EU Council

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are not a Schengen country, so there is no prospect of us being part of a European external border force. Our external border is well delineated and well protected, but we should obviously look at what more we can do. Should we, however, stop other European countries if they want to get together and do more at their external border? No, I do not think we should. Frankly, we want to see a better-protected European border. Whether or not we would co-operate, work with or help some future force, I do not know, but it could be properly looked at. At the moment, even though we are not in Schengen, we have more people working on the European Asylum Support Office than any other European country. In the end, we recognise that protecting Europe’s external border is in our interest. Again, I think we can have the best of both worlds: we can keep our border controls and keep out of Schengen, while encouraging other European countries to do more on their external border and providing help where appropriate and necessary, but make sure that we maintain our own sovereignty in this vital regard.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

In his earlier replies to my right hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), the Prime Minister made it clear to the people of Scotland, and presumably to the people of Wales and Northern Ireland too, that a consequence of being part of the United Kingdom is that we have to put up with the possibility of our people voting to stay in the European Union yet being dragged out of it if a majority of people in England vote to leave. This is how the Prime Minister has started 2016, but for most of 2014 the Prime Minister was telling us that being part of the United Kingdom was the only way to guarantee our membership of the EU. Will he tell us how it is possible to reconcile those two directly contradictory views?

[The Prime Minister]

Very easily. If Scotland had voted to leave the United Kingdom, which the people of Scotland wisely rejected, they would have been in a very long queue to get back into the EU. Having met the Spanish Prime Minister several times, I am not sure that there are many circumstances in which the Spanish would ever let an independent Scotland back into the European Union. That is the answer to the hon. Gentleman’s first question. The answer to the second is that we had a referendum on whether Scotland should remain part of the United Kingdom. Scotland voted to stay in the United Kingdom and the hon. Gentleman’s party vowed to abide by the decision taken—for one United Kingdom.