European Union Referendum Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-09
Topic: Foreign Trade
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): I cannot as there is a time limit The Swiss do not have access to large parts of the market, although I would add that they accepted the free movement of labour. They have no access to European financial services, or any other services. Swiss banks are providing investment and employment in the City of London because Switzerland is excluded from the extremely valuable part of our financial services industry, on which a lot of our prosperity depends. Normally, I find that Eurosceptics do not address that Do Eurosceptics wish to go into the wide blue yonder and leave the trade area altogether? That would involve tariffs. That would involve 10% tariffs on vehicle exports to Europe. I doubt whether my hon. Friends are advocating that we should cease to have any access to the market at all. We need to be absolutely clear that the Eurosceptic case is usually that we are so important to Europe that the other countries, if we negotiate strongly enough, will allow us to keep the benefits of membership and give way on the obligations As I have said, there are some things that we ought to negotiate. However, we should be wary of getting too carried away by freedom of movement of labour, which is desirable in a trading area. It is a benefit to all members, including the United Kingdom. We should, of course, stop benefit tourism. Benefit tourists are unwise if they come here, because benefits are more generous in Germany, Sweden and in many other places. No doubt they will agree with us on clarifying the exclusion of benefit tourism What we need to bear in mind about seeking to go further is that 2.2 million British people are living and working in the rest of the European Union, and about 2.5 million EU citizens are living and working here. If we are going to demand treaty change to permit us to discriminate against European foreign nationals—not other foreign nationals, but European foreign nationals—in our employment laws, our tax system or our benefit system, are they going to forgo doing the same thing to British residents in other countries? There are more British people drawing unemployment benefit in Germany than there are Germans drawing unemployment benefit here. I think that an Englishman working alongside a Frenchman in an international company in France should, if he is doing the same job, have the same take-home pay. I find it difficult to argue why an Englishman and a Polish person working alongside each other doing the same job in Britain should not have the same pay either. Freedom of movement of labour benefits us Eurosceptics love to demand treaty change. They do that because they know it is not possible to get treaty change to a complicated 28 nation state treaty before 2017. It takes five or six years. We can have legally binding protocols on particular matters, which has been resorted to, and I am sure ingenuity in the Foreign Office and in the corridors of Europe will produce legally binding protocols for anything we produce. To make a touchstone of treaty change, when there are 27 other Governments who will follow our lead in the process and all start demanding things, is not worth pursuing The key issue is to have a campaign, as well as a question, that is absolutely clear. This is about Britain’s role in the modern 21st-century world of interdependent nations. How do we maximise our influence? By using our powerbase in Europe. The alternative, I am afraid, is a fanciful escapist route into isolated nationalism which would greatly diminish our influence in the world and greatly damage our economy.