Baroness Joyce Quin:

I thank the committee for giving me this opportunity to come before it today. It is a pleasure to be here alongside Brendan Halligan as we were both colleagues in the European Parliament rather a long time ago.

I feel as if I have been involved with the European issue for a very long time having had as my first job after graduating a position in the Labour Party working on European policy. I lectured at two universities in the UK on European politics subsequently before becoming an MEP and thereafter an MP. I say that in order that the committee knows where I am coming from. I took part as a foot soldier in the referendum campaign in the 1970s, arguing for a "Yes" vote by the UK on belonging to what was then the EEC. I remember very well the arguments for and against that were made at the time. It seems a bit surprising that so many years later membership is still a controversial issue in the UK although the issues that are most often mentioned have changed over the years. I remember that in the 1970s the question of the Common Agricultural Policy was particularly prevalent in all discussions, but that takes a much lower profile these days while issues such as immigration and others have come much more to the fore. We are still taking about referendums, however.

Whether there will be an in-out referendum and whether that will take place before or after a substantial renegotiation is not clear. It is also not clear what all the terms of that renegotiation might be. Obviously, certain things are mentioned such as immigration but there has been very little discussion of areas such as how we would co-operate with other European countries on environment policy, development policy and justice and home affairs, although all of those issues are very important. We must then think about what life might be outside the European Union were there to be a referendum and were the vote to be in favour of withdrawal. Only recently has there started to be any serious consideration of what the alternatives to EU membership might be, especially in trading terms. There are a lot of questions to be asked about all of the possible alternatives, including whether we would be in the European Economic Area or simply members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and what this would mean for our relationships with our European partners, notably those countries in the European Union with which we have a special relationship, including, of course, the Republic of Ireland.

There are many questions around at the moment and I suspect members of the committee will probably ask me some of those in this session. I again thank the members of the committee for inviting me.