain speaks about the need for reform, we are listened to. That is leadership in Europe: no longer on the hook for eurozone bailouts; no longer increasing the regulatory burden but reducing it; and the European budget no longer rising but being cut. That is our policy.

Let me be clear about our policy in the next Parliament: it is not the narrow vision that sees Europe as the centre of the universe at a time when we export more to the rest of the world than to the EU for the first time in my lifetime, but a patriotic, outward-looking vision of reform and a referendum.