Richard Graham
Main Page: Richard Graham (Conservative - Gloucester)Trading Relationships with Europe
Richard Graham Excerpts
Mr Gordon Brown (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Lab)
Across each generation during the long march of our country’s history, we the British people have always had to choose how we engage with the world. In particular, we have had to decide, century by century, how and on what terms we engage with our nearest neighbours in Europe. This generation is no exception.
I acknowledge the current strength of anti-European sentiment in the country and I believe passionately that there is no way forward for Europe other than through reform. I have always insisted on reform of the Commission and its bureaucracy, the Parliament and its accountability, and the flawed economic model of the euro, which I recommended that we should refuse to join, just as we should refuse to Europeanise everything—we should certainly not Europeanise our armed forces, as was recently suggested by my old friend President Juncker.
I asked for this debate not just because we must never allow sections of our country to indulge in the delusion that we can discount the 3 million jobs, 200,000 British companies, £200 billion of annual exports and £450 billion of inward investment that are linked to our trade with the continent, but because we must resist defining every part of our relationship with the continent in confrontational terms that pit Britain against Europe and that wrongly make the issue Britain versus Europe, asking, “Are you for Britain or are you against Britain?”, as if to be patriotic one must reject Europe in favour of Britain.
Up against the view, which I see is represented by some Conservative Members, that sees Britain as wholly separate, defiantly independent of others and standing to gain strength from a European exit, there is another strongly patriotic view, which I believe in passionately, that affirms that Britain is not the Britain we know unless we are outward-looking, unless we are engaged with the continent and unless British values—tolerance, liberty, fairness, social responsibility—play a leading role in shaping Europe and helping Europe to lead in the world.
Let me state three maxims that sum up what I believe is the patriotic view of Britain’s future. The first is the belief that:
“Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history.”
The second is a desire that we should
“let Europe be the family of nations…doing more together”,
a Europe that is more united, with a greater sense of purpose. The third is to have
“a Europe which plays its full part in the wider world, which looks outward not inward”.
I know that many Conservative Members may find some of those statements challenging or difficult, but they are exactly the statements that Lady Thatcher set out in her seminal Bruges speech in the late 1980s.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that many Conservative Members could agree with everything he has said so far, and also recognise that the opportunity in the renegotiation with Europe is to improve Europe for the whole of Europe, not just for Britain, so that this great continent goes forward progressively?
Mr Brown
My view is that the hon. Gentleman does not speak for many Conservative Members, some of whom are present, and he should accept that Britain is linked geographically, historically, economically and culturally, as set out in the Bruges speech, to the rest of the continent. We cannot meet and master the challenges of the future for a country like ours unless we accept that co-operation was always desirable and advisable. Now, in the ever-more interdependent and integrated world we live in, that is even more essential and imperative, not as a surrendering of the British national interest, but as the best way to realise it in the modern world.
Cross-border trade used to be one fifth of the world’s economic activity and it may soon rise to being one half of it—evidence that we can be an island geographically but we can never again be an island economically or geopolitically. Like all Europe, Britain is engaged in the same fiercely competitive struggle for global markets, not just with America but now with Asia, which will soon be what Europe once was—half of the global economy.
Just as the US, the biggest economy in the world, needs its economic union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the rising Asian nations need to be part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, how much stronger is Britain, which, at her peak, captured nearly 20% of the world’s economic activity but now has only 2.5%? How much stronger will we be in future when competing and negotiating with China, India and the rest of the world to secure the best deals in trade, address pollution, deliver financial stability and set the rules for tax, patents, action on money laundering and corruption, and to protect our basic security, most recently against Russian aggression, as part of Europe?
If we look further ahead, how much stronger will we be in exploiting the economic and employment benefits of modern science, from the human genome to the semantic web to space—projects too big for one country alone—if we, the Britain of 60 million people, have alongside and around us the strength of our neighbours, a Europe of 500 million people? If anyone is in any doubt about the wisdom of co-operation with our nearest neighbours, they should think of how young people today see the world as interconnected and think nothing of linking up and communicating with friends across Europe and the world.
Whether it was our indispensible role in the defeat of Napoleon, the containment of Germany, the defeat of fascism, the resolution of the cold war, or more recently the response to the global recession, Britain is not truly Britain if we are anything other than engaged. Looking at our history, there was never for us, I believe, any long period of splendid isolation, tempting as retreat may sometimes appear. It is never the British way to be anything but in the vanguard in Europe at the continent’s decisive moments. In doing so, we help make Europe the biggest instrument for peace that the world has ever seen, as vital to ensuring stability now against Russian aggression in the east as it was against Nazism at the heart of Europe.
There is not one single shred of evidence that our engagement with Europe has made us any less British, any less true to ourselves, and any less patriotic. What sort of message will the British people send to the world if we, Britain, the most open, outward-looking, seafaring and trading country the world has ever seen, gives up on centuries of ever-growing co-operation with our nearest neighbours, casts aside the London-Paris-Berlin axis that we have painstakingly built up over decades, and surrenders our rightful influence over future events on the continent, even though it is directly on our doorstep?
What message do we send if, in a betrayal of our history and of our future, the Britain that did more than any single nation to spread liberty across Europe and stood resolutely for democracy, the Britain that helped take on fascism, communism, totalitarianism, anti-Semitism, and is now working with others to defeat extreme Islamic fundamentalism, simply walks away from and abandons our historic role of standing with Europe against ideologies that threaten to deny opportunity and spread prejudice, discrimination and intolerance around the world?
The real challenge is to convert a far too inward-looking, self-obsessed Europe not into some federal superstate—all the European nations that I have visited are proudly independent, with their own traditions—but into an outward-looking, globally oriented Europe with a reach and influence spanning every hemisphere. What message do we send if, by abandoning not only our history of engagement but our history of being at the forefront of Europe, we give up on the opportunities and obligations of a central leadership role in shaping the next stage of our continent’s destiny?
This is the fundamental truth about Britain in Europe. Given our history, the question for Britain can never just be whether we are in Europe; it has to be whether we lead in Europe. Our destiny can never be to be some kind of bit-part player on someone else’s stage or a bystander hectoring from the wings. We must at all times be setting the agenda, bringing people together and championing change. Indeed, Britain makes more sense to the British people, and will enjoy more popular support, if we are more than just part of Europe and we are at its heart, leading from the front and charting the way forward.
The way to reconcile what has too often seemed irreconcilable—in Hugo Young’s famous words, the British past we cannot forget and the British future we cannot avoid—is to see our leadership in Europe not as an abandonment of our patriotism but as the truest modern expression of it.
The Minister for Business and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
It falls to me to respond for the Government on this historic occasion of what might be the last speech in the House of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). Before I respond in detail to his case, it is only right that the House acknowledges that moment. Since the right hon. Gentleman entered the House in 1983, he has been a warrior for social justice, a master at the Dispatch Box, a Chancellor who dominated both the Treasury and this House, and a Prime Minister who never gave less than his all in the service of his nation.
The right hon. Gentleman has been a brilliant debater, besting Nigel Lawson in his prime and humbling a long series of opponents throughout his career. This House exists to ensure that the great issues of our time are debated, that progress is secured and reforms are made through the vigorous exchange of views and a vote to settle matters. That is why it seems so odd for him to make the case today against vigorous debate, open argument and a vote to settle matters.
The right hon. Gentleman was a champion of the referendum to give Scotland its Parliament, and he spoke movingly and from the heart during the referendum to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom, but he stands steadfast against giving the people of the United Kingdom a debate and a vote on our membership of the European Union. I agree vigorously with him that such votes are won with a fight for hearts and not just heads and bank accounts, but for his party to deny the British people a say in a debate of such central importance to this country is surely to make exactly that mistake. We need that debate and that vote, because no one can be happy with the status quo. We want the whole of Europe to work better, and we want to resolve once and for all our relationship with it.
We must see a more dynamic, entrepreneurial and innovative Europe, with more jobs, investment and growth. The right hon. Gentleman made that case and it is something of an irony that now, towards the end of his long and distinguished time in this House, he makes the impassioned plea to stay in Europe when he was first elected in 1983 on a party platform to leave it. In this age of global competition—what the right hon. Gentleman coined as the new global economy—we need reform of Europe in order to compete with an increasingly open, connected and competitive world.
These past five years have seen Britain transformed from a country lacking in confidence that suffered the greatest banking collapse in history and in which youth unemployment and our deficit were rising even before the great recession. That was the Britain we found five years ago and it has been the task of this Government to reverse that inheritance with all our energy and all our means and with difficult reforms, which we stuck to even while others told us to turn back.
Now we can see a record number in work—including 6,500 more in work in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency, where unemployment is also down by a third—as well as 2 million more apprenticeships, 750,000 more businesses, rising living standards and the fastest growth in the G7. We on the Government Benches want to see the whole of Europe reformed for the better prospects and opportunities of people across that continent.
Richard Graham
My right hon. Friend is making a series of extremely valid points about our role in Europe today. Does he not think it symbolic that, just at the moment when this country will have created more jobs than all the rest of Europe put together, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath believes that, somehow, ours is the party that advocates leaving Europe and is no longer at the level of competing with Europe? Surely we are in a position to lead it forward into a much better era of growth.
Matthew Hancock
Our country has been and is being turned around, but it will prosper whatever the institutional arrangements of our relationship with Europe. We are a brilliant country with the most enterprising and innovative people in the world, and it ill behoves anyone, least of all the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, to compare Britain’s future to a brutal dictatorship such as North Korea. For him to compare Britain to North Korea shows a perverted sense of reality. Indeed, he loses heads and hearts when he makes such a comparison
There is nothing God-given about the prosperity of our nation or our continent, but with the right policies there is nothing to stop us becoming the most successful major nation upon earth. That cannot be done, however, without reform.
Those who argue against a referendum make the following case. They speak of the risk to investment, which the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned. However, since my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced our policy of a referendum before the end of 2017, investment to the UK has increased by 14%. We have attracted the most inward investment since records began in the 1980s and business investment has risen by 6.8%.
They speak of the dangers of uncertainty, but this referendum does not bring uncertainty. That uncertainty already exists, because we live in a democracy with an unhappy relationship between the British people and the European institutions. Many of us have never even had the chance to vote on the question. The uncertainty is there because in the past politicians repeatedly signed over yet more powers to the EU and repeatedly refused to ask the British people for their consent.
Just as we were left in 2010 on the verge of bankruptcy, so our credit with the British people on the issue of Europe had run out; and just as we on this side of the House are turning around our nation’s economy, so we plan by this renegotiation and referendum to restore trust in our relationship with Europe by putting the final decision to the British public, whom we are here to serve. The referendum does not create uncertainty; it will resolve it and give the British people the say that they have been for so long denied.
The right hon. Gentleman speaks of jobs, but there are record numbers of jobs, and unemployment has been coming down at a record pace. He speaks of British influence in Europe, but our influence is strengthened, not weakened, by taking a clear-eyed view of the British national interest. I ask this: where was the influence in Europe in the past when red lines were printed in such faint ink that they were stepped over again and again, when rebates were surrendered and powers handed over with so little in return?