Westminster Hall

8 juillet 2026

Sommaire mis à jour le 8 juil. 2026

Opening of the Gibraltar debate with Martin Vickers setting out the fact‑finding visit, airport and base arrangements, retail and policing concerns, political consensus in Gibraltar, and his overall case for ratifying the UK‑EU treaty.

Chamber mer. 8 juil. 2026 House of Commons

00:10 - 00:15

Intervenant 1

Order. Order. Martin Vickers to move the motion.

00:15 - 03:23

Intervenant 2

Sir, thank you, Sir John. It's a pleasure to see you in the chair this morning for what I hope will be an interesting and constructive debate about the future of Gibraltar. I'm delighted to be joined by the chair of the all-party group, of which I serve as the vice chairman. And as a result of a discussion between myself, the Gibraltar government representative who is in the audience today, we thought it would be useful to have a fact-finding trip to Gibraltar to so that when the future of the of the rock and the the treaty was up for discussion, that we could do so from an informed position. Two or three people who were hoping to go on the trip were unable to, but I was delighted that Baroness Butler-Sloss, the crossbench peer, accompanied me, and we were also joined for part of the one or two of the meetings by Lord James Wharton from from the upper house.

So, with following discussions with the Gibraltar office here in London, we put together a program which I think you can say was pretty comprehensive and gave us a good overview of the views of the local population, the business community, and of course the politicians in Gibraltar. We had a meeting with His Excellency the Governor, which was just a courtesy call really, but it's always a pleasure to to meet up with him and other senior diplomats to hear how they approach the issues. So, um, we arrived, we we went, I should point out that we went at our own expense from our own resources and so were therefore indeed independent of the government of Gibraltar. We were delighted for our first meeting after we'd seen the governor to go to the airport and be joined by the Chief Minister, who delighted in giving us a tour of the the airport. He's clearly devoted a great deal of time and effort to the arrangements that are necessary to ensure that all sides are content and importantly that the sovereignty of Gibraltar is is maintained.

And we all know of the long history of Spanish claims on the rock, but that is definitely not in any way part of the the treaty. Sovereignty is absolute, and I can see the minister nodding at that and no doubt later on he'll confirm that.

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