EU Council

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. In his discussions yesterday, was he aware of a growing mood among Heads of Government across the European Union—I certainly saw it among the seven Liberal Prime Ministers to whom I spoke yesterday—that given that three quarters of Britain’s young people voted to remain in Europe, they should be permitted, as far as possible, to remain in Europe? What can be done to ensure that young people are allowed access to Europe—perhaps even over and above the rest of us?

Is the Prime Minister also aware of the great concern among many communities that depend on European funding? Most important perhaps are Britain’s farmers, many of whom are deeply worried about the loss of CAP payments at some point in the next two years. Will the Prime Minister guarantee today that British farmers, particularly livestock and dairy farmers, will continue to receive direct payments to keep them in business even after we leave the European Union—if we do?

[The Prime Minister]

On young people, the hon. Gentleman is right that people want the opportunities to work, to travel and to study. One of the things that the EU unit will need to do is to work out the precise nature of agreements such as the Erasmus programme and what access we can have to them from outside the EU.

On funding, the European budget between 2014 and 2020 has been set out, including the amount of money that goes to our farmers. What I can guarantee is that those payments will continue while we are in and that contracts will obviously be honoured, but it will be for a future Government to determine at the point of departure what payments we should continue to make to our farmers. If it was me making that decision, I am keen to have a living, working countryside, but we will have to go through those options and a future Prime Minister will have to decide.