European Union

Neil Parish Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

To continue the party analogy introduced by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), I am certainly a willing attendee, although judging by his speech he is a bit of a party pooper. I did not agree with much of what he said, but I certainly agreed with the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) and others who have spoken from the Opposition Benches—if not always in opposition to us.

I want to mention the response from my constituents. Since the Prime Minister’s action on Friday, we have been inundated with e-mails, Twitter messages, answerphone messages and telephone calls to the office from people—people who voted for all different political parties—saying that the Prime Minister was absolutely right to draw a line in the sand. It has been interesting listening to the people who criticise us on this issue and the language that they use. It is the usual sort of Euro-fanaticism that we hear from them, the usual patronising guff, as I called it the last time I spoke.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is right. The Prime Minister used the veto to stop this European integration. Sitting in the European Parliament, of course, one finds that people are ever driving for greater union. This is one Prime Minister who has actually stood up for the British people. We must commend that.

[Andrew Percy]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who, having been not at the heart of the EU but certainly present, knows a lot more about its workings than I would ever wish to know.

I was talking about the language used by those who object to or criticise the Prime Minister’s actions despite having no alternative plan. They say that it is ill thought out, that we are ill informed and ignorant and that we do not understand the issues. My response is this: we understand the issues perfectly well, we understand how the EU works; we just do not like it—and you know what, Mr Deputy Speaker? They need to wake up because the public do not like it either, if the response to opinion polls and in our constituency offices and e-mail inboxes is anything to go by.

Of course, these are exactly the same people who argued for us to be in the euro. We hear this nonsense from Labour Members that they were the party that kept us out of the euro. They were not at all. They would have had us in there had it not been made so politically inconvenient and difficult for them. That is why they spent so much money trying to prepare us for the euro. I suspect that quite a few of them, if they were honest, would have us in the euro at the first possible opportunity. So we will not take any criticism from the Opposition Benches—I mean the Labour Benches, not the finer Benches occupied by Irish Members.