ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well the in and out campaigns have been trading some heavy blows this morning on whether Turkey will soon join the European Union.  The Leave camp says the free movement of Turkish citizens would pose a security threat whilst the Remainers insist Britain has the power to veto any bid for Turkey to join the European Union.  Well the Justice Minister and Vote Leave campaigner, Dominic Raab, is here with me now and a very good morning to you Mr Raab.  Just deal with this directly, the issue of Turkey joining the European Union and Britain’s role to prevent it if it wanted to.  Penny Mordaunt, you colleague in the party, colleague in the Leave campaign, was this morning asked by Andrew Marr if Britain has a veto that could prevent Turkey from joining the European Union and she replied ‘No, it doesn’t, we are not going to be able to have a say.’  That’s just plain wrong.

DOMINIC RAAB: Well we have a theoretical veto but the fact is the Prime Minister, the Europe Minister and successive UK governments have all said they want Turkey to join the EU and because we’ve now got this EU Turkish visa  liberalisation agreement, it’s very clear that Whitehall and Brussels are going to push in that direction. If the British people want to have their say, now is the time to do it.  And I just put this out there, British taxpayers are already paying £1.8 billion towards paving the way for Turkey and these other central European countries to join the EU, why would they be doing that if it wasn’t going to happen?

DM: But Penny Mordaunt, just on that narrow fact, you talk about a theoretical veto but it’s an absolute veto, it’s in the European Treaty there that all member nations, members of the European Council, can veto any country that wants to join, Penny Mordaunt thinks we don’t, you need to tell her we do have the veto, whether we use it or not is …

DOMINIC RAAB: It’s very kind of you, Dermot, to tell me what I need to tell her.  

DM: But she says here in black and white, no, we do not have a veto, we are not going to be able to have a say.  We are.  

DOMINIC RAAB: No, I think in theory we don’t but in practice …

DM: In theory.

DOMINIC RAAB: Yes but let me explain why, the difference between in theory and in practice.  In practice the Prime Minister David Cameron, the Europe Minister David Liddington have said and successive UK governments have set out their long-standing policy that we want in this country, government, Whitehall, Turkey to join the EU, the EU want Turkey to join, that’s why we …

DM: We haven’t really been hearing that explicitly have we from the Remain campaign?  Vote Remain and Turkey can join the European Union, even you couldn’t say they’re saying that.

DOMINIC RAAB: You’ve nailed it.  We haven’t heard this honesty but if you look back at the quotes in Parliament  and publicly it is very clear so you’re quite right.  The point we’re making is look, if the Remain campaign want to continue down the track of the EU – and one of the issues is enlargement to include Turkey but also the four other central and eastern European countries – be honest about the price.  Now in Turkey you have got 75 million people, the minimum wage is £1 an hour, just think about the impact that will have if they join, on low skilled jobs, wages, the NHS, housing.  Think about the fact that we are already paying £1.8 billion, British taxpayers, to pave the way for this to happen.  If a lot of poor countries join the EU British taxpayers are going to foot even more of the bill and there is also a democratic point here – the more countries that join the EU, the more qualified majority voting there is and the more Britain’s share of that vote comes down. Now that’s fine …

DM: Given Turkey’s borders with other countries, do you think terrorists could infiltrate as well?   

DOMINIC RAAB: I think there is a very real security risk around the whole way free movement works within the EU and of course …

DM: But would it be exacerbated by Turkey joining?

DOMINIC RAAB: Absolutely.  If you look at it from a crime perspective, the homicide, kidnapping, the organised crime that Lord Owen just talked about but also the question that is linked to the Middle East and the lack of proper preventative border checks we have at the UK border even though we are outside of Schengen and we are going to hear a lot more about that in the days and weeks to come because in the aftermath of the Paris and Brussels attacks we are learning a much more about the way that terrorist attackers and plotters have been slipping through the border.  

DM: People are going to say you’re dog whistling here, Turkey is a Muslim nation with borders to plenty of countries with a lot of terrorists in them, they are all going to come here.  

DOMINIC RAAB: No, did I say that?  What I said was if the Remain camp want to make the argument that everything is hunky-dory in the EU and the future is rosy, they cannot just airbrush some of the costs that go with it so what I’ve tried to do is set out three of the costs.  I also think just as the costs of staying in the EU have been airbrushed, the Remain camp have airbrushed some of the advantages of coming out of the EU.  What we learnt in the Sunday Telegraph today is that protectionist French farmers are vetoing, blocking a trade deal with the emerging economies of Latin America through Macosa.

DM: I wanted to put to you this idea that the price of your shopping basket will go up if we leave, you are saying the opposite?

DOMINIC RAAB: Well look at these facts – the government assessment of this free trade deal that the EU should strike with Latin America is a £2.5 billion gain to the British economy every year,  the advantage for us is that manufacturing businesses in this country, services can export more to Latin America but also, and this is the long standing historic evidence…   

DM: So you are saying Britain could do it more easily itself?  Britain could do it more quickly itself?  

DOMINIC RAAB: If we have free trade with Latin America, prices in the supermarket will come down and this is a very clear example of …

DM: But how would those negotiations work when it is Britain knocking on the door, let’s say in Buenos Aires, Britain knocking on the door instead of the European Union?  

DOMINIC RAAB: Well listen what the Argentine President and Uruguayan President are saying, they are absolutely …

DM: They want to be nice to Britain.

DOMINIC RAAB: It may be counter-intuitive, Dermot, but the fact is they are complaining about French special interest holding up a deal that has been negotiated since 2000.  Britain could do this deal within a year if we were freed up from the special interests and the protectionism of the EU and it would be good for British jobs and it would lower prices for British consumers.  

DM: I just want to hear this explicitly though, I am going to go back to his issue of the veto, the absolute veto, there has to be unanimity amongst members of the European Council if a country wants to join the European Union.  You accept that Britain has a veto that it can employ?

DOMINIC RAAB: What I said is that theoretically on paper we’ve got a veto, in practice we don’t and …

DM: And Penny Mordaunt therefore is wrong when she thinks we don’t have a veto.

DOMINIC RAAB: I think Penny Mordaunt is right to say that in practice, cutting to the chase …

DM: No, she doesn’t say that, she says that Britain doesn’t have a veto, no it doesn’t have a veto, we are not going to be able to have a say.  

DOMINIC RAAB: I think in practice if the British people want their say on the cost of Turkey joining the EU and Albania and Montenegro and Serbia, they will get a chance on 23rd June and even if – this is clearly a question that will be sided down the line, all I’ve told you is what long standing British governments of successive political affiliations have said but if the British people want their say rather than just the elite in Whitehall, rather than just the elite in Brussels, they get a chance on 23rd June.  

DM: But you know what it looks like, with two of you saying different things …

DOMINIC RAAB: We’re not saying different things.  

DM: Have you spoken to Penny Mordaunt since she did that interview this morning, it was a bit of a car crash …

DOMINIC RAAB: She is absolutely right.  It wasn’t a car crash …

DM: But the public are going to be thinking they will say whatever it takes, some of them are making it up as they go along.

DOMINIC RAAB: Dig out those quotes from David Cameron, from David Liddington about what this government has said and successive governments have said about Turkey joining the EU and then come back to either Penny or I if you think it’s not clear that the direction of travel is  that Turkey will join the EU, the establishment in this country and in Brussels want it and all we’re saying is not that this is a right or wrong thing but just be honest about the cost.

DM: Talking about digging out quotes, I dug out this quote from a year and a bit ago, ‘If we leave the European Union we will face several years of fiddly negotiations.’  I wonder who said that?  Boris Johnson.  

DOMINIC RAAB: Fiddly, yes.  Doable with political will, absolutely.  No one pretends it’s a breeze.  The point is there are risks and rewards on both sides and in fairness both sides need to be honest about that but what we’re pointing out is the huge risks of staying in the EU and enlargement to include Turkey is one of them, the Eurozone crisis is another and at the same time I’ve come on here and made the positive case to you that actually if we trade more freely and energetically with Latin America, with Asia, there are huge gains and that £2.5 billion a year is the government’s estimate, it’s included in relation to those negotiations, airbrushed for Whitehall’s cost benefit analysis of this debate.

DM: Okay, Dominic Raab, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed.  Dominic Raab there from Vote Leave.