EU Referendum Leaflet

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sir William Cash]

I endorse my right hon. Friend’s intervention. It also made me particularly angry to hear Mr Juncker say that Eurosceptics should go and visit war cemeteries—people will understand the impact of that comment on someone like me—and I deeply resented President Obama’s reference to the same matter with respect to both United Kingdom and American troops. My father fought with American troops, and I am absolutely certain that the kind of undemocratic, dysfunctional, authoritarian, centralised system represented by the European Union, which does not work, is the antithesis of what they fought for. I want to get that firmly on the record.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it is a measure of the remain campaign’s desperation that it has to invoke the memory of those who died fighting dictatorships in order to try to present its case as patriotic when, in fact, we know from all the language that the campaign uses that it wants to do the country down?

[Sir William Cash]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I would go further, with reference to the historical analogies that permeate these documents and what the Prime Minister said today, and say that the very idea that Brexit would create war completely turns on its head the reality that, for at least four centuries, this country was drawn into all the wars in which it has been engaged by the desire of those in Europe to create European empires. That started, for example, with Philip of Spain and the armada, and later there were the Dutch wars, the Napoleonic wars and the first and second world wars. Those are realities. We were drawn into those wars. If we leave the European Union, we will be able to stand alone and, as we did in 1940, remind people that we are not going to be part and parcel of this dysfunctional system, which has so much instability and insecurity built into it that it is bound to lead to deep disturbance. Our attempt to make sense of all that has led us to argue so strongly for so many years that this European Union is dysfunctional, which is why, ultimately, we have to leave it.

The hon. Member for Vauxhall referred to the European Scrutiny Committee’s reports. She is an excellent member of the Committee, which I have the honour to chair. In the Liaison Committee’s examination of the Prime Minister last Wednesday, I was asked to go first after the Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie). I explained to the Prime Minister and to the Committee why I believe that the voters are being cheated on 23 June and, ultimately, a false prospectus is being offered to them. The reason is simple: the outcome of the question of whether there will be a full-on treaty change, which we were promised, cannot be guaranteed, if at all, until after the vote. When the voter goes to the voting booth and votes, they simply will not know whether, for example, there will be a treaty change, whether the European Court will intervene, whether there will be a change of Government or whether there will be a referendum in any other country on the basis of the changes that are made. The outcome of any one of those questions cannot be guaranteed under any circumstances, so I allege that requiring people to vote in such circumstances is cheating the voters.

I was most impressed to see the numbers on the petition, and it may be of interest to Members to know that the clip of my allegation that the Government and the Prime Minister are cheating the voters has now reached 175,000 viewings on Facebook, which is quite a lot. I strongly believe that that message is getting home to all the people who need to hear it.

The question of the single market seems to be so central to the economic case, the political case, the democratic case and the accountability case for why we should leave because it is in contradiction to what the people fought and died for in the last war. That is extremely important, but the Government also make an economic case in the leaflet, which talks about our having a massive single market:

“EU countries buy 44% of everything we sell abroad, from cars to insurance.”

What the leaflet does not say is outlined in a note I received from the House of Commons Library, and it is as simple as this. When we are trading with 27 other member states, the question of whether we have a deficit in goods and services, and in imports and exports, is the equivalent of asking whether we are making a loss in relation to those 27 member states. This is the answer from the House of Commons Library:

“UK trade deficit with EU countries: £67.8 billion”.

That is annual, and it is going up. That is a vast amount of money in our dealings with the single market, and it demonstrates that the single market does not work for us across the board. On the other hand—this is important—Germany has a £81.8 billion trade surplus with the 27 other member states. We make a loss of £67.8 billion, and they have a surplus of £81.8 billion. I do not have time to go into all the reasons, but it is a salutary lesson about the real value of the single market to us.

The UK’s trade surplus with the rest of the world, in relation to the same goods and services on which we make such a monumental loss with the other 27 member states, was £31.1 billion last year, and it is growing. We have a bright future. The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s accusation that leaving the single market would be catastrophic, the idea that we would end up at war if we do not carry out the diktat that the Government are issuing to the British people, and all the accumulated international bodies that are being brought in to support this flimsy argument that we should stay in, are all to be taken into account when people come to vote on 23 June.

I reject the manner in which the Government have gone about this. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam has done us a service in bringing this issue to the House, as have the petitioners. Jayne Adye deserves 100% credit for doing so. There is only one answer to this shambolic European Union, and that is to vote to leave it.

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[John Redwood]

My hon. Friend is right—there is absolutely no proper provision for the very large number of people that the Treasury now admits are likely to come in. That is one of the few Treasury forecasts that I might believe. It is quite obvious that it could not forecast its own public spending, its own interest rates or anything in the recent Office for Budget Responsibility and Treasury documents. It had to make another revision again in the March Budget—it revised the forecast made in November—because it had found it difficult to grasp how the world might change between November and March. So there is this inability to forecast the economic numbers, but for once I think the Treasury may be honest in forecasting a substantial increase in migration. I suspect that the Treasury’s estimate is an underestimate because it has been constantly underestimating these figures in recent years, and it proves that we have no control over our borders and no “special status” whatsoever.

The third area is benefits. The Prime Minister made a great deal about benefits in the renegotiation; it was one of the few areas where he really pushed quite hard to get reform in the way that Britain wanted. I think both major parties campaigning in the last election wanted, for example, to no longer have to pay child benefit to children who are not resident in our country, but apparently that is something that we cannot negotiate. There is no “special status” to allow us to decide that child benefit should go to children living in our country rather than to children living elsewhere. There is some kind of fudge whereby we could pay the benefit at the level that applies in that country, which means in some cases that we will have to pay a higher level of benefit, although in other cases it means we will pay a lower level of benefit. So there is absolutely no control there.

Again, both major parties wanted amendments so that people coming here to work under the freedom-of-movement provisions would not automatically get the full range of benefits until they had been here for a bit and made some kind of contribution. We were not able to get a guarantee on that, either. There is some sort of four-year clause as a temporary expedient, but the benefits have to be phased in over the four years and the negotiating aim was not met.

On the big three things, therefore, which all independent democratic countries control through their Parliaments and Governments, Britain is unable to exert control: we cannot decide what taxes to impose; we cannot decide what benefits to spend our money on; and we cannot control our own borders. So I have to submit that the Government are completely misrepresenting the position when they say that they have negotiated a “special status”. They are completely wrong when they say that shows we can get our own way. They could not even get their own way on a very limited number of negotiating objectives at a point when they were threatening withdrawal and a referendum, so how will they ever get their way at all once the referendum is out of the way if, by any chance, the British people have not seen through this and voted to stay?

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the right hon. Gentleman find it strange that, although the Government claim to have special status on some issues—and he has proved they have not gained such status—they refer time and again to things that we have opted out of? They make a case for joining Europe, but they boast that through our special status, “We opt out of this, we opt out of the euro, we opt out of border controls—we opt out of a whole range of things.” The Government are actually making a case for staying clear of the European project.

[John Redwood]

I agree. I always liken it to someone joining a football club and then announcing truculently that they have no wish to play football or watch football, getting cross when they go to club functions and people talk about football, and wanting to reduce the club subscription because, as they do not join in the football, they think they are overpaying. That is what the Government are doing to Europe. They do not want to join the single currency or Schengen, or the quota system for refugees. They do not like political union being talked about, although that is the EU’s main purpose, and they think that the club subscription is too large. They are right about one thing: the club subscription is far too large for us because we do not believe in practically any of the club’s purposes. Most of us would draw the conclusion, however, that the simplest thing to do would be to leave the club and spend the subscription on things we do like.

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[Mrs Trevelyan]

My hon. Friend is right. It is always a little confusing when leaders of opposing camps in any election start to talk about the other side’s views. I hope that uncertainty and economic disruption will not be caused by Brexit. It is safe to say that we see much ahead of us that could cause that anyway.

The question of what happens if we leave is presented in the leaflet. What is not offered for those who have had the pleasure of having it through their door, or who have that pleasure still to come, is the question of what would voting to stay look like, since we know what would happen if we leave. It would ensure that we remain wedded with almost no influence, as several colleagues have already said. We are outwith the battered and struggling eurozone framework, but we are wedded to it. We are seeing Greek residents yet again put under unbearable financial strain so that EU bankers can circulate IMF money through Greece to ensure that the bankers do not come off too badly because of the euro chaos going on there. That is something we will definitely stay attached to in our uncontrolled sector outwith the eurozone, but that will cost us money. We will have to continue, as required, to bail out future eurozone crashes.

Jim Mellon, a successful entrepreneur who works across a large number of EU states, has made it clear—his forecasts, unlike the Treasury’s, have often been accurate—that the likely next crash of the euro, possibly a complete crash, will be within the next three years. It seems to me that voting to stay in will almost certainly ensure that we are wedded to a big bill over which we have little control, watching nations around us suffer even greater debt. The reality is that France’s and Italy’s debt balance sheet is pretty unsustainable. The chances are that the bill will be a lot bigger than just Greece’s costs. It is clear what will happen if we choose to stay.

The Government leaflet briefly suggests that we might strike a good deal in terms of trade with the EU if we were to leave, but it goes on to dismiss that as a pie-in-the-sky idea that is incredibly unlikely, because, somehow, there is no reason why a trade deal would be struck. The leaflet indicates that 8% of EU exports come to the UK and that 44% of UK exports go to the EU. That sounds terrible: 8% in, 44% out. That is a big imbalance, but let us look at that in real terms—my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) mentioned this earlier—and in the terms that businesses and those who make the exports and provide the services that we sell abroad would actually understand: the terms of money.

I am an accountant; percentages can be a useful way to present an issue, but also a useful way to create a level of dissimulation. There is a £67 billion deficit of goods and services this year.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Lady accept that the argument about a trade deal is really a non-argument? The United States has no trade deal with the EU and yet sells billions of euros’ worth of goods every year to the EU. Trade occurs because people want to buy the goods and because the prices are competitive.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

Indeed. The hon. Gentleman anticipates my words.

On the numbers, there is real cash—real money—involved in selling and buying goods. I am not willing to brook the scaremongering message that businesses that sell us their products—all £67 billion of them—will want to stop doing so. It is said that the EU creates jobs and makes us money. None of that is true. The reality is that hard-working businessmen put their houses on the line to set up a business and employ people. They make a great product that other people want to buy. That is how jobs are created and how business and growth happen. It has nothing to do with the EU. It is about people buying and selling goods. It is as old as the hills and will continue.

British car drivers will still want to buy BMWs and Mercedes, and I have no doubt that the Germans will still want to sell them to us. We will be in what is described as a free trade area, which goes from Iceland through to Turkey. The risk of dramatic and terrifying tariffs is not a real risk. That is not what can happen under WTO rules within a free trade area.

The leaflet is frustrating. Not only is it biased, but it is unable to explain the reality of what trade means and how it might work, for better or worse, if we were to vote to leave on 23 June. At best, it is simply scurrilous. One of the real problems with the message about exports being key is that only about 5% or 6% of our businesses, which are a very important part of our UK trade, actually export to the EU. In my constituency in north Northumberland, I have a large number of small businesses, very few of whom export at all. They mostly sell their goods to other UK citizens. Of those who do export, they export to all corners of the globe, not only to the EU. In fact, thanks to the Emirates airline that set up a Newcastle to Dubai route four years ago, many now trade in the middle east in a whole new world. We have opened up dramatic new markets thanks to one aeroplane that goes once a day. It has been a fascinating thing to see. The EU is not the be-all and end-all of trade.

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[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

As has already been pointed out, the people of Northern Ireland have not yet been subjected to having to read the dodgy dossier that has been published by the Government. No one should be surprised that it is not an objective assessment of the case for staying in or leaving because, as a number of hon. Members said, the Government made up their mind at the outset that, regardless of what happened in the negotiations, they would put forward the case for remain. No doubt, when the leaflet eventually makes its way through the Royal Mail’s postbags to my constituents’ houses, they will treat it with contempt because they will know it is not an attempt to set out the facts and figures.

We have just finished the Assembly election campaign in Northern Ireland, and the question I was most commonly asked on the doorstep over the past three and a half weeks, even though it is nothing to do with the Assembly election, was, “Are you in or are you out?” From the conversations I have had with thousands of my constituents, I have absolutely no doubt which way they will be voting on 23 June.

The Government are desperate. We saw the degree of their desperation when the Prime Minister visited Northern Ireland at the beginning of this campaign. He brought together farmers and told them that their crops will die in the fields, that their bank balances will be slashed, that European money will end and that we will no longer be able to feed ourselves because of the disaster that will befall Northern Ireland if we drop out of the EU and no longer have the support of the CAP. He ignored the fact that, as most farmers know—a large part of my constituency is rural—EU support for agriculture in the United Kingdom has been falling because support is increasingly being directed towards eastern Europe, and that many small farmers are crippled by bureaucracy and the CAP’s requirements.

Of course, the Prime Minister pulled out the ultimate card: he said that somehow or other the peace process might be in jeopardy. I lived in Northern Ireland right through the troubles, and I never, ever heard any IRA spokesman say that he was determined to bomb the life out of people in Northern Ireland to stay in the EU. It was never an issue with republicans. Indeed, it is significant that, until it got embroiled in the politics of the Irish Republic, Sinn Féin used to be a very anti-EU party. Suddenly, because it wanted to curry favour with voters in the Republic, it decided that it was pro-EU. Saying that the peace process will somehow be in jeopardy is another scare tactic.

In Northern Ireland, whenever we get into trouble with the peace process, we can be sure that political leaders whose names the President of the United States has never heard before will get a telephone call from the White House. “Jimmy, how are you?”—I cannot do an American accent, so I will not even try—or, “Peter, how are you?” and the soft-soaping starts. It has been no different in this referendum campaign. The US cavalry has ridden to the rescue of General Cameron, who is making his last stand. I believe that he knows it is his last stand. He cannot convince the people of the United Kingdom to go into the reservation of the EU, so he has to bring in the American President to frighten them, but I think the American President’s ham-fisted attempt has not weakened but strengthened the leave campaign.

Many Members have already talked about the false arguments in this document, and I want to pick up on one or two of them: first, that the cost of living is going to go up. How do they justify that—on the basis, primarily, that the value of the pound will fall. However, our exchange rate goes up and down. We have a freely floating exchange rate mechanism, because we are not part of the euro. Our exchange rate goes up and down all the time. We live with the consequences of that: sometimes it helps our exporters and sometimes it is to the detriment of our exporters; sometimes it brings down the cost of living because imports become cheaper, and sometimes it puts the cost up—but that is what happens without a fixed exchange rate. Our membership of the EU will make no difference to that—but that is the main way in which the cost of living could increase, according to the Government leaflet.

We have had that reinforced by the Chancellor’s predictions and the Treasury’s model up to 2030. I taught economics at one stage and the one thing I know about economic models is that we do not rely on economic models to tell us what is going to happen in 2030 when we are living in 2016. A Treasury model also told us that the deficit would be wiped out by now. The Treasury revises its estimates almost on a yearly basis, because economic models are subject to a whole range of assumptions. If we are looking 14 years in advance, how can we possibly know what parameters to put into an economic model? We are certainly not going to be able to tell people, “You are going to be £4,302.22 worse off,” which is what the Government want people to believe.

That is the first scare tactic. The second is the idea that people will not be able to go on their holidays any longer, they will have to get a visa to go to the sun and flights will cost more. For those who are concerned about carbon footprints, that would be a compelling argument, but it does not really play much with me. Again, that is based on what? The price of flights has come down not because of the EU, but because of people such as O’Leary, companies such as Ryanair and easyJet, and competition between airlines. That has nothing to do with the EU, yet it is rested at the EU’s door.

Next is the argument that millions of jobs will be lost because it is more difficult to get access to European markets. However, in my constituency, there are companies that do research for the pharmaceutical industry; one firm has 140 workers who research new drugs and, as a result, drugs worth £750 million are produced across Europe from the patents for which they are responsible. Do people buy that information because we are part of the EU? No, they buy it because the research is good quality, and the drug has been tested and is capable of being marketed.

In my constituency, too, Schrader Electronics provides valves that tell drivers whether their tyres have gone down, without them having to look at them. The valves are sold to car manufacturers all over the European Union, as part of the supply chain. On 24 June, are those manufacturers likely to say that they will no longer buy the valves? Of course not, because the technology is good and the price is good. The company is part of the supply chain and will remain part of the supply chain.

For anyone who flies on an airplane, every third seat is made in Northern Ireland—anyone sitting on seats A or D is probably sitting on one. Why? Is it because we are part of the EU? No, it is because we have a manufacturer that produces a competitive product.

I could go on. People buy our goods for those reasons. All around the world, we sell goods to countries that we do not have trade deals with. So what about the idea that, if we left the EU, suddenly we would not get a trade deal with it? First, the supply chain would demand that the goods are bought anyway and, secondly, if the product is not competitive, people will stop buying, but if it is competitive, they will keep on buying. The argument is that it will take us years to negotiate a new trade deal. It will not, for the simple reason that, if firms want our products, they will continue to buy them.

On the last argument to be made, I have to say that the Prime Minister has been despicable today, invoking the war dead. It shows desperation to say that people died for the European Union, or for a united Europe. They died for a Europe free of dictatorship; they died for a democratic Europe. The whole essence of the EU is that it is not a democratic institution—some people do not even try to defend it as that any longer—and it is not an institution in which the will of the people is reflected in the decisions made; the will reflected is that of people who believe they know better than the elected politicians. The bureaucrats believe that they can develop an efficient system of government, free from those pesky politicians with their mad ideas and everything else. For the Prime Minister to invoke the war dead was an absolute disgrace.

We have seen the security argument, unfortunately, blown apart in Paris and Brussels. Terrorists, because of the Schengen arrangements and open borders, can wander around Europe like jihadic nomads, crossing borders, planning and plotting, and then killing. That is why we need to have control over our own borders. That is why we need to be out of an institution that leaves us open to that kind of terrorist activity.

I made an intervention about this earlier, but it is significant that the Government’s own document eulogises the fact that our special relationship with Europe enables us to opt out of and to distance ourselves from most of the major policies of the European Union. If there is a compelling argument, it is in the Government’s own document. We do not want to be part of the euro, because we have seen what it has done, the devastation that it has wrought across economies in European countries, the youth unemployment, and the way in which democratic institutions have been undermined in Italy and Greece as a result of the requirements to stay in the euro. Looking at the arguments in the document, we can also opt out of Schengen, another essential part of the EU.

By the way, the Government say that no country has been able to negotiate a trade agreement with the EU without allowing free access to labour. That is not true. Many countries outside the European Union trade freely with it, and they do not have to accept anyone and everyone who wants to move from EU countries to their country, but the document makes that claim—although the Government say that part of our special relationship is that we can opt out of that as well, and we can opt out of any other interference. If it is so good to be able to opt out of those policies, is it not even better to opt out of the EU altogether?

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Three people are standing, and I intend to call the Scottish National party spokesperson at 7 o’clock. People can do the arithmetic themselves.