European Union: UK Membership

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the petitioners on securing this debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for his eloquent and passionate speech.

I fear that I am in danger of picking at the scars and wounds referred to by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy)—a very learned Member—but I must reflect on these past nine years. On 23 June 2016, the people of Scotland voted to remain within the European Union by 62% to 38%. There was a majority for remain in every single one of Scotland’s local authorities. In anyone’s terms, that was decisive, and if the vote were rerun today, I suggest it would be even more decisive.

It is almost nine years since the disastrous misleading of the electorate by Gove, Johnson, Farage et al., and we might want to consider the extent to which this failure of democracy has increased support for Scottish independence—from 45% to 54% and rising. But still and all, democracy has been undermined in Scotland, because the imposition of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 restricted the previously agreed powers of the Scottish Parliament and ignored the Sewel convention by proceeding with UK legislation without the consent of the Scottish Parliament.

As a result of Brexit, we are a much poorer nation, at a time when we cannot afford to be poorer. That poverty equates to £3 billion in lost public revenues for Scotland each and every year since we left Europe.

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is of course right to talk about the economic impact of Brexit, but would it have been different if the vote had been won on our joining the customs union—a vote that the SNP abstained on?

[Seamus Logan]

I cannot comment, as I was not here at the time, but we will come back to the issue of the customs union in a moment.

The UK has endured the highest rate of inflation in the G7 for many months. Brexit has exacerbated the cost of living crisis, driving a £250 increase in annual household food bills. Food and drink inflation in 2023 was at a 45-year high, with food prices up by almost 25 percentage points between 2019 and 2023. Analysis suggests that a third of that increase is due to Brexit, meaning UK households have paid out almost £7 billion to cover the extra costs of overcoming trade barriers that make importing food from the EU harder.

No community has escaped, but inevitably it is our poorest families who are hurting the most. Our business community is also enduring increased costs and damaged trade. According to Scottish Government analysis, 44% of businesses in Scotland face difficulties trading overseas, and named Brexit as the main cause. They face significant additional costs and bureaucracy at a time when their margins are already being squeezed at home by decisions made here in Westminster. Our prized seafood industry has been hit with an estimated 50% increase in the cost of packaging items sent to the EU, and new export health certificates are costing the salmon sector alone approximately £1.3 million per year.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will join me in expressing dismay at the fact that, for the bivalve fishing industry, the waters of Wales were no longer acceptable, and that industry died with Brexit.

[Seamus Logan]

I thank the right hon. Member for that point. Our fishing industry has effectively lost quota share and has access to fewer fishing opportunities for some species than it had under the EU’s common fisheries policy. That includes, for example, North sea whiting, where the maximum percentage of total EU and UK quota available is 73.5% compared with average UK landings in 2015 to 2019 of 82%. Even where quota has been gained through the TCA, much of it is for species that the Scottish fleet does not generally catch, or does not want to catch, making it of little practical value.

In the wider seafood sector, some shellfish exporters have estimated that the new barriers to trade with the EU have resulted in additional costs of £500 to £600 per consignment, making some exports unviable. Seafood Scotland has described post-Brexit labour shortages as having a huge impact on the seafood processing sector, with businesses turning down growth opportunities due to a lack of labour. We no longer enjoy freedom of movement—it has gone—despite the promises of the then candidate for leader of the Labour party in 2020, now the Prime Minister.

Some 45% of tourism businesses in the highlands and islands have reported staff shortages, forcing otherwise successful firms to cut their opening hours. In July 2022, UKHospitality reported 40,000 hospitality vacancies in Scotland, but the sector is excluded from the UK Government’s seasonal worker scheme. Recent media reporting found that one hotel in the highlands alone is short of 70 staff for the busy summer season. In response to an oral question recently, the Prime Minister told me he was fully aware of the labour shortages and was working to address them. I have two questions for the Minister when she winds up, and the first is: how exactly is the Prime Minister working to address those shortages?

[Sir John Hayes in the Chair]

Travel is more difficult and costly as Brexit has slowed down the process of entering the EU on a British passport. Business travellers and holidaymakers report long delays at some airports and extremely long tailbacks at the port of Dover. Pets can be brought into the European area only with an animal health certificate, which must be issued by a vet and can cost between £100 and £300 per trip. Most mobile phone operators have reintroduced roaming charges, which were abolished for EU members in 2017. Perhaps most shamefully, our young people miss huge opportunities as a result of Brexit because, as many Members said, we are no longer participating in Erasmus+.

In summary, our democratic will is being ignored, we are poorer, the cost of living is climbing, business is suffering, we do not have enough workers, foreign travel is more difficult and expensive, and our young people have lost enormous opportunity. History will reserve an especially harsh judgment for those who misled us down this path. Paradoxically, we are now forced into closer defence relationships with our European allies and higher spending in the face of the growing threat of Russian aggression. But we cannot say that we were not warned that, while the creation of the European Union has been a bulwark for peace in Europe since 1945, its weakening would potentially threaten that peace.

In conclusion, I ask the question that we should all ask: who really benefited from Brexit? It certainly was not the ordinary people. But rather than speak about how bad this all is, let us do something about it. I feel a teeny, wee bit sorry for the Chancellor at the minute, but I am giving her a way out: rejoin the single market, rejoin the customs union and get the benefits that they offer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John.

I am afraid my contribution will jar with the cosy consensus of the debate, if we should call it a debate, because has it not just been an echo chamber for the laments of two or three dozen Europhile MPs? It has not been a debate at all, but what brings us here are 130,000-odd signatures on a petition. Well, of course, what that immediately calls to mind is the contrast with the 17,410,742 British voters who made the most consequential decision in the greatest democratic decision ever made by the greatest number of people ever voting. That embarrasses them. That is why, almost two hours into this debate, this is the first time we have heard that figure, because those in this Chamber have their face set against that democratic decision.

This petition is notable in its arrogance. It does not even say, “Well, let’s have another referendum.” No—in its arrogance, it demands that we simply rejoin the EU, which the British people decided democratically to leave. I know that is an uncomfortable fact, but that is the core issue.

[Seamus Logan]

The hon. and learned Gentleman speaks of uncomfortable facts. Has he been listening to the uncomfortable facts that have been shared in this debate?

[Jim Allister]

Let me give the hon. Member and others some rather uncomfortable facts. I am delighted to tell those Euro-fanatics who gather in this hallowed hall today that only 50 of my constituents in North Antrim signed this petition. Of course that is for very good reason, because unlike the rest of you, we have continued to have to live under the EU. We have continued to be subject to the bureaucratic stranglehold of the EU single market and its customs code. What has that meant? It has meant that in over 300 areas of law we in Northern Ireland are governed by laws that we do not make and cannot change because they are made by a foreign Parliament in which we have no say. That is the product of the denial of Brexit to the people of Northern Ireland. That is how we have been left. Those are the laws that govern the single market.

I hear the moving desire of hon. Members to be back in the single market, but let me tell them what that has meant for Northern Ireland: we were told that it was the best of both worlds and a panacea, and if only we all had the best of both worlds. Well, having the best of both worlds and being able to sell into the mighty market of the EU was supposed to bring a flood of foreign direct investment into Northern Ireland. According to some enthusiasts, we were going to be the Singapore of the west, but the reality is that there has not been one foreign direct investment in Northern Ireland because of single market access.

Before people get what they wish for, I caution them that being in the single market is no panacea. As I have already illustrated, in Northern Ireland it comes at the price of being governed by laws that we do not make and cannot change. Everyone here seems to want to put the whole United Kingdom in that position. I have heard hon. Members lament American tariffs, but they want to put themselves in the club that will be most tariffed by the United States. Where is the logic in that? It really is beyond belief.

The real lesson from Northern Ireland is that the growth in our economy has come in the services sector, which is the sector that is outside EU control. Of the two sectors—manufacturing and services—the sector that has grown is the one outside EU control. The one that is still under the EU’s control is the one that has struggled and has not grown. That is a telling reminder of what it means for people to subjugate themselves in a subservient way to rules made in a foreign Parliament.