EU Membership (UK Renegotiation)

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I am sure my hon. Friend is aware that the Library has done some research that shows that if the UK left the EU, the UK would be the EU’s single biggest export market, bigger than any other country in the world. Is it not clear that if we left, and given that we have a £62 billion trade deficit with the EU, we would still be able to trade freely with other countries in the EU?

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend demonstrates again that he is a very well read Member of this House and, as usual, ahead of the curve. He is right, because negotiating a free trade agreement with the EU should be fairly straightforward, given our status as the EU’s largest trading partner and the fact that we already meet all the EU’s requirements. One fifth of all the cars produced in Germany are exported to the United Kingdom. Is anyone seriously suggesting that if we left the European Union Germany would want to cease trading with us? With a successful leave vote we could negotiate a successful UK-EU deal.

Many countries around the world already have free trade deals with the EU but do not have to accept the supremacy of EU law like we do and do not have to pay the EU a massive £10 billion and rising each year as a membership fee. If Chile, Peru and Colombia can negotiate successful free trade arrangements with the EU, surely the UK, as the world’s fifth largest economy, would also be able to do so. Our membership of the European Union means that we are constitutionally unable to negotiate free trade deals of our own with other countries.

The EU has been in existence since 1957 and has yet to conclude a free trade arrangement with America or China because 28 countries are involved and getting them all to agree on every detail is proving impossible. I suggest that if we left the EU negotiating free trade agreements with the United States and China would be a top priority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Percy. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) for his brilliant speech. As usual, I agree with everything he said.

I will focus my brief remarks on the renegotiation itself to tell the Minister that we are not fooled, and that the British public will not be fooled, by the farce of this renegotiation. The Prime Minister has already pre-agreed all the things in his letter, and he certainly will not have risked writing a letter asking for things unless they had already been agreed. He has written a letter asking for things that have clearly already been agreed, but he knows that it would lead to more problems if the EU accepted it all straight away—people would say that he had not asked for enough, and all the rest of it—so he had to choreograph a farcical row with all these EU leaders: “Oh, he’s gone too far this time. He can’t possibly ask for all this. It is an absolute disgrace. He is going way too far this time.” And then, lo and behold, as the EU referendum approaches, we can expect that an equally choreographed agreement will be reached one by one in a domino effect across Europe. Hey presto! All these EU leaders will then say, “Actually, go on then. You can have what you’ve asked for.” The Prime Minister will come back saying, “This is a massive triumph for my renegotiation, and it goes to prove that if you battle hard for such things in the EU, you can get exactly what you want. As a result of my great triumph in these renegotiations, we can now vote to stay in the EU.”

If the Minister and the Prime Minister think that we are all going to be fooled by such nonsense, they are sadly mistaken. The Prime Minister underestimates the British public if he thinks they will be taken in by such choreographed, farcical renegotiation. We all know that it will all be agreed and that the renegotiation is just a farce. If the renegotiation is really meaningful, presumably the Prime Minister, who for years berated the previous Labour Government for giving up our rebate, would have made it a key part of his renegotiation strategy to get the rebate back by seeking a reduction in the amount of money that we hand over each year. He is the one who has been going on about that so much over the last few years, yet he did not even ask for it. It is perfectly clear that this is not a meaningful renegotiation; it is not covering all the things that the Prime Minister wants to see. The document that he sent is a request for things that have already been agreed by EU leaders so that he can come back and say that his renegotiation is a great triumph.

As it happens, I do not blame the Prime Minister for his strategy to some extent. I have never known a Prime Minister to come back from a renegotiation saying, “Do you know what? I gave it my best shot, but it was a disaster and I didn’t get anything at all.” Every Prime Minister comes back from a renegotiation saying that it was a great triumph. Even Neville Chamberlain said that his renegotiation was a great triumph, so I do not blame the Prime Minister for doing so—that is just the way it is.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), I commend the Prime Minister for giving us the referendum that the British public have wanted for so many years. There is no question that we will fall out with each other—everyone has their view, and I respect people’s opinions. All I will say to the Minister is: please, do not treat us like fools. Please, do not pretend that this is a meaningful renegotiation. Please, do not pretend that the Prime Minister is battling hard to agree these things with the EU. We are not that stupid, and the British public are not that stupid. When the referendum comes, I hope the facts will win the day. We can survive and prosper on our own. We have a huge net trade deficit with the EU, and we would be the EU’s single biggest export market. There is no way that we would have an end to free trade. Ultimately, when people voted to stay part of the common market in 1975, that is what they thought they were voting for—free trade. We can have that for nothing, and we do not need to pay £19 billion a year to have something that we can have for nothing.