Conduct of negotiations

Part of European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill – in the House of Commons at 2:45 pm on 8 February 2017.

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Photo of Mike Gapes Mike Gapes Labour/Co-operative, Ilford South 2:45, 8 February 2017

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I hope that he gets a chance to enlarge on it when he makes his contribution.

I wish to highlight two of my other amendments. Amendment 29, to which Joanna Cherry referred, and amendment 35 both relate to Gibraltar. Anybody who, like me, has seen the occasional attempts by the authorities in Madrid to cause trouble in Gibraltar will know that there might suddenly be hundreds of vehicles and dozens of people queueing at the border between Gibraltar and Spain, the special police sent down from Madrid at a moment’s notice having imposed a rigorous check on everyone going to Gibraltar. A few hours later, there will be no queue—and then it can come back again.

Between 10,000 and 14,000 people living in southern Spain, in Andalusia, travel across the border each day to work in Gibraltar. Gibraltar has a population of about 32,000 people, many of whom are children. There is an economic base there now that cannot be sustained simply by employing residents of Gibraltar. Also, there is not enough land to house the number of workers it needs, so it is dependent on 10,000 or more workers crossing daily to work in Gibraltar—about 40% of the total workforce in the Gibraltar economy.