UK-EU Renegotiation

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

On my hon. Friend’s latter point, the European Parliament is a party to these negotiations and I have had a number of meetings with it. If he looks at the draft declaration of the European Commission on the safeguard mechanism, it is very clear that we are justified in triggering the mechanism straight away. On his other point, he is absolutely right to say that we need to secure in the negotiations the best possible agreement on all the other aspects of the operation of this mechanism: how long it lasts for, how many times it can be renewed, and all the rest of it.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

There were approximately 500 days between the announcement and the date of the Scottish independence referendum, which is roughly the same length of time between today and 23 June 2017. There are 30,000 British citizens living in European countries and claiming benefits, so how will this draft, permanent, still-to-be-negotiated, legally binding package affect them?

[The Prime Minister]

I can let the House into a little secret. The reason why there were 500 days between the announcement of the Scottish referendum and the referendum itself is that I was so determined that there was going to be one question and one question only that I granted the former First Minister, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), the right to name the date. He wanted to make sure that the referendum took place after as long as possible, after the anniversary of Bannockburn, after everything—everything he could throw in. I have to say that, from my point of view, the result was still very clear.