Clause 10 - Establishment of combined region
European Parliament (Representation) Bill
10:30 am
Mr William Cash (Stone, Conservative)
I am not going to bother to answer that. The important question is whether the Bill gives the people of Gibraltar a reasonable opportunity to have their daily practical lives and interactions reflected when the elections take place. I do not think that anyone with the slightest understanding of the situation could fail to appreciate that point. It is very simple, and concerns the day-to-day lives of those people.
The measure is an important step for those people. Simply to be rolled into a region called the south-west, the west midlands or whatever it might be would make them appear completely unrecognised—I do not like to use the word insulting—and would emphasise my point about what the Government have done. I simply do not agree with their reasons, although I suspect that I know who was behind what they did, which might have had a rather Hispanic connection. We shall see in due course. I may be entirely wrong, but if that were the case, I certainly would not agree with what was done on that and many other related issues.
My point is important. I shall be interested to see how the Minister reacts to it. I do not think that adding ''and Gibraltar'' would be difficult, and it would not only give enormous satisfaction to the people of Gibraltar but would recognise the territoriality of the issue and at the same give an enormous amount of pleasure and satisfaction to people in this country who feel strongly that Gibraltar should be supported.