Gregory Campbell says Brexit joblessness and house price headlines were ‘scaremongering’
Gregory Campbell has described claims unemployment would rise and house prices would decline by almost a third as a result of Brexit as ‘scaremongering headlines’.
Mr. Campbell also lamented how British companies were prevented from selling plants and seeds into the North following the referendum to leave the European Union ten years ago.
The DUP MP said he remembered the weeks before the referendum in June 2016 ‘when we were told amid all the scaremongering that if we voted to leave, house prices would decline by 28 per cent’.
"They did not. We were also told that unemployment would rise, but it did not,” he said.
The East Derry MP made the remarks during a debate on the impact of the 2016 EU membership referendum on the UK at Westminster.
He asked Peter Wishart, the SNP MP who secured the debate if he recalled ‘those scaremongering headlines’.
“Indeed I do. They were almost as ridiculous as the extraordinary claims that were made about what would happen if we left the European Union, from the £350 million saved per week to the claims about bendy bananas and sausages.
"They were absurd, and the hon. Gentleman is right that it was a poor debate, but he cannot disagree with the evidence from the House of Commons Library and all the major financial institutions that Brexit has been an economic disaster. I do not think anybody could possibly disagree with that basic statement,” Mr. Wishart replied.
Mr. Campbell’s party colleague Jim Shannon complained that the Windsor Framework had not improved matters.
The mechanism was introduced in 2023 to supersede the Brexit Protocol and remove red-tape on goods flowing between Britain and the north.
"We have been trapped in a dynamic alignment. If the mainland innovates and cuts red tape, Northern Ireland is legally forbidden from joining them because we are chained to the EU customs code. That is not the best of both worlds; it is economic partition,” said the Strangford MP.
His East Derry colleague raised the specific prohibition of plants being sold into the North from Britain.
"Does my hon. Friend agree that a classic example of that, which we had some time ago, was when companies selling plants and seeds in Great Britain could not supply them to Northern Ireland, but people could buy them here and take them over on a plane? That was all down to the Windsor framework and the subsequent hash that Governments have made of the Brexit vote,” said Mr. Campbell.
Mr. Shannon said he agreed ‘absolutely’.
"We need to finish the job that the people voted for in 2016. That means removing the Windsor framework, stripping away the remaining vestiges of EU interference and fully restoring the internal market of the United Kingdom,” he declared.
The Brexit Protocol, which was updated and replaced by the Windsor Framework in 2023, were implemented after the Brexit referendum ten years ago.
The DUP and British Conservative party successfully campaigned for a no vote in the UK-wide referendum. This resulted in the UK departing the EU, the internal market and the customs union.
A majority of voters in the North voted to remain in the EU. Derry returned one of the highest remain votes of any constituency with 78.3 per cent in favour of remaining.