UK’s Exit from the European Union

Debate between Stella Creasy and Adam Holloway

Monday 24th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe.

When 65% of the people in my constituency of Gravesham voted in the 2016 referendum, they cast their votes in favour of leaving the EU. They did so in the expectation that their views would be respected and in the hope that the Government would have the guts to make a success of it. In those ambitions, my constituents have not been well served. Their clear instructions to us here in Parliament were not respected. For years the Government, with the collusion of the civil service, treated Brexit as a gigantic, strategic mistake by the people of the United Kingdom, and they saw their role as one of damage limitation. But in 2019 the electorate had the chance to speak again, returning my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) with a huge majority, and he respected that mandate and was finally able to deliver Brexit.

It is faintly depressing to be here again ostensibly debating whether the benefits of Brexit have been delivered and whether there should be a public inquiry. In reality, we are arguing today about whether we should have voted to leave the EU or whether we should rejoin. For me, the single most important benefit of Brexit has been realised, leaving aside some slightly unhappy compromises in the Windsor framework, because our sovereignty has been repatriated. Many remainers seem to view our desire to govern ourselves as at best an outmoded and abstract concept, and at worst a front for baser impulses.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Adam Holloway]

I will not. I came in here earlier, took one look at all the articulate advocates of remain or rejoin, and I thought that in the interests of my blood pressure, which I tested this morning, I would not give way—[Interruption.] I am sure the hon. Lady can address that in her speech: we have heard a lot from her on the subject already.

It is easy to undervalue sovereignty if the areas in which it was surrendered to the EU do not actually impact one’s life. It is easy to disdain patriotism if someone is economically and socially mobile and derives their self-worth from a well-paid job, or if their life is made easier by cheap labour as a result of free movement. In my constituency, EU membership has brought social problems, pressures on housing in the social and private sectors, enormous stress on public services and a sense of disenfranchisement. My constituents are not crazed nationalists. They are hard-working people who voted to take back control over the laws that directly affect their quality of life, and to have the right to vote out politicians who make laws that do not work for them. That power is important to them, and it is important to me that we deliver on that promise.

On the economic benefits of Brexit, we should have the courage of our convictions and stop being so cautious. It was encouraging to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), unveil his post-Brexit reform of financial services, which aims to give us a regulatory framework that meets the needs of our financial services industry and can respond effectively to emerging trends. With the freedom to diverge from EU law, we can now make substantial changes in many areas—for example, in the regulation of insurance firms. The risk margin, the capital buffer that insurance companies must hold, will be cut by 65% for life insurers and 30% for general insurers. The eligibility of assets that life insurers can use to match their liabilities will therefore be broadened. That will free up capital for investment in the UK economy and improve the competitiveness of the important financial services industry, bringing benefits to consumers.

The Government must stick to their promise to make substantial legislative progress in this area during 2023. Reform of the financial services regulations is just one area where we now have the freedom to extricate ourselves from a regime that was not designed with our best interests in mind.

There are a host of opportunities we must now seize. We must make progress with the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, and we must take advantage of our freedom from EU control of state aid. We must make sure that our immigration system works for the people of this country. It is a difficult task to disentangle ourselves from a heap of legislation that we did not choose, but it is a vital job. We should be bold and move quickly.

Unaccompanied Child Refugees: Europe

Debate between Stella Creasy and Adam Holloway

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Adam Holloway]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention. The reality is that this was some time ago, and that there were very, very few children. What I found in my week-long stay at the Sangatte camp was that the refugees were mostly fit young men. I would do exactly as they did—they had sold bits of land in Kurdistan or wherever else and were coming to England. The reasons why that camp was full, why the Jungle camp was full and why there are thousands of people around Calais is that they know they will get into Britain. We have people drowning in the Mediterranean because we have created the pull factor: the expectation that if they make it to Europe, they will stay in Europe. Until we break that, we will continue to have this problem, and we will continue to have so many young people coming over here.

The reality with what we describe as these “refugee children”—I do acknowledge that we cannot have nine-year olds living in bushes—is that 90% of the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who applied for asylum in 2016 were male, 59% of whom claimed to be either 16 or 17 years old.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about people who may have come here illegally. Does he agree that if we have a safe and legal process, all of the Daily Mail myths about who the refugee children are can be dealt with because Home Office officials will be processing them on the ground? That is what we are talking about today.

[Adam Holloway]

I have great sympathy with what the hon. Lady says, but I have also seen these kids in the camps. We should be doing everything we can for the many, not for the relative few. [Interruption.] It is true. We should not just do what makes us feel good. There are millions of refugees in the middle east who need as much help as we can give. We cannot settle them all in the UK; we must do what we can for the many.

By taking such young people, we are spending vast amounts of money that could much more effectively help children in their own regions. We are also creating pull factors, which encourage young people to embark on these long and sometimes lethal journeys. Here, council foster places are already oversubscribed. The amount of money spent on each child is enormous. I am saying not that we should not take in some cases, but that we should think about where we spend this money. We should use the money to look after people nearer their own homes. We must do what is right, and not what makes us feel good. If we are really to help all those who most need our help, we would do better to help them outside our borders, and to stop these immoral pull factors. We should be helping the many, not pulling in the few.

Refugee Crisis in Europe

Debate between Stella Creasy and Adam Holloway

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holloway]

I myself wonder how many people have not drowned because of those policies, but, again, we shall have to differ.

We must return those who are not entitled to claim asylum to their countries of origin, and—as we heard from the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford—try to find mechanisms to help the very, very large numbers of refugees in the region. We must consider establishing migration centres in safe places outside the EU, or possibly within it, for those who are rescued or those who have arrived. I believe that, in the jargon, that is called “extraterritorial processing”. In 2003, the Labour Government presented their idea for “transit processing centres”. Those proposing such an offshore asylum strategy could also learn from what the Australians have done in Papua New Guinea.

There are millions of genuine refugees from Syria alone, plus millions of economic migrants from numerous countries, whom we must discourage, and those are not numbers that it will to be possible to accommodate through dispersal within Europe. Besides, Syria needs a regional solution; relocating people away from the region does not offer the long-term approach that it requires.

At some stage, we shall have to realise that big boys’ toys—that drones, lean men with unseasonal suntans and Viking moustaches, and fast jets—do not end wars. What ends wars, ultimately, is working on the politics, and sometimes that means going into partnership with some pretty unpleasant people. However, that is for another debate.

Let me say this in conclusion—Members will be relieved to hear that. If we do not act to break the link between a journey and a right to remain, millions of migrants may arrive on European soil over the next couple of years alone. Today, if we keep sending people in poorer or less stable countries the message that once they are picked up by the Royal Navy, or walk into Hungary, or reach a Greek island, they will have a ticket to a whole new life in Europe there and then, ever-growing numbers will come. Wouldn't you?

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman’s argument seems to be predicated on the idea that the fact that Australia has said no to boatloads of people has had the effect of stopping people going. Is he aware of the number of people who are continuing to drown while trying to get to Australia? Is there not just a vague possibility that the boats are not a pull factor, and that it is the need to flee for their lives that is making people take this risk? Operation Mare Nostrum was stopped in the Mediterranean because there was an idea that doing so would somehow stop people coming, but that simply was not true. People are dying and fighting for their lives; surely they deserve our protection.

[Mr Holloway]

They absolutely deserve our protection, and that is where I am coming from in this debate. We have to be hard-nosed and realistic. It is all very well to try to make oneself feel better, but we must do what is sustainable, moral and right in the long term.

Unless the message gets through to people in these countries, we are inviting hundreds of millions to seek a better life in Europe and Britain. Either we are a nation state or we are not. Either we are able to be serious about helping the many millions who are affected, or we are not. We should decide who comes into our country, not the German Government, and not the people smugglers. The message needs to be much clearer, or the drownings and the chaos will go on.

I completely understand the sentiments of those, here and in my constituency, who are demanding that something be done. We must do the right thing for the long term, in order to prevent the tides of death many of which we will never see in a newspaper. We need to resist the temptation to do what makes us feel better, and start coming up with some proper ideas that could solve the problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman raises the point about the well-founded fear, but my point is that every generation faces the test that the 1951 convention sets us. When a person comes to us and says, “I am in danger, will you help me?”, how we answer defines us as much as it defines their future. As the hon. Member for Gravesham said, it is a moral question. When we signed the convention in 1951, nobody could have predicted the situation that we are in now, but the fact that we could not predict it does not absolve us of the responsibility to answer the question. We are not absolved when the people fleeing the murderous intent of ISIL ask, “Will you help?” Our answer should be yes. When people are fleeing sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, will you help? Yes. When people are fleeing the repressive regime of Robert Mugabe, will you help? Yes. When people are fleeing civil war in Sudan and Eritrea, will you help? Yes. How we answer says as much about us as it does about them, so when we quibble about numbers and qualify them by saying that we will take 20,000 but over a number of years, or perhaps that we will take not 20,000 but up to 20,000—

[Mr Holloway]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I will give way very quickly, and only once.

[Mr Holloway]

So rather than quibbling, will the hon. Lady tell me how many people we should be taking in her constituency and for how long?

[Stella Creasy]

I shall come on to talk about Walthamstow and am happy to invite the hon. Gentleman, who need not come under cover, to see the welcome that we give to people in Walthamstow. It is not easy, but we do it because it says something about us as a country and a community that when people are at risk we answer the call. When the people of Germany have answered the call to the tune of 800,000, when the people of Sweden have answered the call by taking eight per 1,000 of population, that challenges us all in the UK.

Let us look at the camps, because the Government are specifying that we should take people from the camps alone. When we consider the figure of 800,000 taken by Germany, it is sobering to realise that Lebanon has taken more than 1.1 million people in a country of 4.5 million.