Outcome of the EU Referendum

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Let me try to reassure Members. The only reason I am saying “No immediate changes” is that I am just trying accurately to reflect the legal situation, which is this: for people who are free at the moment to come and live and work in the UK—let me repeat that if they come here and they cannot support themselves, we can ask them to leave; that is important and has been the case for some time—as long as we are members of the EU, that continues. At the point at which we go, a Government will have to make a decision about what to negotiate with the rest of Europe about the rights of Europeans to come and live and work here—whether there will be visas or work permits, or what have you—and then there will be consequences potentially for British citizens going to live and work in Europe. The House is going to be able to debate all these things, so Members will be able to contribute to all these discussions and conversations, but I must answer accurately from this Dispatch Box, and what I can say is that as long as we stay in the EU those rights are protected, and I have gone further than that and said that everything I have heard from those who were campaigning to leave is that those rights will be continued after we have left.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister accept that maintaining very strong UK participation in Europe-wide scientific research collaboration needs to be an important strand of the work he has described going forward?

[The Prime Minister]

I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman. This is an area where we have got more out of Europe than we have put in, and we will clearly want to safeguard that for the future.