European Union: UK Membership

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I congratulate all the petitioners on securing this important debate. More than 400 signatures came from my constituents alone, and I believe it is democratic to debate these important issues. Today is the start of a very important debate, and I hope the Government will listen.

I say to the petitioners that I fought to the last to stop Brexit. I was shocked and grieving when we left in January 2020, and I almost took it as a personal failure that we could not stop Brexit. I would be the first to agree that Brexit is not working, and we have heard why this afternoon.

Like my wonderful friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella), I am a European product. I would not be here without the EU. I am German by birth and origin. I met and married my British husband, and I became a British citizen when I was 30. For the last 35 years, I have tried to get rid of my German accent.

Through those many years, I have always been a European at heart. That heart was somewhat taken out of me, but through my scars, incomprehension and shock, I have come to understand that looking back is not an option now. We must find new ways of engagement and a new language to define our relationship with the European Union. We have to be pragmatic, realistic and honest with our constituents. I expect our Government not to look backwards, but to define what a reset of our relationship will lead to. The Liberal Democrats believe that the end of that journey should be being at the heart of the European Union once more.

Last week, I was in Brussels as a member of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, as were a number of colleagues here today. The Assembly is the only formal body in which UK parliamentarians engage with EU parliamentarians. I heard from our European friends that the TCA is the EU’s most comprehensive and wide-ranging trade agreement with any third country, which is because the UK is an ex-member. No other country has left the European Union; most want to accede.

It is important to recognise that the EU is quite happy with the TCA, and it does not necessarily want to reopen those discussions. We can theorise and test how far the TCA can go, but we have to recognise that the EU is currently quite happy with it. However, the EU does want to engage on its concerns about people-to-people contact, a sustainable energy future, and security and resilience.

On people-to-people contact, the EU has mainly been proposing a youth mobility scheme. We Liberal Democrats were first out of the box to say we should agree to that. It is not helpful if the Government say that a youth mobility scheme is a return to free movement —it is not. We have to consider what a youth mobility scheme could realistically look like.

Although I tried in the last Parliament to look at whether we could go back to something like Erasmus+, I recognise that it would cost the Government a lot of money, so I cannot see it happening just now. The Turing scheme, which is not just about students but apprenticeships and other exchanges for young people, is accessible only to British citizens. We should therefore consider whether there is an opportunity to make Turing reciprocal. I urge the Government at least to look at that, because it would make some sort of movement towards the European Union.

Secondly, energy security is a shared concern, and the European Union wants to engage on energy security. However, the current system through which we trade our energy is not working. It was set up as part of the TCA, it is called something very complicated—multi-region loose volume coupling—and it has to be replaced by something a lot more ambitious than the current price coupling model

That is particularly important if we want to draw in the vital private investment to realise the huge potential of the North sea for our shared clean power plan. Again, I urge the Government at least to look at how we are trading our energy. This would have big advantages not only for UK citizens but for EU citizens, and the EU is open to having such discussions.

Another issue is, of course, the emissions trading scheme. Again, I do not expect the Government ultimately to follow a European model entirely, but we need to align as far as possible.

Finally, it is obviously in our shared interest to protect and defend Europe. When we were talking about security co-operation, someone from the European side said, “Oh, we have to look at whether this needs a new legal framework.” I would say in response, “If the European Union is talking about new legal frameworks, that is probably not the pragmatic and realistic solution we are looking for.”

However, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) that unless we find ways to improve security procurement and to work together on the supply chains to ensure that our defence systems work together, including by determining where we produce things, the reset of our relationship will be just warm words.

I urge the Government to move away from warm words—at the PPA, we all exchanged warm words about our new relationship—towards action and results. Otherwise, we will be talking about a reset for many decades. We need action from the Government now.