MPs caution on Westminster proposal

Pro-Brexit advocates were wrong to float a proposal for Gibraltar to have its own Westminster MP as part of their campaign to leave the European Union, two MPs with longstanding links to the Rock have told the Chronicle.  

The idea was proposed by Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell and a delegation from the Grassroots Out campaign during a recent visit to the Rock in the run-up to the June 23 referendum on EU membership.

It was dismissed as “a publicity stunt” by the Gibraltar Government, which said there was no change in the British Government’s longstanding policy of not integrating its Overseas Territories or giving them Westminster representation.

That view was echoed this week by two MPs who sit alongside Mr Rosindell on the Gibraltar all-party parliamentary group in the House of Commons.

“It’s not, I think, of his gift,” Ian Paisley, an MP with the Democratic Unionist Party, said of Mr Rosindell’s suggestion.

“It would have to be negotiated [and] something like that would have to come from Gibraltar first.”

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