Europe has been the dominant issue in the House of Commons this week,
both with growing concerns about the crisis in the eurozone and
Monday’s debate on a motion calling for a referendum on our membership
of the European Union.
I know where I stand on Europe. I believe that we should be members of
the EU, but with powers being returned to Britain. Our relationship
with Europe should be more like it was when we joined the Common
Market in the 1970s. The EU has encroached too far into our national
life. Many of the rules and regulations it has given us are holding
Britain back, frustrating us with red tape and adding costs to
business. The European single market is important for our trade,
although we must do much more to build up customers for our products
around the world; particularly with other countries in the
Commonwealth and new markets like China and Brazil.
I believe that our relationship with the EU has to change, but I voted
against the motion before parliament on Monday because I think we need
to know what powers we can get back from the European Union, before we
can hold a proper debate and vote on whether we should stay in or
leave. The motion would most probably not have given us a referendum
for about two years and it would most likely have been on a completely
different question to the one we debated. I don’t think this is very
satisfactory. If we are going to have a referendum we should get on
with it. Also, the motion proposed a three part question, asking
whether we should stay in the EU with no change, leave, or stay in but
renegotiate. This means that if just 34% of people have voted to stay
in with no change to our membership, that could have been enough to
win; again this would be a totally unacceptable result.
There is no doubt that Europe is facing its greatest economic crisis
since the war, and that we have been totally vindicated in our
decision that Britain should never join the euro. Outside of the euro
we have the power to run our own economic policy, suited to conditions
at home; whereas in the eurozone, they have been trying to apply the
same structures to Germany and Greece, which was always going to be an
almost impossible challenge. In Britain, since the election, we have
put in place a credible plan to bring our national finances back under
control, so that we are no longer spending more than we earn and can
start to reduce our debts, other European countries should do the
same. Although we are outside of the eurozone, a crisis there would be
bad for our economy too. The European Union is still the biggest
export market for British goods and services and I hope that they take
whatever measures are necessary to bring stability to eurozone. That
may mean a new European Treaty, which would also give us the
opportunity to negotiate for powers to come back to Britain, over
employment law and other areas which have previously been lost.