Pete Wishart

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Sir Edward. I congratulate all the petitioners on the efforts they have made to secure such a number of signatures for this petition. After 10 years, I thought that maybe, just maybe, we might be getting somewhere. The Government are starting to talk positively about the EU, and they correctly describe the carnage, chaos and disaster that was the Brexit deal, and even at his conference speech, I thought I heard the Prime Minister talking positively about actually rejoining the EU. However, as with everything from this Government, we need to be cautious. From that heady talk about rejoining only a couple of weeks ago, we are now back to the familiar territory of a deal and an arrangement with the EU. I have just come from the Chamber, as many hon. Members have, and I listened very carefully to what the Prime Minister had to say about the EU. He described a perfectly reasonable deal. I quite liked what I heard from him on that—he is going to try to ensure a number of positive developments for the UK—but what he did not talk about was rejoining the EU. If I am not mistaken, that is what the petition asks for: it asks for the UK to renegotiate its terms and rejoin the EU. I am okay with what the Prime Minister is going to do on work experience, immigration and all the other things, but what we need after the disaster of the last 10 years is to get back to the territory of rejoining the European Union.