UK–EU Treaty on Gibraltar - Speech by The Hon Sir Joe Bossano MP – 4th March 2026 - 141/2026

Madam Speaker, I previously intervened in the amendment and I will now deal with some of the statements made by the Leader of the Opposition and Mr. Clinton. One thing about the statements of the leader of the opposition was that we were a Latin people. Latin, yes, Latin, as the language of the Roman Empire. I don't think we are. I mean, Latin people are the Latin colonies in Latin America, which were Spanish and Portuguese colonies, not British colonies. And therefore we are a British people, and we are not English or Scottish or Irish. But we are part of the European families of nations that are British. And we see Gibraltar as having a place which is within the Commonwealth and within the UK family of nations. And just like the people in Scotland are Scottish and the people of Northern Ireland are Irish and the peoples in Wales are Welsh, we the Gibraltarians are in that area and not Latins which are the Latin element, because Latin people supposedly are very exuberant and so on, which hardly fits the character that I have observed in the member opposite. So if he is a Latin, he's a very subdued Latin.

One thing that I welcome upon his part is that he now accepts that we still have to travel on the road to decolonization, and that we were not decolonized by the Constitution of 2006, which is the position that he had as PDP when he joined me to continue with the national day in casemates while the GSD was Cancelling it because it was no longer required, because allegedly we had already triggered our self-determination. So if now under him the GSD accepts that we have not yet been decolonized and that the 2006 constitution has not decolonised us, that is welcome because then we are both on the same page and it's better that it should be like that. And I think it is better for Gibraltar when things that have got a national impact can be analysed and defended in the same way and on the same issues on both sides. This has happened many times. When the first problems arrived in the early 1960s, the position of the then legislative council was a unanimous one in terms of what was needed and, in fact, what they identified as being needed at the time was not available at the time but became available subsequently.

I'm saying this as a preview to the fact that we need to understand what it is that has happened with Brexit and we need to understand why we are where we are. Because unless we understand what happened with Brexit, and we understand why we are where we are, then we're going to draw all kinds of incorrect deductions as to what is possible for us to do. So if we look back on the journey of constitutional advancement and our development as a nation, there are some people in Gibraltar that say we cannot be a nation because we are too small. Well the reality is that there are two nations. One is Lichenstein, that was mentioned by the Honourable Member, and the other one is San Marino, which have got slightly smaller populations now than we have, and have both got a seat in the United Nations. So there are nations smaller than us. Looking at where we were in 1964-65, the position that was taken unanimously by the Legislative Council, as it was then, was to seek a status of close association with the UK. Now, close association was not something that existed in the 1960s. Because in the 1960s, there were only three options to decolonize. Independence, which the UK said then and now, they could not agree to without Spanish consent because it would breach the Treaty of Utrecht, which we believe is total nonsense, because the Treaty of Utrecht is in total breach of the Charter of Human Rights, and the Charter of Human Rights is international law, which overrides treaties that conflict with it. So if we've got the right to self-determination, then the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 cannot deprive us of rights that did not exist in 1713, but exist in the 21st century.

But that is the UK position and it's not going to change because it's a convenient thing to use in order to placate Spain. And that has been of course much of the problem we've always faced, you know, when we were just between UK and Spain, the UK wanted to protect us but placate Spain at the same time and when we went into the EU we were okay for all the years that the Spanish, that Spain was not a member, but of course, the expectations of Sir Joshua Hassan never materialised and the expectations for people like the Honourable Member of Opposite, who is a pro-European Union, are not going to materialise because the European Union set out originally as an economic agreement to have free trade. And a free trade group is what the EEC was and what we joined with the UK originally in 1973. And in 1972, as I've explained before, we had the easiest passage anybody could have because they gave us a blank piece of paper and they did the same with the Channel Islands, and the Channel Islanders chose to be in for some things and not others, and we chose to be in for some things and not others. And in fact, everything that applied in the Channel Islands was the things we didn't want, and everything that applied in ours was what they didn't want, but we actually were able to write down without having to negotiate with anybody what was important for us because the people who were there were interested in having the UK and therefore were willing to go along with anything that the UK wanted for its related territories, we as a colony and the other ones as Crown territories. And of course that situation was something that we lost with Brexit. And something that we will never regain again. That is to say, the world and the situation that there was in 1972, when we negotiated entry, no longer exists. So if we tried now to become a full member of the EU, we would only be a full member of EU on the conditions that everybody else is a member of EU, probably including having to adopt the Euro, because they're not going to have, for us, a different set of rules.

And paradoxically, the reality is that we are where we are because Spain, in my view, wanted to keep us out of the UK negotiations on the basis that that would weaken our bargaining power. That if we were with the UK, it would be strengthened. Of course, the opposite is what has happened. I think if we had been with the UK, we would have got at best the deal that they have, which would have done nothing on frontier fluidity and would have nothing on any other things that we've got. So the reality is that although at the beginning we thought, as they did, that it was bad for us to be left behind, and we were, as I remember, as I mentioned in my earlier intervention, it was a last-minute move on the part of Spain because we didn't move. So, Spain was even then, in the agreement on the transition period because it was Sanchez who kept us out. He, at the last minute, when we didn't expect it, he told the EU that unless we were separated from the exit and the transition period from the United Kingdom, he would veto the United Kingdom. And that is it. We need to understand that if Spain has got the right of veto in the EU, nobody in the EU is going to say, well, I don't mind having a veto exercised by Spain and blocking things for 480 million people because there are 35,000 people affected. And the weight of the 35,000 people is more than the 480,000 million. It's not going to happen. We shouldn't think it might happen. It doesn't matter who goes up to the negotiations, that is the reality. We have got very little power. And we have got more power on our own than when we've got UK doing the negotiating for us, because when UK is negotiating for us, then the blackmailing is against the UK. And that has been since the beginning, when, as the Honourable Mr. Clinton mentioned, the UK was willing to make concessions on removing the fence and giving them all sorts of access into Gibraltar without even consulting the people who were in the government then, never mind getting their approval. And nobody would have got their approval, of course.

This business of removing the fence is a red herring. I mean the fence was put up at the beginning of the 1900s. There is one particular version was that it was put up by the UK because Spain wanted a fence to stop smuggling. There is another version which is that the UK put the fence to take even more of the neutral ground and then the Spaniards put an equivalent fence on the other side to stop them getting more. But whatever the reason for the fence was, it didn't alter that, as far as Spain is concerned, what they are claiming in the United Nations, what they started claiming in 1964 and have not stopped claiming to date, is that the only legitimate area of Gibraltar is the one that finishes at Casemates. The city walls, where we had, what we celebrate in the parades that we have. When the aliens, because at that point in history and even later points in history, the concept of the British in Gibraltar was that there were two kinds of human beings, there were British and there were aliens. And the aliens were not from another planet. The aliens were the unfortunate humans that were not British because it was a good thing to be British, right? So aliens were much out of a fortress when the sunset gun was shot the powder as a warning that they could not stay overnight because it was a threat to the security of the fortress. And as far as Spain is concerned, that is what was negotiated away and that is what Spain ceded sovereignty on.

So the isthmus for them is not what the isthmus is for us. For them, the isthmus is from the gates of casemates to La Linea. That's the isthmus, right? So to suggest that we are making some concession by agreeing that they can actually walk into five metres of an area on condition that we walk into 5 metres of La Linea on the other side, that is not boots on the ground. That is the first concession by Spain that the five metres are ours and not theirs. They are claiming that the whole thing from the fence in La Linea to the casemates is not part of the Treaty of Utrecht, was not ceded and was stolen by the British. That's what they claim, and they claim it in the United Nations. We have done an agreement as a compromise and the compromise is without giving you the five metres, we will allow you to work in five metres of that area, but on condition that we have the same right to do it in Spanish territory. What they are recognising, they are intruding into British territory five metres, and we are intruding, as a quid pro quo, into five metres in their direction. To suggest that that has been a red line that we have conceded is insane! It's a red line that they have conceded. They have recognised that they are not entitled to be one inch inside Gibraltar in the Isthmus without doing a Quid pro quo with that, that for every inch they step in, we step one inch in Spain. We have got the same rights in that area in Spain that we have given in Gibraltar.

Why is it that we finish there? Well, that's a very simple explanation. The explanation was that when we started, having first had the transition period and having in that transition period starting the negotiations with Cain, what we found is that we actually were able to do deals which they appeared to think was very good for them and we thought were very good us. It was a completely new experience because the attempt to have the issue of Spain's claim on one side and allow us to live as normal neighbours cooperating with each other, that has been again something that every political party has supported. Notwithstanding the fact that the GSLP was against Strasbourg and against Lisbon and against Cordoba and against Brussels, we were the ones in government who initiated with the municipalities here and the municipality in Africa, a committee that would be promoting mutually beneficial economic cooperation. We did that without the UK and without Madrid at the local level. That didn't stop us being against every attempt to have a bilateral or even a trilateral forum discussing our future.

Our future and our constitution and the road that we want to take Gibraltar to, can only be discussed between the colonial power and us. It's nobody else's business. The UK has got no right to discuss our future with anybody else, and we should not want to discuss the future with everybody else. We are not a Spanish colony, we are a British colony. We don't want to continue to be a colony, but we want to continue to be British. The fact that, for example, the Brussels process was something that was supported by the GSD initially, but now, not supported anymore, is again something that is good for Gibraltar. Because what was supported there was the agreement that they would be talking about the issues in the plura of sovereignty. That is, accepting the concept that Spain has that there are two separate issues. The one is the territory they negotiated away in perpetuity, which they want to undo because they said that they gave it away under duress. Well, of course, they lost the war. So that is when there are wars, if the war in Ukraine tomorrow finishes, it will not finish with the borders that it had before the war started. When there are wars, when humans fight for land, the same as the macaques up there, the macaques down here do the same thing. If one advances into a bit of a territory of a neighbour and they do it successfully then they finish up making a peace deal but keeping the area. That is, it happened in the whole of Europe. There was nothing different to what was happening in Gibraltar to what happened in the whole of Europe. The Spanish government of the day, the monarchy of the day, lost a hundred times more territory in the rest of Europe that they had from the Netherlands to Sicily than the little spot of Gibraltar. And they were all given away in the European treaty. So it was a devastating result because there was a massive loss of sovereignty throughout Europe in territories at the end. But that is what happened.

So for reasons that are difficult to understand, but it may be, if one tries to understand the psychology behind this, is the fact that they spent so long in trying to, you know, conquer, because the Reconquista was not a Reconquista since they haven't, Spain did not exist before. In the 750 years that Andalucia and Gibraltar was Muslim, it was not that there were Spaniards here before. The people who were here before were Germans who had pushed out the Romans. So the Romans pushed the Germans, the Germans pushed the Romans out and then the Muslims from North Africa crossed over and pushed out the Germans. And then eventually the Spaniards from the north of Spain came down. But what they have been taught from childhood is that the recovery of the territory in the Iberian Peninsula would not be complete until Gibraltar was included and that has been their mentality in generation after generation as if it was you know something that had to be completed in order to finally create a united Spain. Which of course is not true of Span because the Basques don't see themselves as Spaniards, and neither do the people of Galicia.

So the reality is, you see, that the Europe, the pro-European people, like the honourable leader of the opposition, don't seem to understand is that the founding fathers that started the EEC had a vision of creating a United States of Europe where people would be prepared to give up their identity. And merge that identity so that they would not only want to be French and German and British and Spanish, they would want to be one citizens of the United States of Europe. That dream that some people had is clearly not going to happen, and is clearly further away than it ever was, and we're now seeing more right-wing nationalist parties, you know, wanting to go in the opposite direction. And in fact, part of the reason for the exit of the United Kingdom was that the United Kingdom actually entered the trading area and was very reluctant to move from the trading area to the concept of the United Nations of Europe. And this is why they never entered Schengen. And this why they have never adopted the Euro. Because the integration of things that are national identities were things that the UK would not want to give up because they were only interested in free trade.

So, we have a situation now where, in the situation we find ourselves, is that we now have what we have and what we brought to parliament only because of Spain. This is not something that the UK could have got for us. We would not have anything like this if the Spaniards had not pushed us out of the negotiations in 2020. In 2020, they pushed us out, to isolate us, and we negotiated a better deal than the UK would have negotiated for themselves, right? And then they stopped. As far as the EU is concerned, they are only doing this at the request of Spain. But of course, the reality is that what was started as the request of Spain has evolved into actually completing Brexit. That is, Brexit was not finalised while we were in a limbo between being in or not being in, because we were left behind, but we did not have the hard border here that existed in France, just like they didn't do it between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. So, the fact that the Irish situation and the Gibraltarian situation were, as far as the EU was concerned, unfinished business that had to be completed for the total Brexit with UK to be a finished item on their agenda.

So, when we go into what was happening after the transition period and, you know, as I mentioned previously, Madam Speaker, what we saw as a great deal for us in the taxation, I was accused by the Honourable Member opposite as having, you now, done a U-turn and suddenly becoming pro-Spanish. Well, it doesn't, I mean, if the Spaniards, if, if a Spanish government or any, or anybody else on the side of the frontier does something that is good for Gibraltar, I think it's very stupid not to welcome it simply because I am more than 100%, if it's possible to be, against any concessions to Spain. So to do a bilateral treaty on tax, which the Honourable Mr. Clinton said, we shouldn't accept it because this is not what is normally done elsewhere. Okay? You tell me where elsewhere you've got a colony that is not able to go into international treaties negotiating with its biggest enemy, a tax treaty, and you tell me what is a standard tax treaty in that circumstances. You will not find one. It doesn't exist anywhere. But the Honourable member criticised it at the time because it was not what it's standard. We are not standard, we are unique, and because we are unique, we have to find unique solutions to our problems.

What then has to be analysed is, is it good or bad? And it's good for us because, incredibly, they actually created a legal identity of a Gibraltarian, which for years, for years in the United Nations, they said they would never allow the United Kingdom to create a legal identity for the Gibraltarian, because the Gibraltarian didn't exist. We were a population fabricated. In the 1960s, they claimed we were like the American base in Cuba, and giving decolonization to Gibraltar would be the same as decolonizing the American base in Cuba. That was the parallel that they used to throw out in the United Nations. So here we've got a situation where the Spanish government says to us, I'm going to have a tax treaty and I want that people who move from Spain to Gibraltar will continue to pay tax in Spain, under a number of conditions about how many years they will have before that kicks in, and for how long it will last. And the best deal in the different categories is for the Gibraltarian, and worst deal in that category is for Spanish nationals. And you think that's a bad deal because it is not the same as the deal other people do in other places. Well, nobody anywhere else has got a deal that gives different treatment on the basis of nationality and gives the best treatment to the Gibraltarian and the worst to the Spanish national. What is it? Are we against what Spain seems to be indicating? If Spain is saying, if somebody is in Spain and is a Spanish national and wants to move to Gibraltar, if a frontier worker comes to Gibraltar in that treaty, his tax liability in Spain never ends. That clearly is to discourage Spanish nationals from coming to Gibraltar. Is that a bad thing for Gibraltar? If the Spanish government doesn't want the Spanish national to Gibraltar, I can understand it. If they could all come to Gibraltar, they probably would all want to come to it. It's much better here than there. If we try to stop it, they will probably attack us for trying to stop it and accuse us of being racist, even though it's not a separate race. Because they say you're racist if you are against a particular nationality, and that is not being against the colour of the skin, that's being against a colour of a passport.

So the situation is that we've got a good deal, and if the honourable members approach things that are of national importance on the basis of what is the best way to do it for party political reasons, then they are doing a disservice to Gibraltar. And that's the reality. If they genuinely believe what they're saying, then it's incomprehensible, because it defies logic. The same as we saw with the agreements that we did then, we are seeing now. We have a situation where we've got a treaty, so the honourable member says that if he had been in the treaty negotiations and been part of the delegation that was negotiating, he doesn't say it would necessarily be better, but who knows, you know, two minds better than one when it comes to solving problems. Well, I think it would have been worse, given the fact that he thinks that having five metres recognised as something that a Spanish official can walk into on the basis that we have five metres of La Linea into which our official can walk in to and that therefore there is absolutely no concession of sovereignty in those five metres, and he says that is boots on the ground. So that means that, which was one of the first things we negotiated, the first thing we negotiated was that, that area. He, if he had been in the delegation, he would have brought the thing to a halt then. Boots on the ground. We cannot do this. No five metres. So we all go home, and then we would have the no deal.

The reality is that if he really believes what he said, then it's a good thing we didn't take him along, because we would have finished with the no deal very early in the stage, because that was originally there, and we accepted it originally because it was bilateral and because nobody can say that if a Spanish official can walk into Gibraltar for five metres, and Gibraltarian policeman can walk into La Linea for five metres that anybody has conceded anything. What they've done is, for the first time accept, that the five metres are mine, as I accept that their five metres are theirs. So I am negotiating with what they say is theirs, and I give them five metres. And in exchange, they give me five metres more for Gibraltar. Look, I've been a negotiator for many years, I've never seen a deal as good as that one. So, that would have been put on the ground, all finished, we all go home, you know, the border closes, the gaming companies go, all because of these five metres, right?

When we agreed it, the situation was that it was only going to be used when the controls that were going to be inside the terminal were flagged up by Frontex as having somebody that was potentially somebody that couldn't come in. So if there was a situation where there was reason to believe in terms of the knowledge that the people, the Gibraltarian officials would first allow, say that we allow this person to enter Gibraltar and then Frontex might say we don't know, we think we have to check this guy because there's something strange here. Then that guy would go to the bilateral office on the frontier line, which continues to exist fence or no fence. That would be only happening in very few cases.

We then had a situation where, having agreed that there was going to be Frontex, and having agreed that it would be a four-year, and having agree that at the end of the four years, as far as Spain was concerned, we would have lost our lack of confidence in their behaviour by them behaving very well for four years, they would then say, well, there's no need now for Frontex because the Frontex is because we recognise that because Spain has behaved so badly with you, you still don't trust us, which is what the leader of the opposition explained. That distrust is there because of that previous behaviour. That was what Frontex was supposed to cure. After the four years, Spain would say, well, okay, things have gone very well, so now we don't need Frontex. We said no. Independent of any distrust and independent of how well you work, we are not prepared to have you in Gibraltar because whatever may happen anywhere else in similar situations, it doesn't happen between a country that is a colony and a neighbour that wants to decolonize that territory by absorbing it. That doesn't exist in any of the parallel situations.

So, they agreed. And then a couple of years later, they turned up and said, well, we can't deliver what we agreed. You know, we said yes, but now we're saying no. We can't believe it, right? That's more than usual with the Spaniards, you know. So you don't know what they really want until everybody's just, you now, exhausted. Everybody wants to go home. They're going to put the lights out and then at that point, they say, ah, but. And that is when they tell you what their position is. So, at that point, you know, we had a problem. Because they said, the document that the Honourable Member quoted, which was rejected at the time, was regurgitated on the basis that it had always been their understanding that their legal obligation to Schengen required a Spanish presence to make sure that Frontex was doing the job properly. So okay, they delegated their responsibility to Frontex but they needed a Spanish official beside the Frontex official to make sure that the Frontex official was doing things right and not doing them wrong. Well clearly that was totally unacceptable because he was trying to take us back, do the whole thing to square one.

So actually, I'm not sure whether it was Joseph or Fabian or both of them who came up with this brilliant idea that we say, okay, we don't want them in the terminal. But we've already accepted the joint area in La Linea. So let's go, let's take everybody there. And now they've got no problem. They can have Frontex in there as well if they want, but it doesn't make any difference.

To put in context what we're talking about, we need to remember what is happening now and what has been happening for years. For years we've had UK passengers on aeroplanes arriving in Gibraltar and 65 to 70 percent of the plane has gone to where the point is going to be of the five metres. Into La Linea. 65 to 70 percent have been doing this all the time. Because they were not coming to Gibraltar, they were going into Spain. So they went straight from the plane to Spain, which meant they went straight from the plane to Schengen, which is what they're going to be doing now, going straight to the plane to Schengen. So the people from outside that come here that go into Spain will be doing with this treaty what they are doing before the treaty. They will be passing through the entry into Gibraltar, which we can give them, and then they will be passing through the Schengen entrance, which only Spain can give them. And of course, we all know that it's only because it is Spain, that there are problems about this. Because if it was Italy, or if it was France, or it was Germany, or was any one other of the 26, other than Spain, who have no claim in Gibraltar, presumably we wouldn't have minded. They wouldn't mind it, and we would not have minded it. So this is only on the basis that the five metres might help them take over Gibraltar. Well, they'd have to have a much bigger fight for the rest of Gibraltar than for those five metres.

But we need to understand who is affected by this and who is already doing it. And that is the 35% that is not doing it now, because they don't go into Spain will have to do it, provided they are not residents. Because if they're residents, their residence gives them access to Schengen. They don't need to get access from the Schengen state there. If you are arriving in Gibraltar to go into Schengen today, you will have to do what will happen after the treaty and nothing will have changed for you. For those people who come here to go into Schengen. The ones who came here and didn't intend to Schengen, other than the residents, which probably is 10% of the plane, those 10% will be the ones that now, even though they didn't want to go into Spain, will have to be cleared because once they're here, there is no way of stopping them going into Spain. So these are things that have got logic. And if there is something that has got logic, then we shouldn't be so obtuse as to say oh yes, it is logical but if it is being done by Spain there must be an ulterior motive. There is no ulterior motivation. This does not give Spain anything that they don't already have. This doesn't do anything that they can use to go to the United Nations tomorrow and say look now that we've got somebody from Spain into five metres of the isthmus, for which we have given a comparable five metres in La Linea, we now claim that we've proved that the isthmus is ours. They've proved the opposite. What they have done undermines their argument that the Isthmus is theirs. Because if the Isthmus was theirs, they would not have to trade five metres of La Llinea for us to be able, for us to agree for them to step into five metres of the land that they say is Spanish. There is no other possible analysis. It should be welcomed. And instead of being welcomed, we have this nonsense that this is what boots on the ground means. It is not.

And if you have a situation where you got a vessel that is out there to stop illegal immigrants or to stop drug trafficking and that vessel is crewed by a crew that is Spanish and Gibraltarian, then they're recognising that it is a joint venture because there are joint owners of the waters, not one! The Spanish position has always been that they can come in the water because we haven't got any water outside the dock yet, outside the moat, okay? Outside we have no rights. Well, outside if we have no rights, that is being undermined by having Gibraltarians on the boat patrolling. So these are things that are the concessions that we have made. The concessions that we make are things that give us strength in our argument as opposed to their argument as to what is the reality of the situation. Even then, it is something that we have negotiated as a concession from us to them. So the Honourable Member must understand that if we make a move that we think is going to be beneficial to us you don't go and say, I want this because it's beneficial to me. You say, I want to do this because this is the way two neighbours need to work together and because we want to promote friendly cooperation and so on. The reality is that the subsequent interpretation of what has happened is not that we have given up the territory. It's that they have accepted that it is our territory and that they cannot do it without us. And, of course, all these areas that I'm identifying, people need to understand that what we've got is very fragile. I mean, when the honourable member says, well, we could have got something like Liechtenstein had. Well, look, Liechtenstein is an independent state. It has a seat in the United Nations. And it is almost integrated into Switzerland. And therefore, what Lichtenstein gets, it gets because it is considered to be almost a part of Switzerland for all. It uses the Swiss currency. Switzerland is responsible for its international relations. It is not a colony. It is an independent state. It is a nation in the United Nations. But it is more integrated into Switzerland than we are integrated into the UK. And therefore, the parallel is that actually we have got some things that they haven't got. And if we look at the other territory, San Marino, San Marino is the oldest republic in Europe, probably in the world. It was established in the year 301. San Marino works with Italy, and is not a member of Schengen, and is not a member of the EU. But it has a seat in the United Nations, and it is an independent country. We have achieved more access as a colony than others have as sovereign states.

We need to understand that the real problem with this is not that this is not a good deal. It may not be the best possible deal, because the best possible deal probably will be that we make the Spaniards pay tax for being in Spain. I can think of lots of things, if you give me a list of what's the best possible thing to do. You know? We should instead of, I mean, after all, if the city of Gibraltar is in San Roque, why shouldn't we extend the border beyond San Roque? That would be the best deal, right? But it's not the one that I think we'll have much chance of getting even if we took the Honourable Member along with us. So, what we need to understand is, when I was in Moorish Castle and I went to see the great work that some of our young people are doing up there, and I went to the club. And they asked me about the treaty. I said, look, well, I am in your club. And your club has rules. And if you have in your club a rule that people can't stay beyond 8 o'clock, and I am a guest, that you allow me to use your club, what I cannot do is come to the club and say, I don't like that rule. I wanted to stay until 9. Well, that is what the Honourable Members need to understand and what we all have to accept, that we are joining a club and we have got rules that everybody else has, right? And we say, ah, yes, but the problem is that Spain claims Gibraltar. Therefore, I want you to change the rules for me because Spain claims Gibraltar. Look, this is not an argument that has got great potency to the European Union. After all, the European says, look, the only reason why we're talking to you is because Spain has asked us to talk to you. You wouldn't be here! If Spain had not taken the position of isolating us, we would have finished up with the deal of the UK, which would have been a disaster. Even though we were very upset when it happened, with the benefit of hindsight, we now see that it was a good thing that it happened. And if it had not happened for the transition period, we wouldn't have had this opportunity. And in all probability, if there had been another government in Spain, we wouldn't be having this debate. We wouldn't be having these things. And of course, that means, inevitably, that we cannot rely on how long this is gonna last. And that therefore we may find ourselves in a situation or a future government may find itself in a situation they may find themselves - if Gibraltar has the misfortune of putting them here - they may find themselves in the situation that a right-wing Spanish government says we're not happy with this. We want either we give you notice to stop or we want this renegotiated. That means that we cannot say we have solved this for the rest of our lives. And Gibraltar is now OK. We cannot say that. That is not true.

This is something that I have no hesitation in recommending because it is not boots on the ground and it's not any of the other tragedies that people have invented. I mean, the last thing that people put on the internet, incredibly, is that the organisers of the proposed demonstration to persuade us to say no are going to be joined by Spanish people who also want us to say no and their government to say, no. So we're going to have a demonstration which is made up of people that think this is too little and people who think this is too much. It's an unusual demonstration. Because you can't satisfy all the people in that demonstration, you can only satisfy one. The reality is that in a future, which would be a tragic thing for all of us in Gibraltar, situation where a new government wants to undo what has been done, then what is the alternative? What is the worst-case scenario? The worst-case scenario is we go back to Pre-parity Gibraltar, with a border that is to all intents and purposes closed. And that doesn't have an MOD presence of thousands of jobs and doesn't have development aid. That is a worst-case scenario, right? How close to that are we? I don't know, but it's clear that we can't say, well, look, now that we've got this, we are going to be able to rely on a model, because the Honourable Member, Mr. Clinton, wanted to know what was the economic model that I had said we had changed as a result of the situation that we were coming out. But it's very simple. I've explained it to him every budget. I've invited him to comment every budget in the House. Before, before the Brexit, we were in a situation where we were increasing our dependence in Spain, right, the frontier workers. Once Brexit came along, I said, we are no longer going to have, as a target, increasing the GDP. Now, unlike anybody else in any other country in the world that I know of, we are going to introduce a new metric. What we are now going to be trying to do is to increase productivity, not the size of the economy. So we can get wealthier, even without increasing the size of the economy, if we still produce the same size of output with less people. That is the explanation of the change, and therefore in doing that, because instead of having a situation where we say, okay, you know, our GDP is 100 million if the GDP is produced by this side, and our GDP 200 million if it's produced by the two sides, that hasn't made us any wealthier, because you just double the resources and you double the output. It's simple arithmetic. But if we say, with the same people, we are now producing more, then our demand for labour comes down and therefore we are less exposed to frontier problems. That was the change and I have actually in my budget speeches pointed out what was happening with a number of frontier workers and to what extent it was growing or not growing compared to the size of the GDP and I also gave him Madam Speaker the figures that were not GDP per capita anymore, but GDP per worker which shows that the average output of a Gibraltar worker, as I told him in the last budget, was in fact higher than the output per worker in the United Kingdom, and that we were over £90,000 per worker. So if you have less workers, even the size of the economy is static, but less people are engaged in producing that, then you have the same money, but the money is now available to a shrinking number of people. And that was the way to go with frontier problems and the only alternative that we would have to be able to keep on producing extra income without a bigger economy which would need bigger human resources.

Now, it's the opposite. If we are going to be able to rely on Frontier workers coming in, then given that we've got pressure on our facilities in Gibraltar from the number of people who want primarily to come in from the UK, because most of the people when we put the halt on processing in October. The bulk of the people who wanted to come here were from UK. And the bulk that wanted to come from UK wanted to relocate, as if they were moving, you know, from the Midlands to the South End. So they wanted to re-locate and relocate themselves, relocate their children and put them in local schools, relocate their parents and put them in local homes, relocate themselves and put them in the National Health Service in Gibraltar, right? We can only do that for a very limited number of people. It's impossible for us to continue to grow as we were doing in the last couple of years by 1,000 a year. That's impossible. The growth in the census showed that in 10 years we went up by 3,500, an average of 350, and then in the next 10 years, we went by 500 a year, and it was 5,000 up, and then after the census, after 22, it shot up to nearly a thousand. And we said, we've got to do something about this, because otherwise we will find ourselves with public services collapsing because of the demand. And therefore we have to look at the situation that if there are supplies of labour coming in from Spain now, and the treaty requires us to give access to the Gibraltar labour market for EU nationals that are legally in Spain, we will have to have a system that identifies who is entitled to this by the treaty, and we will have to have a way of giving identification to those people and registering them so that in fact we would have a better position in knowing who is legally working in Gibraltar and a better way of preventing illegal workers even with a frontier that is more fluid and there are no controls, if you cannot be a frontier worker without a frontier worker identity, then it's possible that you can stop anybody working anywhere and then say I want to see that you've got the identity of a frontier worker and that will help us to stop illegal labour, it will help to have a better control of the labour that comes in. And of course in that situation we may then say well look having less workers in Gibraltar and more frontier workers at present is the model that we had before Brexit.

The economic policy is not something that we can devise and give a copy of to the honourable member opposite because we don't know the future. And if what is happening is something that is not a change that we can look back in the history of Gibraltar and say, well, let's analyse what happened the last time it was like this. There hasn't been a last time that it was like this. There was a time when there was no control between Gibraltar and Spain and people could come in and out as if there was no bother. There was a time that Gibraltar was like that, but there are no records about that. And There was a time when Gibraltar was predominantly military and very little civilian activities other than the servicing of the forces and the shipping. You know, at the beginning we were a big place for producing, for providing coal, and then we went to oil, and now we are in gas, and therefore we have adapted to the market and the use of Gibraltar as a bunkering place has been something that has got a long history. And that will continue. So we have to look at the things that we can do on the basis that we maximise the potential of this but not have an economic model that will only work if this is there forever. That would be something that would be... I think the probability of this changing with a new government in Spain will be reflected in just how anti this deal we see the opposition in Spain is, right? But I think we should be, in everything that we do in Gibraltar, given our experience of trying to survive on a lump of limestone with no resources and doing a very good job with the process. I think we have to do it on the basis of being cautious about not over depending on a situation which may not be there for many years.

One of the things of course that we all need to be conscious of is that we are going to be moving into a world where human labour is going to be declining. And of course, we are in a particularly good place in that respect, because we have got a huge problem of shortage of labour. The priority of the government has to be that we promote the introduction of AI in order to do things more efficiently and save on labour resources so that we are able to keep on increasing the new measure of the economy, which I have suggested, which, as I say, I think nobody else is doing, but we are, which is to look every year when we get the employment survey and we get the GDP figures, whether what has happened and what should happen for this to be working as we want it to work for Gibraltar is that the movement of the GDP, right, should be more than the movement of the labour. The input should grow less than the output and therefore output per worker increases, which means productivity increases, instead of measuring what I have considered to be a fictitious figure and the Honourable Mr. Clinton agrees with me that it is a fictitious figure because if we say the GDP is three billion and half the workforce is in Spain then the reality is that that GDP has not been produced by the people who are here. It is the way everybody else does it. That doesn't make it right or correct. Everybody else does it because that is the only international measurement that there is. But it is something that treats the 15,000 frontiers workers as if they were here when they're not, and treats their expenditure as if it was expenditure here when it isn't. But if we actually say, well, forget about the per capita, and now you measure per worker you are actually taking into account the 15,000 workers that are here. So instead of dividing it by the population, we now divide it by the workers, including the frontier workers, and therefore, to that extent, it is a totally different metric, but a more accurate one. And in addition, we then have a target that if we... If we increase, for example, that workforce by 2%, the GDP should increase by 4%. Or if there is no increase in the GDP, there should be a decrease in the output, in the input of workers. So that gives us a measure, which is the one that I reflect at budget time, and I think it's one that should be adopted by the honourable members opposite, because it's something that is a good way of realistically knowing what progress we're making and it is only by efficiency and productivity that we can actually liberate ourselves permanently from dependence on outside sources. It's not an easy thing to do, it's not a thing that can be done quickly, but there is no alternative.

I think in this situation that we have today, the reality is that the position taken by the honourable leader of the opposition, presumably speaking for all the opposition and for his party, that he is willing to support this even though he thinks it's a deal that breaks all the commitments that we have made then it's a very bad message to send to Spain. Because I am telling him, I've told him, that I would, if I had to choose between the worst-case scenario that I've just explained, my vote will be for the worst-case scenario rather than giving concessions Spain. And I am clear that what may look like a concession is not a concession. It's something that other people are doing. And it's all very well to say, well, look, the other people are doing it, but they don't have a neighbour that has a claim. OK? So they don't have a claim, OK? But we are being, we are the only non-independent country, we are a colony that has negotiated through the colonial power to have access to the Schengen area which is 90% of being a member. I don't know how they would manage if we were a member because there is no provision in the EU or in the Schengen area for non-sovereign states. So we, as a non-sovereign state have had to accept what all the sovereign states accept between each other, right? We have done it minimising the intrusive part that has to be done. We could have said, okay, we don't give in to the change from Frontex, and that would have been the end. We would have then been in the no deal scenario and with all the things that come after. We could've said, we want the patrol to be French or Italian or any other nation. If you start negotiating with the EU, because Spain has asked the EU, the first thing you need to understand is that you can mess around with Spain as much as you like, but then Spain has to say, look, I've changed my mind. Don't negotiate. It's as simple as that.

The line that we have to travel of being aggressive, I mean, probably we might not be there if I had been in the team. But the line we had to travel was that when they came back from the negotiations and I blew my top, they went back and in a gentler fashion transmitted the discomfort. Not so gentle. Not so gentle sometimes. So that, I think this is not the best thing since sliced bread, but it is a remarkable achievement to have got this. It is a remarkable achievement because when you think the people in Spain who say that the Spanish government has not used the opportunity to make huge advances are correct. The Spanish government, the socialist government may believe and should believe as socialists that if they wish Gibraltar to be a part of Spain, they would have to wait to the time when Gibraltar wanted to do it and not seek to impose it. As far as I'm concerned, I expect and I hope that Gibraltar would never want to do it because I think that if we ever became a part of Spain, then we would cease to be Gibraltarians with our own identity and our own homeland. We would just be one more Spaniard in the Iberian Peninsula. We have to be the way we are because being here has created us and given us, you know, the culture, the way, we are the identity we are. And that we cannot have if we are a part of anybody else. So we are like San Marino in Italy or Lichtenstein in Switzerland that have total independence and are members of the Schengen area, no, they're not members of, they have access to the Schengen area on similar but not as good terms as we have. But are members of EFTA, and are members of the United Nations. And if Gibraltar ever gets decolonized, that should be the place where it is. Not becoming a part of any other state. Having this now is an opportunity to look at it with our eyes open and say, well, look, this is not something now, you know, the job is done, we can all relax, all go home, and this is going to be there for eternity. We have to realise that within the European Union, they would probably want this to continue and they certainly want us to see it as a transition into greater integration when we are ready and if we are ready but very much of that will depend on the level of hostility to this that emanates from Spain. And I think we have to measure that with the passage of time. There are already people, even in La Linea, which are saying there's not enough here of benefits for them.

And, you know, this is something that we need to understand is inevitable, I mean, when we had a situation recently that the taxation was put on the gaming companies here, which is bad news for Gibraltar, but all we need to do is to be honest with ourselves. If you were an MP in the UK and you had the situation where you had to tax the betting shops in your constituency or tax the companies in Gibraltar, which would you vote for? The companies in Gibraltar. Because the people who vote for you matter to you. That's a reality. So although it's bad that they've done it, it's understandable that they've done it because, of course, we if the shoe were on the other foot, we would have reacted in the same way, and anybody else would react in the way.

So in Gibraltar we have to realise that one of the things of the economy that we have is that we'll have to keep on reinventing ourselves. We cannot just say, well look, we've got something that has worked very well and that's going to be there forever. We're living in a world which is going to see changes, and I've said it more than once, that will be 10,000 times more disruptive in a much shorter space of time than the Victorian Revolution which created the world we know today. This is going to happen whether we want it or not. It's going to happen because the people with the most money on the planet are all financing the change. The people who are putting trillions into this are putting trillions onto this on the basis that they're going to be making huge profits. And they're only going to make huge profits because they're going to create a situation which is going to eliminate economics as a science. Economics as an attempt to create a scientific analysis of work because there will be no work. So when there is no work, there will be no concerns about the queues of workers coming in. And this may happen faster than we think. I mean, most of the people who know more about this than I do think that the 10 to 15 years is probably too long. The pressure to be first will make it happen faster. Like anything else in technology, the people who get it first have an advantage in any market that others don't. The people that are going to be last clearly are the Europeans who will be still arguing about what rules they have to do to control this after everything has finished in other places. And therefore, there are really two contenders to be first. It's either going to be China, it's going to be the United States. More probable that it will be China than the United States. And once it's out, it will go, it'll be global because what the world has created today is a level of connectivity where you can do anything without moving. You know, we don't need now to go to the UK to have a meeting. I'm the chairman of a committee of the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation, which is for the fundraising and finding way because of the finances were in a very bad way, and they asked me to chair the committee that is going to find new ways of funding the CTO. I don't need to go to London. We do it online. So now you can do work without moving. Just doing that means a huge saving in resources of having to fly from different parts of the world to be together to meet. And a huge benefit to the planet, because the less we travel, the less damage we do. So the advantage of artificial intelligence, in my view, is going to be very good news for the planet although it may be very bad news for humanity, who will have a huge problem in adapting to what is going to be coming. So, when we're talking about timelines, right, look, if we're saying this may not be there in 10 years' time, well look, in 10 years' time we may be living in a different planet with different rules. It really is coming and it really is true and everybody talks about it, but they then behave as if they didn't believe it.

Madam Speaker, I think that what we are doing today is important for where Gibraltar is going to be in the next week and in the month and in the years ahead. And I think that certainly with a socialist government we can expect that they will be cooperative and helpful because they have made it happen. We hope that that new climate of... You know being good neighbours to each other will continue. I mean, I tried to do it while fighting against the Madrid-driven claims by working with the people in the Campo area. And in fact, what brought it to a halt was the issue of the Spanish pensions, which the UK was not willing to pay for, and they announced that they would stop the pensions and therefore the people that were in that committee felt they could not continue to cooperate in trying to do something together in economic development because their constituents were so upset about what the UK had done in stopping the Spanish pensions that they blamed Gibraltar for it. And it brought it to a halt. So, you know, it was a short-lived experiment. It lasted, I think, about 18 months. But there is a potential that we say, you know, we will continue to go to the UN and we will continue to press for decolonization. We have to continue to look to the UK to give us further progress in our own control in Gibraltar. And I'm glad to see that the opposition no longer think that we have been decolonized and are on the same place as we are. And then at the same time, we have to see that we have a bilateral relationship with our neighbour, where, you know, we live in harmony and we work together for the prosperity of the people in Gibraltar and the people in the Hinterland, and that is the best that we can hope from this. It is what this is intended to do, it is not intended to put us on a road which finishes with us being Spanish or Gibraltar becoming part of Spain.

There is nothing here that puts Spanish aspirations for the conquest of Gibraltar in a better place. If it was there, I would rather leave politics, which I have no intention of doing, than say yes to this. And therefore, Madam Speaker, I have my hesitation in supporting, and I'm glad that honourable members opposite are supporting it too, but I regret that they should think they're supporting something that is bad for Gibraltar.

ENDS