What they said then: Nigel Dodds outlining ‘Brexit’ case in 2013

On July 5, 2013, just months after David Cameron had promised a referendum if the British Conservative Party were to win the next General Election, Mr. Dodds, outlined what would become the DUP’s ‘Brexit’ policy.

Speaking in the House of Commons in support of a private Members’ bill that sought to expedite a referendum the former North Belfast MP said it was ‘38 years since we have had a referendum on the UK’s relationship with Europe, and it is now time to give people their say’.

"In 1975, 67 per cent of voters in this country chose to remain within the Common Market—a union which we were told at that time was more about co-operation between European nations on trade.

"However, today we view an EU landscape that is vastly changed—so much so that, as a senior Labour peer recently noted, the mandate secured by the Government in 1975 ‘belongs to another time and another generation’.

“Over the past three decades, there has been a steady transfer of powers from our sovereign Parliament here at Westminster to the corridors and back alleys of Brussels,” he told MPs.

The Derry-born unionist complained of ‘red-tape’ and ‘immigration’.

“How often do business people come to us complaining about the red tape and regulations that emanate from the EU? How many times do we hear complaints about untrammelled immigration from EU countries as we no longer have the power effectively to control our own borders? I could mention a number of other policy areas,” he stated.

He argued that the UK was not receiving sufficient funding from the EU in return for what it was putting in.

“It is absolutely scandalous that between 2007 and 2013 the UK will have contributed £29 billion on EU structural funds and received back only £8.7 billion to spend in this country. That is simply unacceptable and it is damaging to communities and households right across this United Kingdom,” he claimed.

He complained of EU ‘waste’ claiming ‘spending on the unaccountable EU civil service will rise by 2%’.

"The organisation already employs 3,000 unelected officials on salaries of more than €150,000 and gold-plated pensions,” he said.

He mentioned the European External Action Service claiming it would receive a ‘spending increase of more than 3% for its role in undermining the foreign policy of countries across Europe’ and that ‘EU’s 56 quangos will receive an increase of 4% under the new budget’.

He claimed a House of European History was set to cost £136m with ‘British taxpayers contributing £18m’.

“The European Parliament continues to split its activities over three locations—something that my party in the European Parliament is deeply opposed to and fighting to change—and it will cost €1billion to have two places, Brussels and Strasbourg, as the seat of the European Parliament over the next seven years,” he lamented.

He concluded: “The fundamental point is that on these issues, whether they be expenditure or setting policy with regard to agriculture or foreign affairs, it should be for the British people, through their elected representatives in this House, to decide the policy of the UK.”

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