I personally think that my noble friend Lord Callanan is extremely patient and polite in this House.
As I was saying, Mr Selmayr was the prime suspect behind the leak about a dinner in Downing Street, at which untrue and personal remarks were made about the Prime Minister. It is he who is keen to block the UK’s access to the Galileo satellites. The Napoleonic behaviour of the Commission gets more blatant every day. It is not just pursuing a so-called European system of protectionism like Bonaparte, but brushing aside democratic and accountability constraints in pursuit of the self-interest of an imperial bureaucracy.
Back in 2015, I did not want the UK to leave the EU. Naively, I did not know how the Commission carries on. I helped to edit a 1,000- page plan called “Change or Go”. The EU refused to change in response to David Cameron’s reasonable requests, so I concluded that we should go. I was reminded of those days by the excellent television series by Norma Percy over the last three weeks, which gave inside views of that renegotiation and the events that led up to it. It brought back memories of how much the Commission disliked Britain then, thought our affection for democracy was stupid and quaint, and how it kept wishing we would go away. Yet now it wants to stop us leaving.
The most sobering thing I have read today is from Jim Ratcliffe, Britain’s successful chemicals businessman. In an open letter to Jean Claude Juncker, he says:
“Nobody but nobody in my business seriously invests in Europe. They haven’t for a generation”.
He says the EU is scaring away investment with heavy green taxes, with Europe’s share of the world chemical market having halved to just 15% in the last 10 years. He says the EU has,
“the world’s most expensive energy and labour laws that are uninviting for employers”.
The UK’s growth last year was better yet again than Germany’s, France’s and Italy’s, so it is clear that the reason for our sluggish growth—and it is sluggish—is that we are still in the EU. It is precisely for the people at the bottom of the pay scale that we need to leave and rediscover growth and enterprise.
My noble friend Lady Wheatcroft worries about the wages of a broccoli picker going up lest it put up the cost of vegetables. If it means that broccoli farmers have to pay a little more so that people in the north of England can afford to work for them rather than seasonal workers from abroad, that is quite good for people at the bottom of the pay scale. That, I think, is why we are leaving.
8.24 pm