European Affairs

Richard Drax Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend, who served with me in the Ministry of Defence, will know that no one is as alert as I am to the risks of undermining NATO’s crucial role in underpinning the defence of western Europe. We have always been very clear that any role played by the European Union in our defence must be complementary to, and in no way undermine, the role of NATO. I remind him that, when we took part in the counter-piracy operation to interdict terrorists pirating ships crewed by British citizens off the coast of Somalia, it was led by a British admiral based in Northwood, but it was a European Union mission that carried out the task. We have to look for roles in which the European Union can augment our security and safety. We are seeing that across the piece in organised crime and counter-terrorism. We see it today, and we have seen it in past years.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

rose—

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[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is right. These are the complexities: obviously, if we were outside the European Union, we would not be bound by any foreign policy of the European Union, but, equally, we would not have any influence and, in this case, that influence is decisive because of our veto over that policy. It is a judgment, and people will have to weigh up the pros and cons.

[Richard Drax]

The Foreign Secretary used the expression “the political elites”. He slipped into using it just naturally. The political elites are the main problem, because they ignore the voter. If that goes on, it will just happen more and more.

[Mr Hammond]

Rather to my surprise, I agree with my hon. Friend. I shall use the phrase “the political elites” again in my speech, because he is absolutely right: there is a gap between what the political elites in some European countries are thinking and what their voters are thinking. However, on the subject we are discussing—a putative negotiation on Britain’s future relationship with the European Union—the reality is that our negotiators would have to engage with those political elites.

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[Hilary Benn]

To be perfectly honest, I am less interested in what happened in the 1990s. I am more interested in what is going to happen in 2016, which is the big decision that the British people will have to take. I argue that our national security is served by our membership of both the EU and NATO. Co-operation across Europe is essential if we are to deal with terrorist threats. The European arrest warrant is a really good example of that. The case of the failed 21 July 2005 bomber who was returned here from Rome, where he had sought to escape British justice, demonstrates the benefit of working with our allies. That is why the director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, warned recently that British exit would

“make Britain’s job harder to fight crime and terrorism because it will not have the same access to very well developed European cooperation mechanisms that it currently has today”.

[Richard Drax]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Hilary Benn]

No, I am going to try to bring my remarks to a close.

Underlying all those questions is the greatest challenge that the peoples and countries of the world face at the beginning of the 21st century: how do we come to terms with, and deal with, the interdependence of human beings?

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[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Let me start by paying tribute to the Prime Minister—not something I have always done. He has delivered on our manifesto commitment to hold a referendum, and he is the first Conservative leader and Prime Minister to do so in more than 40 years. Even Margaret Thatcher, who I am sure all those on the Government Benches still adore, did not deliver a referendum and did not negotiate any pre-referendum reforms, bar getting the rebate back for the United Kingdom, so credit where it is due. The Prime Minister may not have obtained the impossible, but many of us think that he has obtained the improbable. He went to Brussels with demands that many people thought he would never get.

[Richard Drax]

On what the Prime Minister achieved, does it not strike my hon. Friend as odd that the Prime Minister gave in before he went by saying he wanted to stay in the EU even before the negotiations had started?

[Mark Pritchard]

It is always difficult to set out the defined and true position at the outset of any negotiations, otherwise one would not negotiate the position one would want to find oneself in at the end of it, so I do not agree with that. I think the Prime Minister achieved more than many people thought he would achieve. Of course, for some people even if he had parted the English channel it still would not have been good enough. Perhaps some even might have wanted him to fail. Overall, it is a good reform package for the United Kingdom.

I agree with the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) about tone. The parliamentary and national debate needs to be done in the right tone with the right language, in a measured and respectful way. I hope that will be the case. We have heard some reference to scaremongering today and in the media, but it was Nigel Farage, in a recent Oxford University debate, who said that the EU referendum issue would be “settled by security”. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), in the penultimate paragraph of his remarks, suggested that security was a key issue too. It is unfortunate that the issue of scaremongering is coming into the debate. It is legitimate to talk about national security, both for those who want to remain in the European Union and those who want to leave, and it is on national security that I would like to focus my main remarks.

The hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) wrote in the Daily Mirror this morning:

“The threats posed to the UK’s security are just like the threats posed to the rest of Europe”.

He is right. Common threats require a common response. Europe’s threats are our threats too. The UK’s threats are Europe’s threats. In an unsafe world this is not the time to be walking away from our friends and allies. This is a time to stand together. This is not the time for the United Kingdom to be quitting Europe. My view is that the UK is safer in a reformed European Union and the European Union is safer with the UK standing by its side, now with our own special status.

The Paris attacks have been mentioned a couple of times today and in the media over the past few days. Some say that it is less likely that the United Kingdom will be subject to Paris-style terror attacks if we leave. I disagree and think that is a very, very bold statement to make. Some say the Syrian refugee crisis has had an impact on terrorist incidents across Europe and will therefore have an impact on the UK. That may well be the case, and I will come on to those points in more detail later. Specifically on the nationality of those involved in the Paris attacks, however, the majority were EU nationals. In fact, they were led by a Belgian national.

Some have referenced open borders in the United Kingdom. We do not have open borders in the United Kingdom. That is inaccurate and, unfortunately, misleading. The fact is that under Schengen we do not have open borders. That is a fact.

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[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

Thank you very much for calling me to speak in this interesting debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I believe that 23 June will be the most momentous day in this country’s history, or certainly in my lifetime. We have the opportunity to get our country back, and I very much hope for all our sakes that we take it.

I was inspired by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), because it was so positive. That is what the out campaign is. Today we have heard from the in campaign that leaving would be a leap in the dark. We have heard about the risks—shut the curtains, close the door. Not quite “Dad’s Army”-style “doomed”, but not far off it. Let me tell those who do our country down, as I believe they do by speaking like that, that we will have huge aspiration, hope and opportunity if we leave the EU. We have absolutely nothing to fear from leaving what has, in effect, become a welfare state or the equivalent.

We are now reliant on nanny—let us call the EU nanny. Nanny has bred us, suckled us, brought us up and given us things when we asked for them, even when we did not deserve them. When we reach a certain age and it is time to break free from nanny and the cot and to get out there and start to grow up, we are told that we may not do so—or worse, we have been bred to the point that we do not want to leave. Sadly, that is the position of this great country.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) mentioned his grandfather, for whom I have the most huge respect, as does the nation. I did not know him; I wish I had, but from the history books that I have read, I believe he would be on the side of those who want to get their country back. We often hear from the newspapers, commentators and those who want to stay in that we are all, as I recall the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) describing us, middle-aged grey-haired gentlemen. I hope that I have got that right. We are portrayed as swivel-eyed lunatics who want to leave the EU, dig a hole in the garden, stick up the Union Jack and sing “God Save the Queen.” Oh, if only it were that simple.

We do not want that at all, but we do want to be free to control our destiny, our sovereignty, our democracy. Every speech I have heard warning of the risks of leaving predicts that suddenly we will not trade with Europe, and all communication and intelligence will shut down overnight. We are told that there are 5,000 terrorists heading into the United Kingdom, or certainly to Europe and then, no doubt, on to us. Are our former partners in Europe not going to tell us? Are they going to sit there mute while London is blown apart, or Glasgow, Manchester or Birmingham? Those are, so the Europhiles say, our allies. They are friends; they are decent people. We do not dislike them. We love the Europeans. I am British and a European, and I am extremely proud of it. I want to be in Europe and to trade with Europe. I want to enjoy their culture, their languages, their mountains, their seas, their more efficient trains, their wider and faster roads and their beautiful wine; I want to enjoy it all, as we all do. But, like millions of people in this country, I do not want to be ruled by unelected bureaucrats.

I sit on the European Scrutiny Committee, which is a great privilege, under the most able chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). He might like to hear about the conversation I had with my taxi driver last night as I was heading home—I always talk with the drivers, because they are always fascinating men and women. When he asked me who I was, I replied, “I’m an MP, but please don’t press the ejector button.” He promised not to. Then he said, “Tell me, guv, what do you think about the EU?” I said, “It’s simple. Do you want to control the future of this country, or do you want to hand it across to unelected bureaucrats and a political elite who are completely out of touch with the electorate?” He said, “Guv, do you know William Cash?” I explained that I did and that he is a great friend of mine. He said, “He sat in my cab 25 years ago and said the same thing.” That story is absolutely true. My hon. Friend, who is far-sighted, was right then, and he is right now. Let us get our freedom back on 23 June.

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[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

In the same year as the 1975 referendum, Peter Finch won an Oscar for his role in the film “Network”, with its cry, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!” It is that sense of alienation from the elites that I believe will drive the vote to exit the European Union on 23 June.

Look around us. Why do hon. Members, particularly those who advocate our remaining in the European Union, think that the Chamber is barely full? Can they not see a link between the growing power of the European Union and its influence on our democracy, and the fact that we are trapped here in this Ruritanian palace, with diminishing powers to influence our fellow citizens?

I have always been a consistent patriot in terms of my opposition to the sometimes defeatist, sycophantic and self-loathing attitude of too many people, which has been rampant in my party for too long. I opposed the crazy policy in 1997 of ruling out the single currency for one Parliament, and I opposed the policy of “wait and see”—as if people would “wait and see” whether they wanted to board the Titanic. I have supported the policy of opposing the single currency, which my party has held for 10 years.

Like many Conservative MPs, I wished the Prime Minister well in his negotiations with other EU states, and I kept my counsel, hoping that the pledges he made in the Bloomberg speech in January 2013 would be enacted. Sadly, they were not. The EU is not willing to reform itself in a way that I believe would be beneficial and desirable to secure its own long-term future, and its leaders remain wedded to a bureaucratic, sclerotic political behemoth, disdainful of popular democratic accountability and national sensitivities, hurtling towards greater and ever closer union, and unconcerned by the serious and profound reservations of the British people and their elected representatives. As I said, in my opinion the European Union has already inflicted huge damage on the economies of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland in the pursuit of monetary dogma and ideological obsessions, driven by the mania of a single currency that operates across a hugely disparate and discrete economic area, primarily at the behest of German monetary policy.

In truth, the EU is a concept whose time has come and gone—an anachronism. Within 20 years, only $1 in $6 of world trade will be within the European Union. In the past six years the UK has run a £59 billion deficit with the EU, but a massive surplus across the world, and we cannot truly exploit those opportunities because we are locked into EU trade agreements, rather than our own bilateral agreements with places such as China, Mexico, Brazil, India, South Africa and Canada—markets that would generate British jobs and prosperity.

The negotiations have been a failure. They are crumbs from the table. The process has been depressing, and an historic opportunity for proper reform has been lost, perhaps forever. The Prime Minister asked for very little and he got less than that. Any changes have been given grudgingly. We have failed to abide by our manifesto commitment on child benefit, and no powers have been repatriated to the House of Commons. The European Court of Justice still takes precedence over UK law, there is no guarantee that the UK’s demands or “exceptions” will be incorporated in any new treaties, and the whole deal is legally unenforceable.

One always views issues through the prism of one’s own constituency, and I am surprised and disappointed that my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) did not mention immigration, given that he co-chairs the cross-party group on balanced migration. My constituency has seen the effects of globalisation and the free movement directive. Part of that has been good, but it has also meant slum housing, low wages, welfare and health tourism, and people trafficking. People have concluded—quite rightly—that the UK must control its own borders, who comes to the country, and for what reason. The EU denies that aspiration and makes such control impossible now and at any time in the future.

[Richard Drax]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Jackson]

I will not I am afraid because I do not have the time.

We have been told by the plutocratic, self-interested elite, the City, the media, the establishment and the snobby intelligentsia that looks down on ordinary voters that we must stay at the heart of Europe, fight our corner and reform within. That has failed and it is a fool’s errand to believe that it will not be a calamitous failure in the future. We know what Brexit will be like, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) has said.

In conclusion, all power is a leasehold given to us on trust, and it is not ours to give away. For too long we have been selling the democratic family silver—as Macmillan would have said—traducing our own sovereign Parliament and its powers. I trust my constituents to make the right decision, and I will campaign enthusiastically to leave the European Union.