European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Redwood and Nick Clegg

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

The question mark has been placed there by the EU, not by this Government. If the EU said today that our citizens abroad are safe, all EU citizens here would be safe.

[Mr Clegg]

The right hon. Gentleman would start blaming bad traffic on the EU if he could. It is absurd. We picked the fight, not the EU. His party picked the fight; the EU did not.

I have one observation that I want to press the Secretary of State on. Even if he gets the deal on the issue of EU citizens here and UK citizens there, which I sincerely believe he wishes to seek, and even if that goes as smoothly and quickly as he has suggested today, there is no earthly way that this Government can separate the 3 million EU citizens who are already here from the millions who may, after a certain cut-off date, want to live, study, and work here without creating a mountainous volume of red tape.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Redwood and Nick Clegg

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

I support the Government offering this House a vote. They cannot deny the House a vote—if the House wants to vote, the House will vote—but it is very important that those who want to go further and press the Government even more should understand that this approach could be deeply damaging to the United Kingdom’s negotiating position. It is based on a completely unreal view of how multinational negotiations go when a country is leaving the European Union. I find it very disappointing that passionate advocates of the European Union in this House, who have many fine contacts and networks across our continent, as well as access to the counsel and the wisdom of our European partners, give no explanation in these debates of the attitudes of the other member states, the weaknesses of their negotiating position and what their aims might be. If they did so, they could better inform the Government’s position, meaning that we could do better for them and for us.

[Mr Clegg]

The right hon. Gentleman is, as ever, making an articulate case from his point of view about the dangers of a vote at the end of the process. Can he explain why, on 20 November 2012, in a very interesting blogpost entitled, “The double referendum on the EU”, he advocated a second referendum with the following question:

“Do you want to accept the new negotiated relationship with the EU or not?”?

How on earth and why on earth has he changed his mind since then?

EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Debate between Lord Redwood and Nick Clegg

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clegg]

Being called “off beam” by the hon. Gentleman is quite something. He and I share a passion for Sheffield, however, so I shall put that aside for a minute. In the economy of this country, 78% of GDP is generated by services. Services are barely affected by taxes, tariffs and levies, but British lawyers, British engineers, British architects and British creative industries trying to sell their wares, as they successfully do—we are a services economy superpower in Europe—are affected by precisely the rules that are thrashed out in Brussels, in discussions that we would be excluded from if we left the European Union.

As the right hon. Member for Wokingham acknowledged, the completion of the single market in services is, indeed, a work in progress. We are the chief author and architect of the success in that area. Why on earth would anyone walk away from the construction of a building of which they were the chief architect and the chief beneficiary? A 7% increase in our GDP is the calculated improvement in the economic performance of this country if we complete the single market in services, but the Brexit camp want to walk away from that.

[John Redwood]

Why was there no improvement in manufacturing activity with the single market?

[Mr Clegg]

Dare I say it, but even by the fairly specious standard of the statistics bandied about by both sides in this campaign, the way the right hon. Gentleman used statistics was spectacularly misleading. From listening to the Brexit campaign, people would think that the club we have been a member of for 43 years has been the fount of all misery. How come we are still an independent, free and broadly speaking prosperous nation if we have been a member of it for over four decades? I simply think that that applies to his example.