Rejoining the EU

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I thank the petitioners for bringing forward the petition. In the referendum, South Cambridgeshire was one of the strongest remain-voting constituencies in the country, and many of my constituents have signed this petition. We all respect the result, but 10 years on, we have a responsibility to look honestly at the consequences and costs of Brexit and the relationship that we do want with Europe, so that we can strengthen our economy, security, immigration, energy independence, climate and nature recovery.

In South Cambridgeshire, we see the impacts and consequences clearly. Our farmers have faced costs and red tape because the UK lost alignment with EU sanitary and phytosanitary rules, leading to additional, burdensome checks on animal and plant shipments. Our universities and life science research have faced barriers to world-class collaboration, particularly in relation to our exclusion from Horizon until 2024. Our young people have lost the right to live, work and travel across Europe, and I ask the Minister to confirm that we will rejoin the Erasmus scheme. Cambridgeshire chamber of commerce told me that in its latest survey, one in five businesses reported falling overseas sales, alongside increased paperwork and higher export costs.

On the cost of living, by taking the UK out of the EU’s energy market, the Conservatives created barriers to trading electricity with our nearest neighbours. According to Energy UK, that has increased the cost of electricity imports by up to £370 million a year, with cumulative costs potentially reaching £10 billion by 2030. Will the Minister confirm that the upcoming UK-EU summit will enable the UK to rejoin the EU internal electricity market?

Brexit has also had an environmental cost. Many Brexiteers wanted environmental deregulation, and since Brexit, we have seen Britain diverge from European standards, including in areas such as tackling deforestation and saving primary tropical forests, on which we have been far outpaced by the EU.

The lesson of the last decade is clear: Britain benefits when it works closely with its closest European neighbours. Will the Minister confirm that he will scrap the red lines and join the Liberal Democrats in calling for a new growth and defence partnership with the EU? By joining the customs union, the single market and the internal electricity market, we can collectively boost growth, create jobs, strengthen immigration, raise living standards and make Britain safer, as well as recover our nature and tackle climate change together.

EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond, and I thank the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins) for securing this important debate.

In South Cambridgeshire, the majority of constituents, 60.2%, voted to remain in the European Union. They did so from a clear understanding that our prosperity, freedoms and security depend on and benefit from co-operation with our closest neighbours, but the effects of the Brexit referendum deal have been stark and deeply damaging. Our young people have lost the freedoms that we as their parents once took for granted—the right to travel, work, study, live and love across the EU. Economically, Brexit has blown a £90 billion-a-year hole in the public finances, with around £250 million every single day in lost tax revenue, and an economy now between 6% and 8% smaller than if we had not left, which particularly hits our small and medium-sized businesses.

There are wider issues of security, too. As Dr Paul Browne, chair of Cambridge for Europe, said,

“the world of 2026 is not the world of 2016… Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine shows us that democracy, defence and economic security are one”.

After a decade of working internationally with communities and economies devastated by climate change, I became much more politically active when I realised that Brexit would threaten our environment. Nature knows no borders. Wildlife mates and nests in one country while feeding in another, and the habitats and water framework directives were hugely effective in respecting that. However, we are now diverging from those protections of the nature and wildlife that we all hold so dear. The Institute for European Environmental Policy has found that since Brexit the EU has introduced 28 new or strengthened pieces of environmental legislation that the UK has not adopted. Meanwhile, we have weakened protections in areas such as habitats, pesticides, forever chemicals and fisheries. We must be bolder, rejoin, closer to the EU and—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order.