EU-UK Summit

James McMurdock Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Richard Tice]

Well, the Europeans may well be younger and fitter than me, but the truth is that proximity makes a big difference to the concerns of my constituents. Boston has received a significant quantity of net immigration from eastern Europe, but it has not seen any Australians. There is a proximity issue, but surely it must be right that if the Government are going to agree a deal, they should agree the terms of the deal. We do not know the numbers, the cap or, really, the duration of the scheme—we know absolutely nothing. We are completely at the mercy of the European Union.

I invite any hon. Member to spend a day with me in sunny Skegness and knock on a thousand doors. I promise them that not a single person who answers the door will say, “I want a youth experience scheme for Johnny or Judy.”

[James McMurdock (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Reform)]

As with anything, when the terms are unclear there is a big risk of unintended consequences. Given that 60 million people in the EU are under 30 and that the scheme does nothing for the immigration issues we are already facing, does my hon. Friend agree that those unintended consequences could be quite severe?

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[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am grateful to be able to make a short contribution to this debate. I will not repeat everything I said in last week’s debate, but I want to make this point.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) said that we do not want to go back to the old arguments we had about Brexit at the time of the referendum and while we were negotiating the trade and co-operation agreement before we finally left, but that is exactly what the Government are doing. Who is trying to turn back the clock? Who has decided that we should rejoin the single market for food and agriproducts, having promised that we would not rejoin the single market? It is this Labour Government.

The idea that the Government should be able to wash their hands of their responsibility to voters for honouring the referendum result is an absolute absurdity. Let us remind ourselves that these are the same people who hated the idea of leaving the EU, who campaigned passionately to stay in the EU for ideological reasons, who refused to accept the referendum result, who desperately tried to pervert the referendum result or get a second referendum, and who, in their hearts, have never really accepted the referendum result.

They long to rejoin. That is the motive behind this: they know they cannot rejoin the European Union because they know the voters will not have it, so they are rejoining by stealth. That is what they are doing. They have rejoined the single market for food and agriproducts, which means we are effectively back in the European Union as far as the regulation of food and agriproducts is concerned, only we do not have a say on the new laws that will be made and imposed on all British food businesses.

[James McMurdock]

On that point, I invite the hon. Gentleman to elaborate on what he thinks it might mean that the Government scrapped the European Scrutiny Committee.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The House of Lords still has a European Affairs Committee, which held an inquiry in the run-up to the reset. There has been no inquiry into the reset by any Select Committee of the House of Commons, apart from the Business and Trade Committee.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (James McMurdock) are absolutely right that we need to reinstate the European Scrutiny Committee, because there will be a flow of new regulations coming out of the European Union that should be scrutinised in the proper way, as they were when we were a member of the European Union. Without that, there is no proper scrutiny in this House at all.

I will now move on briefly to the question of how bad Brexit really was as an economic event. We were told that the British economy would fall off a cliff, that the housing market would collapse, that interest rates would rocket—actually, none of those things occurred. When we left the European Union at the beginning of 2021, the dial hardly moved. Our economy was growing at roughly the same rate as other economies in the European Union.

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[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing time for this debate.

The Liberal Democrats were clear about our ambitions for the summit. We repeatedly pushed the Government for a youth mobility scheme between the UK and the EU, we called for a defence and security pact with our European neighbours, and crucially we urged the Government to be much bolder on trade and the economy by seeking a bespoke customs union with the EU.

The Brexit deal was a betrayal. The leave campaign promised that businesses would be able to trade more freely, that farmers would benefit from a new approach to their payments, and that fishing communities would thrive once again. Instead, businesses are caught up in red tape, farmers have seen their payments slashed, and the deal on fishing was a total sell-out. In fact, it has been amusing to hear Members berate the Government this week for an extension on exactly the same terms as the deal that Boris Johnson agreed.

[James McMurdock]

Would the hon. Lady clarify whether she believes the deal is a good thing for fishing or not? She seems to be bashing it, but also remarking on the 12-year extension.

[Sarah Olney]

I am assuming that the Conservative Government were happy with the terms that they were able to negotiate, so what is the problem with extending it? I simply reflect on the comments of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who is no longer in her place: the new agreement enables so many more opportunities for exporting to the EU, and that is something that will be very much welcomed by many of our industries, not least our fisheries.

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[Mike Wood]

That is an important question for the Minister to answer. This should not come as news. The Leader of the Opposition was quite clear on Tuesday that of course we support the principle of mobility schemes. After all, we negotiated so many of them, which the Minister did not support when he was shadow International Trade Secretary.

The Government’s deal clearly also fails the tests on payments to the EU and on fishing rights. Our fishermen stand betrayed. Instead of the four-year transitional arrangement they had under the previous agreement, they have been lumbered with French, Spanish and Dutch mega-trawlers being handed long-term access to their waters. That will become the new permanent state of being, and it will have to be negotiated away from. From Cornwall to Tobermory, fishermen find themselves devastated by a Government prepared to sell them short. That is not what they were promised, and certainly not what they deserve.

Again, it is difficult to judge from the information published on Monday whether the security and defence partnership could undermine NATO. There is clearly a need for western Europe to take greater responsibility for the security of the region and to improve its collective capability. There is no question but that closer co-operation can bring benefits for Britain—particularly for contractors able to bid for projects funded by safe loans—but of course none of that is ensured in any of the material published so far. It is surely true that our partners will benefit at least as much from the incredible contribution that the British armed forces will make to that security so, given such mutual benefit, there should be no case for additional payments or concessions.

[James McMurdock]

To my mind, the core of the issue is the sense of suspicion. No one disagrees that trade barriers are a bad thing and that clearing them is a good thing for trade, but there is an awful lot of suspicion about the exact details and about how much the benefits are real benefits, not just the removal of punitive hurdles.