Stella Creasy MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

  More

  I understand the position that the hon. Member is taking. Many of us believe that somebody standing at an abortion clinic and feeling the need to pray there, rather than in a church or 150 metres away from the abortion clinic, is not silently praying but intervening on the privacy of the person accessing an abortion zone. That is why this Parliament— [ Interruption. ] I can hear the hon. Gentleman chuntering. I want to make some progress, but let me be very clear: those of us who recognise that safe access zones balance rights in the best way recognise that the hon. Gentleman is not alone in continuing to attack them. The vice-president of the United States has sought to attack our nation’s ability to protect women’s access to abortion clinics via safe access zones. The threat that we are facing is therefore not theoretical.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman asks me about the view of people in Northern Ireland. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe pointed out, in the six years since that law was passed there has been no call to reverse it. I believe that human rights are universal, which is why I thought it was right for us in the United Kingdom Parliament to act for all those women in Northern Ireland whose rights were being denied by the previous status quo. There has been resistance, and we can learn from it; that is why we tabled new clause 20 to the Crime and Policing Bill. I want to be very clear: anybody who claims that they are supporting decriminalisation by supporting new clause 1 is not telling us what decriminalisation really looks like. Decriminalisation must involve repeal, and that is why new clause 20 would repeal the legislation around abortion. That matters because, under the existing framework here, the police have already issued guidance that talks about prosecuting women. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) that we do not want to see prosecutions. Many of us have been concerned for some years about the increase in investigations and prosecutions of women for abortion. We have not been able to get to the bottom of why there has been such a surge or why the police felt the need to produce that guidance. New clause 1 would not stop subsequent guidance targeting the partners of people who had an abortion or the medics who provided the abortions, and it would not prevent demands for women to give evidence as part of that process. If we are to finally put to bed the notion that abortion is treated in the same way in this country as endangering the safety of railway workers or the possession of explosives—which it is under the Offences against the Person Act 1861—we must remove these offences from legislation. New clause 20 would do that: it explicitly says that there can be no investigation or prosecution under those offences. Therefore, it offers protection to all those involved in ensuring that women can access safe and legal abortions. That is why we took the approach that we did in Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, there was no abortion service at all, but we wanted to fight for what an abortion service should be. Those of us who consider ourselves pro-choice absolutely want to stop the investigations and prosecutions. Opposition Members have set out many of the arguments that are made to attack abortion access in this country, and that is where the human rights legislation came in. It is not true that when we passed the Northern Ireland legislation in 2019, there was immediately access to abortion. We had to fight tooth and nail against those who used their positions to thwart that legislation. The reason we were able to do that was that we had written into law a human rights lock, which meant that whenever people in the civil service, the police or the healthcare service did not approve of abortion and sought to resist the legislation, the Secretary of State had to stand up for the right of women in Northern Ireland to access a safe and legal abortion. I sat with the Secretaries of State at that point, who were not themselves particularly supportive of abortion access, as they admitted to me that they had to push through that legislation and ensure that provision. I have read the judgments from the cases where the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission intervened directly and used the powers that we wrote into law to defend access to abortion. Why does that matter? It matters because we know that abortion is already under attack in this country. I know that many are concerned about the Americanisation of our debate here—I want to come on to that—but we have already seen millions of pounds being spent on anti-abortion activism in this country. We do not need to import those people from America; we already have people like Lord Michael Hintze and Lord Michael Farmer, who are more than happy to fund anti-abortion activism. I pay tribute to the work of Dr Pam Lowe in identifying and tracking that. We can see from that work that there has been better co-ordination of anti-abortion campaigning, against decriminalisation, as well as the arguments made about the time limit and telemedicine—and, ultimately, in favour of the argument that we should be demanding to know why women wish to have an abortion. For no other healthcare provision do we demand that women explain and justify themselves before we provide it. Whether it is the March for Life, the activities on our campuses or indeed the lobbying of MPs, anybody who was complacent about access to abortion in this country before we saw the Trump playbook being brought into British politics needs to look more closely at what has been happening. When we legislate on abortion, we do not just need to properly decriminalise; we need to properly protect. That is why we tabled new clause 20, which has cross-party support. The anti-abortion movement never asks for abolition; it asks for more safeguards. It asks for more visits to doctors to delay the process of accessing an abortion. It makes a claim about medical technology. Of course, it is amazing when doctors are able to do wonderful things to save the lives of children born prematurely, but this is apples and pears. The people who have to make that horrible choice to have a late-term abortion are not doing so with the best of news in their hearts, but with hearts that are broken, because they have been told that their child will not live past birth. Who are we as a society, here in England and Wales, to compel those women to keep carrying a child to term that they know will die in a way that we do not do in Northern Ireland?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the shadow Minister for giving way and I recognise the points he is making. However, he says that criminal law is the way in which we give effect to the framework that he is talking about. Obviously, as we have discussed in this debate, there is no criminal underpinning to abortion in Northern Ireland, where abortion is a healthcare matter and is regulated as healthcare. For the avoidance of doubt, can I clarify that he would also accept that if we were to do as new clause 20 requires and introduce healthcare regulations that are human rights-compliant to replace the criminal regulation, there would be regulation and guidance about health services? It would not create a gap; it would be a replacement.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  The right hon. Member is shaking his head. I invite him to meet Sharon Matthews—she is an extraordinary woman who has fought for justice for her son, Tyrell. Brexit has made that harder.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  There needs to be some cold hard reality about this situation. The previous Government seemed to be suggesting some kind of cod war where our Navy might have been deployed to maintain the idea that nobody else could fish. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the benefits of the deal that has been struck now is around removing the barriers to selling the fish that we catch? The reason why there has been such a fall—of a third in the exports of fish from the United Kingdom—is the market that there is for our fishery. Our fishing communities face many challenges, not least the myths of the last Government, and we need to give them a market. This deal will do that.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  As the Minister says, the Windsor framework does as well. It shows where and how it works, and I think our constituents deserve the honesty of how the processes actually work and what the rulings are, rather than the fantasy. The puffins are very real; the puffery is not. Finally, I have some questions I wish the Minister to address in his summing-up, because there are questions arising from the summit and the deal that has been struck. He will be aware that many of us have been championing membership of the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention, because that is also about the rules of origin paperwork, which has been so harmful to our supply chains. Could he give us an update on whether there is an opportunity for us to be part of that mechanism again, to help British businesses with all that paperwork? We also need to understand whether any progress has been made on the mutual recognition of conformity assessments and qualifications. We know the latter is in there, but the agreement matters for both. Finally, can he say a bit more about what will happen to our financial services, which have not been mentioned yet but are the primary driver of growth in our economy? The new deal will help our constituents finally clear the fog of Brexit: the excessive paperwork, the partnerships that have been damaged and the personal opportunities lost. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to use these summits to keep working on our relationship with our neighbours. It is an honest recognition that we can fight many things in life, but geography is not one of them. Our constituents have paid the price of a bad deal, as have many of us—some Opposition Members literally bankrolled the Brexit campaign. It is no wonder the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) is not with us today; if I were him, I would not want to be here to admit what a botched deal has been done.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That this House has considered the EU-UK summit. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey, for a debate on such an important issue. Let me start with what I believe is a truism in British politics: we can learn a lot from Disney and the films of our childhood. In this debate, the words of Elsa from “Frozen” are particularly apposite for those people who are still obsessed with the debates of 2016 and 2019: it is time to let it go. I suspect that many Members across the House would agree with that, because 2016 was a long time ago, and time has moved on. It was 2016 when President Trump was elected for the first time. It was the year that, sadly, David Bowie passed away. It really is that long ago. Russia was involved in a war in the Donbas, but no further. TikTok did not even exist—that was not until 2019, which is also now a very long time ago and was when we finally actually left the European Union with the deal struck under the trade and co-operation agreement. It was also, of course, the year of “Frozen II” and that famous song “Into the Unknown”, and it was the year that Greggs gave us a vegan sausage roll, Notre-Dame burned down, Boris Johnson was elected as Prime Minister and “Game of Thrones” finally finished—not the Conservative leadership challenges, but the television series. My point is that so much has happened in our history since the tired old debates were first rehearsed. Let us not do that today, because we have left the European Union. I stand here as chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, seeking not to prosecute an argument to rejoin but to look at the summit and the deal that was struck on Monday. Frankly, I do not believe this country has time to engage in the discussion around rejoining. We need a salvage operation, and I see Monday’s deal as the start of that operation to salvage a future following the impact of Brexit. Even if we disagree on that salvage operation, I hope we can convince the Minister that there needs to be more scrutiny of our relationship with Europe. We might disagree about the direction of travel, but we are bound together by a recognition that taking back control means that this place needs to have discussions about the deals and the opportunities and what they mean for our constituents. Perhaps, like Banquo’s ghost, the former Member for Stone still lives with us; but actually, we can all show today that were we to have European scrutiny formats in the House, it would be a positive and constructive contribution to the deal-making process. That is what is on offer today: the opportunity to take us forward, not back. We can now see the impact of the Brexit deal on our constituents. Our constituents need us to ask questions about what will happen next—about the 1.8 million jobs that we are missing as a result of the deal that was struck, the stagnation in the growth of exports and the 16,000 businesses that gave up trading as a direct result of the “benefit” of Brexit, which was paperwork. The EU is our biggest trading partner: it accounts for 41% of our exports and 51% of our imports. In comparison, the US accounts for just 22% of our exports and 13% of our imports. Clearly, this is a fundamental relationship for the future of British business and British jobs. The summit on Monday was an opportunity not just to look at the trade and co-operation agreement—what was written into the very details of the deal, five years on—but to do something that the public want. Two thirds of the public tell us that Brexit has been detrimental to the cost of living, 65% say it has had a negative impact on our economy, 64% think it has been bad for British business, and 60% think that a closer relationship with Europe is in our interests.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I, too, share a burning desire to still be considered young—alas, I have to face the brutal reality. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has similar concerns about the 13 other youth mobility schemes that we have with countries around the world. Does he fear the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Canadians, the Japanese and the Uruguayans who come on such schemes in the same way that he fears the Europeans? Or is it that he thinks the Europeans are younger and fitter than him?

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is going to apologise to the British public for such an oversight.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I was about to conclude, but I will give way.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the hon. Member for giving way. We have talked about the puffin case; the previous Government, which fought the puffin case, relied on European law in making their argument, and cited it in their own submissions. It was good enough for the previous Government to look at European law and at questions about proportionality, as they did in their submission. The idea that moving to an independent arbitration system, which is what this summit will do, is somehow surrender is misplaced.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I do. We may be making Elton John unhappy in the main Chamber, but I hope that in this Chamber the Minister can make him very happy with progress on touring musicians. We welcome the chance to work across the House to fix this through proper scrutiny, debate and discussion. The world is a very uncertain place right now, and our constituents will consider the new deal to offer hope for their future. As much as there is chaos and confusion, we can be crystal clear that both cake and change are possible.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  That is a fair and central question. I was coming to the point that we must ensure that our young people do not bear the brunt of the obsession with isolation at the expense of influence. That is why it is right to negotiate a youth mobility scheme and to look at Erasmus. I urge the Government to ensure that the scheme prioritises apprenticeships and training opportunities, so that future generations can benefit in the way that many previous ones did by taking a job in Spain or Germany, as well as going there to study. Ultimately, this is just the start of the process—I am very aware that “Frozen III” is due to come to cinemas soon. There will be much more detail to work out, and I am sure that the Minister will give us a timeline for when decisions will be made and when we will get that detail.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  Yes, I do, and I know the Minister knows that. It is healthy for us to have these debates and I hope that we can continue to have them. As I said, I am concerned and interested to see the future possibility of joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention and tackling the rules of origin paperwork. Mutual conformity will be an issue. I know there are more concerns about security and defence. This is such a big issue with such a potential impact on our future. The deal that the Minister has done this week shows that, because of the benefits it will bring. It is right that this place has that debate so that we can move on from Opposition Members appearing like Prince Hans and wanting to take us back to Weselton, rather than thinking about the future that we could offer to everybody. I finish by again urging Opposition Members to let it go. “Frozen III” will offer us many new opportunities to revisit Olaf’s story and to see what happens to Anna and Elsa. Of course, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire will know that Anna saves Elsa through love. Let me offer some love, so as not to go back into the castle, but to move forward together, because things really will look good when we are older. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the EU-UK summit.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  It is always flattering when people talk about imitation. The right hon. Gentleman’s argument was about the difference between co-operation and governance. What is it about Europol and our ability to share information and work together to tackle crime and hold to account those who harm our constituents that he finds distasteful enough that to support not working with Europol? His Government chose, on his argument, not to work with Europol. I believe that that has damaged our ability to tackle crime, and this summit will address that. What was so distasteful about that body that he could not co-operate with it?

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I wonder what the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) might say to apologise to my constituent, who has now been waiting, I believe, for over 12 years for justice to be done in the case of her son’s murder in Greece, and for those responsible to be extradited. The abolition of the European arrest warrant under Brexit has made that harder, which is a real example of the damage done by the previous Government’s approach to crime and security.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  “Misled” is a very serious term, and I hope the Member will withdraw it.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  Thank you, Mr Vickers, and Ms McVey for your able chairing of this afternoon’s debate. I am probably going to show my age and why I am definitely not available for a youth exchange scheme, not by quoting Disney but by making an older reference. Dan Quayle’s words about surrender spring to mind when I hear the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and other Opposition Members talk about Brexit. He said: “My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.” Dan Quayle’s method of surrender is the approach of Reform and the Opposition making. Today’s debate has shown why we need a salvage and not a rejoin operation, given the impact of Brexit. We now hear Opposition parties opposing any co-operation at all—moving the goalposts. I am old enough and have been in this place long enough to remember when Opposition Members used to push for some kind of Swiss-style deal. They wanted some form of co-operation; now they seem to want no deal at all. They want to ignore the Shellfish Association of Great Britain, which criticised the impact on Brexit deal shellfish markets. They want to ignore not just the supermarkets—a bad form of reference according to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin)—but the British International Freight Association. I the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness to go and speak to the association, which talks about that deal as eliciting “a sigh of relief” regarding the practical changes for its members. I understand that we are now no longer to go to Spain, France or even Italy on holiday—only Norfolk. Let me reassure the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) that I will be in Norfolk this summer, but I do not want to deny my constituents the ability to travel all because of the right hon. Gentleman’s obsession with isolation. I do not think we will see no French people go to Skegness. I am sure that if they did come, they would get a very warm welcome. I certainly do not think we want the Henry Ford-approach to arbitration, which says, “Our way or no way at all.” This debate has shown the value of a debate on this issue. I hope that the Minister will take back if not the ideas, then the idea that we can talk about these issues in this place once again. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards), my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth), my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (James McMurdock), the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray), the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) and the Minister.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I am sure the hon. Gentleman will want to tell that to his constituents. Of course NATO is vital, but we are dealing with a new world. They see the aggression of President Putin and the need to stand up to address the situation in Gaza. They see the leadership being shown by our European colleagues and they wish us to be not playground generals, but grown-ups. That is exactly what the defence deal will mean. I also welcome the proposals for co-operation on foreign aid, because that is crucial not only to tackling poverty around the world but to preventing conflict. Conflict is driving many to flee persecution, proving how aid is often our best defence against the small boats, rather than the bluster of some Conservative Members. There has been a resolution to the risk of divergency in our carbon emissions trading schemes, which would have been a death knell for the British steel industry. Energy UK estimates that will mean around £800 million per year of payments going to our Treasury rather than to the EU. It is worth remembering that 75% of our steel exports, worth £3 billion, go to the European Union. Frankly, if we want to save British Steel, we need to save its market, which is what the resolution will do. The talks will allow us to use e-gates at the borders. Queuing might be a national pastime, but it is not a national sport that any of us enjoy. There will be co-operation with Europol and data sharing on fingerprints, DNA and criminal records. Again, I suspect that in future years many of us will realise how criminal it was that that was not part of the original deal, which made it easier for the people who wish to do harm to our constituents to evade justice by crossing the border.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  As a proud member of the Community trade union, and on behalf of all the other trade unions who represent those who work in the steel industry, including many in the Scunthorpe steelworks, I want to ask the hon. Gentleman what he will say to them when they are campaigning for the deal. They recognise that, as I said, 75% of our steel exports go to the EU. If he cuts off their access to the EU market by making them pay an additional subsidy, he will kill the British steel industry. Does he have any words of comfort for them about where their jobs will go?

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  As somebody who still remembers a powerful school trip to Ypres to look at the first world war sites, I know that the dramatic decline in school trips to Europe is harming our children’s education. I am sure the Minister will want to refer to that. The public are living in the world we are in now, which is why they want us to look at the deal. They recognise that Europe now has the highest employment rate since 2005, whereas elsewhere the second-term Trump Administration have brought tariffs and turmoil, just 121 days in; Putin has now invaded Ukraine itself; there is a horrific conflict in the middle east; and China and Iran now figure in our national security concerns, too. And as ever, technology overruns us all. There are now 159 million TikTok users in Europe, and it is predicted that within three years some 15% of our day-to-day decisions will be made by artificial intelligence. All of us will probably become redundant; I shall leave it to Conservative Members to decide whether that is a good or bad thing. Everybody else has moved on. It is time that we in this House do, too. In that spirit, let me fail to heed my own words and turn to perhaps one of the most damaging aspects of the Brexit debate. I welcome the Minister’s hard work and the deal that has been struck as a testament to the ambitions of the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and the concept of cakeism. It is truly incredible to see that, far from it being impossible to be pro cake and pro eating it, the new bespoke deal delivers for the UK in many ways that many people had suggested were not possible. I put on the record my support for the formal security and defence partnership, with the promise of exploring participation in a new defence fund while retaining our red line about not participating in the single market. I will, of course, take an intervention from any Conservative Member who wishes to apologise for the deliberate refusal of the previous Government to put anything about foreign policy or defence co-operation into the previous deal—a decision that has left us uniquely exposed.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I am always pleased to see the right hon. Gentleman admit that he is in fact a rule taker, not a rule maker. It is noticeable that the co-operation that his Government did not pursue meant that we did not have access to EU databases such as Eurodac and the Schengen information system, which are critical to stopping cross-border crime and addressing illegal migration. The right hon. Gentleman talks about the fact that we have always co-operated; it was a conscious decision by the previous Government not to do so, and it is a conscious decision by this Government to address that to help to make us safer. Time and again, his Government rejected important security measures just because they had the word “Europe” in the title. This Government will not make that mistake. All that is before we even get to the basics that I believe most of our constituents will be interested in, including the sanitary and phytosanitary deal, which will see the removal of the vast majority of the paperwork and checks that were killing British food manufacturing and farmers, as well as causing inflation to costs here. Just the removal of export health certificates will save businesses up to £200 per consignment—a cost that was being passed on to our constituents. Again, I offer any Member who wants to defend the previous deal the opportunity to apologise to all those who work in logistics and have had to deal with Sevington, and the queues, delays and confusion about getting goods across the border. I hope that the Minister will confirm that along with removal of the export health certificates, we are looking again at how we can remove the border operating model that the last Government brought in, which put further charges on top of the export health certificates and meant more delays in getting seeds to British farmers and flowers to market for our British businesses. All our constituents will welcome an SPS deal, because it is a way to tackle the extra £6.5 billion that we have had to spend on food and drink as a result of the charges, on top of other costs, because of Brexit. Of course, we must talk about fish, because Britain’s fishing industry has indeed been battered by Brexit. Boris Johnson promised both prodigious amounts of fish to be caught and EU vessels out of our waters. He delivered neither—fishcakes, indeed. The new deal will start to address the damage done to our fishing industries. It is an honest and fair deal to secure no further loss of access and the restoration of a market for fish. The SPS deal will cut the Brexit red tape that has caused a 29% drop in fish exports to the EU since 2019. I am sure that Members read the words of Ian Perkes, a fish merchant from Brixham, who said that he had a catch worth £80,000 written off because of a dispute over the temperature it had been stored at, and another consignment rejected because the Latin name for Dover sole was spelled wrong. The deal done by the previous Government would have expired next year. If we want the investment that the industry desperately needs, the stability of terms matters. With 80% of our catch exported—70% of that to the EU—the new deal offers a chance for that stable future for our fishing communities. It is the same with energy. The deal done by the previous Government would have expired next year. As the Prime Minister pointed out, we have been aligning in practice since we left the EU; we just have not had any say in what happens. We have aligned because the standards are high, and because asking businesses to follow two different sets of rules is a recipe for more regulation, not less. Anybody who doubts that needs to look at the record of the last Government. I stand here as a red against red tape, welcoming the ruthlessness with which the Government have acted. The previous Government tried to introduce the UK charter mark, which they then admitted would cost British business billions of pounds to implement. They then promptly stated that if businesses had met EU standards, they had met British ones too. What a mess! The Product Regulation and Metrology Bill is currently going through Parliament, and I am sure that the Minister will want to update us about what the deal will mean for the Bill and its terms of trade. Conservative Members will decry the idea that we are rule takers. We were under them, but under this deal we will be consulted. We will have to abide by a dispute resolution system. Conservative Members act as if that is some new phenomenon—something we have never had as part of any other trade deal or, indeed, as part of their trade deal with the European Union. Thankfully, we can look to a non-mythical creature—but one that is certainly at risk—the puffin, to see what the reality might be, because last year the EU took the UK and Holyrood to court for banning sand eel fishing in the North sea and Scottish waters, as they wanted to protect that vital food source for the puffin. That is a noble aim that we can all get behind. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague had to decide whether the ban was a reasonable measure and, as a result, rule on our ability to determine fishing in our own seas. The courts upheld that decision to protect puffins and did so on the basis of the European Court of Justice—a process that the previous Government had signed up to already and that is part of the future negotiating deal. Conservative Members talk of sovereignty as if it is some lump of plasticine that we can hand out, but the truth is that the new deal upholds our ability to make our case and to work with our neighbours within a reasonable framework. It is five years since we left, and we are still talking about and affected by the decisions that Europe makes. We are just not in the room where they are being made.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  Sir John was just getting started!

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I refer to the point about the protection of The Hague and where The Hague takes its judgments from. Ultimately, the decisions were made in the Court of Arbitration. It relies on those rulings. That is part of the process. I suspect the fact that the Member has decried that speaks to the need for us all to have more time to scrutinise and do justice to this issue. I suspect that when he makes his speech, he will continue to make the argument that we do not want to work with the European Court of Justice. The truth is that his Government brought in mechanisms that used the European Court of Justice as part of their framework— [Interruption.]

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I can only urge the Member to go and look at the basis for the decision-making arbitration panel. I can hear the Minister champing at the bit to correct him as well.