European Affairs

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Evans]

I think that the answer is for us to have a veto on things we do not like. That is what sovereignty is all about. When I fight a general election, I want to be able to deliver what is in my party’s manifesto. I raised earlier the issue of child benefit going to youngsters who have never set foot in the United Kingdom. One of our manifesto promises was to stop that, but now we are told that we cannot do that. That is the nub of the problem; we are putting promises in a manifesto that we cannot deliver because the European Union will not let us.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Evans]

I will not, because there is no more injury time.

This is all about sovereignty. We talk about the illusion of sovereignty. Well, if anyone wants to see it, they should come to the Palace of Westminster. If we cannot deliver the promises that we put in our own manifesto because a governing elite somewhere else will not let us, that is the illusion of sovereignty here in Westminster.

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[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am most grateful for your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd).

I beg a little indulgence for a moment. It is highly irresponsible to bring in the Northern Ireland peace process as yet another scare against voting leave in the referendum. There was an open border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland when Ireland was not a member of the European Union and we were, and perfectly reasonable arrangements will be made with the Republic of Ireland if the United Kingdom votes to leave the EU. There are participants in the peace process on both sides of the debate, and they are talking perfectly constructively together. They will not allow this to become an obstruction to peace in Northern Ireland, and nor should we talk it up, because I think that that would be irresponsible.

I want to make the point that I am not advocating a second vote. If we get a vote leave in this referendum, as I expect we will, that will do for me. The point I am making is that article 50 is a provision of the treaties that we will have just rejected. The idea that we are bound to follow the article 50 provisions after we have just rejected the treaties in their entirety seems a bit odd. Given that the treaties were created by 28 member states negotiating together, 28 member states negotiating together to rescind our membership of the European Union might be a more sensible approach. However, that should be decided by Parliament, not by the Government acting on Crown prerogative in an act of petty vengeance to scare people.

[Peter Kyle]

The hon. Gentleman is saying that once we say no to the EU, we will tear the whole thing up and do it all on our terms, but he expects there to be a cordial relationship afterwards while we renegotiate on terms that are favourable to us. Are not those two things completely and utterly incompatible?

[Mr Jenkin]

Let me put it another way to the hon. Gentleman. Is he seriously suggesting that after the British people have rejected the treaty on the functioning of the European Union and the treaty on European Union, our European partners are going to say, “You may have rejected all that, but you are bound by this”? That is ridiculous. It is absurd. It is far more likely that Parliament will want to discuss the matter, the Government will produce a proper White Paper and we will proceed in an orderly and consensual manner, not in a precipitate one. The only reason those in favour of remaining are raising this is to try to scare people. It is another scare story, and we are not having it.

The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge also talked about uncertainty. May I point out to him that every time we have a general election, there is a certain amount of uncertainty? My goodness, at the next general election, if there is any possibility of the Labour party being elected, boy, there will be uncertainty! There will be uncertainty in the markets, and there will be pound gyrations. Democracy is about uncertainty, but we get more uncertainty where there is no democracy: look at Greece; look at Spain; look at the eurozone. That is uncertainty, and it is the uncertainty that we want to get out of.

If we vote leave, we know what will happen. We will get our powers back. We will get control over our borders. We will be able to spend the money that we send to the European Union as we want to spend it, instead of subsidising our European competitors. Three hundred and fifty million pounds a week, or a net contribution of £10 billion a year—that is a lot of money. We will be able to pay for the roads in Scotland. We will be able to pay for universities. We will be able to pay for the investment in science and research that we need, and then some.

The real question in the debate is what happens if we vote remain. What new laws will be imposed on us after we vote remain? What judgments will the European Court of Justice visit upon us over which we have no control? What about the next treaty? We know that there will be another fiscal union treaty like the one that the Prime Minister vetoed a few years ago. The agreement states:

“Member States whose currency is not the euro shall not impede the implementation of legal acts directly linked to the functioning of the euro area and shall refrain from measures which could jeopardise the attainment of the objectives of economic and monetary union.”

It sounds as though we are giving up that veto. We will not be able to veto a fiscal union treaty if we have signed this agreement, particularly if it is legally binding and irreversible. We are going to be stuffed. In whatever way that treaty affects our interests—we can even have a referendum on it—if we abide by this agreement, we will not be able to stop it. Talk about uncertainty; I think it is safer to leave.

Let me declare an interest as a director of Vote Leave. Let me also praise my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) for raising the tone of the debate and giving us an historical perspective. He underlined the fact that we are at a turning point in the history of our country. I was struck by the shadow Foreign Secretary’s reminder that more than a generation has passed since the last referendum, when his father was opposed and my father was in favour. Today, the shadow Foreign Secretary is in favour and I am opposed. I shall not speak for my father in this debate, but there has been a reversal of roles. The real question is: should the debate be about the past or the future? We do not live in the world as it was after the second world war—pre-globalisation, pre-global trade, pre-computers and the internet, pre-space age and pre so many of the scientific discoveries that affect our world today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Reynolds]

In a minute.

As the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex said in his powerful contribution, his grandfather, Winston Churchill, played an incredibly important role in preserving the peace in the post-war period. Edward Heath took us into the European Economic Community. Margaret Thatcher very successfully drove the creation of the European single market. Tony Blair, somebody of whom I am very proud because he won three elections for us, successfully pushed for the enlargement of the European Union.

I do not often agree with the current Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party, but I thought he made a very powerful case on Monday for our membership of the European Union. That powerful case goes beyond the deal that he struck. He was absolutely right when he said in his closing remarks that

“this is no time to divide the west”

when we face

“Putin’s aggression in the east; Islamist extremism to the south.”

I agree with him too that there is “strength in numbers” and that the choice in the referendum is between

“an even greater Britain inside a reformed EU and a great leap into the unknown.”—[Official Report, 22 February 2016; Vol. 606, c. 25.]

Many column inches and much time on the broadcast media over the past few days have been dedicated to the divisions in the Conservative party over our membership of the European Union and to the intricacies of the deal that was struck at the longest English lunch in living memory on Friday in Brussels. However, I hope and believe that it is the bigger arguments about why it is in our interests to remain in the European Union that will, in the end, determine how people vote in the referendum on 23 June. I will make three key arguments that are at the heart of the patriotic and progressive case for our membership.

Let me take the economy. We trade more with the rest of the EU than we do with any big economy around the world, including the US, China or India. As a member of the biggest single market in the world of 500 million people, we are a gateway to the rest of that market, which is why we are able so successfully to attract inward investment from companies in the European Union and beyond.

On the outskirts of my constituency, Jaguar Land Rover has invested in a huge award-winning engine factory that, when at capacity, will employ 1,500 people. Its chief financial officer recently said that any split from the European Union would damage trade for UK business, and he cautioned against “barriers” that would arise in the event of the UK leaving the EU.

[Peter Kyle]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly powerful point about the importance and interconnectedness of trade. Does she agree that the same interconnectedness applies to higher education? Universities share funding across Europe and come together in an interconnected way. By working together with research grants and research as one European Union, we share our expertise with that of others, and we solve global problems together.

[Emma Reynolds]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and the University of Wolverhampton and Universities UK have made that point clear. They think that there is great strength in universities across our country working together with other universities and research institutes in Europe, and they benefit from the investment and funding that we receive by being a member of the European Union.

Alongside my colleagues, as a Labour MP I will be making the social Europe case for staying in the EU. Thanks to the previous Labour Government who signed up to the social chapter—I am proud of that Government and that we took that decision—working people across the country have employment rights and protections that they would not otherwise have, such as paid annual leave, and rights for agency and part-time workers. Many of those affected are women. As the TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady recently said, those rights and protections will be on the ballot paper come 23 June. Frankly, I do not think that we can trust this Tory Government to maintain those protections if we were to leave the EU.

There is also a powerful security case for us to stay in the EU. Prior to the European arrest warrant, the French suspected a terrorist in our country of bombing the Paris metro, and it took us 10 years to extradite that suspect. In 2005, Osman Hussain, the terrorist who attempted to bomb the London underground and fled to Rome, was extradited back to the UK in under five weeks. That tells us something about the strength of pooling resources, expertise, and sharing information about criminals who do not respect borders.

Briefly, let me touch on the weaknesses of the counter-argument. Those who want to leave the EU have a responsibility to tell us what “out” would look like, and it seems that there is a choice between on the one hand not having access to the single market with British business being hit with trade barriers and tariffs, and on the other hand having access to the single market while still paying into the EU budget and accepting the free movement of people and all the rules, but without a seat at the table. There are major inconsistencies in that argument. As I pointed out earlier, the idea that somehow we are powerless within the EU, but that if we left we could get precisely what we want on our own terms, is not believable. I hope that the patriotic progressive case for our membership will win out, and that the British people vote to remain on 23 June.