EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits) Bill

Pat Glass Excerpts

Friday 26th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who is not present but whose Bill this is, for giving us the opportunity to once again debate the merits or otherwise of the European Union.

I think we should have a cost-benefit analysis of this debate, given that right at the beginning—it has been going for some three hours—we were told that it was highly unlikely that the Bill would be taken any further, because that would require the referendum to be delayed. It is, therefore, a complete waste of everybody’s time and of taxpayers’ money.

[Mr Chope]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Pat Glass]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could tell us how much this debate has cost the taxpayer.

[Mr Chope]

May I ask the hon. Lady whether that is her best point?

[Pat Glass]

No, but I think it is worth saying. We have sat here for three hours, and we have heard Members talk for at least an hour about a Bill that they do not intend to take any further. As the Bill is about a cost-benefit analysis, perhaps we can have a cost-benefit analysis of this morning for the taxpayers of this country.

[Oliver Colvile]

My great grandfather was a rural vicar in Oxfordshire. He said that he did not mind his congregation looking at their watches; it was when they started shaking them that he became concerned. I feel that that is something we should take on board.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I assure you that I am beginning to look at my watch.

[Pat Glass]

That is helpful. As the hon. Gentleman has spoken about his great grandfather, I will talk about mine a little later. [Interruption.] Would the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) like to say something about my great grandfather? I will talk about him later, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to intervene then.

[Oliver Colvile]

I would like the hon. Lady to talk about her great grandfather.

[Pat Glass]

I will do so later.

We had a long debate on European affairs yesterday. I am sure we would all agree that it was an excellent debate, with many outstanding contributions. The debate has felt a little flat today, because we have returned to the usual suspects with the usual very narrow arguments. However, it gives me an opportunity to talk once again about the benefits of being a member of the European Union. I do not think—this is one of our criticisms of the Bill—that the benefits of being a member of the European Union can be narrowed down to simply an economic cost. The question is much bigger than that.

Labour, as hon. Members know, are united on this issue. We believe that Britain is stronger, safer and more prosperous as part of the European Union.

[Philip Davies]

Is that it?

[Pat Glass]

No; just a second. We are a proud nation, with almost half our exports going to European countries. Those exports were worth £227 billion last year to the UK economy. We receive, on average, £26.5 billion of investment every year from the EU. Jobs and businesses, large and small, depend on our trading with the EU. Future EU trade could create 790,000 more jobs by 2030 by opening up markets in digital services, energy and tourism.

I will talk a little about my part of the country. The north-east is the only part of the country that has a trade surplus. Proportionately, we are the biggest exporting region in the country. We make things in my part of the world and we export them, largely to Europe. As I said yesterday, we make more cars in one city in the north-east in a month than that great car-building country, Italy, does in a whole year. I invite Conservative Members to go along to Teesport or the port of Tyne and see the lines of cars that are made in the north-east and exported to the European Union. In my region, 75% of our trade depends on being part of the European Union. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in the north-east are directly or indirectly linked to being part of the European Union. That is just one aspect of the benefits.

I will talk about the peace dividend later, but I want to talk a little about the fact that we live in a global world where we face issues such as international terrorism, international crime, war, migration and Russian expansionism. Listening to the debate today, I have not heard anything from Conservative Members that gives me any answers to the big questions facing us. It is not possible to reduce those huge issues to a cost-benefit analysis or an economic cost.

TTIP has been mentioned. I have to say that my blood runs cold at the thought of negotiating a TTIP arrangement outside the European Union. I am quite clear that our public services and our NHS need to be protected in any negotiations about TTIP. Having listened to the libertarians opposite, I am sure that that would not be the case.

[David Morris]

On negotiating TTIP within Europe, it is my understanding that that point is a non-issue, especially in relation to the NHS, as has been clarified many times during the past three years. Will the hon. Lady elaborate on that point?

[Pat Glass]

In such negotiations, it is clear that we are much more likely to get a TTIP agreement with red lines around our public services and the NHS as part of the European Union. If we were outside the European Union and negotiating such a treaty directly with the USA, I would not be so confident that that would be the priority of the current Government.

[David Morris]

For the record, does the Opposition agree that there will be protection for the NHS under TTIP within the European framework as it stands?

[Pat Glass]

We agree that if there is to be a TTIP agreement, it is much better to negotiate it with Britain as part of the European Union.

We have talked a lot about sovereignty in recent weeks. Many of us would agree that we have in various ways negotiated on our sovereignty in order to be part of something bigger. We have given up part of our sovereignty in defence to be part of organisations such as NATO, and we have done the same with the UN. On a personal level, when I married—I have been married for 30 years—I gave up some of my sovereignty over decisions that I would have made myself to be part of something that I accepted was bigger and better for both of us. The principle is very clear: in order to be part of something better, we sometimes have to give up things we want to hang on to. That is true of our sovereignty. I do not believe that this country has given away our sovereignty. It is very clear that whenever decisions are made in the European Union, they come back to and come under the sovereignty of this House.

On immigration, one of the huge strengths of this country—it has made us one of the strongest, richest, most powerful and greatest countries in the world—has been our ability, over centuries, to absorb and integrate millions of immigrants, migrants, people fleeing oppression and economic migrants. My family were economic refugees who came to this country during the Irish famine in the mid-19th century. Such people came to this country and worked hard for it. They brought up their children in this country, and paid their taxes. They fought for this country and, frankly, some of them died for this country. That is part of what makes this country the great country it is. To the idea that we can close the doors to people who will work in our NHS or our schools, I would say that that is part of what has kept this country rich. This country has got rich and stayed rich on immigration. We need to be very careful when talking about closing the doors to people, particularly those from the European Union.

[Mr Chope]

I do not think anyone has talked about closing the doors. We have talked about giving equal access on the basis of merit to foreigners regardless of whether they are from the EU or from outside the EU. For example, the hospital in my area tried to recruit nurses from the Philippines because they are well qualified for its needs, but it was unable to do so because priority has to be given to EU nurses.

[Pat Glass]

If we look at EU immigration, we can see that it is almost the same: 2.3 million people from the European Union are in Britain; and 2 million Brits live in the European Union. Many of them are working in and contributing to European countries and some of them, having worked hard all their lives, have retired and are now living in the European Union. We must be absolutely clear about what “out” would look like for those people. At the end of this debate, I want us to be very clear about that. We know what “in” looks like—we have had 41 years of what “in” looks like—but we absolutely no idea what “out” would look like for jobs and the economy, or for people from the EU working in this country and people from this country working in the EU.

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Pat Glass]

If the hon. Gentleman is going to tell us what “out” would look like, I will happily give way.

[Philip Davies]

I am rather interested in the Labour party’s views. I urge the hon. Lady to look up the meaning of net migration. Net migration means the number of people coming in after we have taken out the ones who have already left, and that figure is 325,000. Is her party happy with the net migration figures as they are? Is she not prepared to take any measures to reduce them?

[Pat Glass]

Once again, another opportunity to tell us what “out” would look like and we do not get it.

We had an excellent debate in the Chamber yesterday, a lot of which centred on the peace dividend. I have not heard anything about that from Conservative Members today. The first aim of the European Union was peace. It was created not as a project or a political union, but to ensure peace in western Europe after the ruins of 1945. We committed genocide on one another in western Europe every 30 years up until 1945. As I said in the Chamber yesterday, for me this is personal. It is not just about politics. I accept that the European Union is not the only reason why young men and women are not lying in graves outside Thiepval and Ypres today, unlike my great grandfather and his brother, two young men from this country aged 22 and 25 who died within six weeks of each other and are lying in unmarked graves in Belgium and France. Great though the loss was to my family, it pales into insignificance alongside the loss suffered by other families. Mrs Smith from Bishop Auckland, a town just over the hill from where I live, lost her husband and her five sons. How can we put an economic cost on that? At the end of the awful wars in western Europe, when we regularly turned our continent into a killing field, the victors and the vanquished said never again will we allow this to happen. I believe that by voting to remain in the European Union we will ensure that this never happens again to the young people of this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

I was not privy to the exact point in the debate when that comment was made, but I will ask the relevant Home Office Minister to write to my hon. Friend to clarify exactly what does happen. I am now mildly curious to find out those details myself.

[Pat Glass]

That is really interesting and I wonder whether that happens. It sounds like a damned good idea, doesn’t it?

[Mr Ellwood]

I feel an element of consensus breaking out in the Chamber, which is a rare thing.

As I bring my introductory remarks to a close, may I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on promoting the Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough, who has been an astute advocate of debating these matters in more detail? The issue of Europe is not only topical, but of the utmost importance. It received a full day’s parliamentary debate yesterday and we will have further debates leading up to 23 June.

The British public made it clear that they were not happy with the status quo, and the Prime Minister sought to address that, so last November he wrote to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, setting out in detail the four areas in which he sought change to the European Union, namely economic governance, competence, sovereignty and immigration. At the February European Council he achieved a deal covering each of those areas.

As the Prime Minister has said, we said that we would get Britain out of ever closer union and give national Parliaments the power to work together to block unwanted EU laws. The deal we have delivered means that we will never become part of a European Union superstate.

We said that we would make Europe more competitive, and we have delivered that in this deal as well, with commitments to cut red tape, in particular for small businesses. That means we can create more jobs and security for working people in Britain.

We said that we would protect Britain as the eurozone continues to integrate. We have delivered that in this deal, which means that British taxpayers will never be required to bail out the eurozone and that British businesses can never be discriminated against because we are not part of the euro.

We said that we would put an end to the “something for nothing” welfare culture for EU migrants so that we can control immigration from Europe, and we have delivered on that as well. EU migrants can no longer claim full in-work benefits for four years, which some people said would be impossible to achieve, and child benefit will no longer be sent overseas to Europe at UK rates. We have already delivered our commitments to require EU migrants to leave Britain after six months if they have not found work and have no genuine prospect of finding a job, and to stop EU migrants being able to claim universal credit while looking for work.

This is a legally binding and irreversible deal that delivers for Britain. It means that we will never join the euro, never join a European army and never be part of the Schengen borderless zone.

Soon the people of Britain will have their say on the UK’s membership of the EU. The Prime Minister has announced that he intends to hold the referendum on Thursday 23 June, and that must now be agreed by both Houses of Parliament. We have already published information on the outcome of the Government’s negotiations on the UK’s membership of the EU, as required by the European Union Referendum Act 2015. In time, we will publish information on the rights and obligations resulting from the UK’s membership of the EU, as well as examples of countries that are not members of the EU but have other arrangements with it.

This will be a once-in-a-generation moment to shape the future of our country. Ultimately, it will be for the British people to decide, but the Government have made it clear that we support continued membership of a reformed European Union. I want to set out in more detail the Government’s thinking on renegotiation, but first I will explain some of the benefits—I am sure that Back Benchers will appreciate this—of our membership of the EU.

The Government’s long-term economic plan is delivering economic security for families and businesses, underpinned by sound public finances, by investing in the UK’s future, addressing the productivity challenge and rebalancing the economy towards trade and investment. With turbulence in the global economy, membership of the EU supports that plan by giving British businesses access to the free trade single market and dozens of trade deals across the world. The Government’s deal keeps the EU moving firmly in the right direction. It hardwires competitiveness into the decision making of the EU and commits the EU to pursuing more trade deals with non-EU countries. We contribute a huge amount and get a huge amount in return. We cannot be a force for good in a reformed Europe if we are not at the heart of what is going on. We are a major player—