Oral Answers to Questions
(5 years ago)
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Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)
The Government published our immigration White Paper on 19 December 2018, which set out our principles of the future immigration system. The future system will ensure that the process for recruiting and sponsoring migrant workers is straightforward for businesses and employers. We are committed to reducing the time that it takes to hire skilled migrants and to processing the vast number of visa applications within two to three weeks.
Tonia Antoniazzi
I thank the Secretary of State for his response. Recruitment from abroad is essential to ensure that we can deliver an effective NHS in Wales and across the UK. Following the scenes of far-right thuggery outside this place last Friday, what steps is the Secretary of State taking to reassure both EU and non-EU workers that the United Kingdom is a safe place to be, where their rights will be protected?
Sajid Javid
I very much agree with the words of the hon. Lady, and like her, I believe that our country has benefited hugely from immigration over many, many years. We have benefited in so many ways—our economy and our culture—and it is very important that we maintain that welcome. I believe that the new immigration system does that. She also rightly mentioned harassment and intimidation, and there will be no place for that ever in our society.
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The national health service depends on nurses of course, and we must welcome the Government’s announcement of the removal of the £30,000 pay cap from nurses. That makes a great deal of sense, but does the Secretary of State also agree that the long-term care industry equally depends, to a very significant degree, on people from the European Union? Will he not consider, equally, removing the cap for long-term care workers?
Sajid Javid
I hope that my hon. Friend welcomes a change that we have already made to the tier 2 system for non-European economic area workers, when, last year, we exempted nurses and doctors from that cap. As far as the new system is concerned, he is right to raise this issue, and that is why, as we set out in the White Paper, there is a process of engagement over this year to make sure that we are listening, including to the care industry.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
York currently carries over 500 vacancies in our NHS and not just for nurses, so will the Home Secretary look at lifting the cap on tier 2 visas for all NHS professional staff?
Sajid Javid
As I just referred to, we have already made a significant change in this area. We also operate a shortage occupation list, which can benefit both the NHS and other sectors where a shortage is identified. I believe that as we set out the new immigration system and through the process of engagement with the White Paper, we can make sure that we get this right.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
You and I are big Arsenal fans, Mr Speaker, and we will be following Arsenal tonight as they thrash Newcastle. We will remember watching a 16-year-old Cesc Fàbregas. Will the Home Secretary ensure that under the rules after we leave the European Union, we can still make sure that we have the youngest talent from Europe playing in our premier league?
Sajid Javid
I very much agree with my hon. Friend on the issue of talent. The heart of the new immigration system, as we set out in the White Paper, is all about making sure that we are open to talent from across the world in all sectors and all industries and doing our best to make sure that it wants to come to Britain.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
An effective system for the UK must mean immigration rules being tailored and differentiated for different parts of the UK. What plans does the Home Secretary have to put in place differentiated rules reflecting the particular needs and circumstances of Northern Ireland?
Sajid Javid
It is important that like the current system, the new immigration system is simple and straightforward for businesses and others to understand, so I want to avoid unnecessary complexity. The hon. Gentleman is right about making sure that it reflects the needs of different parts of the UK. That is why in the current system, we already have, for example, the shortage occupation list specifically for Scotland. I want to make sure that as we go forward, we keep looking at the needs of all the nations of the United Kingdom.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Despite the doom-mongering from Opposition Members, is my right hon. Friend aware that since the referendum almost three years ago, the number of EU staff working in our NHS has increased by 4,000?
Sajid Javid
I would add to that—I think there are 5,200 on the latest figures, and I am sure that my hon. Friend would welcome that. What this shows is that the UK continues to attract the talent that we need from across the world, and we want to make sure that that happens with our new immigration system, when it is introduced.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)
The Government are committed to supporting community organisations to counter all forms of extremism. Through our £63 million Building a Stronger Britain Together programme, we are supporting over 230 civil society groups to stand up to extremism in all communities.
Mary Robinson
In the light of the recent terrorist atrocity in Christchurch, New Zealand, there is a renewed focus on the worrying increase in far-right-related terror in the UK. What role can community organisations play in identifying and preventing potentially vulnerable individuals from being radicalised into supporting these far-right acts?
Sajid Javid
I am sure the thoughts of the whole House are still with the victims of the terrible terrorist attack in Christchurch. I would like to reassure my hon. Friend that our Prevent programme works with a range of organisations, including many community groups, to safeguard individuals from radicalisation. Last year, almost one quarter of Prevent referrals were related to far-right extremism. I want to reassure her and the whole House that we will continue to do all we can to fight extremism in all its forms.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
As the Home Secretary will be only too well aware, access to EU databases is vital to protecting our country, yet we could be just 11 days from a no-deal Brexit, which the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police has described as potentially putting people at risk. Is she right?
Sajid Javid
If we leave the EU with no deal, of course there will be a change to the tools we use with our European friends. For over two years now, but especially in the last six months, we have been working with them both bilaterally and using other tools, such as Interpol and the Council of Europe, which together will still keep us safe.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Extremist views take root more easily when the communities involved feel beleaguered or at odds with the rest of society—that is one reason I disagree with the Home Secretary on the Shamima Begum case. Has the Home Office researched the attitudes of the various communities in Britain to its own counter-terrorism policy, both legislative and operational?
Sajid Javid
My right hon. Friend raises an important issue. It is very important that the Home Office, in all its counter-extremism and counter-terrorism work, continues to engage with communities at all times and in various ways—I have met many community leaders; we have had recent roundtables with members of the Jewish community on antisemitism and with members of our Muslim community on anti-Muslim hate crime; and I have attended Prevent boards and panels to see the work they do—but we are always looking at what more we can do, because having the confidence of all these communities is essential.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
In the aftermath of the appalling Christchurch attack, I met leaders of five mosques in my constituency yesterday, and they are understandably very worried about the possibility of further radical attacks, particularly during the holy month of Ramadan, when the community will be especially visible. They are very appreciative of the announcement of additional funding for security at places of worship, but they say that, with Ramadan imminent, it is important that that comes forward very quickly. Can the Home Secretary say what the plan is for doing that?
Sajid Javid
Again, that is such an important issue, after the Christchurch massacre. The hon. Lady will know that we have already doubled the funding available under the places of worship programme. I have allocated £5 million for a three-year training programme, and I have also started a consultation. In addition, we are meeting many members of that community and hon. Members to see what more we can do.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)
As Home Secretary, I have been clear that far-right extremism has no place in Britain. The Government take this issue very seriously, and it is routinely discussed by Ministers. Earlier this month, the inter-ministerial group on safe and integrated communities, which I chair along with the Communities Secretary, discussed the threat we faced from extremism, including the far right.
Alex Sobel
On Friday, outside many of our offices, on a specially erected stage, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon addressed crowds, while many parliamentary staff were trying to get home. Staff were told to leave but at times that put them directly into that crowd. At the rally, there were Generation Identity activists and organisations that had received money from the Christchurch killer and a convicted leader of the Ulster Defence Association, and the media were physically attacked. Will the Home Secretary urgently investigate with the Met police how a convicted far-right leader and such groups were allowed to whip up hate right outside Parliament?
Sajid Javid
Sadly, as the hon. Gentleman points to, there have been many instances of abuse and intimidation of Members, especially in recent weeks. All Members should be able to go about their business with complete confidence—[Hon. Members: “Staff.”] Of course, all staff as well—everyone who works in the cradle of our democracy. It is important that the police, both the Met police and local police forces, and the House authorities work together, which they are doing. I had a meeting just last week with police, officials and others to see what more we could do.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Extremism in all its forms is often whipped up by social media. To what extent can the Home Office engage with social media to try to counter that?
Sajid Javid
We are already engaging with social media companies, especially the US giants that dominate the sector. I have met their representatives both here and abroad to discuss, in particular, terrorists and terrorism-related extremist content. However, the Government recognise that more needs to be done, which is why we will shortly publish the online harms White Paper.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
The Home Secretary will be aware of recent reports that right-wing extremists are gaining access to ISIS-related terrorist training materials. The House should be aware that just as there is a terrorist threat from supporters of grotesque organisations such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, there is also a growing threat from the far right, which includes the threat of acts of terrorism. It has been reported that senior Home Office officials, Scotland Yard and the security agencies have met senior representatives of both the Muslim and Jewish communities. Will the Home Secretary confirm that those meetings have taken place, and will he tell us what reassurances he was able to provide?
As my hon. Friends have said, there is grave concern in the Muslim community in the light of the Christchurch massacre and the subsequent attacks on mosques in Birmingham. Can the Home Secretary assure us that funds will be available for the security of mosques and other Muslim places of worship, in the same way as they are available through the Community Security Trust for the security of synagogues? Is he aware that there are many Muslim community centres like my own North London Muslim Community Centre, which is next door to the mosque and forms part of the same complex of buildings? The people there feel very threatened. Is the Home Secretary prepared to consider helping them with funds for their necessary security?
Sajid Javid
I share the concerns that the right hon. Lady has expressed. Everyone in the House will understand why there are heightened concerns in our British Muslim communities, and why we need to do more. Soon after the Christchurch massacre, I sent “Dear colleague” messages to all Members about the immediate action that we are taking in increasing the funding for places of worship.
The right hon. Lady rightly raised the issue of Muslim community centres. I want to work with Muslim community leaders and others and to listen to what they say about what needs to be done. I think that all Members are united in their wish to ensure that our Muslim community in Britain, whom we cherish, feel hugely valued and receive the protection that they deserve. No one should feel intimidated in any way whatsoever.
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)
The Government’s approach has been informed by extensive, regular engagement with external stakeholders representing the needs of a broad range of people, to ensure that the EU settlement scheme is accessible to all. The Home Office has introduced a range of support, including £9 million of grant funding for voluntary and community organisations, and support via the EU Settlement Scheme Resolution Centre.
Damien Moore
I welcome the Government’s honest and transparent approach, which I know gives EU citizens living in my constituency the reassurance that they need. What steps is the Minister taking to give EU citizens as much reassurance as possible throughout the whole process?
Caroline Nokes
The EU settlement scheme opened fully on Saturday, and we have worked with EU citizens to make it as simple and straightforward as possible. Last week, we launched a £3.75 million programme of communications that provides both information and the underlying message that EU citizens are our friends, our colleagues and our neighbours, and we want them to stay.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I have met the Minister to discuss this, but will she tell the House what assurances she can give those who are not citizens of the European economic area but are married to EEA citizens? Under the current system, they have to obtain the permission of those EEA citizens to secure their settled status, regardless of whether or not they are victims of domestic violence.
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Lady for that question. It is not correct that people have to get the permission of somebody who may well be a perpetrator of domestic violence, but it is important that, through our £9 million of grant funding, we work with groups and support the most vulnerable in the community so that they can help evidence their time in the UK and be granted status through the channels that we have put in place.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
In the light of contact I have had with a constituent who is undergoing cancer treatment, may I urge the Minister to state in the clearest terms that EU nationals living in this country will continue to be entitled to NHS treatment?
Caroline Nokes
That is absolutely correct. There will be no loss of entitlement to NHS services and treatment, and I thank my right hon. Friend for her assistance in conveying the message to her constituents that we want our EU friends and neighbours to be able to stay and access the services and benefits to which they are entitled. That is important.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
As the Minister says, the EU settled status scheme opened at the weekend, but the Government have not introduced a right of appeal to a tribunal against a decision under it. So in the event of a dispute about whether a person qualifies, the only means of independent redress is judicial review, which can be expensive and time-consuming. Does the Minister agree that that is not satisfactory? Will she commit to introducing a proper right of appeal?
Caroline Nokes
Of course, the hon. and learned Lady will know that an entire package of citizens’ rights for EU citizens is planned as part of the withdrawal agreement. That will provide the route, and her party might consider voting for it.
Joanna Cherry
As always, the Minister does not answer the question. It seems to me that there is no intention of introducing an independent right of appeal. Perhaps she can answer this question: the Costa amendment required the Government to ring-fence what had already been agreed for EU citizens’ rights; what progress has been made on securing that ring-fencing? Will the Prime Minister raise the matter at the EU Council on 10 April?
Caroline Nokes
I thought my response was quite clear. I reiterate to the hon. and learned Lady that the best way to ring-fence citizens’ rights is to vote for the deal.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
As of 30 March, the EU settlement scheme is fully open. Efforts to promote the EU settled status scheme are too little, too late. No matter how well the Government advertise, there will be people who fail to apply before the deadline. Even if that is just a small percentage, hundreds of thousands of people will be stripped of their rights and subjected to the hostile environment. Will the Government accept proposals for a declaratory scheme—the only way to avoid a repeat of Windrush for EU citizens?
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He will of course know that the first three phases of the scheme were in testing mode, and it opened publicly for the first time on Saturday. That was designed to coincide with a widespread communications campaign, on which the Government are spending £3.75 million. He well knows that we debated the issues about a declaratory scheme in the Committee stage of the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill. We are very conscious of the fact that we want people to have status that they can evidence. That is why we put the scheme in place. They will have digital status, which will provide them with the ability to share just the information that is required for landlords and employers. I encourage all hon. Members to ensure that EU citizens living in their constituencies take part in the scheme.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
The misuse of air weapons has led to too much tragic loss of life. That is why I commissioned the review. We intend to publish our conclusions alongside a consultation on firearms safety issues, to which we committed during the passage of the Offensive Weapons Bill.
Karin Smyth
I am grateful for that answer, but the review was announced in October 2017 after my Adjournment debate. It closed in February 2018 and last July, the Minister told me that it would be published as soon as possible after the summer recess. We had more assurances in the Public Bill Committee, when I tabled further amendments, but we still have no answers to give the victims of those lethal weapons. What do the Government have to say to the families of those who have been killed and to those who have been injured, such as people in my constituency and in that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson)?
Mr Hurd
I am genuinely sorry that this is taking much longer than I would like, and I am more than happy to meet Mr and Mrs Studley and other victims. However, bearing in mind that we have some of the toughest regulation in the world, we have a range of issues to look at in relation to firearms safety—we have committed to consulting on them in the Offensive Weapons Bill—and we are determined to consider them in the round.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
Does the Minister share my concern about the easy availability of air and imitation firearms? Given that there were 1,300 offences relating to imitation firearms last year, does he agree that it puts our police officers in a particularly difficult position if they do not know whether a weapon is real or an imitation?
Mr Hurd
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but the broader point is that it is absolutely right to look again at the regulations on air weapons. They are already tight in terms of ownership and possession, but we have undertaken to look again particularly at what we can do to tighten up the safety regime, and that is exactly what we intend to do.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
May I ask the Minister for his help in encouraging Cash Exchange on London Road in Morden not to have firearms for sale right in its front window, which is encouraging the purchase of those weapons?
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)
Diverting young people from crime is at the heart of my approach to tackling serious violence. Factors such as domestic abuse and substance abuse can make an individual vulnerable to becoming a victim or a perpetrator. I understand these communities; I was raised alongside kids like these and I will not leave them behind. That is why we are investing record amounts in early intervention schemes to steer even more children and young people away from serious violence.
David T. C. Davies
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Will he also investigate changing the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to allow a recent conviction for carrying a knife or gun to be used as grounds by the police for carrying out a stop and search? Does he agree that this could divert larger numbers of people from crime?
Sajid Javid
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting this issue, which has also been raised by the police. I have asked officials for further advice on the matter. He might also be interested to know that just yesterday we announced changes to stop and search that would make it easier for police to deploy “no suspicion” stop and search powers to combat serious violence.
Maggie Throup
How does my right hon. Friend expect the £100 million of funding, allocated in the spring statement for the purpose of keeping young people safe, to ease police pressures not only in large cities such as London but in towns and villages such as those in my constituency?
Sajid Javid
It will certainly help to ease pressures. The £100 million will help police with their immediate response to the rise in serious knife crime, and it will also help to support the violence reduction units. That £100 million is alongside the almost £1 billion increase in total police funding this year.
Eddie Hughes
Could more money be made available to excellent groups such as Youth of Walsall and its campaign Real Knives, Real Lives? The campaign seeks to educate those at risk of committing knife crime to understand the impact of their actions.
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is right to raise this, because the work of Real Knives, Real Lives and of other groups doing similar work is really helping young people to move away from involvement in what could become a life of crime. We have provided significant funding to similar organisations through the early intervention youth fund, and now the new youth endowment fund will also support similar community organisations.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I welcome the public health approach and the knife crime summit, but the evidence presented to the Home Affairs Committee inquiry into serious violence suggests that the Home Secretary’s claim to be putting record amounts of funding into prevention is simply not credible. We were told by West Midlands police that they now have no police officers based in schools working on crime prevention because of the scale of the cuts. There has also been a one third reduction in youth service funding over the past few years and, crucially, there are now 50,000 fewer people working on community safety and crime prevention. Children’s lives are being lost and it is crucial that investment in prevention should take place.
Sajid Javid
First, the right hon. Lady will be aware that we have had the biggest cash increase in police resources—almost £1 billion—since 2010. That is going to lead to the recruitment of more than 3,000 officers. I absolutely agree with her that early intervention should be a priority, and just last week we confirmed that a record £200 million is going into the youth endowment fund. That will help many community organisations to help young people to turn away from crime.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Sajid Javid
First, I am very sorry to hear about that incident, which must have been shocking for everyone involved. We need to ensure that the police are properly resourced, which is why this record increase in funding since 2010 is hugely welcome. However, when it comes to other types of crime that require more focus, the additional £100 million to tackle serious violence that the Chancellor announced in the spring statement will also help.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
For months, I have been raising the need for the Home Secretary to get a move on and get a grip on this national emergency. We welcome the measures that he has announced to tackle youth and violent crime, but will he commit today to come to this House of Commons every single week to let us know how everything is working, how it is reducing serious violence and whether it is having any impact at all? We will then start to believe him.
Sajid Javid
We absolutely should regularly update the House, whether by coming to the House, through “Dear colleague,” letters or by holding meetings with hon. Members who request them. However, it is important, on many of these measures, that we are united as a House. The public health approach, which seems to have united hon. Members, is an example of what we can do if we work together.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
Right across the country, vulnerable children are being coerced and threatened into joining gangs that run drug operations. There are instances where vulnerable and isolated children are groomed, exploited and filmed while being sexually abused and subsequently blackmailed into selling drugs. What assurances can the Home Secretary offer the House about the specific action being taken to tackle the county lines operations properly to ensure that children are not caught up in violent gangs?
Sajid Javid
First, the new public health approach, the consultation on which was launched today, will certainly help to safeguard many more young people. Secondly, the work of the National County Lines Coordination Centre, which began in September, has already seen startling results. For example, just one week of intensification led to 600 arrests and 1,000 young people being safeguarded.
Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
Public investment in policing is set to rise by over £1 billion next year, including an additional £22.7 million for Devon and Cornwall police.
Scott Mann
I thank the Minister for that response. I receive a large number of emails and a lot of casework from constituents who are concerned about parity between rural and urban areas. We understand the challenges facing areas such as London, Manchester and Birmingham, but county lines operations mean that those challenges are also present in rural areas. I urge the Minister to speak to the Treasury about looking after rural policing in the spending review.
Mr Hurd
I receive representations from colleagues across the House who represent rural seats pointing out the specific challenges of policing a rural area. They also point out, as the evidence shows, that satisfaction with local police forces is lower in rural areas than in other areas. We are increasing police funding, and the Home Secretary has made it clear that it will be a priority in the spending review. In that context, I have also undertaken to reconsider how resources are allocated across the system to ensure that no one feels left behind.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Mr Hurd
More money is going into policing, including in Cumbria, and more police officers are being recruited, including in Cumbria. Cumbria constabulary is rated good for efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will join me in congratulating its hard-working officers on achieving that.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
While welcoming the increased officer numbers and police funding that were announced recently, does the Minister share my concern that towns such as Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard have far fewer officers than they had many years ago? This needs to be urgently addressed in the spending review, as it is the first duty of a Government to keep their citizens safe.
Mr Hurd
It is the first duty of a Government to keep the public safe and the Home Secretary and I could not have made it clearer that our priority going into the spending review is police funding. More money has gone into Bedfordshire police and we intend to take police funding as a priority into the next spending review.
David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
The North Wales police precept has risen by 8% at a time when, over the past few years, the reduction in central Government funding has been £31 million. Will the Minister indicate how much the North Wales police precept would have to rise to compensate for central Government cuts?
Mr Hurd
I hope the right hon. Gentleman would welcome the additional public investment in North Wales police, as seems to be the case. That is part of a trend, which I hope he would welcome, of increased public investment in policing. If we want more to go into policing, we have to pay as taxpayers. Whether it comes from central Government or local government is not the point. He will know that most funding for local policing comes from the taxpayer through the centre. I will take no lectures on precepts from the Labour party, which doubled council tax when it was in power.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
As the House has heard, the Government attach high priority to bearing down on the cycle of serious violence and have recently committed an additional £100 million to support police services in that effort.
Helen Hayes
Last Wednesday another life was tragically lost to serious violence in my constituency when a young man was shot at close range in West Norwood in the middle of the afternoon, leaving another family devastated and another community traumatised. The Government committed last October to a public health approach to serious violence, but they have taken until today to hold a meeting about it. When will the public health approach be implemented in full, and when will the killings stop?
Mr Hurd
I have a great deal of sympathy for the hon. Lady and the situation in her constituency—I, too, have suffered a recent murder in my constituency—but it is a misrepresentation of the Government’s position to say that we have just embarked on a journey of underpinning our strategy through a public health approach. What we have announced today is the launch of a consultation on a statutory duty to co-operate.
Sandy Martin
In addition to our need for police officers, public interface, intelligence gathering, evidence processing and so on depend on police staff. Does the Minister accept that the 30% cut in Suffolk police staff and the 72% cut in police community support officers since 2010 have reduced the capacity to investigate serious crime?
Mr Hurd
I have candidly recognised in the House that our police system has been under pressure, which is why we have increased public investment. As a result, police and crime commissioners across the country are recruiting, at the last count, around 3,000 officers, plus additional staff. I am mystified as to why the hon. Gentleman voted against it.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Collaboration across force boundaries is clearly crucial in helping the police not only to investigate but to tackle serious violent crime head on. What steps are being taken to help to promote that agenda?
Mr Hurd
I thank my hon. Friend for raising a fundamental point that goes to the heart of how crime and the demands on policing are changing and are increasingly not respecting borders. Specifically on county lines, we have supported the police with a multimillion pound investment in a new co-ordination centre that is already resulting in increased arrests and increased numbers of safeguarded children.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that what we need is more capacity building in the police to tackle gangs? Whether it is gangs of traffickers at Calais or county lines gangs in Kent, we need a war on crime and a war on gangs to make sure we combat drugs and properly secure our borders.
Mr Hurd
I recently visited Kent police, who are an outstanding example of an excellent force that is using the additional resources from the public to increase its capacity, with an additional 450 officers in recent years, and to take a very tough approach to knife crime, which is bearing fruit. I congratulate Kent officers on their hard work.
Mr Speaker
If the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) were standing, I would call her, but she is not and so I will not—but she now does, so I call Colleen Fletcher.
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)
Mr Hurd
What I say to that officer is what I say to every officer who makes exactly the same point, which is a valid one: the Government understand that police officers are feeling very stretched and under pressure at the moment, which is exactly why we have increased investment in our police. It is exactly why we are investing more than £1 billion more in our police system. He may wonder why the hon. Lady voted against it.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
It is unclear how the long delayed public health duty consultation announced today will make any difference, given that the agencies referenced already have those safeguarding responsibilities under crime and disorder partnerships. If today’s summit is to be anything more than another talking shop, we need to see urgent action on school exclusions, long-term police funding, mental health services, and youth services and diversion for young people. These systemic changes require a Government with the capability and the will to act. When can this House be assured that this Government have either?
Mr Hurd
We are already acting, and all the issues the hon. Lady mentioned were part of the discussion that I took part in, alongside the Prime Minister and other Ministers, with a range of experts today, where all were agreeing about the approach the Government are taking, underpinned by a public health approach. The hon. Lady was dismissive of the statutory duty to co-operate, but that has been welcomed by both the Mayor of London and the commissioner of police.
Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)
The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)
The White Paper, published in December, proposes a route for skilled workers of any nationality coming to do jobs at RQF—regulated qualifications framework—level 3 and above. It will be uncapped, allowing all those meeting the requirements to come here. The right hon. Gentleman will of course recall that the Home Secretary lifted the tier 2 cap for NHS workers last July.
Sir Vince Cable
Freedom of movement has allowed 20,000 nurses to be recruited to the NHS. Some 5,000 have left since the referendum and there are 41,000 vacancies, with many more in other occupations, such as careworker. While the Government are consulting on the salary cap level, can the Minister guarantee that there will be sufficient flexibility to allow these relatively low-paid but scarce occupations to be fully recruited and filled?
Caroline Nokes
The right hon. Gentleman will have heard earlier that, as at December 2018, we had over 5,200 more EU nationals working in the NHS in England than we did at the time of the referendum in 2016. He makes an important point about careworkers. During the engagement going on as part of the White Paper, this issue has been raised with me and the Government are certainly listening carefully. I am working closely with the Minister for social care and later this week we will be attending a roundtable on exactly this subject.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Kettering General Hospital recruits doctors and nurses from the European Union and from non-EU countries. Will it be able to continue to do both once we have left the EU?
Caroline Nokes
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The answer is: absolutely. The proposals we have put forward in the White Paper will ensure that there is absolutely no discrimination in respect of those seeking to come here from EU countries and from non-EU countries.
Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)
In Northern Ireland, social care is fully integrated within the Department of Health. Many of the jobs that supply vital services to older people, both in care homes and across the community, are filled by EU mainland nationals. What conversations has the Department had with the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to ensure this vital flow of employment and workers can continue post Brexit?
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Lady for that question. It is important to note that just last week I held a roundtable with representatives from the Scottish and Welsh Governments, and civil servants from Northern Ireland. It is important that we make sure we have a future immigration system that works for the whole of the UK, and we are determined to do so.
Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
As the hon. Lady knows, each fire and rescue authority is required to have an integrated risk-management plan and risk-based inspection programme, and the adequacy and effectiveness of those arrangements are now subject to independent inspection.
Emma Dent Coad
Following the Grenfell Tower fire, the London fire brigade implemented a more rigorous and detailed building inspection programme, which has brought up additional issues that need enforcement action. That inevitably takes up a great deal of time and limits the brigade’s ability to assess premises. Will the Minister agree to review funding, to improve the recruitment and retention of the suitably qualified officers we need to ensure that people are safe in their beds?
Mr Hurd
I understand the hon. Lady’s point. Core spending for the Greater London Authority has increased by 6.3% in 2019-20. We are reviewing the funding arrangements for the fire service as part of the spending review, and I will note the hon. Lady’s intervention in that context.
Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)
Not only are the Government failing to deal with dangerous cladding wrapped around buildings, but they are responsible for cutting one in four fire inspectors since 2010. They cannot cut red tape and fire inspectors and expect there to be no ticking time bombs like Grenfell. Cuts have consequences. The fire service must be funded to seek out risk, not just to respond to it. I add my voice to those asking the Minister whether he will undertake a serious review of fire service funding, with a view to implementing a robust national standard framework to set expectations of fire inspector numbers and competency.
Mr Hurd
I can certainly assure the hon. Lady, as I have before, that as it prepares for the spending review the Home Office is extremely serious about assessing the demand on the police and the fire service. In the latest forces reviews by the independent inspectorate, 10 out of the 14 forces were rated “good” for effectiveness. I hope the hon. Lady would join me in welcoming that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I hope the whole House will want to join me in congratulating the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) on her wedding on Saturday. We wish her and her new husband a long, happy and healthy life together.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
The Minister for Security and Economic Crime (Mr Ben Wallace)
I add my good wishes to my hon. Friend and wish her all the best for the future.
Our security and intelligence agencies are currently conducting more than 700 live investigations, so it is crucial that they have the resources needed to keep our citizens safe. In 2015, the Government increased counter-terrorism funding by 30%, from £11.7 billion to more than £15 billion, for the spending review period.
Mrs Murray
I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply. How does he respond to the concerns raised by the security and defence chiefs about the danger posed by the withdrawal agreement to our security relationships with the US, NATO and the Five Eyes alliance?
Mr Wallace
I read with interest the article and the letters sent by the former Chief of the Defence Staff and Secret Intelligence Service—in fact, I served with the former Chief of the Defence Staff. I regret to say to my hon. Friend that I think they are completely wrong. Nothing in the withdrawal agreement or the political declaration cuts across NATO, our defence and intelligence relationships with the EU or the US, or the Five Eyes alliance. The withdrawal agreement guarantees that it is the United Kingdom’s sovereign choice to co-operate with the EU on foreign policy and intelligence matters, while protecting the UK’s national security safeguards.
Mr Speaker
It would be a very odd and almost irregular parliamentary day if the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) did not leap to his feet to pose an inquiry to the Executive branch, and I am delighted that he has done so. In particular, I am pleased that he has not been unduly dispirited by Huddersfield’s relegation.
Mr Sheerman
Thank you for your condolences, Mr Speaker. We live to fight another day.
There are some thoughtful people on the Government Front Bench, but listening to today’s questions I get the feeling that they live in a silo, where they are comfortable but do not join up with other Departments. I hear from senior police officers up and down the country, but particularly in West Yorkshire and Huddersfield, that there is inadequate supply of the special skills needed to combat terrorism on the internet.
Mr Wallace
I am afraid that is simply not the case. I speak regularly to all the leaders of the regional counter-terrorism response and the serious organised crime response. The part of policing that currently gets increased funding around that speciality is organised crime and counter-terrorism. I am happy to visit with the hon. Gentleman the counter-terrorist unit in his part of the country, which does a first-class job. The problem is not access to that speciality but making sure that we cut off the future demand and threats. I urge him to come with me to visit his local unit, and we can discuss the Prevent programme together.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
May I add the congratulations of Members on the Opposition Benches to the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray)?
The Minister has spoken about having more money for counter-terrorism, but when an appalling terrorist attack occurs it draws in officers and resources from mainstream policing as well as specialist counter-terror officers. Surely he must accept that cutting more than 21,000 police officers since 2010 has diminished the Government’s capacity to keep people safe.
Mr Wallace
The hon. Gentleman will know that when police forces come under pressure—such as when they respond to a terrorist incident, to an incident such as Salisbury or, indeed, as in my constituency, to a process such as fracking—there is an extra grant for those police forces. We have refunded extra money to police forces in Dorset, London and Manchester, and we will continue to do so. That is why we have this pot in the Home Office: to make sure that we can flex as something happens. Police respond, and they then get back the money that they need.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)
The Home Office’s comprehensive vulnerability strategy ensures that the EU settlement scheme is accessible for all, including children in care. The Home Office is engaged with the Department for Education, the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services to assess the needs of this group and ensure that they are met. I have welcomed their ongoing contribution to the development of the scheme.
Teresa Pearce
The Home Office’s testing of the EU settlement scheme has highlighted real challenges for this group of vulnerable children. Across five authorities, only 16 children have secured settled status. Does she agree that, as corporate parents to these vulnerable children, we should be giving automatic settled status, and that those eligible for citizenship should have their fee waived to avoid any risk of them becoming undocumented and causing a second Windrush scandal?
Caroline Nokes
As the hon. Lady knows, five local authorities took part in the private test phase, making applications on behalf of children for whom they had full parental responsibility. They reported that the process was quick and easy for them to use. As I have said previously, we have a comprehensive vulnerability strategy and are working hard to make sure that the scheme is accessible and handles all those who are marginalised or at risk with the sensitivity that is required.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)
My deepest sympathies go out to all those affected by the terrorist massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand. To help protect our faith institutions, we are increasing next year’s places of worship fund for protective security to £1.6 million, investing £5 million in security training and consulting communities in what more can be done. Tragically, we are still seeing an epidemic of knife crime on our streets, so today we have launched a consultation on a new legal duty to support our public health multi-agency approach.
Sir Edward Leigh
The Secretary of State will be aware of the case of the Iranian Christian whose asylum application was turned down by the Home Office because—I quote a Home Office official—“violent passages” in the Bible contradicted his claim that Christianity is a “peaceful” religion. Will my right hon. Friend acknowledge that some of his officials may be so worried about being accused of Islamophobia or antisemitism that they overcompensate by becoming Christian-critical and do not understand that Christianity is the cornerstone of all our freedoms?
Sajid Javid
I have seen the letter to which my right hon. Friend refers. I found it totally unacceptable, and it is not in any way in accordance with policies at the Home Office. I have ordered an urgent investigation and not ruled out any further action.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Sajid Javid
Of course resources are very important in fighting knife crime. Alongside the £100 million that the Chancellor announced in his spring statement, which all the forces have told us will make a big difference, we should consider the almost £1 billion increase this year in the entire police system because of the financial settlement.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
The west midlands police and crime commissioner is one of many PCCs who were asking for more public money while, at the same time, putting public money aside to increase their reserves. We have increased the funding to west midlands police, and I hope my hon. Friend will welcome that. However, we also require police and crime commissioners to publish transparent strategies of how they intend to use their reserves. It is public money given by the public for investment in policing.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)
The hon. Lady will have heard me say earlier that we are working very hard with the social care sector and listening to organisations such as the Local Government Association. A couple of weeks ago, I met not just the LGA but the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to talk about the importance of the social care sector and to make sure that our future immigration system is able to recruit people with the skills and the talents that we need to come to the whole of the United Kingdom.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Caroline Nokes
My hon. Friend is right to emphasise that it absolutely is people traffickers and organised crime gangs who are encouraging people to make this extremely perilous crossing. We deploy aerial surveillance, but the House will appreciate that I will not be able to discuss our covert assets in detail. He is right to emphasise that we are working with a number of member states, including France, to facilitate returns. About 20 individuals who have crossed via small boat have been returned to date, and further returns are in progress.
Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
Caroline Nokes
The Government have made available £9 million of grant funding to charities and other organisations to support vulnerable people, including vulnerable adults in the care sector, through this process. We have already, through the test phase, been working closely with a number of local authorities, and there has been an extensive engagement process with the LGA and other local government bodies to make sure that we get this right.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Sajid Javid
Yes, I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The simple truth is that stop-and-search saves lives. Of course it should always be targeted and intelligence-led, with proper engagement with the community, but it saves lives. There are people alive today because of stop-and-search.
Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I share completely the views of, I think, most Members of this House that the victims of child sexual abuse, whether current or historical, deserve justice, deserve fairness, and deserve our support. Our use of language in this arena is vital, and the priority of this Government will always be to support those victims.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
Sajid Javid
I am pleased that my hon. Friend welcomes the introduction of the pilot scheme. I listened carefully to what he said. The scheme will be evaluated very carefully—I can give him that assurance. We want to make sure that it works for all parts of our agricultural sector.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Over a third of my constituents do not earn enough to sponsor a visa for a family member from outside the EEA. Will the Minister consider revising the minimum income requirement, to provide a pathway for minimum wage employees to be reunited with family members?
Caroline Nokes
The minimum income threshold was set after consideration of advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee. The Supreme Court has endorsed the lawfulness of that approach and agrees that the minimum income requirement strikes a fair balance between the interests of UK citizens wishing to sponsor a non-EEA spouse and of the community in general.
Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman could not be accused of excluding any consideration that he might think in any way relevant, anywhere at any time.
Mr Hurd
Mr Speaker, my hon. Friend was raising the tragic case of a family who had to organise three separate funerals for a child. I understand that the deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester has written to Ms Aldridge informing her that Greater Manchester police will commence a formal investigation upon receipt of further details of the complaint. As promised, I have written to all chief constables in England and Wales requesting that their human tissue retention policy be submitted to my Department for scrutiny.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
When the Home Secretary launched the immigration White Paper, I asked him about the overseas students falsely accused of cheating in the test of English for international communication. He said he was taking the matter very seriously. Can he update the House, and will he meet the officers of the new TOEIC all-party parliamentary group to discuss progress?
Sajid Javid
When I met the right hon. Gentleman, I took this issue very seriously. I have asked my officials to review it. We had a further meeting to make some final decisions just last week, and I will be in touch with him shortly.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
Can we do more to help victims of car theft? My constituent Linford Haggie faced an extraordinary situation where his car was stolen, and the police told him he could retrieve it, but because the car had been kept to gather evidence and forensics, he had to pay a £150 release charge plus £20 a day for storage. Surely we should not be penalising victims of crime in that way.
Mr Hurd
I understand the point that my right hon. Friend makes. We are concerned about the increase in vehicle crime. That is why I have convened a taskforce to bring everyone together to look at it. There are costs that need to be recouped, but he raises a serious point, and we have agreed to look at that again.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
The seasonal agricultural workers scheme presents a real risk of inadvertently creating slavery. What extra resources will the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority get to ensure that that does not happen?
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He will know how vital the work of the GLAA is to tackling modern slavery. I am working with my ministerial colleague to ensure that the situation he describes does not occur.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
For many victims of domestic violence, the mental and psychological abuse they are subject to has the biggest impact on their lives. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that that aspect of domestic abuse is tackled?
Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point; often, the emotional and mental effects of domestic abuse can be just as harmful as the physical effects. That is why we are including those forms of abuse in the statutory definition of domestic abuse in the draft Domestic Abuse Bill. In addition, we are ensuring that the coercive and controlling behaviour offence, which we introduced in 2015, is still appropriate in this day and age.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
Members of the British armed forces from foreign and Commonwealth countries are rightly allowed to settle here in the UK with their families after their service. Why must they pay £2,389 per person—nearly £10,000 for a family—to be able to exercise that right? Will the Home Secretary scrap those fees for veterans of the British Army?
Sajid Javid
The right hon. Gentleman raises a reasonable issue, and the Home Office has been working with the Ministry of Defence to see whether we can do more.
Points of Order
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As I have advised you, I should be grateful if you would allow me to make a personal statement.
I do not feel that I have misled the House, but I do feel that I have not been true to myself. Although doing what I believed to be in the country’s best interest at that moment in time, I quickly realised that I should not have voted with the Government on Friday afternoon. We have to weigh up the balance of risk and make an almost impossible choice: it seemed to be either the Prime Minister’s deal or a long delay, European elections, a softer Brexit and more political uncertainty. What I should have done, and did not do, was to trust my instincts and those of the British people. I made the wrong call on Friday, and let me very briefly explain why. First—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. [Interruption.] No. I signalled an acceptance of the hon. Gentleman’s wish to raise this matter, and he must be allowed to do so.
Richard Drax
Thank you, Mr Speaker. First, I have consistently voted against the withdrawal agreement because it is flawed. Secondly, I believe I have let down good friends here in the House, and my friends and colleagues in the Democratic Unionist party. I served on three operational tours in Northern Ireland, playing a small part in protecting the innocent and combating terrorism, so I say sorry to DUP Members and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) for voting for a deal that could risk the integrity of our country. For that reason, and for that reason alone, the withdrawal agreement, as it stands, must never ever see the light of day again.
Finally, if the Prime Minister cannot commit to taking us out of the EU on 12 April, she must resign immediately. This is no longer about leave or remain—that was decided in 2016—but about the future of our great country, and about faith and trust in our democracy. Spring is here: time for a new start for us all. Let us take our country back in 11 days’ time, and fulfil our honourable duty. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I do not need any advice from the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp). I have the highest regard for the hon. Gentleman, who is a very keen, committed and assiduous new Member, but I hope he will accept it when I say, on the strength of nearly 22 years in the House and nine and three quarter years as the occupant of the Chair, that I do not feel in immediate need of assistance from someone who entered the House in May 2015. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his views, but it might be prudent if he had the good courtesy to keep them to himself on this occasion.
I thank the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) for his point of order. I did not know what its content was to be, and I had not seen the text. The hon. Gentleman speaks for himself. I know him well enough to know that he speaks not merely from the head, but from the heart. He is a person of integrity and a man of principle. I respect what he said, and I think it stands for others to judge, but I appreciate his saying so candidly what he wanted to say.
Laura Pidcock (North West Durham) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is not Brexit-related, but it is important to my constituents. On 31 January, I wrote to the Minister for Employment about an urgent matter involving a severely disabled constituent of mine who, through natural migration on to universal credit, has been made £98 a week worse off than when on working tax credit, after she was mis-advised by officials. I did receive a response—shockingly, eight weeks later—not with a solution, but asking for more information. My constituent has been in severe hardship the whole time. Given that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said earlier this month that people in this situation would be fully compensated and given the huge loss to this woman—this is no criticism of the workforce—what can we do in the face of such a dysfunctional Department and a Minister lackadaisical in the face of such distress?
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. I know that she was courteous enough to give me notice that she wished to raise the matter. I trust that she has also notified the Minister of her intention to do so.
Mr Speaker
It is clearly important, colleagues, that Members receive timely responses from Ministers on important constituency matters. This is an observation I have had many times to make from the Chair. It should not be necessary to do so again, but, sadly, it has been. The hon. Lady has made her concern clear. It will have been noted by those on the Treasury Bench, including the Leader of the House, who I am sure, in common with her predecessors, takes very seriously the responsibility to chase Ministers to serve the House efficiently and in a timely fashion. We will leave it there for now.
Are there no further points of order? The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) was thirsting a moment ago, but he appears to have lost his appetite.
Mr Speaker
I do not think that “mundane” and the right hon. Gentleman ordinarily go together, so it would have been an exceptional state of affairs. Nevertheless, if he wishes to apply a self-denying ordinance on this occasion, who am I to prevent him?
Bill Presented
Prime Minister (Confidence)
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Tom Brake, supported by Jo Swinson, Sir Edward Davey, Layla Moran, Tim Farron, Wera Hobhouse and Christine Jardine, presented a Bill to require a Prime Minister to tender their resignation to Her Majesty if the House of Commons passes a motion of no confidence in them; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 5 April, and to be printed (Bill 370)
Business of the House
(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
16:37 - The House divided: - Ayes: 322 / Noes: 277 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Speaker
I inform the House that I have not selected any of the amendments.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
(1) That, at today’s sitting –
(a) any proceedings governed by the order of the House of 27 March (Business of the House) or this order may be proceeded with until any hour, though opposed, and shall not be interrupted;
(b) the order of 27 March shall apply as if, at the end of paragraph 2(b), there were inserted “and then to motions in the name of a Minister of the Crown relating to statutory instruments”;
(c) notwithstanding the practice of the House, any motion on matters that have been the subject of a prior decision of the House in the current Session may be the subject of a decision;
(d) the Speaker shall announce his decision on which motions have been selected for decision by recorded vote before calling a Member to move a motion under paragraph 2(f) of the order of 27 March;
(e) the Speaker may not propose the question on any amendment to any motion subject to decision by recorded vote or on the previous question, and may not put any question under Standing Order No. 36 (Closure of debate) or Standing Order No. 163 (Motion to sit in private);
(f) debate on the motions having precedence under paragraph 2(f) of the order of 27 March may continue until 8.00 pm at which time the House shall proceed as if the question had been put on each motion selected by the Speaker for decision by recorded vote and the opinion of the Speaker as to the decision on each such question had been challenged;
(g) in respect of those questions –
(i) Members may record their votes on each question under arrangements made by the Speaker;
(ii) votes may be recorded for half an hour after the Speaker declares the period open and the Speaker shall suspend the House for that period;
(iii) the Speaker shall announce the results in the course of the sitting;
(h) during the period between 8.00 pm and the announcement of the results on the questions subject to recorded vote –
(i) no motion for the adjournment may be made;
(ii) the Speaker may suspend the sitting if any other business, including proceedings provided for in paragraph 1(b) of this order and paragraph 2(g) of the order of 27 March, has been concluded.
(2) That, on Wednesday 3 April –
(a) notwithstanding Standing Order No. 14(1) (which provides that Government business shall have precedence at every sitting save as provided in that order), precedence shall first be given to a motion relating to the Business of the House in connection with the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union
(b) if more than one motion relating to the Business of the House is tabled, the Speaker shall decide which motion shall have such precedence;
(c) the Speaker shall interrupt proceedings on any business having precedence before the Business of the House motion at 2.00 pm and call a Member to move that motion;
(d) debate on that motion may continue until 5.00 pm at which time the Speaker shall put the questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on that motion including the questions on amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved;
(e) any proceedings interrupted or superseded by this order may be resumed or (as the case may be) entered upon and proceeded with after the moment of interruption.—(Sir Oliver Letwin.)
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I think we are all very much looking forward to today’s proceedings, as they were such an overwhelming success last week. The whole House has to congratulate the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). We have been looking forward to this as much as the general public have been looking forward to the last series of “Game of Thrones”, such is the excitement in this place.
We can see that this is very much a British parliamentary coup, one conducted with points of order and copies of “Erskine May” rather than through military means, so all power to the right hon. Gentleman. He has managed to achieve more in five days than the Government have in the past three years. We have made more progress in that short time than we have in the course of those three years. He has seen a Government defeat and a possible general election. More than anything else, he has demonstrated that when the House takes back control and speaks with authority, it can do something that no Government have done on this issue of Brexit.
I look forward to today’s proceedings, as I am sure the rest of the House does.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Andrea Leadsom)
I will keep my remarks brief as today is another opportunity for hon. Members to set out their thoughts on the way forward. However, I wish to reiterate my concerns about this approach that I set out last week.
The Government have consistently said that we do not support the unprecedented removal of Government control of the Order Paper, no matter the circumstances. For many years, the convention has been that it is for the Government, as elected by the people and with the confidence of the House, to set out the business. It is for Parliament to scrutinise, amend and reject or approve. The Government will listen carefully to Parliament today, but, as I have explained, the approach to today’s business sets an extremely concerning precedent for our democracy, and we will therefore oppose the business motion.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
The Leader of the House has just said that the Government will oppose the business motion. The Attorney General said on Friday:
“There is no desire on the part of this Government to interfere with the process that the House is currently undergoing”.—[Official Report, 29 March 2019; Vol. 657, c. 697.]
Can she explain how that statement squares with the Government’s opposition to the business motion today?
Andrea Leadsom
The right hon. Gentleman quotes selectively from the Attorney General’s comments. All I can say is that the Government have concerns about the precedent that this sets, and they are legitimate concerns. Opposition Members may one day be in a position to be concerned about parliamentary conventions and dangerous precedents.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
When the Leader of the House last made this point, I pointed out that the Prime Minister promised that if her deal was not passed, she would find time and make arrangements for the House to have indicative votes. Had the Government done that, the procedural point that the Leader of the House raises would never have arisen. Having got where we are, and given the situation the country is in, will the Leader of the House reconsider indicating that the Government still intend to resist anything that the House passes that they do not approve of? The whole thing could have been sorted out if the Government’s promise to put their own arrangements for indicative votes in place had been honoured.
Andrea Leadsom
My right hon. and learned Friend has a slightly different recollection from my own. Indeed, the Prime Minister did say that she would seek the views of this House, but my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) came forward with his motion prior to the Government being able to do so. The Government respect that, but are concerned about the precedent.
Last week, the House considered a variety of options as a way forward and will do so again today. What was clearly demonstrated last week is that there is no agreed way forward, but urgent action is needed. I continue to believe that the deal the Government have negotiated is a good compromise that delivers on the referendum, while protecting jobs and our security partnership with our EU friends and neighbours.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I disagree with the right hon. Lady on the withdrawal agreement being a good compromise, but does she agree, first, that any vote in this House today is indicative; and, secondly, that it would be totally unreasonable to expect any Government to negotiate an arrangement totally at odds with the programme they set out, the manifesto commitments they made, and the arrangements that the people of the United Kingdom would accept?
Andrea Leadsom
I think the right hon. Gentleman was reading my mind. I was literally just about to say that any alternative solution that the House votes for would need to be deliverable, would need to be negotiable with the European Union, and would need to deliver on the vote of the referendum.
Several hon. Members rose—
Andrea Leadsom
I do not want to give way any further, because this is a day for Parliament. I do apologise.
Members of Parliament should also be in no doubt that any alternative solution requiring a further extension would mean the UK participating in European Parliament elections. It is now nearly three years since the referendum, and I believe that position would be unacceptable to the people of the United Kingdom. The Government will continue to call for an agreement that delivers on the 2016 referendum, and maintains a deep and special partnership with the European Union. I look forward to hearing the contributions made in today’s debate, and to working with the House to agree a negotiable and deliverable way forward that respects the result of the referendum.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I had not intended to speak, but I think it is important, in the light of the comments the Leader of the House has made, that at least somebody gets up and points out that our debate today has come about simply because Parliament has tried to do something that the Prime Minister ought to have been doing three years ago when the referendum happened: namely, to try to make some sense of what was a completely undefined way of trying to leave the European Union, which had divided our country. What we should have been seeing, and what today’s business motion allows us to do—albeit at the very last minute—is to try to reach out and see if we can come together ourselves across Parliament and begin to think about ways that might be able to heal our deeply divided country. It has been divided by a Prime Minister who insisted on dealing solely with her own extreme right-wingers to try to define what Brexit should be, rather than reaching across the aisle in this House to try to bring about a compromise that could have taken more of the country with it.
I understand the points made by the Leader of the House about the constitutional novelty of the situation we are in, but I disagree with her hard-line view of Parliament’s role, especially since the 2017 general election deprived her party of a majority in this House, and taking into account this Government’s record in riding roughshod over constitutional understandings by ignoring Opposition votes, by refusing to vote on Opposition motions, and by defining the parliamentary Session in two years, thereby taking away the opportunity for Opposition days and halving their number.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
It was announced over the weekend that none of last week’s indicative votes got anywhere near what the Prime Minister’s deal got. Given that the Government abstained on last week’s votes, is it not correct to say that the numbers were clearly going to be smaller because the payroll was not involved?
Ms Eagle
Yes, and although the payroll is in constant contention against itself, it has grown over time. If the payroll does not vote, by definition anything that this House votes on today will involve lesser numbers. I think we are close to reaching some conclusions, but it is almost as though the Leader of the House does not want the House to reach conclusions so that she can have another go in meaningful vote 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 or, God forgive us, even 10.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend makes very strong points. I, too, am backing the business of the House motion, because I think Parliament made remarkable progress the other day in a few hours, compared with the Government, who have had two years to sort this out. Does she agree that it is important that we vote the motion through to give us not only the opportunity to make further progress tonight, but, if necessary, a small amount of time on Wednesday to get to where we need to be, so that Parliament can take control and we can move forward together as a House?
Ms Eagle
I agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, listening to those who campaigned to leave in the referendum, I thought it was all about Parliament taking back control. Right from the beginning, the Prime Minister attempted to exclude Parliament from any part in the decision-making process, and she had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the Supreme Court to give Parliament the role that is its right. It is about time we demonstrated to this dysfunctional Government that there is a way forward. I hope that in our deliberations we will do so.
Finally, I am concerned that the Government are going around saying that they will not listen to the results of indicative votes. That is why it is important, albeit very difficult, for Parliament to take even more time from the Government so that we can begin to legislate if there is a result tonight. Given that the Government have tried to keep power to themselves and to exclude Parliament completely from any say in the decisions made post referendum, we have to keep doing constitutionally novel things to try to save our country from the disaster of a catastrophic no-deal crash-out.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
In some ways, this business motion might be seen as the most interesting and important part of the day, because procedure is now everything. The fact that, on this historic day, the Government have lost control of the Order Paper is vital to the debate and how we proceed. Although we will have an interesting debate in the coming hours, I doubt whether a single vote will be changed by what anybody says, what blogs are written or what tweets are posted. Most people have made up their minds, and they have a settled view on what they want—whether it is the customs union, no deal or whatever.
My few remarks are almost by way of questions to the Leader of the House and to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). Like many people, I want to know what will happen under the current procedure. It seems to me that tonight we will probably whittle matters down to one option that has the most support in the House, and we all know that that is likely to be permanent membership of the customs union. On Wednesday, the alternative Government—not the Labour party, but my right hon. Friend—will take control of the agenda. As I understand it, he will then produce a Bill to implement what is decided, which will probably be permanent membership of the customs union.
I put it to the Government that we Conservative MPs will then have a choice: we will have to have permanent membership of the customs union because the Order Paper will have been taken over by Parliament; or we have a general election; or we prorogue Parliament. I say to my right hon. Friend that I think it would be a dereliction of duty on the part of the House if we were to abdicate our responsibility and have a general election. The people asked us to make this choice and to do this job. If we cannot agree on what we do not want, we should agree on what we do want. Therefore, the Government have to move forward with their meaningful vote, if necessary in a run-off with this customs union, and if necessary in a vote tomorrow.
I do not believe that it is in the interests of the nation to have a general election, which would solve nothing: people do not vote on the issue—they vote on who the leader of the party is, who they like or who their local MP is. We all know that every single general election gets out of control. We ourselves have to decide this issue. We have to make the choice. We have to decide what we want, not what we do not want.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Edward Leigh
No, I am going to finish in a moment. The other thing that we surely cannot do—I say this to my friends who, like me, voted for Brexit—is duck the issue by proroguing Parliament. We cannot act like Charles I. We voted leave because we wanted to give control back to Parliament; it would be like someone throwing the football out of the stadium because they are losing the football match.
There is a simple choice for my colleagues now. The Government are on the cusp of losing control and we are on the cusp of facing permanent membership of the customs union, which runs contrary to our manifesto. We have to get real, dear friends: we have to make that choice. My personal choice is that I would rather vote for the Prime Minister’s deal, which at least delivers some sort of Brexit.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I very gently say to colleagues that although there is time scheduled for this debate, some of the points being made could perfectly well be made in the debate itself, rather than in the debate on the business of the House motion. I would have thought that colleagues could speak extremely briefly, as will be brilliantly exemplified now by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell).
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I will do my best, Mr Speaker. I wish to touch on my amendment that was not selected. Of course, I pay ultimate deference to your decision, Mr Speaker, but I wonder whether, at some point before we vote on the motion, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) could help me. When we discussed the business of the House motion last week, I asked him about the daisy-chaining process that he was involved in—the process of attaching another day to the business of the day we were discussing. We now have a motion that we passed on the 25th to have a debate on the 27th. The motion on the 27th gave us the 1st and the motion on the 1st would give us the 3rd. I have no issue with the House doing what it sees as necessary to find a way through this Brexit impasse, but I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman, if he has a plan, can tell us what that is going forward.
There is a rumour that on Wednesday we may be asked to legislate for the outcome of this evening. I presume that on Wednesday’s business of the House motion, there will be another paragraph (2) to commandeer a day of the week after. If that is the case, I wonder whether a plan—if it exists somewhere—of how many days and what the days are to be used for can be shared with the House. That is not because I wish to impede the House from doing this. However, on Friday I was asked to vote against the withdrawal agreement on the basis of a blind Brexit, and I am now being asked to hand over days of parliamentary business with no idea of what will be tabled and discussed on those days. [Interruption.] As much as I thank Government Members for their support, I do not really want it. [Interruption.] I will take it, but I do not want it.
I mean to try to be helpful to the right hon. Member for West Dorset. If he has a plan of how many days and what those days are to be used for, could he share it with us? If we as a House are going to be asked to hand over day after day, we should know what we will be asked to vote on during those days.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
A few days ago, I brought in the House of Commons (Precedence of Government Business) (European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018) Bill, to which I gave a great deal of thought and that I discussed with many other Members. It is due to be debated on 5 April. The position is this. I did it because of my grave concern about the procedure being employed under this motion in particular, for the following reasons, which I will give briefly.
First, it is well said in our constitutional authorities that justice is to be found in the interstices of procedure. What that means is that through procedure we can ensure that things are done that should be done, based on conventions such as the reason for the rule, which is a fundamental basis of our constitutional arrangements.
Standing Order No. 14 is quite clear: it gives precedence to Government business. As a result of this procedure, we are impugning that rule and substituting for it a completely different arrangement—one that I have described as a constitutional revolution. It is not a novelty, as it was described just now, or, as the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) said the other day, a technical innovation. The problem goes back to the reason for the rule and the Standing Order. Government business takes precedence for one simple reason: the Government are the Government of this country and are given that opportunity by virtue of the decisions taken by the public and the wishes of members of the public, as voters in general elections. That is the basis of our democracy. Likewise, decisions in referendums are taken by members of the public as voters.
It is utterly perverse for us to vote by such a significant majority—I will not go into that, because we know it is the case—and then overturn and invert the business of the House rules as we are doing under this business motion and as happened the other day. Government business takes precedence because of democracy. It is a fundamental question. Parliament decided in the European Union Referendum Act 2015 to give the decision to the British people, not to this House. I have said repeatedly—and it is true—that we operate on the basis of parliamentary government, not government by Parliament. If, by a sovereign Act of Parliament, we confer upon the British people the right to make that choice in a referendum, there is not, in terms of that Act, for which the House voted six to one, an opportunity then to take back control in this context.
It is a very simple question, and, to my knowledge, it has happened only once before. You mentioned the other day, Mr Speaker, or somebody raised with you, a precedent going back to 1604. As it happens, there is another precedent, from the 1650s, when the House became completely anarchic, and different factions started making decisions without reference to any Government policy—and look at the mess we are in now and the anarchy now prevailing, with these indicative votes and everybody making different decisions for no good purpose. Oliver Cromwell came down to this House and said, “You have been here too long for anything useful you may have done. Depart, I say, and in the name of God, go.” He then brought in the Barebone’s Parliament; that collapsed as well, and we ended up with a military dictatorship.
Members of Parliament voted for the referendum Act by six to one, for the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 and then for the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. As I say quite often, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) himself voted for the Third Reading of the withdrawal Act. These indicative votes are just a means of trying to unravel the decision taken—that is the bottom line. I believe that it is undemocratic and in defiance of our constitution, our procedures and the reason for the rule. As far as I am concerned, these indicative votes are like a parliamentary bag of liquorice allsorts—or rather humbugs.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
It is because the Government have lost the confidence of the House that this business motion is before us. After 1,012 days of trying to find a solution, they have completely failed to do so. This is day 2 of Parliament’s attempt to find a cross-party solution to the Brexit dilemma. I hope that we shall be successful on day 2, but if we are not, and if we pass the business motion—as I hope we will—we shall also have day 3 on which to resolve this matter, and I hope that we shall be successful then.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I agree with the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) on one point: the present situation has obviously arisen because the Government have lost the confidence of the House on this issue. I shall return to that question later in my speech, but let me first return to the questions posed to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), very courteously and politely, by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). I think that they were perfectly reasonable questions, for which the hon. Gentleman was having some difficulty in holding my right hon. Friend accountable.
I am reminded of the words that we heard from my right hon. Friend on 14 February, when he said:
“The process of which we are now at the start will require the fundamental realignment of the relationship between the civil service, Government and Parliament…for a period, for this purpose, we will have to take on the government of our country.”—[Official Report, 14 February 2019; Vol. 654, c. 1110.]
But this “Government”—those sitting on my left, including my right hon. Friend—are not accountable to the hon. Gentleman who was asking the questions. It is not possible to table a question to this “Government”, and it is not possible to ask this “Government” to come and make a business statement, because, of course, they are not a Government; they are merely pretending to take over the role of a Government.
I do not wish to discuss Brexit in my speech. I want to place on record some concerns that I have and that I think many right hon. and hon. Members, on reflection, should have about the consequences of starting to run our country in this fashion. Passing the business motion will confirm that, for the first time in more than 100 years, the Government have lost explicit control over legislative business.
The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which I chair, held an evidence session that underlined what an extraordinary state of affairs this is. Conservative Members of Parliament who only two months ago voted for confidence in Her Majesty’s Government do not appear to have confidence in that Government’s legitimate authority over the control of the timetable of the House, and that raises profound problems with this new procedure. Some people seem to believe that it is a long overdue modernisation of an antiquated system of parliamentary government. In fact, it is turning our system on its head in a dramatic reversal of roles for Government and Parliament. The procedure may be well intentioned, and I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset, but it has been invented on the hoof, bypassing every means of reviewing the practices and procedures of the House. The Procedure Committee has not been consulted in any fashion.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Some of us who are members of the Procedure Committee have sought to have further discussions about how to deal with these problems and have met with some resistance. The hon. Gentleman seems to want to limit the role of Parliament to that of the legislature. I do not understand why he wants to import an American doctrine into our constitution, with a sharp division between the role of Parliament and the role of the Executive. That is just not the way in which the British Parliament is run, or has been run.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
It is a question of who imported whose model. Montesquieu actually thought that he was copying the British system when he created a United States constitution that gives the President a legislative veto and requires a two-thirds majority of Congress to overrule it.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
Would my hon. Friend feel the same way if my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) proposed to use Wednesday to legislate in favour of a no-deal Brexit?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Very droll. My hon. Friend rather misses the point of my opening remarks that I do not wish to discuss Brexit. I simply point out that he voted for the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which legislated for us to leave the EU with or without a withdrawal agreement. He put that on the statute book with me, so in that respect, parliamentary democracy has been served.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
My hon. Friend keeps referring to me, yet I voted for the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement three times. I accept that the House, by a large majority, is settled on a course, which I deeply regret, to leave the EU, and therefore I am trying to make some progress on what the House can agree about the form of that leaving. The Government are not prepared to give the House time to express an opinion or reach an agreement on that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) implied a moment ago, I strongly suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) would take a different view if the Government were excluding no deal, which had, by some chance, the support of the majority of the House—though 400 people voted against it the last time it was raised.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I say to my right hon. and learned Friend that the problem with the process of indicative votes is that MPs are free to pick and choose whatever policies they like, without any responsibility for what happens afterwards. There is an obvious flaw in that process—I look particularly at Opposition Members. Especially in a hung Parliament such as this, it is not unreasonable to suspect that individual Members might have ulterior motives for supporting or opposing particular measures, rather than voting just on their merits. After all, the House of Commons is a theatre, within which different political parties compete for power, either by trying to avoid a general election or trying to get one by collapsing the Government. Amid that chaos, who is to be held accountable for what is decided?
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Is that not particularly the case when Parliament is trying to issue instructions to the Government about an international negotiation, but only the Government can negotiate on behalf of the United Kingdom? We cannot have little groups of MPs who fancy their chances turning up in Brussels, purporting to represent the UK. It makes it a difficult exercise when Members are trying to influence a negotiation that only the Government can handle.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I agree with my right hon. Friend. I have some criticism of the way in which the Government have conducted their European policy, but they cannot be held responsible for decisions for which they did not vote or prove impossible to carry out.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. I noted that he described the procedure as “Game of Thrones”. That underlines how it is open to ridicule. No doubt he will continue his ridicule because he wants a nationalist Scotland.
Pete Wishart
I am intrigued by the hon. Gentleman’s last comments. He says that he wants the Government to be in charge of the process and negotiating Brexit, but how did he vote on the Government’s motion the last three times?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I do not think that that is a secret. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman has not looked it up. The problem is that last week’s indicative votes have already discredited Parliament because no single proposal was adopted by a majority. Sustained use of the procedure is already undermining trust, increasing alienation and destroying the credibility of institutions that have historically worked tolerably well. It is apparent that the long-term effects of this constitutional upheaval are not a consideration for those who are forcing it upon us. There is no electoral mandate for such a dramatic constitutional upheaval. In what circumstances would this experiment be repeated in the future, perhaps when a majority Government did not have a majority on a particular issue? It is one thing for a minority of the governing party to help to vote down a Government proposal; it is something else, and quite extraordinary, to combine forces with Her Majesty’s official Opposition to impose an entirely Government different policy that the Government were not elected to implement.
Sir Edward Leigh
These constitutional perambulations are very interesting, and I accept everything that my hon. Friend says about the nature of these indicative votes, but if he and his Friends had voted with the Government on the past three occasions, we would have Brexit by now.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I am deliberately not going to become involved in that argument, but my hon. Friend knows that I do not believe that the withdrawal agreement delivers Brexit.
What policy decisions would be eligible to be made through this procedure in the future? Why not decide taxation policy like this, or social security? I well remember my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, giving stinging rebukes to those who voted down his policy on increasing VAT on fuel. It is a bad thing for a Government to lose a vote on a taxation measure in a Budget, but just imagine handing over the entire Budget proposals to the House of Commons to be voted on in this way.
The vote to leave was in part to reverse the democratic deficit of the institutions of the European Union and to restore national democratic accountability. Whatever anyone’s view, that should be uncontroversial. The EU’s elected Parliament is blighted by low turnouts, and I doubt that anyone other than those who follow these issues most minutely could name with any certainty more than one or two of the candidates to be the next President of the European Commission, which is of course a legislative body. If we are to respond to the mandate expressed in the referendum, it cannot be right that we corrode our own system of parliamentary government by making it less accountable to voters in elections and rendering its process more inaccessible and confusing.
Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)
Being something of a traditionalist in these matters, I have a good deal of sympathy with the points that the hon. Gentleman is making. I very much dislike the necessity, which has been forced on the House, to take control of the business from the Government because they are simply not doing their business. However, I would have much more sympathy for the complaint being made by him and some of his friends if they ever seemed to notice the constitutional innovation that has been practised many times by this Prime Minister when something has been voted on in this House and the result of that vote has simply been ignored.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
“Ignored” is the operative word that the right hon. Lady uses. Obviously, it is and should always be the practice of Governments to respect the will of the House as expressed in a motion. However, as Mr Speaker himself has confirmed, a motion is merely an expression of opinion, and it is up to the Government to decide how to respond to that opinion. This underlines how, in our system, a Government propose and Parliament disposes. Parliament does not take over the Government’s role, which is what is being proposed in this process.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
But the historical precedent is that when a Government lose their major policy—whether it is a financial policy, or in this case their most significant policy—they resign. They do not hang about for a vote of no confidence; they automatically resign. That is always been the historical precedent, and it is a bit of a surprise that they have not done it in this case.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
That takes me on to my next point, which is that it seems likely, so long as the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 endures, that minority Governments will continue to be vulnerable to this usurpation of power—or this paralysis, as the hon. Gentleman sees it—which will bring some in this House more influence while never being held accountable or responsible for what happens as a consequence of any decisions made in that way.
The risk is that this process of disapplying Standing Orders, casting aside the processes of the House of Commons, seizing control from the Government, threatening to pass legislation against the Government’s wishes and bending the Executive to the legislature’s will is being used to remove a Government from power but not from office. It seems that the House will strike but not kill, and this new kind of instability is already having dire consequences for our voters’ rapidly diminishing confidence in our nation’s democracy.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Has the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) finished his oration?
Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Ind)
I did want to speak, but I think can weave the 30 seconds into my speech later on, if you are mindful to call me.
Mr Speaker
Well, what impressive self-restraint. That may be a model that others should follow. Who knows? I say that more in hope than expectation. I call Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I am sorry not to be quite as brief as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), but I want to speak to the specifics of the motion. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) that this constitutional innovation is deeply unsatisfactory. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) rightly said that it is an indication that the House no longer has confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. The whole point of the Government having control of the timetable is that that is an expression of confidence. I am even quite sympathetic to the point made by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). It is the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 that has created an element of constitutional muddle, where we have a Government who obviously do not command official confidence but none the less carry on as if they did.
We need to get to a situation where the business of the House and the Government go together once more. This approach is deeply unsatisfactory because there is no means of holding anybody to account for it. The motions can be passed one way or another, and they then go off to Europe to be discussed—if they are to be discussed—by people who do not believe in or support them. Those people may come back having failed, and they may have done things in a way that the House might not have liked, but the people who proposed the motions do not go out to discuss them with Brussels because they are not the Government. Therefore, this approach leads ultimately to chaotic relationships between the legislature and the Executive.
This business of the House motion is itself unsatisfactory. Paragraph (1)(c) states that
“notwithstanding the practice of the House, any motion on matters that have been the subject of a prior decision of the House in the current Session may be the subject of a decision”.
Mr Speaker, as you pointed out to us, that goes against the most ancient practice of the House dating back to 1604, but it is also a considerable discourtesy to you personally. On Thursday, you ruled that the Government could not bring forward a paving motion to allow them to bring forward their motion again—a decision that everybody in the House accepted and thought was reasonable. Therefore, to have slipped through under your nose in this motion something that allows a paving motion for motions that have already been determined is a discourtesy. If I had been as discourteous as that to you, I would not have the gall to move the motion standing in my name. Indeed, I would feel it necessary to make a public apology for such a shaming state of affairs.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman’s real objection is not that Parliament is trying to balance control away from the Government, but that his power has been seriously weakened by Parliament asserting its own authority in trying to find a way forward.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The shame is not that Parliament is trying to wrestle power from the Government, but that Parliament is wrestling power from the 17.4 million people who voted to leave. The shame is that people who stood on manifestos saying that they would respect the result of the referendum did so with forked tongues.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
On the subject of shame and public apologies, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman might seize this opportunity to apologise for quoting, apparently approvingly, the leader of Germany’s far-right AfD party this weekend.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think it is reasonable to quote speeches made in the German Parliament. It is not as great a Parliament as this one or as noble a House as this House of Commons but, none the less, it is the Chamber of a House of an important ally and friend. What was said was extremely interesting. Just referring people to what has been said is not necessarily an endorsement. As the hon. Gentleman may have noticed, I just quoted from the motion before us, not because I endorse it but because it is interesting and important, so perhaps he should not jump to weird conclusions.
The other problem with this motion is the time it allows for debate. We will have quite a number of motions to consider, as we did yesterday.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The right hon. Lady, quite correctly, corrects me that it was at the end of last week.
We have motions (A) to (H) to debate, and the format of this business of the House motion leaves between 6 o’clock plus a Division, so 6.15 pm, and 8 o’clock for that debate to take place, which seems a very rushed approach to debating these important issues. When the Government were in control of the Order Paper, they allowed more days for debate than this motion allows hours.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
If the hon. Gentleman were to conclude his speech, and if others were to resist having a debate at this point, we could get to the meat of the issue.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman. Had he not decided to intervene, I might have finished my comments, but now he has given me inspiration to carry on against this appalling motion, which is fundamentally against the spirit of our constitution.
I appeal to those who support this type of motion to have the courage of their convictions. If they really have no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government, let them vote that way. Let them go to their constituents and see how far they get standing as independents. Let them see, as socialists, how many votes they get. Let them see, as independents, how many votes they get. They lack the courage of their convictions, and therefore they try to undermine the constitution by subterfuge.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
On the matter of the courage of our convictions, just a few months ago, the hon. Gentleman voted that he had no confidence in the Prime Minister as leader of his party. He subsequently voted that he has confidence in the Prime Minister, in whom he has no confidence to lead his party, to lead the country. What kind of courage of his convictions is that?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman misses the rather obvious point. I have much more confidence in my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, or indeed any Conservative Member, to lead the country than I have in the Leader of the Opposition. It seems to me a very straightforward choice, and of course I back a Tory against a socialist.
Anna Soubry
The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point in talking about the courage of our convictions. Would he like to tell the House why he voted against the Government’s withdrawal agreement a few weeks ago but voted for it on Friday? Why is he entitled to change his mind in a vote but the people of this country are not allowed to change their mind and have a people’s vote?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am deeply grateful to the right hon. Lady for intervening, which is much appreciated because it allows me to point out to her that she is the foremost campaigner for a second referendum and she favours votes at every opportunity except, having stood as a Conservative, she does not reoffer herself to her constituents to decide whether they wish to have somebody who has turned their coat as their Member of Parliament.
Mr Rees-Mogg
If the right hon. Lady wishes to apply for the Chiltern hundreds, I will of course give way.
Mr Speaker
Order. We are in danger of straying somewhat from the narrow ambit of the business of the House motion, to which I hope we will return.
Anna Soubry
I think it is important to record that, of course, the majority of people in Broxtowe did not vote Conservative and, like all hon. and right hon. Members, I seek to represent all my constituents. As we all should, I put them and our country before narrow, sectarian party interest.
Mr Rees-Mogg
What was it the late Earl of Beaconsfield said of Mr Gladstone, “A prolix rhetorician inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity”? I would not dream of saying such a thing about the right hon. Lady.
Let me return to the motion in hand, which is discourteous to you, Mr Speaker, does not allow sufficient time for debate—
Mr Rees-Mogg
I will not give way again, because others wish to speak—apologies. The motion is discourteous to you, Mr Speaker, limits time for debate and is fundamentally against the constitution.
Tom Brake
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) would like to correct the record, because it is clear from the tweet from the AfD that he retweeted that he was endorsing the statement that had been made by that member of a far-right party in the German Parliament.
Mr Speaker
The answer to that is that every Member is responsible for the truth of what he or she says in the Chamber. If a Member feels that he or she has inadvertently erred, it is incumbent on the Member to correct the record. The hon. Gentleman will have heard what the right hon. Gentleman has said and will make his own judgment as to its merit.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
I have grave concerns about the way we are dealing now with our business in this motion. I accept that we voted last week to have further discussion and indicative votes today, but the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) would have given the House a chance to decide whether we wanted to continue this process, which the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) continues to undertake. I do not think we can continue to have a business motion that puts another day in and then not have a chance to have that vote.
I am concerned about that, but I also have another concern. I know that all my Labour colleagues, particularly those on the Front Bench, aspire to be in government and they should just remember that this process may well be used when we are in government. Would we like to see that happening?
Sir William Cash
Does the hon. Lady agree that one problem with these indicative votes is that when they are attached, as they are intended to be, by all accounts, to a Bill that will then follow and be put through the House of Commons in one day—[Interruption.] Perhaps it will have one day in the House of Lords as well, for all I know. The bottom line is: we do not know yet what any such Bill will contain. It is inconceivable, is it not, that we should be presented with Bills that will be rammed through the House of Commons on matters of such incredible importance without even seeing them?
Kate Hoey
That just further adds to my view that we should be able to vote on whether we want another day or not after today’s business. We have to remember here, as do people watching, that Parliament abrogated its responsibility to take this decision—we have to say that over and over again—and asked the people. It said, “We will listen to whatever you say.” I do not care what anyone says, the dictionary definition of what “leave” means is very simple. All these motions today, with the exception of the one tabled by the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), are designed, in some way or another, to not allow us to leave in the way that people thought they were voting for when they voted on 23 June 2016. It was made very clear—I do not want to go into the details—and we all knew that leave meant leaving all the institutions of the European Union. So I would never question it, but I am disappointed that we will not have a vote on the amendment, as that would have been sensible. I hope that today people remember that the biggest majority in this House for anything to do with the European Union was when 498 votes said we would leave, with or without a deal.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
I need only 30 seconds, to make two points, Mr Speaker. First, it is extraordinary that we are going to have less than three and a half hours to debate incredibly important matters: whether we are going to enter into a customs union, be in the single market, have a second referendum or opt for revocation. I find this extremely unsatisfactory, but I will not eat further into the time that is left.
Secondly, I think people will be puzzled when they look at the Order Paper—notwithstanding the selection that you make, Mr Speaker—because, for example, motion (C) on a customs union, which is before us today, is precisely the same, word for word, as the previous motion (J), which was rejected by this House only three sitting days ago. Members of the public will be baffled as to how a 585-page Government agreement is unable to come back for a further vote, yet a word-for-word motion that was rejected only three days ago might be deemed suitable for debate today.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
I had not intended to speak in this debate, but I wish to do so briefly because I am astonished and not a little outraged at what is happening. Members of the public who are watching our proceedings will be incredibly exasperated, not only at the fact that a hard-right faction in Parliament is using lengthy speeches about procedure to try to prevent us from getting on to the debate, but because the Government are acting with extreme bad faith towards Parliament.
Let us remind ourselves why we took control of the Standing Orders that give the Government the right to set the agenda: because the Government are incapable of using that right to move this process forward. They have done one of two things: they have either brought a proposition that has manifestly failed to get a majority back to the House completely unchanged, in the vain hope that the passage of time will allow them to browbeat their opponents into submission; or, even worse, they have filled our agenda with stuff that we do not need to discuss as a matter of urgency, leading to the embarrassing situation in which, in a moment of national crisis, this House has finished its business early and we have been sent home with nothing to discuss. That is an outrage and that is why Parliament is taking control of the agenda so that we can move the process forward. I believe we will do that if we get the chance to get at the matter today. I therefore hope we can take the vote, agree to take control into our own hands and then make better use of it than the Government are able to.
Question put.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)
(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
We now come to the motions relating to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from and future relationship with the European Union. I inform the House that I have selected the following motions for decision by recorded vote: motion (C), in the name of Mr Kenneth Clarke; motion (D), in the name of Mr Nick Boles; motion (E), in the name of Mr Peter Kyle; and motion (G) in the name of Joanna Cherry.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Could you perhaps clarify why you have selected for debate motion (C), in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), when exactly the same motion with exactly the same words was debated and rejected by this House only three sitting days ago? For the benefit of those watching, could you perhaps explain why this can be brought back three days later, but the 585-page withdrawal agreement cannot?
Mr Speaker
The short answer to the right hon. Gentleman is that the House has agreed to the process that has unfolded, and therefore it is entirely procedurally proper for the judgment I have made to be made, and that is the judgment that I have made. The right hon. Gentleman will have noted the view expressed in the debates last week, and let me say in terms that are very clear—he may not approve of them, but they are clear—that the purpose of this discrete exercise, as I think is understood by colleagues across the House, is to try to identify whether there is potential consensus among Members for an approach to the departure from and the future relationship with the European Union. It is in that spirit and in the knowledge that it is wholly impossible, colleagues, to satisfy everybody, that I have sought conscientiously to discharge my obligations to the House by making a judicious selection. That is what I have done, that I readily defend to the House and that I will continue to proclaim to be the right and prudent course in circumstances that were not of my choosing, but with which, as Chair, I am confronted.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You know me not to be one to play games in this place. With respect, may I ask you to reconsider when it comes to motions (A) and (B)? The reason why I ask—we live in unusual times, so I do not apologise for making this request—is that motion (A) is new, in the sense that it reflects the withdrawal agreement as amended by the backstop. I suggest to you that it is the one vote we have had in this place, on the back of the Brady amendment, that actually achieved a majority. It is a new motion that has previously achieved a majority, and with respect—and I mean that—I think it worthy for consideration. May I also suggest, if only for future reference, that motion (B) is actually the legal default position from our triggering article 50? I do think it is incumbent on us to consider that in this particular debate, when we are trying to find some sort of consensus.
Mr Speaker
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for the very reasonable tones in which, as usual, he expresses it. He and I have known each other for a long time, and I have the highest regard for the integrity of the hon. Gentleman. I am happy, although not obliged, to provide an answer to each of his two points. I say I am not obliged not in my interests, but because the House has long understood and asserted the obligation of the Chair to make these judgments and expected that the Chair would not provide an explanation, but that the House—having vested in the Chair the responsibility—would accept the judgment. However, I am happy in this case to respond to his two points.
First, in relation to the hon. Gentleman’s motion appertaining to the backstop, he makes his own point in his own way. I have to make a judgment about what I think is reasonable going forward. In this debate, colleagues, we are not acting alone; we are acting in a negotiation with the European Union. The point that the hon. Gentleman feels strongly about is expressed in this motion for the first time, but it has been aired repeatedly—I do not say that critically, but as a matter of fact—since the publication in November of the withdrawal agreement. Repeated commitments have been made to seek a re-examination of that point by the Union, and it has become clear over a period of months that that re-examination is not offered by the Union. It may or may not feature in the future, but in terms of trying to broker progress now I did not think it would be the most sensible motion to choose at this time. I put it no more strongly than that.
Secondly, in relation to the so-called no-deal motion, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me—and, frankly, even if he will not—I am going to replay to him his own point in my support rather than his. Somewhat exasperated —well, quizzical—that I had not selected his motion, he said, “But Mr Speaker, leaving without a deal on 12 April is the legal default.” He is right: it is precisely because it is the default position in law that having it on the Order Paper is, in my view, a rhetorical assertion. It is a statement of fact, and it does not in my judgment require debate. The second point on that motion is that in looking at it—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) can chunter from a sedentary position in evident disapproval of the thrust of the argument that I am developing if he so wishes, but it does not detract from the fact that I am making the point I am making. He does not like it: I do, and we will have to leave it there.
The simple fact of the matter is that that motion, voted on last week, as the beady eye of the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) testifies he realises, was rejected by 400 votes to 160. A significant number of Members did not vote, but even if every Member who did not vote on that motion last week were to vote in favour of it this week, it still would not pass. I see my duty as being to try to advance matters. Whatever people think about this issue and whatever side of the argument they sit, they all think, “Can we not make some progress?” It is in pursuit of progress that I have made the disinterested—I use that old-fashioned but valid term—judgment that I have made to try to serve the House.
I totally understand that it will not please everyone, but it happens to be my view, it is an honest one, and it is my best judgment.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
I will happily take points of order indefinitely: I have good knee muscles and plenty of energy. I am not sure that it will greatly advance matters, but if hon. Members wish to raise points of order they are most welcome to do so.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I have always found you very patient in hearing the concerns of any colleague in the House, and always passionate about the rulings that you make.
If I may remind you, the other day you made a ruling on meaningful vote 3, and you said that you wanted to make it clear that you expected the test of change to be met and that the Government
“should not seek to circumvent my ruling by means of tabling either a ‘notwithstanding’ motion or a paving motion. The Table Office has been instructed that no such motions will be accepted.”—[Official Report, 27 March 2019; Vol. 657, c. 370.]
What, then, is motion (C), which seems to be exactly that?
Mr Speaker
Forgive me if I was not sufficiently clear. I thought I had been. My apologies to the hon. Gentleman if my reply was too opaque. I thought I had indicated in an earlier reply that the House, in the motion that it had supported, had endorsed the approach to indicative votes that we are now taking. It is a discrete process separate from and different to the processes that have been adopted thus far.
All sorts of arguments and explanations have been given as to why we are in this process, with the House taking control of the process, and I do not need to revisit those, but I have answered that point already. I do not wish to be unkind to the hon. Gentleman, whom I like and respect very much as he knows, but I fear I have to say to him that it is not that I have not answered his point. I have answered his point already in response to an earlier point of order, but the simple fact is that the hon. Gentleman does not like my answer, and I am afraid I cannot do anything about that.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Tonight, we will be debating motion (E) on a confirmatory public vote, but this House voted on a confirmatory public vote, and I believe it gathered only 85 votes at the time. I am just wondering, Mr Speaker, why that motion, which was so roundly rejected by this House—it was not even supported by those on the Labour Benches—is worthy of another debate. Perhaps it should be kicked out.
Mr Speaker
I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me. I may have misheard her, but I thought she said something about 85 votes. From memory—I do not have it in front of me, although I can easily find it; it would not be very difficult—I think I am right in saying that the vote for the confirmatory public vote, for a confirmatory referendum, received 268 votes and was defeated—
Mr Speaker
The hon. Lady is shaking her head, but I am trying to answer the point. I think it received 268 votes and was opposed by 295, so it was defeated. But again, if the hon. Lady will forgive me, and even if she won’t, I repeat the point that this is part of a process for which the House voted. Colleagues did so in the knowledge that a result might not be achieved on day one or even necessarily on day two, but the House wanted that process to take place. It may be—I have not looked at the Division list and it is absolutely her right—that the hon. Lady voted against this process altogether, and I completely respect her autonomy in making that judgment, but the House chose to adopt the process. What I have done and am doing is entirely in keeping with the spirit of that process.
Mr Speaker
Is it is further to that point of order? I am not sure there is a further to.
Mr Speaker
I am sorry. I did not realise that was what the hon. Lady was saying. Okay, but my point about the discrete process we are undertaking and the level of support for that particular motion stands. What I have tried to do—I say this not least so that our proceedings are intelligible to those who are not Members of the House but are watching—is identify those propositions that appear to command substantial support, preferably of a cross-party nature. That is what I have done. It does seem to me, if I may say so, that although it cannot please everybody it is quite a reasonable approach, as opposed to, for example, identifying a series of propositions that have minimal support and thinking that it would be a frightfully good sport instead to submit them to a verdict of the House again. That would not seem to me a particularly constructive way in which to proceed. I am for a constructive approach and I hope most of the House will agree with me that that is how we should operate.
Can we now move to the main debate? I call the Father of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), he who owns motion (C) on the customs union, to address the House.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
I beg to move motion (C),
That this House instructs the Government to:
(1) ensure that any Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration negotiated with the EU must include, as a minimum, a commitment to negotiate a permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union with the EU;
(2) enshrine this objective in primary legislation.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following motions:
Motion (D)—Common Market 2.0—
That this House –
(1) directs Her Majesty’s Government to –
(i) renegotiate the framework for the future relationship laid before the House on Monday 11 March 2019 with the title ‘Political Declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom’ to provide that, on the conclusion of the Implementation Period and no later than 31 December 2020, the United Kingdom shall –
(a) accede to the European Free Trade Association (Efta) having negotiated a derogation from Article 56(3) of the Efta Agreement to allow UK participation in a comprehensive customs arrangement with the European Union,
(b) enter the Efta Pillar of the European Economic Area (EEA) and thereby render operational the United Kingdom’s continuing status as a party to the EEA Agreement and continuing participation in the Single Market,
(c) agree relevant protocols relating to frictionless agri-food trade across the UK/EU border,
(d) enter a comprehensive customs arrangement including a common external tariff, alignment with the Union Customs Code and an agreement on commercial policy, and which includes a UK say on future EU trade deals, at least until alternative arrangements that maintain frictionless trade with the European Union and no hard border on the island of Ireland have been agreed with the European Union,
(ii) negotiate with the EU a legally binding Joint Instrument that confirms that, in accordance with Article 2 of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland of the Withdrawal Agreement, the implementation of all the provisions of paragraph 1 (i) of this motion would cause the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland to be superseded in full;
(2) resolves to make support for the forthcoming European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill conditional upon the inclusion of provisions for a Political Declaration revised in accordance with the provisions of this motion to be the legally binding negotiating mandate for Her Majesty’s Government in the forthcoming negotiation of the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Motion (E)—Confirmatory public vote—
That this House will not allow in this Parliament the implementation and ratification of any withdrawal agreement and any framework for the future relationship unless and until they have been approved by the people of the United Kingdom in a confirmatory public vote.
Motion (G)—Parliamentary Supremacy—
That—
(1) If, at midday on the second last Day before exit day, the condition specified in section 13(1)(d) of the Act (the passing of legislation approving a withdrawal agreement) is not satisfied, Her Majesty’s Government must immediately seek the agreement of the European Council under Article 50(3) of the Treaty to extend the date upon which the Treaties shall cease to apply to the United Kingdom;
(2) If, at midday on the last Day before exit day, no agreement has been reached (pursuant to (1) above) to extend the date upon which the Treaties shall cease to apply to the United Kingdom, Her Majesty’s Government must immediately put a motion to the House of Commons asking it to approve ‘No Deal’;
(3) If the House does not approve the motion at (2) above, Her Majesty’s Government must immediately ensure that the notice given to the European Council under Article 50 of the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the European Union is revoked in accordance with United Kingdom and European law;
(4) If the United Kingdom’s notice under Article 50 is revoked pursuant to (3) above a Minister of Her Majesty’s Government shall cause an inquiry to be held under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the question whether a model of a future relationship with the European Union likely to be acceptable to the European Union is likely to have majority support in the United Kingdom;
(5) If there is a referendum it shall be held on the question whether to trigger Article 50 and renegotiate that model;
(6) The Inquiry under paragraph (4) shall start within three months of the revocation; and
(7) References in this Motion to “Days” are to House of Commons sitting days; references to “exit day” are references to exit day as defined in the Act; references to the Act are to The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018; and references to the Treaty are to the Treaty on European Union.
Mr Clarke
May I first of all say that I hope, for the reputation of this House and the reputation of the political institutions of this country, that we will achieve a majority for at least a couple of these motions this afternoon in order to reassure the public that we do know what we are doing, or we are beginning to know what we are doing, and that we are capable of delivering responsible government and looking after the national interest in the present crisis? I think most right hon. and hon. Members must have appreciated at the weekend how little respect the public as a whole have for their political institutions at the moment, and how very low is the regard in which they hold what is going on in this House.
The House has blocked the Government’s policy. It will not vote for the withdrawal agreement, and last week in a rather curious mixture of votes it voted against the propositions before it. If we are to avoid ludicrous deadlock, today is the day when the House has to indicate that there is a majority and a consensus in favour of something positive that will give some guidance on where we are going.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr Clarke
I might do so when I have got going, but the filibustering on the business motion means that we have very little time for debate, so I am going to make an effort to keep my speech short. With respect to my hon. Friend, who is an old friend, I will not give way.
What happened last week was understandable. People plumped for what they wanted, and we spread so widely over eight motions that nothing actually got a majority. Today, I trust that people will vote for more than one motion if they can live with more than one, because if we just keep plumping for our one and only solution, we will find that we are broken up. That is what my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) had in mind when he introduced this process.
I voted for, I think, five of the motions last week, and, as I shall argue, I do not think that they are incompatible with each other. Some are larger than others, and they swallow one within the other. Some are on separate subsets of the problem. What we are all asking ourselves, in this deadlock, is, what compromise would each and every Member be prepared to accept in the national interest?
Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Sir Oliver Letwin
I am enormously grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, and I agree with every word he has spoken. Does he agree that the reason why we are holding this debate and following this unusual process is not that we are interested in some zany constitutional theory, but that our country faces the prospect, on Thursday week, of leaving without a deal if this House does not come together and find some way forward?
Mr Clarke
My right hon. Friend and I are in complete agreement. As he quite rightly says, we must avoid no deal occurring by default in a fortnight’s time simply because the House of Commons could not agree on anything. In fact, 400 Members of the House of Commons have voted against no deal, and it would be calamitous just to collapse into it because we cannot reach any compromise among ourselves about what we actually wish to put forward.
I am trying to illustrate that my motion, which is for a permanent customs union, is perfectly compatible with a wider look at the subject but sets a basic agenda. I think it will help to minimise what I regard as the damaging consequences of leaving the European Union, and enable us to reassure the business and other interests in this country—some of them are absolutely panic-stricken—who view the great unknown and the end of the common market with great concern. I hope that the public, who are as polarised as this House in their opinions, will begin to be reassured. I hope that people will be reconciled to a compromise of leaving the political European Union but staying in the common market, to use the language of Eurosceptics over the years.
Mr Clarke
No, I will not give way. As I have said, we have just had two hours of filibustering, and I do not want my speech to be spun out.
Let me illustrate why I think motion (C) does not conflict with the body of opinion in most of the political parties in this House, starting with the Conservative party. My motion does not conflict with the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement. Indeed, it slightly complements it, and it deals with a different subject. Motion (C) deals with the political arrangements—the non-binding political declaration and the nature of the later negotiations that will have to take place to determine our long-term future.
As I said last week, the motion answers the concerns of the Labour party, which has supported it. The Labour party says that it will not vote for the withdrawal agreement, not because of its contents, but because it represents a blind Brexit in which we have absolutely no idea what the Government are going to do. To approve the withdrawal agreement would be to give the Government a blank sheet of paper and allow them to carry on arguing inside the Cabinet about what objectives to seek in the negotiations that would follow. What this motion suggests is that the House mandates the Government—whatever shape they take and whatever the Government—to make a permanent customs union one of their foundations in the negotiations. I will come back to the only reason that they have ever given for being against the customs union, which is the only basis for voting against it.
Mr Clarke
No, I am not going to give way. It would be unfair to other Members who have had this whole debate crammed into three hours. In 1972, we used to have all-night sittings on much smaller issues than this. I do not recommend going back to that, but I object to listening to my colleagues having to speak on three-minute time limits because chaps want to get to dinner and will not sit after 7 o’clock in the evening in the middle of the week, which is where this rather pathetic Parliament has got itself recently. That is my last digression from my theme. [Interruption.]
Mr Clarke
As I have said, the motion does not conflict with the Government’s withdrawal agreement. If the motion is passed or if it is subsumed by common market 2.0, which I will also vote for—that motion would subsume this one if it is carried—the easiest way of proceeding is for the Government to proceed with their withdrawal agreement tomorrow and for the Labour party to abstain because it is no longer such a blind Brexit, and then we can get on to the serious negotiations, which this country has not even started yet, with its 27 partner nations.
Motion (C) does not conflict with the case that is being made by many Members for a further referendum—either a confirmatory referendum or a people’s vote. It is not on the same subject. The referendum is about whether the public have changed their mind and whether we are firmly committed to the EU now that we know what is happening. That is a process—a very important one—that we are arguing about. I have been abstaining on that; I am not very fond of referendums, but there we are.
Motion (C) is concerned with a quite different subject: the substance of the negotiations if we get beyond 12 April. It begins to set out what the Government have a majority for and what they are being given a mandate for when they start those negotiations. The separate issue of whether, at any relevant stage, a referendum is called for can be debated and voted on quite separately. Advocates of a people’s vote are not serving any particular interest if they vote for a people’s vote and somehow vote against this motion to make sure that that somehow gets a bigger majority. Both can be accommodated.
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr Clarke
I shall be accused of bias if I give way to my right hon. and learned Friend.
I urge the Liberals to proceed on that basis, and similarly, the Scottish nationalists. I agree with them—I would much prefer to stay in the European Union—but I am afraid that in trying to give this country good and stable governance by giving steers to the House of Commons, I have compromised on that, because a huge majority seems to me to have condemned us to leaving the European Union. I have tabled motions with the Scottish nationalists and have voted with them to revoke article 50 if the dread problem of no deal seems to be looming towards us by accident, and I will again. I cannot understand why the Scottish nationalists will not at least contemplate, if they cannot get their way and stay in the European Union, voting for a permanent customs union, which will benefit business and the economy in Scotland just as much as here and is not remotely incompatible with pursuing their wider aims.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Joanna Cherry
I am very grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. The reason that the Scottish National party cannot support his motion today is that freedom of movement is vital for the Scottish economy and we do not get freedom of movement without the single market—that is the reason we cannot support his motion.
Mr Clarke
I will vote for the single market, if it is presented in a proper way, and I would have voted for the motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) last week, had he not at the end added a gratuitous sentence ruling out a customs union. If we can get a majority for the single market, I will vote for it again.
I accept that if we pass a motion for the single market, or the motion for common market 2.0, which no doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) will move later, my motion will be subsumed, but I am not confident we will pass a motion for the single market, because although the Scot nats are attracted by freedom of movement, many of my right hon. and hon. Friends are provoked into voting against it for that very reason. Similarly, common market 2.0, which I would settle for, is probably too ambitious. Mine, then, is the fall-back position.
I hope that my hon. Friend votes for my motion, but I cannot understand the Scottish nationalists. Voting for my motion is no threat to their position; indeed, it is an insurance policy—this goes back to how I started—to make sure that we move forward and that the House of Commons gives the Government a mandate that we can then ensure they have to follow in mapping out this nation’s future. In the long negotiations over the next two or three years, questions of regulatory alignment and freedom of movement will start coming into the negotiations again; that we have committed ourselves to a permanent customs union will not compromise any of those discussions.
I have not the faintest idea why Members of the Democratic Unionist party are not supporting motion (C). If we pass motion (C), it will mean we have no tariffs or certificates of origin and that the Irish border question is pretty well solved—we will be 90-odd% of the way to maintaining the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. It would be of huge benefit to the Irish economy and Irish security and mean that the DUP’s objection to the Irish backstop—that Northern Ireland is being treated differently from the rest of the UK—vanished Pass motion (C) and it applies to the entire United Kingdom.
Sammy Wilson
I am glad to hear that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is a Unionist, though in supporting the withdrawal agreement three times he has shown that he does not respect the views of the people of Northern Ireland who believe it puts the Union in jeopardy.
The customs union alone does not resolve the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic in the terms in which the EU has expressed it. The single market rules are equally important in its argument that there would need to be regulatory checks—though of course we know, from its no-deal preparations, that it does not matter whether we are in a customs union or a single market, or neither, because it does not intend to put checks on the border anyway.
Mr Clarke
I agree that to have an open border—unless we invent these magic X-ray cameras whose discovery some of my hon. Friends think is imminent—we will need to be in a customs union and have some degree of regulatory alignment. In the case of the Irish border—and, I think, of Dover—a customs union gets us 90% of the way. As I say, it is not the customs union that is inconsistent with the right hon. Gentleman’s aim and mine, which is a totally free-moving, frictionless—to use the Prime Minister’s phrase—border at the channel in England and in Ireland, with the same arrangements applying to both. He cites the fact that unfortunately the withdrawal agreement has the Irish backstop in it. Motion (C) makes the Irish backstop irrelevant and superfluous. It will never feature if we pass my motion (C).
Mr Clarke
No, I am sorry; I will go back to being strict, though when I refer to parties or people, I feel it is courteous to let them respond.
Let me now deal, finally and very briefly, with the only substantial argument that has been raised in the House against the customs union from the beginning to the end of our debates. That argument is that it will stop us having our own customs arrangements with third party countries, and it is repeated by Ministers over and over again.
Mr Clarke
No, I will not, in the interests of other Members who wish to speak.
First, that argument is not actually accurate. It is true that trade agreements with other countries would mean that we would not be able to make changes in external tariffs. Of course, we would have the benefit of no tariffs at all: totally tariff-free entry into the rest of the EU. What we would be able to have trade agreements on is the service economy, service industries, which constitute the vast majority of this country’s GDP.
I have been involved in trade negotiations quite a lot over the years. It is not vanity, but simply my longevity, which leads me to say that I have probably had more experience of trade arrangements and dealings than any other Member. In every Department that I have occupied, I have led trade delegations to somewhere or other. During my spell at the Department of Trade and Industry and my spell at the Treasury, I became heavily involved in trade deals, particularly with the Americans, China, and large parts of Latin America. I led for the last Government—the coalition Government—on the EU-US TTIP negotiations. Although the Commission conducts the negotiations on a mandate that it has been given by the 28 member states, certain of the bigger ones—such as Britain—remain a constant presence, and go backwards and forwards to try to ensure that the process is going smoothly. So I have been involved in many attempts to secure trade deals, some successful and some not. Opening up the Chinese market is a very slow business: I could have told President Trump that.
Some of my right hon. and hon. Friends ascribe great weight to an American deal. TTIP failed. It was given that strange title—the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership—because Obama’s officials said that it would not be possible to get anything called a free trade agreement past America, which is quite a protectionist country. Certainly Congress is protectionist, and that was under Obama. The problem with the Americans was, first of all, that we wanted to open up access to services. Tariffs do not matter much in European-American trade. They are vestigial. All the Europeans, including the British, are quite content to abandon tariffs in both directions, because they are fairly small. The auto industry, on both sides of the Atlantic, did not really want tariffs. It is regulatory differences, and getting regulatory equivalence, or convergence, that stand in the way.
We wanted the Americans to open up public procurement, which they would not do—and, anyway, it is a state-by-state process, which makes it more difficult—and to open up the service sector, particularly financial services. The lobbies in Congress are too strong for that to make much progress. The present President has given no indication that he would open up any market to us. The approach that he has taken to trade negotiations, when he talks about a trade agreement and takes on the Mexicans, the Canadians and the Chinese, is that he wants America to export more to them and wants them to export less to America. We have a large trade surplus with America, and that is what he has in mind. It is perfectly plain. His obsession is with food and agricultural products, and that means giving up our standards of animal welfare and food quality—which, owing to British lobbying, are very high in Europe—and accepting America’s lower standards involving hormone-treated beef and chicken.
If any Members think we can influence that—if they think that with such a trade agreement we can somehow start tightening up American food standards and animal welfare—I can only tell them that the agriculture lobby in Congress is extremely powerful, and would not take the slightest notice of British interests in such matters. The Australians would probably agree to a deal, but we would have to face the problem of hormone-treated beef, because that is what they want to export to us. The New Zealanders would want a deal as long as the quotas were lifted from their tariff-free exports of lamb. I am sure that they would be happy if we could think of anything that we wished to sell to New Zealand that we do not sell at the moment. But those negotiations will not compensate for the loss of our European markets if we stay outside the customs union and the single market and erect great barriers in our way.
I have made a modest case—it is modest compared with my own views; nobody in this House is a greater supporter of the European project than I am and nobody in this House wants Britain to remain in the EU more than I do, if that were in the realm of the possible. To reject motion (C) again would run the risk of the adverse reaction outside that we got when—as I think we all anticipated—there were minorities for every motion last week. Now is the time for hon. Members to get behind motion (C). If they wish to get behind common market 2.0, they should feel free to do so, and those who want to reinforce the revocation argument if otherwise we would crash out with no deal should vote for that.
So far, the process has been a shambles. The public hold their political parties and politicians and the institutions of Government almost in contempt. Today, we must start to bring that to an end. All I propose is a modest step compared with most others on the Order Paper. It is perfectly compatible with the wider ambitions of a large majority of this House. It is fitting that I should open the debate because my motion is the basic, obvious beginning. If the House wishes to add more, I shall probably vote with it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am keen to accommodate all those whose motions have been selected before calling others. I am not imposing a formal time limit at this stage, but there is a premium on parliamentary time and therefore on brevity.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Motion (E) is an attempt to bring us all together and to restore the kind of politics that will allow us to overcome the greatest challenges. We need to recognise that the House is in peril—not just of a disastrous Brexit outcome, but of falling so far in the popular esteem that we may never recover public trust.
We have lost the art of politics because we have become gridlocked in the politics of position. We have taken up positions, usually in groups, and effectively gone to war against all the other groups. There has been a heavy price to pay, even beyond the battering and the bruising of opposing views. It has been paid outside the Chamber in an ever more divided and fractious country.
The country is also bemused and demands that we chart a new course. After three years of assault and counter-attack, no position has emerged victorious. Instead, the politics of this House has been even more diminished and entrenched. Nothing will change if we are not prepared to move. A solution will emerge only if we make it so.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful tone. I would like to ask for some clarification. What will be the question in the referendum that he proposes? Given that we have already voted to leave in 2016, I assume that the question in his referendum would be to leave with the Government’s deal or to leave with no deal.
Peter Kyle
The hon. Gentleman anticipates where I will get to in my speech. I will answer the question once I have addressed it, but I think I can predict that we will get there soon.
I believe that the solution is to work with what we have before us: to accept the world as it is, not the world as we would like it to be. After the referendum, I travelled to Norway and met negotiators and Ministers. I visited the European economic area headquarters in Brussels and I worked alongside colleagues to champion a soft Brexit, which I then voted for. So those who say that I and others like me have simply tried to scupper Brexit from the start are wrong.
I have also voted for every proposition from the Labour Front Bench and I encourage others to do the same as another way of achieving compromise and consensus. I congratulate the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Brexit Secretary on their excellent work in crafting a set of Brexit policies that puts the future of our economy and workers first and foremost. I believe that if they had done this from a position within Government, we would have been able to present a deal to Parliament that would have been accepted. That is why our motion relates to a deal, rather than specifically to the Government’s deal.
I know that many people on these Benches still long for a better proposition than the one on offer. We must be honest with each other, however. When the Prime Minister triggered the article 50 process, we all knew, whether we voted for it or against it, that it bestowed on the Government the right to negotiate a deal on behalf of the British people. That deal is now before us, and it defines Brexit.
Peter Kyle
I am grateful to the hon. Lady—[Interruption.] I encourage everyone to look in this direction rather than in any other direction. I am not suggesting that we propose another deal. I am proposing that we accept the landscape that we are standing in, exactly in the manner that I have just suggested. The deal before us is one that defines Brexit, and as it stands, this sovereign Parliament has rejected it again and again and again. In fact, MPs have cast a staggering 1,167 votes against the deal—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I ask colleagues to show some respect for the Member who has the Floor. The hon. Gentleman has had his motion selected, and he is entitled—[Interruption.] Order. He is entitled to be heard.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This debate is obviously of extreme importance and it is vital that Members are able to hear the speeches, particularly those made by the proponents of the different motions. There is obviously a disturbance in the Gallery, and whatever the rights and wrongs of that protest, I am sure you would agree that we need to ensure that people can be heard in the debate and that the situation in the Gallery is appropriately handled so that we can proceed with our debate today.
Peter Kyle
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
As it stands, this sovereign Parliament has rejected the deal again and again and again. In fact, MPs have cast a staggering 1,167 votes against it. That is 50% more than the number of MPs who sit in this Chamber. However, although the majority here do not like it, the fact remains that it has been signed off by every EU country, by the EU itself and by the British Government. It is the only deal on the table. We have to accept that there is no majority for the Government’s deal, but neither is there a majority right now for an alternative. So we have a stark choice. Do we continue the war of positions in the hope that one side will capitulate, knowing the damage that it will do to our politics and to our country? Do we persist with the deadlock? Or do we choose to progress? If there is no outright majority for any of the motions, we must do what the country is desperate for: we must compromise by bringing together two minority positions to create a majority in order to move forward.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Ind)
I should like to intervene on the hon. Gentleman to enable him to collect his thoughts. I congratulate him on speaking in the way that he is, notwithstanding some of the other stuff that might be going on. In any event, does he agree that it is really important that everyone believes in and votes for a people’s vote and does not get distracted by anything else?
Peter Kyle
I am very grateful to the right hon. Lady for her intervention. What a great sight she is for me to focus on, rather than what was going on in my peripheral vision and tempting my eyes elsewhere. The bottom line is—[Laughter.]
Huw Merriman
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for the constructive manner in which he has worked with those on the other side of the divide—albeit those who have come to the same conclusion as him. We can either keep going on and on, with Parliament being seen as an absolute failure that delivers nothing, or put the matter back to the people and get legal certainty. His is the only option that would give that certainty.
Peter Kyle
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He has been a fantastic person to work with. Listening to him and learning from his experiences and from how he has approached his voting has informed how we can move forward based on compromise. The naked truth is that 202 Members have loyally voted for the Prime Minister’s deal three times now, and that is a principled stance. However, simply repeating the same exercise will not see loyalty rewarded.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I have long said that if this House cannot find a solution to the Venn diagram that is Brexit, all options, including a confirmatory vote, must remain on the table. However, does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that any route from here is not consequence-free? Does he further acknowledge that a second referendum could be much more divisive than decisive?
Peter Kyle
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his cheeky intervention. He makes a good point. I accept that the 2016 referendum was challenging for our country, but the next public vote need not be, and we have a role to play in that. If we choose to lead the country in a different way, we can hope not to repeat the 2016 experience and instead have a vote that reconciles more than it divides. That is our hope as we move forward. We are not slaves to the past. Let us be masters of the future.
Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is fleshing out his arguments well. We cannot keep going around in circles. This Parliament has spent nearly three years debating the topic without finding a consensus, so we need to understand that we must break that deadlock, and he is right that the only way of doing so is through a public vote. Surely it makes more sense to have a public vote on the matter at hand, which is the route forward on Brexit, than a general election that may result in different MPs, but still a hung Parliament and no direction.
Peter Kyle
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her intervention. As she will see, I will reframe the way that she puts it, but I agree with the general direction.
Peter Kyle
I am going to make some progress. I promised Mr Speaker that I would take about six minutes, and I am trying hard to honour that promise.
Last week, 268 Members voted for the principle of a confirmatory ballot—the largest number of votes for any alternative Brexit proposition up to that point. The principle has effectively been used twice in the past 20 years to solve complex, divisive issues.
The first occasion was on the Belfast or Good Friday agreement. Many people, institutions and organisations were asked to give a lot to cement the deal, but they gained a lot together despite sections of Northern Irish society strongly rejecting it. The Good Friday agreement was put to a confirmatory ballot that confirmed the deal and led to a decisive end to the arduous process and a peace that has endured to this day. I do not want to risk undoing those gains, which is another reason why we need to unlock our politics.
Peter Kyle
I am going to make some progress, but I will allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene a bit later.
The second occasion was the alternative vote referendum in 2011. Electoral reform had been hotly contested and was a regular feature of public debate, and it was a divisive matter within the coalition Government. However, both Tory and Lib Dem parliamentarians were able to work together to legislate for it, because the matter would be subjected to a confirmatory public ballot. The innovation of a confirmatory ballot is important, because it is binding on Government. Once confirmed or rejected, the subject does not even need to return to Parliament. In the case of the Good Friday agreement, the matter was agreed. In the case of the AV referendum, it was rejected. However, the debate was settled instantly in both cases, as it would be in this case. There would be no return to Parliament, no more squabbling, no best of three, no “neverendum”, just a definitive end to the Brexit impasse—talking of which, I give way to the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans).
Mr Evans
The hon. Gentleman has kept his word, for which I am extremely grateful. His idea would have some merit were it not for the fact that we had a general election in 2017, which our parties both fought on manifestos saying that we would deliver Brexit. Some 80% of the people voted either Labour or Conservative. Does he not therefore believe that, as I have heard from constituents over the past few weeks, we should just get on with it?
Peter Kyle
The Labour manifesto was published two and a half weeks after I agreed to stand as a Labour candidate, and the deal we are now debating was reached a year and a half after the general election. We did not see the Chequers agreement, the Government’s negotiating stance or the deal until months after that general election. By standing on either manifesto, we did not give the Government a blank cheque to deliver any deal.
Mr Vaizey
The simple answer to the manifesto point is that the coalition Government worked out a completely different set of policies, literally behind closed doors, after the 2010 election, and the Conservative party lost the 2017 election. The reason why the Brexiteers cite the manifestos is that they are trying to stop Parliament having a say on Brexit.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware, as I read in The Times this morning, of a secret letter that was sent to the Prime Minister by 170 Conservative MPs, and which they refuse to publish, apparently advocating no deal, in direct contravention of a resolution passed in this House? That shows a complete lack of respect.
Peter Kyle
I am not aware of that letter, but it is something we have seen time and again. We have to ask ourselves a fundamental question: people going to Chequers to discuss stitch-up deals behind closed doors, and people writing letters to the Prime Minister that are not in the public domain—is that an elitist stitch-up? Alternatively, is getting Brexit out of Parliament, out of Westminster and into every community up and down our country an elitist stitch-up? One of those two is an elitist stitch-up, and I believe in my heart that I am on the right side of the argument so far.
Motion (E) offers two benefits that Members cannot afford to ignore. It breaks the deadlock in Parliament; I reassure Opposition Members that the motion makes it explicit that Parliament is withholding consent for the deal until it is confirmed by the public. It cannot be said that, by supporting the motion, Members are supporting the deal.
Secondly, the motion allows us to offer a definitive end to this nightmare. It is a sign of failure that we could not resolve Brexit alone, but it is at least honest to admit our failure. We owe the public an apology for the need to return to them one more time, but at least it will be only one more time.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Ind)
Is not the essence of the problem that the original referendum was not defined in terms of whether it was binding or, as the Government said at the time, advisory? As a result, it has led to lots of complications. The referendum proposed by motion (E) would clearly be a final say, and therefore there would be no ambiguity, which is what the people deserve.
Peter Kyle
I could not agree more. This time, voters would be making a decision based on facts not promises. They could compare the deal on offer with the deal we already have. The consent they give would be an informed consent. It is time to get Brexit out of Westminster, and we can do that only by backing a compromise. If we do not back this compromise, we could be stuck here in Parliament debating this for weeks and months to come.
Brexit has to be returned to the people of the United Kingdom for them to issue their final instruction, and then together we can begin the reconciliation our country so desperately needs but which today seems so far away. Motion (E) makes that possible, and possibility is the very art of politics.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) on managing to deliver a powerful speech despite a certain amount of distraction. He was responsible for my defeat in his constituency in 2005—not as the candidate but as the campaign manager—and I have always been slightly frightened of him since.
I find myself wondering whether it is a coincidence entirely that the people who normally sit around me on these Benches are not here, given that we all know that among them are counted noted naturists. It has long been a thoroughly British trait to be able to ignore pointless nakedness, and I trust that the House will now be able to return to the issue we are discussing.
In last Monday’s debate, my great friend and mentor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), urged the House to take to heart the words that are recited every day during Prayers by the Speaker’s Chaplain:
“never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind”.
In the nine years since I arrived in this House, there has never been a day, or a debate, in which this injunction is more relevant. If by doing this a clear majority of right hon. and hon. Members are able to support one of the Brexit compromises on the Order Paper today, the vast majority of the people we represent will breathe a deep sigh of relief. We are sent here to make the most difficult decisions on behalf of our constituents. If we vote for a compromise version of Brexit this evening, they will see that we are up to the job.
Anna Soubry
As my hon. Friend knows—and he is my friend—I have made the case and voted for the single market and the customs union for almost the past two years. My difficulty with his motion is that paragraph 1(i) says that it seeks to
“renegotiate the framework for the future relationship”.
I think that he would have won more support if, like motion (C), on the customs union, he had sought to change the withdrawal agreement as well as the future framework. The problem with his motion is that it is about only the future relationship, which any Government and any Prime Minister who succeeds the current one can change. In other words, it is non-binding.
Nick Boles
I thank my right hon. Friend for her point, but I do not agree with it. My motion specifically includes a provision that the political declaration, as renegotiated, should then be cemented into the withdrawal Act, as will come if this House votes for this, and therefore this will require a majority of this House to vote to amend statute if there is to be a change. So it will not simply be a matter of a future leader of the Conservative party being able to rip this up and renegotiate it. They will have to amend an Act of Parliament in this House, and currently there is no majority for amending it in the direction that she fears.
Mr Nigel Evans
I agree that the public would be relieved if we ever did come to a conclusion, but they would be angry if we came to the wrong conclusion. Does my hon. Friend accept that his common market 2.0 proposal would allow free movement of people, that it would cost us billions to access the single market, that we would be justiciable by the Court and so we would be law-takers, and that we would not be able to do free trade deals—and was that not the basic tenet of what we voted for in 2016?
Nick Boles
Unfortunately, my hon. Friend is right about only some of those things. It is true that in normal days we would be subject to free movement, because that is the price of single market membership, and that we would have to pay over some financial contributions, although they would be probably of the order of half of what we currently have to pay. He is not correct to say that we would be justiciable by the European Court of Justice. If we were within the European economic area, which is what common market 2.0 proposes, we would be subject to the European Free Trade Association court, and the key thing about the EFTA court is that there is no direct effect in its judgments; they all have to be implemented by sovereign Parliaments before they take hold. So this is a substantially different relationship, one in which we would have a great deal more control. Of course we would be outside all the areas other than the single market—all the political areas of the EU—and we would truly have taken back control.
Several hon. Members rose—
Nick Boles
I will not give way again.
Some commentators have criticised those of us who support common market 2.0 for adapting our proposal in response to suggestions from other colleagues or to statements by leading figures in the EU and the EFTA states. I make no apology for that; from the start we have wanted to bring forward a realistic and deliverable plan, and give as many people as possible reasons to support it. So since last Wednesday’s debate, in response to comments from Labour Members, we have added further detail to the definition of the comprehensive customs arrangement that would prevail at least until alternative arrangements underpinning frictionless trade have been agreed with the EU. We have also added a commitment to seek a protocol on agri-foods trade across the UK-EU border. I want to thank the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) for educating me about this matter, and for the tireless work of Diane Dodds MEP on behalf of Northern Ireland’s farmers. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) felt able to sign the motion. I understand that the Scottish National party plans to vote for common market 2.0 tonight, which shows that it is the Brexit compromise that would be best for all parts of the UK.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I hope the hon. Gentleman will be able to clarify one important point: if his proposal were to go through, would it require a long extension to article 50 or would we Brexit on 22 May?
Nick Boles
That is a good question and I am pleased the right hon. Gentleman has asked it. I truly believe that if this proposal were to achieve a majority tonight and if the Government were to accept it as Government policy tomorrow, which they should if this House has resolved on something by a majority, it would not be necessary to extend beyond 22 May. Last week, the EU said that it was ready to renegotiate the terms of the political declaration within hours, not weeks.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he has done on common market 2.0. Does he agree that it is not just a strong Brexit, but a unity Brexit, because many Eurosceptics in the past have supported the idea of Britain joining EFTA and current Eurosceptics such as my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) are supporting common market 2.0 membership of EFTA. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) not also agree that it provides important brakes on freedom of movement?
Nick Boles
I thank my right hon. Friend for that. He has been an important ally in this cause.
Nick Boles
I am replying to another intervention, if the right hon. Lady would just give me one moment. My right hon. Friend is right; common market 2.0 has attracted the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), and no remainer is he. He has been one the most long-standing and principled Brexiteers, but he nevertheless sees the merits in a proposal that offers something to the 48% who voted remain as well as to the 52% who voted leave. My right hon. Friend is also right to say that, although free movement would apply in normal times, by joining the common market 2.0, we would secure a new legal right in exceptional circumstances—I stress the exceptional—to pull an emergency brake on free movement if there were major societal or economic impacts being felt by this country. That is significant. We do not have it as a member of the EU; it is a significant measure of additional control that we do not currently have.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
This is important, because we are all, or should be, compromising across this House. Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge, on freedom of movement and immigration, that Scotland has a unique demographic situation and that we cannot compromise on freedom of movement because of its importance to the Scottish National party and to Scotland? Will he elaborate further on that point?
Nick Boles
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In truth, I have been educated not only by the right hon. Member for East Antrim but by the hon. Member for Dundee East and the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins), and I now understand better the importance of immigration not only to the Scottish economy but to Scottish society. There is an important detail about the emergency brake in articles 112 and 113 of the EEA agreement, which is that it talks about regional impacts and the potential for a regional application of the emergency brake that might suspend free movement. Therefore, were there significant societal or economic problems in, say, the south-east or east of England but not in Scotland, a Government could bring forward a brake that applied only to the affected areas and not to Scotland. That is entirely within the scope of the emergency brake framework.
Several hon. Members rose—
Nick Boles
Mr Speaker is glaring at me, so I am not going to take any more interventions until I am much closer to the end of my speech.
We all in this House would much prefer to avoid the activation of the Irish backstop. One of the great advantages of common market 2.0 is that it keeps all parts of the UK in the single market and in a customs arrangement, with a common external tariff, until alternative arrangements have been agreed with the EU. It should be possible to agree with the EU a legally binding joint interpretative statement, enshrining the commitment that the backstop protocol will be superseded in full once the UK is safely inside the EEA and a customs arrangement. Common market 2.0 is the only Brexit compromise that can make the Irish backstop fall away altogether.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a compelling case, and I am almost convinced—almost, but not quite. Will he confirm that he would replace the Northern Ireland backstop, with its potential “forever” arrangements and handcuffs on the United Kingdom, with something that we could at least depart from upon having served sufficient notice?
Nick Boles
I simply say that we have to have an agreement with the EU about alternative arrangements. Thanks to the hard work of the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and many others from across the House, we have secured in the agreement with the EU a commitment to develop those alternative arrangements. Although they may not exist now and may not exist in three years, I am absolutely confident that, with good will, we can secure arrangements. I do not believe that the EU wants any more than we do to keep us in a prehistoric situation when new technologies make the more sophisticated management of the border possible.
As we heard from the hon. Member for Hove, many in the House believe that there should be a referendum to secure the voters’ consent to any Brexit deal. I do not agree with them, but I have the greatest possible respect for the sincerity of their arguments, and I admire the passionate commitment of the supporters of their cause. I hope that, like the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), they will support common market 2.0. We have learned that were a referendum to happen, its result would be unpredictable; surely it would be better for the leave option to be one that retains membership of the single market and a customs arrangement that guarantees frictionless trade.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is to be commended because, unlike Government Front Benchers, we are now looking at compromises and working together in the interests of the people. Let me push him a little more on the idea of a referendum. We have already discussed no deal and the Prime Minister’s deal, and now potentially common market 2.0, and all of them are mutually exclusive and they cannot all represent all of the 52%. Does the hon. Gentleman not feel that in the interests of democracy and legitimacy, the only way to end this situation is to put his proposal, with all the benefits it brings with it, to the British people and allow them to choose either it or to remain?
Nick Boles
I thank the hon. Gentleman for taking the time to talk to me about the proposal and to understand it. We discovered much common ground. I am not persuaded of his argument, and in a sense I apologise that I am not able to be. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be aware that if the House votes for common market 2.0 tonight, it will then need to come forward in a withdrawal implementation Bill. There will be opportunities for people from all parties to seek to amend that Bill to add the confirmatory referendum that they seek. This is not the last stage in this conversation; if anything, it is just the beginning. I hope that the hon. Gentleman can support the leave option that would do the least damage to the British economy, while he continues to make his argument for a referendum.
Several hon. Members rose—
Nick Boles
I am going to make some progress.
Some of my hon. Friends supported the motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), which also supported British membership of the EEA and EFTA. Although the journey proposed by the common market 2.0 motion might take a little longer, I hope that those colleagues will recognise that the destination is, to all intents and purposes, the same and that they will therefore join my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth in supporting our motion today.
The construction of a compromise is not easy—nor is the realisation that we may not get everything that we want, that other people’s views and interests matter and that it is better to get half a loaf than to get nothing at all. Our constituents do not send us here for an easy ride or to duck difficult choices. This evening, let us live up to the words of the parliamentary prayer and, setting aside our private interests and prejudices, lead our country out of the Brexit morass.
Mr Nigel Evans
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Briefly, may I thank you, Sir, and the House authorities for the way in which the disruption was handled? It was a distraction, but there was no disruption to our proceedings. May we, through you, thank everybody involved?
Mr Speaker
We want to thank those who look after us and protect us. I very much appreciate what the hon. Gentleman has said. We just press on with the debate. That is what we are here to do.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), who has become a good friend during the course of this debacle, and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles).
Given the mess that the Government have got the United Kingdom into, each of us who has spoken so far today is, in our own way, trying to ensure that the Prime Minister does not go naked into the conference chamber—if I can use that phrase—when she goes to the EU Council on 10 April, which is a week on Wednesday. As the Father of the House said, we must not allow no deal to happen by accident on 12 April simply because this House has failed to find a deal that a majority can get behind. As the Government Chief Whip has himself admitted, the Prime Minister’s failure, from the beginning when she lost that general election two years ago, to try to build a consensus across the House and with the devolved Governments, means that we are highly unlikely to find a deal that the House can get behind before Friday 12 April. We therefore need some sort of backstop—some sort of insurance policy against a no deal.
We also need a way to make sure that the Prime Minister honours the promise that she gave this House at the beginning of last week: that unless this House agrees to it, no deal will not happen. That is what the Prime Minister said. As we know, and as has been said already this afternoon, one thing that definitely did happen in the indicative votes last week was that 400 Members rejected the idea of a no-deal Brexit. We know there is a majority against a no-deal Brexit.
Neil Gray
I commend my hon. and learned Friend for her efforts in respect of her motion. She will remember, as I do, that the Prime Minister pledged that, if Parliament voted to support no deal, that would become the Government’s policy. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that, if Parliament votes for her motion tonight, that should be the Government’s policy and there should be a backstop to make sure that no deal cannot happen?
Joanna Cherry
Yes, I do. That is the purpose of the motion. It is not an SNP motion, although I am absolutely delighted that all my right hon. and hon. Friends are backing it; it is a cross-party motion. It has support from members of every single party in this House, apart from the DUP. If we cannot agree a deal by 10 April, which is the date of the EU Council—everyone must see as a matter of common sense that that is highly unlikely—my motion, if it is passed tonight, will mandate the Government to ask, first, for an extension of the article 50 period. If the EU did not agree to that, the UK Government would be required immediately to table a motion asking this House to approve no deal. My motion goes on to say that, assuming the House did not approve no deal—I think that we can assume that given the many votes that there have been on the matter already—the United Kingdom Government would then be mandated to revoke article 50, before we exit the EU with no deal late on the night of 12 April.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I am very sympathetic to the idea that we need a backstop in extremis to prevent no deal from happening, but can the hon. and learned Lady explain why, later in her motion, she goes on to introduce a level of complexity and a prescriptive route? Is she really wedded to that process, or is she more flexible about how that might work?
Joanna Cherry
I am keen to get this motion passed today. I was very disappointed that some hon. Members, particularly those in the official Opposition, did not feel able to support it last week but, in the spirit of cross-party working, I am trying to be respectful of the reasons why they did not feel able to support it. Coming from the city of Edinburgh, which voted 75% to remain, and the country of Scotland, which voted 62% to remain, and representing a constituency which voted 72% to remain, I understand that it is easy for me to cross this bridge, but it is more difficult for Members in English and Welsh constituencies with different mandates.
Equally, unlike the British Government, who have failed to recognise the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland voted remain, I am trying to recognise that other parts of these islands voted leave and that, for some people to support this motion, the door cannot be closed on the Brexit process by a revocation to prevent no deal. That is why, with the assistance of lawyers—including Jo Maugham QC who was my fellow petitioner when we took the case to the Court of Justice in Luxembourg to establish that article 50 can be unilaterally revoked—we have crafted the motion in this way. In that connection, I declare my interest in relation to the support of the Good Law Project.
Mr Bradshaw
Does the hon. and learned Lady agree that nobody in this House except those who positively want a crash-out, no-deal Brexit should have any problems voting for her motion?
Joanna Cherry
I do agree. I appeal to Members across this House. I know that 10 Conservative Members, including two junior Ministers, voted for this last week. I appeal to anyone who cares about the people who live on these islands and the economy of these islands to prevent a no deal from happening. It is no secret that I came to this House to secure an independent Scotland. That is still my primary aim, but it is not in the interests of Scotland for the Scottish economy to go down the tube with a no-deal Brexit. It is not in the interests of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish economies to go that way, and it is not in Scotland’s interests for the English, Welsh and Northern Irish economies to go that way. Make no mistake about it: if we crash out with no deal, it will be the jobs of ordinary, decent working people that go first. They are the sort of people who vote for the SNP. They are the sort of people who vote for the Labour party and we must protect them.
Joanna Cherry
It is indeed, but the difference is that many people who signed that petition would like to see us just revoke article 50 now—straightaway—and that would be an end of the matter. I would quite like to see that myself, but that is not what this motion seeks to do. The motion is about using revocation as an insurance policy. In respectful recognition of the fact that the issue of Brexit will not go away if we simply revoke to avoid no deal, the motion seeks to mandate the Government to set up a public inquiry, under the Inquiries Act 2005, within three months of revocation to establish whether a model of a future relationship with the European Union could be found that would command majority support in the United Kingdom. It also says that, if that could be done, another referendum would be held on the question of whether to retrigger article 50 and renegotiate that model.
Joanna Cherry
I will give way in a moment, but I just want to knock on the head at this stage a myth that has been peddled by some people that, if this motion were passed, the EU would object to our revoking article 50. That is not the case. It is a misunderstanding of the judgment of the Court of Justice in Luxembourg in the Scottish case, which did not say that, once we revoke article 50, we can never issue an article 50 notice ever again. It categorically did not say that. If Members cannot take that from me, then please read the judgment of the court, which I put on my Twitter feed this afternoon.
Richard Benyon
I am very grateful to the hon. and learned Lady. Does she agree that one of the failures of this debate, in this House and beyond, is that we do not talk about exactly what no deal is all about—what it actually means for our constituents? We talk about it in too much of a conceptual way, and we let those who are in favour of leaving with no deal get away with not going into the real details—whether on agriculture, or the 83 trade deals of which we would no longer be part.
Joanna Cherry
I absolutely agree. That has been one of the many failures of this process—that this House has not been afforded sufficient time to knock on the head the sort of misinformation peddled about the consequences of no deal. Fortunately, we have much independent research on the consequences of no deal and Members will find that that independent research wholly tells us that no deal would be bad for the economies of these islands, for jobs and for the living standards of people who live here. It would be to shoot ourselves in the foot and to cut off our nose to spite our face.
Anna Soubry
I am proud to have signed the hon. and learned Lady’s motion and I shall be voting for it tonight. My only concern is not about the motion but, if it is passed, about the consequences. Many of us, right across this House, are concerned that, whatever votes we come to and whatever majority we find, the Government will simply ignore them.
Joanna Cherry
We have every reason to be concerned about that. As the right hon. Lady knows, the Government have repeatedly ignored votes in this House. However, if an instruction is clear and unequivocal, as this motion is, and it is ignored by the Government, there will political consequences—we have seen that previously with a contempt motion in this House—and there could also be legal consequences. In any normal times, this Government would be long gone because of their incompetence and the multiple fiascos that we have had recently but, really, if this Government were to ignore an instruction as clear as this and plunge the nations of these islands into the economic disaster of no deal, not only would they not survive it, but the Conservative and Unionist party would not survive it.
Joanna Cherry
We all know that, if there is any sort of a lengthy extension, there will have to be European elections. I know that there is some learned opinion to the contrary, but the weight of opinion is that there will have to be European elections. I know that that will be difficult for some people to deal with, but if that is the consequence of preventing no deal and protecting our constituents’ livelihoods—the businesses of our constituents and the jobs of our constituents—then so be it and no responsible MP could fail to support this motion tonight. There are four motions before us. I will vote for two of the other ones as well but supporting this motion does not preclude hon. Members from supporting other motions. It is not a motion about the eventual outcome; it is a motion about process and about protecting us. [Interruption.] I can see that Mr Speaker is keen to bring in other speakers. I will not take up much more time, so I will wind up to a conclusion.
For Conservative Members of Parliament, this is an opportunity to make good on the promise that the Prime Minister has already made to this House that, unless the House agrees to it, no deal will not happen. For Labour MPs, it is the opportunity to make good on the promise in their 2017 manifesto, which of course I have read, as I always do Labour manifestos, and which says:
“Labour recognises that leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ is the worst possible deal for Britain and that it would do damage to our economy and trade. We will reject ‘no deal’ as a viable option”.
This is pretty much the last chance saloon. If Labour wants to reject no deal as a viable option and put in place the insurance policy of revocation, then it really needs to do that today.
Most of all, this motion should appeal to all of us as democrats, because this decision of such importance for the United Kingdom, between revocation and no deal, ought to be one for the representatives of the people in this Parliament and not for the Prime Minister in a minority Government. That is why I have called it the parliamentary supremacy motion. Of course, in Scotland, it is the people who are sovereign and supreme, not the Parliament, but I recognise that, for all intents and purposes, this Parliament is supreme. This motion is all about taking back control and making sure that we have an insurance policy against the danger that this rather confused Government could crash us into no deal without really meaning to do so.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. Approximately 40 right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak, the large majority of whom, I am sorry to say, seem set to be disappointed, and three Front Benchers are due to speak, although I hope mercifully briefly. So in the interests of trying to accommodate colleagues, we will start with a time limit of six minutes, but it is not obligatory to absorb the full six. I call Mr Dominic Grieve.
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will try to be brief.
Of the four motions before us, two relate to substance and two relate to process, and they cannot be easily disaggregated. I have signed motion (E) and motion (G), motion (E) being that of the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle). As I have said on many occasions, in view of the circumstances that have arisen, the idea that we can legitimately take the people of this country out of the European Union without consulting them as to whether the deal that we are offering them is one they want seems to me very odd indeed. The reality is that everything we have been talking about this evening, on the two substantive motions in particular, bears almost no relation to what was advanced by those advocating leave in the 2016 referendum campaign.
Equally, this House has said repeatedly that it does not believe in a no-deal Brexit. That is why I support the motion of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry)—because we have to do everything to stop it, given that the evidence is overwhelming that leaving without a deal would be catastrophic. I realise that this is sometimes a very difficult issue. On Friday night, I found myself giving an audience the Government’s own figures on the administrative burden on business of leaving without a deal, which is £13 billion per annum. That may be too high or it might be too low, but it is a reasoned estimate. That group of people, some of whom say they support my party and therefore the Government, were shouting “Liar” at me. This, I am afraid, is the point where reasoned debate has wholly evaporated. The House is very clear that what we have here is a real risk to this country’s integrity in future, and that is why no deal must be prevented.
Let me now turn to the two substantive motions. Looked at straightforwardly, I think that both offer a better destination for this country than what the Prime Minister negotiated. That is first because they address the Northern Ireland issue, and do it a way that covers the integrity of the whole United Kingdom and does not separate Northern Ireland out from it, which seems to me to be an advantage; and secondly, because the concessions they make to our participation or deeper integration with our EU partners even after we have left do not come at a cost that people will notice when we are out. I agree entirely with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) that, in reality, the trade deals that we were told we would have, and which were celebrated, are going to be absolutely marginal compared with the effect on our wellbeing now and what we are going to lose.
For those reasons, I look with favour on both motions. They are both, as I said, very far removed from what was being trumpeted in 2016, which unfortunately was an utterly misleading vision that the United Kingdom could have its cake and eat it—could have the benefits of membership and all the freedoms that go with not being a member. That is the basic problem that this House is going to have to grapple with. I will not vote against the two motions of substance, which seem to me to be moving us probably in the right direction.
I am anxious about the risks of our concluding a political declaration and having a very limited timeframe—to 22 May, with probably no extension—to resolve fully the issues within it to the satisfaction of this House. I have a serious concern, first, that that can be done; and secondly, that it can be done to the satisfaction of the public. That is why there is a need for a linkage between the preferred option and consulting the public. I do not want to say any more about that now—I want to sit down and allow others to speak.
However, I do want to emphasise my willingness to work with Members of this House who have promoted both these motions, in my determination to try to bring this sorry saga to an end. But in saying that, I want to emphasise that the House has to be very careful about simply jumping on something that it thinks we can all agree on without thinking through the consequences of the process and making sure that the process ends up satisfying the House itself and the electorate, and leading to the right outcome.
Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)
I shall seek to be extremely brief, Mr Speaker, because I have been fortunate enough to catch your eye before on these matters.
One of the merits of last week’s indicative vote process was that the arguments for each option, and also the prime concerns, have become much clearer. Discussions on the proposal for a confirmatory ballot devised by my hon. Friends the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) and for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) revealed considerable reluctance to contemplate the longer extension, and hence the delay, that would be needed. I completely understand that reluctance, especially if, as may be, it would lead into the holding of Euro elections. But to me, that would be a price well worth paying for the sake of achieving the settlement that a confirmatory vote could produce, as it did with the Good Friday agreement. It may also be the price that we need to pay to allow enough scrutiny of the different options before us to provide the basis for a stable majority, not just a fleeting majority, in this House.
As it happens, I very seriously doubt that such a longer extension can be avoided in any event. The Government can only deliver either the Prime Minister’s deal or any other deal when the necessary legislation passes both Houses of this Parliament. That legislation is said to be ready, but, as the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) pointed out last week, the House has seen neither hide nor hair of it. I have heard that it is long, perhaps even 100 clauses, and that it is also complex—and it is obviously an extremely significant part of this process. But whenever it is mentioned, Ministers speak briefly and dismissively as if its passage is just a given thing that will be both brief and uncontentious. Frankly, I rather doubt that. So as we are likely to need a long extension anyway, for a whole variety of other reasons, why not take advantage of that reality to hold a confirmatory vote on the likely outcome of Brexit, whatever option ultimately emerges from these deliberations?
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I agree with what my right hon. Friend is saying. Does she agree with me, though, that in order to get that long extension, the EU would need to be satisfied that this House has actually taken forward a view through a substantive, positive vote, and that otherwise—if we do not take that difficult step—we could just crash out with no deal?
Margaret Beckett
I agree that that would make it infinitely easier. The EU might be convinced of that on the basis of our wanting to hold such a vote, but I totally accept my hon. Friend’s point. This is all based on us trying, if humanly possible, to get such a deal.
Dr Murrison
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady. This country has had half a dozen or so referendums in recent years, and we have honoured the outcome of those referendums on each occasion. She is suggesting that we do not honour the outcome of the June 2016 referendum. If we do not honour the outcome of that referendum, are the public not entitled to ask why we should honour the outcome of the referendum that she is advocating or any other?
Margaret Beckett
I am sorry, but I utterly reject the notion that what I am proposing does not honour the outcome of the 2016 referendum, and I will come to the reason why I do not accept that for one second. We should take the step of a confirmatory vote whatever the deal or option that is finally agreed, or even if none is agreed, because whatever the hon. Gentleman may say, not one of the options before the House tonight or over the last few weeks was on the ballot paper in 2016—not one of them, including the Prime Minister’s deal.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I agree with her, but for a confirmatory referendum to take place, there needs to be a viable leave option on the ballot paper versus remain. Does she agree that those campaigning for a second referendum should support the other motions on the Order Paper that present a viable leave option—namely, a customs union and common market 2.0?
Margaret Beckett
I am happy to agree with my hon. Friend about that, but I hope it cuts both ways. I heard the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) say, “Of course, those who want a second referendum can come back to this some other time in legislation when all of this is done,” but it must be a two-way street.
Nick Boles
I will be brief. I just want to reassure the right hon. Lady of one thing. Last Wednesday I abstained on her motion, and I will abstain on it again tonight, as a gesture of good will towards it.
Margaret Beckett
I am duly grateful to the hon. Gentleman.
What is most often heard in these discussions is the argument that to hold a confirmatory vote would be not only wrong but undemocratic, which is the point that the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) was trying to address. That argument is advanced both by those who believe that the view of the people has not changed and that they will still vote to leave—and, according to Mr Farage, by a bigger margin—and by those who fear that their view might have changed and who resist holding such a vote for that very reason. It seems to me that there is something mutually contradictory in those arguments.
We have heard a great deal about the resentment that would be felt by those who voted to leave, but I again ask Members to carefully consider the position in which this House would place itself if it is the case—I do not know one way or the other—that the British people do not now wish to leave the European Union. We are being invited to vote to take the UK out of the European Union even if it is now against the wishes of the British people, and to do so while refusing to give them the opportunity even to express such wishes. I fear we may find such a refusal difficult to defend, especially if the basis of our decision ends up being the Prime Minister’s deal, which will itself have been presented to this Parliament for decision more than once.
There is another dangerous argument being advanced: that we should leave, and if we do not like it, we can always rejoin. This House knows that if we leave, we lose the special opt-outs on the euro and Schengen that successive Governments have negotiated. Rejoining would put us in a very different place from remaining with the concessions that we have now.
I accept that, in a variety of ways, the alternatives proposed on today’s Order Paper by the Father of the House and others offer advantages over the Prime Minister’s proposal. I could live with any of them apart from the option of no deal, but I repeat: none of them was before the British people three years ago, and for that reason, if for no other, they should be asked for their view on the reality that is before them, rather than the fantasies they were spun in 2016.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett). Like her, I will be voting for motion (E), but I will be doing so for very different reasons, and I wish to explain those reasons in the time I have.
I have been on the wrong side of all the EU votes when it comes to the arithmetic, with the exception of the vote for the Prime Minister to trigger article 50, when I was one of almost 500 MPs who voted for that to occur. Since then, I have voted for the Prime Minister’s deal three times, I have voted for no deal as the fall-back twice and I have voted not to allow an extension of article 50—on each occasion, I have lost. That has brought me to this place.
Motion (E) provides the opportunity to get the Prime Minister’s deal through, as much as it provides the opportunity for those who did not vote for article 50 to be triggered to revoke article 50. I am willing to take my chances and put the matter to the people, because I have given up on Parliament delivering a majority for the deal that I want. I am left with two choices. One is to find myself in meaningful vote 3,029, and the other—I say this as a former transactional lawyer working on a trading floor—is to look ahead and try to find a solution that will deliver what I want, which is to honour the vote in 2016. That is incredibly important to me. I worry about the democratic deficit of that not being delivered.
Of course, people could ask us why we are going back to the people. I say this with a great degree of self-loathing, but I am supporting this purely because Parliament is unable to reach a majority and a decision—we are stuck. Every Member of this House needs to face up to the reality and ask themselves, “How long can this go on? How much uncertainty will we allow business and our constituents to bear before we finally reach the conclusion that we need to find another option?”
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
My hon. Friend talks about uncertainty, but surely a second referendum, whatever way it is formulated, will just add to uncertainty ad infinitum. Why would people accept the result of a second referendum? It is an absurd position.
Huw Merriman
I do not believe it is absurd. With respect, it is more absurd us having debate after debate and vote after vote and achieving absolutely nothing. Alternatively, we can be realistic and say that Parliament is not delivering. I mean no disrespect to us, but that is the reality.
This motion gives certainty because unlike, for example, a customs union, which would then have to be negotiated, there are two options—one is revoke, which can be done but I hope will not be, and the other is the Prime Minister’s deal, which has been agreed with the EU—and they both automatically deliver certainty. The other options do not deliver certainty, and Parliament is not delivering anything at all right now.
Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend confirm what he appeared to just say, which is that he would support there being two options on the ballot paper in a second referendum, one of which would be to revoke article 50? Is he representing the Chancellor when he says that?
Huw Merriman
I resent that point. No, I am not representing the Chancellor, otherwise I would be sat behind him on the Treasury Bench. I am representing my constituents and what I feel is right. I take umbrage at that.
Let us be reasonable. Let us look at compromise and at two differing views. It has been put to me that the options on the ballot paper should be no deal or deal. Of course that is what I would want, because those are the options I have voted for, but on the other side of the divide, if the options were customs union and single market membership or revoke, that would be no good for the 17.4 million. Let us choose options that might deliver something for both sides of the argument and then put it to the people and give certainty.
I do not say this because I have ever wanted a second referendum. As far as I was concerned, when we had the first vote, that was it. I said to my constituents that I would first support the deal, and if that did not work, no deal. My voting record shows that I have done just that, but it also shows that I have lost. Being a serial loser, I can either carry on in that negative vein or face reality and tell my constituents that we have to find a way through this—they want that more than anyone I speak to—and look for another solution. That solution, to me, is a confirmatory vote.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Further to what the hon. Gentleman is saying, does he agree that a confirmatory vote is also the best way of healing the divisions, as it would give both sides the chance to have a view on the final deal, put it to bed once and for all, and move us forward?
Huw Merriman
It may well do so, although it would of course be fractious. I would certainly be embarrassed at the very fact that we had got there, but I support doing so on the basis of the reality in this place.
It has also been asked, would we not be better off having a general election? Again, however, I want certainty, and a general election would not deliver certainty. With all due respect to us all, it might deliver us back here again, and then we could carry on in the same vein as we have so far. I do not believe that that would be better, whereas the options I have laid before the House would provide legal certainty and that would be it. So far as I am concerned, I say with great reluctance that I will absolutely support a confirmatory vote because, to me, that is the only way we are going to deliver certainty. This place, I am afraid to say, has not done so.
Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), and I agree with the points that he made.
This is the first time I have contributed to any of these debates—I have managed to avoid doing so until now—but I have worked with right hon. and hon. Members across this House. Incidentally, I pay particular tribute to the right hon. Members for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles). It has been a pleasure to work with people who have been united in a desire to find a way forward, and united also in recognising that there is an absolute need to avoid leaving the EU with no deal.
I believe it is essential now that we seek to build consensus, and I feel that for two reasons. First, we are in a perilous state: there is a real danger to this country. There is a high risk that, unintentionally, we could end up in just a few days’ time crashing out of the EU with no deal. The damage to the economy would be profound. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), with the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), has made very well the points about the absolute importance of protecting manufacturing industry, and the auto industry in particular. As Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, I should also say that the damage to our science community from crashing out with no deal would be profound, and it seems to me that we have to avoid that at all costs.
The second reason why I think it is important to build consensus is that we live now in a horribly divided country, with entrenched positions and intransigence on both sides. This is deeply damaging to our country, and we risk damaging the social contract. I think we play with fire if we do not recognise the danger, and I do not think enough people have been seeking to find ways of bringing this country together again, rather than maintaining the divisions.
I approach this as someone who campaigned for and voted for remain. It may be odd to say this, but I respect the alternative point of view. I have my own criticisms of the EU, and I always have done. It is massively over-centralised, and I think it needs substantial reform—it needs to be more dynamic and more flexible—yet I was clear in my mind that I should support and campaign for remain. However, I lost, and we now need to find a way forward out of this mess. No route is perfect and no route is risk-free; danger is everywhere.
It is vital that Parliament today actually supports a way forward, rather than rejecting everything yet again. Another day of everything being defeated risks inflicting further enormous damage on this institution and of leaving the country feeling that it is without leadership. The country is crying out for leadership. I want this Parliament to agree on a Brexit deal that, as far as possible, protects jobs, the economy and the funding of public services, and maintains the closest possible relationship with the European Union—and then I want that settlement to be put to the people of this country in a confirmatory referendum.
The Prime Minister opposes the single market and a customs union, and her red lines have stayed rigidly in place all the way through. She says she cannot support those because they were not in the manifesto, but in 2017 she failed to get a majority. Just as in the coalition the parties coming together had to make compromises—a party cannot get everything in its manifesto if it does not have a majority in Parliament—this necessitates compromise. The Government Chief Whip was absolutely right to say that the election changed everything, yet the Prime Minister has failed to recognise that. She has failed to reach out and has stuck rigidly to red lines that are inappropriate in a balanced Parliament.
I will vote to support a customs union, the argument for which was put very succinctly and effectively by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). Manufacturing industry in our country demands that we remain part of the customs union, and that is why I will support it. It is not sufficient on its own, but it is a building block. I will also support common market 2.0. It is not perfect, but it seeks to ensure the closest possible economic relationship, protecting the economy and jobs.
I would say to the people who support a confirmatory referendum that motion (E) says that nothing in this House should be approved without a confirmatory referendum, but we have to agree what this House decides. They should please engage in that process, come together and support a deal that protects jobs and the economy—and then put it to the British people.
Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who was a very good Minister in the coalition Government.
I am very keen that the voice of the world of work should be heard in this debate today. Last week, with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), I co-chaired an industrial coalition. A huge range of industries and trade organisations evaluated the options before us, and they are going to inform how I will vote this evening. The British brand has been badly damaged, they said. Brexit has changed international perceptions of our country.
The CBI and the TUC were very clear that they want Parliament to compromise to find a way forward. No deal or a Canada-style relationship with Europe would not, in their view, be workable. They warned us that the trade we do with our near neighbours is very different from how we trade with more distant partners. Trading with Canada, for example, could necessitate the completion of up to 12 pages of customs forms. They estimate that that could cost British business an extra £2.5 billion annually, and that would of course hit small and medium-sized enterprises hardest of all.
There are big problems, businesses said, with mini extensions of article 50, because they cannot properly function on such a short-term planning cycle. Car factories in our constituencies are shut down this month in anticipation of the disruption of Brexit, and the workers have been urged to take their annual leave this month. They cannot suddenly open the factories and shunt the annual leave three weeks later. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders would prefer an 18-month to two-year delay to article 50 just to give business a chance to adjust. It said that we cannot keep marching up to the top of the cliff.
The TUC and the CBI again made clear the threats of a no-deal brisket that would—[Laughter.] I had a go at cooking that yesterday, Mr Speaker. A no-deal Brexit would put thousands of jobs at risk. This is not just about jobs; I remind the House that it is about the thousands of Brits abroad who will not be able to fund their own healthcare in the event of a no deal and are receiving notice of that now. I appeal to the Government for contingency funding to help those vulnerable individuals, but again mini extensions do not help them much either.
I have consistently supported the Prime Minister’s deal. Business says that it is workable and would give clarity. I will continue to support that deal if it comes back for another vote, but without enough support in Parliament we have to consider the other options. I will vote in favour of two options. I will support the proposal for “a” customs union. There is a big difference between “a” and “the”. The withdrawal agreement already provides elements of a customs union and that is something that both main parties supported in different forms at the last election. While the Conservative manifesto stated we would
“no longer be members of the single market or customs union”
we did commit to seeking a
“deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement”.
I will also vote for the proposals setting out common market 2.0, which builds on the EFTA model put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice). We helped to set up EFTA: it offers preferential trade with the EU, recourse to an EFTA court for trade disputes and the right to pull the handbrake on migration.
All the options have their critics. However, an agreement on customs with the EU would work for business and help to safeguard jobs—
Dame Caroline Spelman
I am afraid I do not have time to do so.
We must weigh up the pros and cons of all options before us. However, given the large manufacturing footprint in many of our constituencies, the impact on jobs must be a key factor. If jobs are lost—
Dame Caroline Spelman
No, I will not give way.
If jobs were lost so that we could have a more flexible trade policy in the future, I would find that way forward very difficult to support. The critical issue for business is the need for frictionless trade with our principal market.
Dame Caroline Spelman
No, I have now said three times that I will not give way.
For the automotive industry, just-in-time manufacturing is critical. Some 1,100 lorries a day pass through Dover. Many firms do not have warehouses to store parts. The lorries are their warehouses. Any logistic disruption at the border is damaging. While I was out canvassing in my constituency, a small business owner explained how 15% of his trade is with the EU, and that is at risk. If he loses that trade, he has to make two of his people redundant.
I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) that a customs union alone provides 90% of a solution for a frictionless border. People have been understanding on the doorstep, but they expect Parliament to come together now across parties and find a compromise. Our children’s future will depend on the quality of the compromise we achieve, and we must not let them down.
The votes tonight will help to shape phase 2 of the Brexit process when we negotiate that future trading relationship. However, we cannot get to phase 2 without phase 1. That means accepting the treaty, which allows us to leave in an orderly fashion, and I urge more colleagues to do so.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I rise to speak with great pleasure, because this has been a good debate. Over the weekend, when I was thinking about speaking in the debate should I be lucky enough to be called, I decided that I wanted to be entirely positive. Indeed, I am a Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament and have a penchant for co-operation in my DNA. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and I were both born during the blitz. I was born a week before him on 17 August, the day after the heaviest bombing by the Germans in the second world war. A week later, my neighbours—both parents and two little children—were killed by a German bomb.
When I got into Parliament, many of the generation here in 1979 had fought in that war. Denis Healey had been on the beach at Anzio, and Ted Heath had also been in the war. They were great pro-Europeans because they had seen two world wars and knew what the killing and waste had done to Europe—to our economy and to our people. The European economy was set back for many years and political progress seemed the only way forward. Those men and women built the United Nations and NATO, and started the European Coal and Steel Community, which was the beginning of Europe. We should honour them, and put this debate into context.
I often say that I have been sent here from Huddersfield to make sure that people from my town get a better standard of living, improved health, welfare and prosperity. We all say that, and we all believe it, but we must put it in the broader context of the hallowed duty we have never to go back to that Europe that was so divided and bitter.
To hold out an olive branch to the Conservatives, over the weekend I did a lot of reading of the history of the Labour party on Europe. What a mess that was! One man who is almost canonised in the Labour party—
Mr Sheerman
No, not Marx. I will give the House another clue: he was our first Prime Minister—
Mr Sheerman
Yes, Attlee. He is almost canonised, but anyone who wants to know about the confusion on Europe in the Labour party should read about Clement Attlee. He wanted to reject Europe and continue expanding trade with the colonies. The divisions on Europe in the Labour party were deep, mirroring in part what has happened more recently in the Conservative party. It was Harold Wilson, who came from Huddersfield but was never Member of Parliament for the town, who called the first referendum because of the deep division between left and right in the party, especially with Tony Benn. The result was the innovation, which I much regret, of referendums under our constitution.
I will support all four of the motions this evening, because this is the beginning of a process. We are in a bitter and toxic period. In my nearly 40 years in Parliament, I have never seen such nastiness in the streets, on social media and in the way we treat each other in the House, referring to each other as traitors. I hope tonight we can start the process, by voting for some of these positive motions. Of course, in the end I want to stay in the European Union, but I am willing to meet people halfway and to build bridges.
All the time I have the national interest at the back of my mind. Someone asked me at the weekend, “What is the national interest? The Prime Minister keeps talking about it. The Conservative Prime Minister who first got us into this mess has disappeared and now another one is going to disappear.” The national interest is for this House to come together and replace the vacuum we have had from the present leadership in the major political parties. I say that reluctantly, but it is true. It is time we had that leadership, but until we get it again, the House must pick up the baton and run with it. I hope that tonight will start that process.
Mr Speaker
I will next take the Front-Bench speeches. I have asked the Secretary of State, the shadow Secretary of State and the spokesman for the SNP to try not to exceed five minutes, and then the Back-Bench limit will have to be cut to four minutes to try to maximise participation.
The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Stephen Barclay)
I will obviously take note of your direction, Mr Speaker: the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and I are not particularly short of opportunities to debate these issues at the Dispatch Box. I commend the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on his honesty. He set out clearly that he wishes to stay in the European Union. It is the case, however, that the Government are committed to ensuring that we deliver on the referendum result.
The right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) is no longer in his place but he spoke about respecting all views, which has very much been the tenor of the debate today. I take issue with one point that he made: when he criticised the Prime Minister for not compromising. Part of the criticism she has received from both wings of the debate is that her deal is seen as too much of a compromise, both for those who want purity on one aspect—a purity of Brexit beyond what 17.4 million people voted for—and those who do not want to leave at all. That is the pincer movement that has bedevilled the agreement she has reached.
Stephen Barclay
I will give way, but I am mindful of Mr Speaker’s direction.
Anna Soubry
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that there is a difference between those who wanted a pure Brexit and those who did not want us to leave in any event? I suggest to him that that is not any compromise that the Prime Minister has made. She has not compromised. The point is that she has not reached out to those of us who had accepted the result of the referendum and did want to form a way of delivering on it with the least amount of damage.
Stephen Barclay
With all due respect to the right hon. Lady, the passion and persistence with which she campaigns for her specific view is perhaps an indication of the lack of compromise that there sometimes is in the wider debate.
Stephen Barclay
I have just five minutes, but I will take one further intervention. Then, I think, Mr Speaker, your steer is that I should press on.
Mr Vaizey
I am sorry to intervene on the Secretary of State. I was going to raise this point in my speech with the hope that he would respond to it, but he is now speaking before me. Will he illuminate the House on the letter that has gone to the Prime Minister from 170 of our colleagues? Did he sign it? What is in it? Is it true, as the papers are being briefed, that it keeps no deal on the table, despite the resolution of this House?
Stephen Barclay
All of us, as politicians, are often accused of not answering questions, so let me be very specific. I have not signed any letter of the sort. I have the opportunity to meet the Prime Minister most days and if I have a point to raise with her I do so.
Stephen Barclay
No. I am conscious that I have only five minutes, and I wish to press on.
It is worth reminding the House that it was only last Friday that Members—[Interruption.] I do not know why the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) is chuntering. I have been given a steer from the Chair to give time for other Members and she wants to come in a second time. I have taken her intervention.
On Friday, the House voted against the withdrawal agreement. It is worth pointing out that a number of the motions before the House require the withdrawal agreement as part of the package, including motions (C) and (D). Likewise, the motions on a public vote are proposals that include the same withdrawal agreement that the Members who signed them opposed. The fourth motion before the House includes a vast number of signatories who stood on manifestos contrary to what they have signed. So, again, that points to the contradictions inherent in the approach that many have taken throughout this debate. People are taking positions one week and then signing motions that are contrary to them the following week.
I have used four minutes of my five, so I will press on very quickly. Many of these points were raised in the debate last Wednesday, including on the permanent customs union. The concern relates to giving control of our trade policy, in particular our trade defences, to EU countries over which we would have no say. It is questionable why we would want to give MEPs in other countries control over our trade defences, whether in ceramics or steel, or on many of the issues debated in this House. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) has quite often drawn the attention of the House—I am pleased to see him in his place—to some of the issues I do not have time to expand on today. Likewise, the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) reminded the House, when he intervened on the Father of the House, that regulatory alignments often drive friction at the border—much more so than the tariffs on which the debate tends to centre.
Motion (D) was debated last Wednesday, so we do not need to rehearse the arguments about financial contributions, the acceptance of freedom of movement or alignment with EU rules—all the issues that cause concern. Indeed, the Governor of the Bank of England, no ardent Brexiteer he, talked about the damage and how highly undesirable this option is, because of the rule-taking element strangulating a part of our economy that paid £72 billion of tax in 2016-17. We should be cautious about the rule-taking implications. In his remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) talked about an extension to 22 May. I simply remind my very good friend that—I am sure he is aware of this point—the conclusions from the Council do not give an automatic right to an extension to 22 May, given that we have passed the 29 March deadline.
We debated motion (E) last week. It was defeated by 27 votes, so the arguments were rehearsed. Likewise, we debated motion (D), which was defeated by 109 votes. What we have is a rehashing of a number of arguments that did not curry favour last week. Again, many of the issues remain. Motion (G) does not specify how long the public inquiry should be. On average, they last for three years. Are we going to subject our businesses to a further three years of uncertainty, followed by a further vote?
What we need to do is give certainty to our business community and to safeguard the rights of EU citizens. That is what the House rejected by rejecting the deal. What we see today is a number of motions signed by people who, just last Friday, rejected the withdrawal agreement. They stood on manifestos that contradict the motion before the House and, in essence, are asking colleagues across the House to vote for a package that includes a part that they themselves rejected just a matter of days ago.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I am glad that we are resuming this indicative vote exercise. It has been a good debate today. There has been a good tone, with good contributions from around the House. I recognise that no majority was found last week for any option, but I equally recognise that Parliament is trying, at some speed, to complete a process that the Prime Minister should have carried out two years ago.
May I begin by saying a few words to all Members across the House, but particularly to colleagues sitting on the Labour Benches behind me? I recognise that many Members have a single preferred option and understandably want to push that option as hard and as far as possible. No one wants to stand in the way of that, but I do urge colleagues to enter into the spirit of the exercise we are now engaged in. That means supporting options other than their own preferred option in order to break the deadlock. It is important that we find a majority if we can this evening—if that is possible. I do recognise how difficult that can be for individual Members and how they have grappled with the positions they have tried to take, but I ask them to enter into the process in that spirit. I thank them for the approach they have taken so far.
As far as the Labour position is concerned, it will again be to support amendments that are consistent with the two credible options we have been advancing time and again: a close economic relationship with the EU based on a customs union and close single market alignment; and a public vote to prevent no deal or a damaging Brexit.
Keir Starmer
I am going to come to the customs union in a minute, and I will take an intervention then.
On that basis, we will whip support for motion (C), the customs union as a minimum, in the name of the Father of the House; for motion (D), common market 2.0, in the name of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles); and for motion (E), on a confirmatory public vote, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), assisted by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson). I will come to motion (G) in one moment.
On motion (C), Labour has long supported a customs union. It is a vital component of any deal which will genuinely protect manufacturing, and it is necessary to protect against a hard border in Northern Ireland. As I said last week, it must be a minimum, and that is written into the motion in terms. That is the position of the Labour party.
Greg Hands
On the customs union, I would like, if I can, to take the right hon. and learned Gentleman back a few years to when the Labour party was wholly opposed to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership—I think it was before he was in the House. At the time, the UK had a seat at the table. Now, as he is proposing it, the UK would not have a seat at the table and the EU would set our trade policy. Why is he in favour of that arrangement, particularly at a time when the United States says it wants to launch trade talks with the European Union? The EU has, in general, a system of social insurance, not our system for the NHS. How does he think that this is a better arrangement to defend his NHS?
Keir Starmer
That is a serious point. Before the Labour party surfaced its proposition for a customs union, we had long and hard discussions with the EU about the sort of customs union that we were considering—not the customs union, but a customs union—and we looked at the influence that now exists for EU members, and how one could devise a pillar that gave influence to a very close third party. I have stood at the Dispatch Box many times and said that that would not be easy, but that is why we have always said that we should have a customs union with a say. We have sought to discuss that with the EU, and it is telling that when we put our proposal to the Prime Minister, the EU was very warm about the possibility of negotiating it. I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but we have, I hope, addressed it in our approach to the customs union.
On motion (D), Labour’s preference remains the approach that we set out in the letter to the Prime Minister in January this year—that is, a customs union and single market alignment. However, we recognise that motion (D) has a number of similarities and could deliver a close economic relationship with the EU. The motion has been revised since the first phase of indicative votes and now includes further detail about the form of the envisaged customs arrangements, which have similarities with the approach that the Labour party has set out.
The motion does not specify that those arrangements should be permanent—that is our preferred option—but it does say that they should be in place at least until alternative arrangements can be found. There remain differences between our policy position and motion (D), but the motion would allow for close economic partnership with the EU. It is a credible proposition, and on that basis we will support it this evening.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Keir Starmer
I will not, because I am trying to make some progress. We will support motion (E), because at this late stage it is clear that any Brexit deal agreed in this Parliament will need further democratic approval, and that is what the motion will provide. It will put a lock around any deal that the Prime Minister forces through at the eleventh hour, or any revised deal that comes about at this very late stage. It will ensure that any Tory Brexit deal is subject to a referendum lock. In other words, it upholds the principle that any such deal must be confirmed by the public if we are to proceed.
I want to finish by dealing briefly with motion (G). I understand why it has been tabled, and I have had the opportunity to discuss it with the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) . Our focus today is on the way forward, and that is why we are supporting the three motions that I have mentioned. Motion (G) is, in a sense, a fall-back for if that exercise fails, so I understand why it has been tabled. We will not be voting in favour of it tonight, but we accept that it deals with an issue that the House will have to confront in due course.
Joanna Cherry
I am extremely puzzled by the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s position. We all have to compromise today. I am going to vote for motion (D), and I am on the record as having concerns about it and saying that it did not go far enough. What does he think will be the reaction of working-class voters if the Labour Front Benchers’ failure to support motion (G) means that we crash out with no deal a week on Friday?
Keir Starmer
As we try to find a way forward, I think it is important that we all adopt the right tone, rather than throwing around, “What will people think of this, that and the other?” We have always said that we will take whatever measures are necessary to stop no deal. The exercise that we are involved in is an attempt to break the impasse and find a way through, using the indicative process. I accept that if that fails, there will have to be an insurance exercise, but we are not at that stage yet.
Keir Starmer
I am not going to take another intervention. I am not rejecting the principle, but I am not going to stand at this Dispatch Box and listen to Members from across the House throwing around allegations that we are not interested in this, that and the other. We are trying to have a different debate, with a grown-up tone, to find a way forward. I am prepared to engage in that, and I am prepared to accept that we will have to confront the principle, but at the moment our focus is on how we break the deadlock. If we can do that, we will be able to move on to how we progress. If we cannot do that, we will have to look at other options. That is a genuine and sincere position from someone who cares a great deal about whether we crash out without a deal.
Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)
I want to start with my usual mantra. I have voted for Brexit three times, and I have backed the Prime Minister's withdrawal agreement, but I will be supporting the customs union and common market 2.0 tonight. I want to make it absolutely clear to anyone who is thinking of not doing so that supporting those options will not preclude them from supporting the withdrawal agreement, should it come back as MV4.
It is clear that we need a plan B. The House needs to show what it is in favour of if we cannot get the withdrawal agreement through. The reason for that is that, sadly, certain elements in my party are hellbent on shoving through a no-deal Brexit. I apologise to the Secretary of State for putting him in the same category, but I read on the cover of The Times this morning that 170 Conservatives had signed a letter to the Prime Minister—they kept it secret from all their other colleagues, by the way, so keen are they on debate—calling for no deal, despite Parliament’s resolution. Parliament has to vote tonight in support of these measures to show that it remains in favour of a reasoned exit from the EU, and it must not be taken in by some of the absurd arguments that we are hearing.
I am confused about how, three years after the referendum, we have got to a place in which no deal turns out to be allegedly what people voted for. I look aghast at some colleagues who I have long admired, who have spent the last three years attacking the judges for daring to suggest that Parliament might have a vote on article 50; praying in aid the manifesto which we lost on, despite having supported for five years a coalition Government who governed on a manifesto that had not existed in 2010; and berating remainers for treating with foreign powers and then merrily going off to the Polish and Hungarian Governments and asking them to force a no-deal Brexit on the United Kingdom.
The fact is that too many of our colleagues have decided that they are the self-appointed interpreters of Brexit, and that anything that gets in their way has to be stopped. When those of us in this House—I count in this almost everyone in the Chamber this evening—want to make reasonable progress and deliver Brexit in a reasonable way, the constitutional experts from the hard Brexit wing emerge to tell us that what we are doing represents the biggest constitutional outrage, oblivious to the fact that one of their colleagues has called for the prorogation of Parliament to get through a hard Brexit, and for a no-confidence vote in the Government from which he still takes the Whip.
The fact is that we seek a compromise. I voted for the withdrawal agreement. It has been supported by Gove, Leadsom, Fox, Grayling and Leigh—all people whose Brexit credentials cannot be second-guessed. For those who worry about the manifesto, it accords with the manifesto. If we cannot have the withdrawal agreement, we need a reasonable way to leave the European Union and deliver on Brexit. According to what the Brexiteers said during the leave campaign, Norway was on the table, Switzerland was on the table and EFTA was on the table. The House wants to leave with a deal, but if we do not show tonight that we are in favour of a deal, I guarantee that my colleagues will do their level best in the next two weeks to drive through a hard, no-deal Brexit.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
My remarks will be brief. I will explain why Plaid Cymru will be supporting only one option, and two procedures, as a potential solution to the Brexit deadlock. The Prime Minister insists on bringing forward the same votes on her botched deal, only for the House to reject it again, as has happened twice already. We believe it is essential to hold a people’s vote on the final deal. Ultimately, it must be a question of deciding between the arrangements that we know, and that have worked well, although not perfectly, for several decades, and what those who advocate change can devise. It is clear that there is no agreement on what that alternative might be, so what was started by a vote of the people must, I think, be ended by a vote of the people. We will be supporting the motion in the name of the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) tonight.
The best option for Wales is undoubtedly to remain within the European Union. As our economy is heavily dependent on the ability to export tariff-free to the European Union, leaving the Union would be damaging for the Welsh economy. It is our responsibility as Plaid Cymru, the party of Wales, to mitigate that as much as possible. Therefore, we will also be supporting the motion in the name of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), which would continue to ensure membership of the single market and a form of customs union, protecting jobs, protecting workers rights and protecting our economy. It is indeed strikingly similar to the proposals entitled “Securing Wales’ Future” that we brought forward some two years ago and which were largely the fine work of our late friend Steffan Lewis AM, whose untimely death this year deprived us of a great future prospect for our politics. If this is the final position adopted, it is imperative that this too is put to a people’s vote.
It is essential that we have a means of protection against crashing out of the European Union with no deal at all. The first step to protect against this must be a meaningful extension of article 50. This has to be obtained from the European Union, but were it to be refused—although I think that is unlikely—it must be up to this House to choose between a no-deal Brexit, which we have already rejected, and revoking article 50 and stopping this careering train in its tracks. Therefore, we will be supporting motion (G) in the name of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry).
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
I will begin by answering my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who said that he had not heard a single argument against a customs union. I credit him for staying for the whole debate, because I am going to give him plenty. He also said that I had been involved in a filibuster, but my contribution to the business of the House motion lasted for one minute and 13 seconds. That must be the shortest filibuster that there has ever been. I did once speak for one hour and 43 minutes on beer duty, but I do not think that one minute and 13 seconds really counts.
Why is a customs union a very bad idea? Broadly speaking, it would mean a huge loss of control over our economic policy, a decline in our foreign policy influence and a huge democratic deficit. Trade policy is not just about trade deals. It is about much more, which we would be handing over to the European Union without a seat at the table. There are tariffs, remedies and preferences as well as trade agreements, and these would all be given over. The House of Commons would abrogate its responsibility in relation to the UK’s trade policy. This is not Andorra or San Marino, which are currently in customs unions with the European Union. This is the world’s fifth largest economy.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe and I were on the same side in the referendum in 2016, so I am approaching this debate not as some kind of Brexiteer, but from the position of what makes sense for the UK’s trade policy. It makes no sense in our democracy for the House of Commons to vote tonight to hand over control of UK trade policy to Brussels. It would mean that a Maltese Commissioner, a Latvian MEP, a Portuguese Commissioner and a Slovene MEP would all have more say over UK trade policy than any elected politician, including the UK Prime Minister. That is not democratically sustainable, nor is it sustainable for our foreign policy.
My right hon. and learned Friend and I served in the Government together. At that time, I went into various rooms in foreign countries to speak to foreign Governments, so I know that trade is one of the aspects of leverage that we have. As a member of the European Union, the UK has influence on EU trade policy. That will obviously be gone when we are no longer a member, but under a customs union we would also have no influence over our own trade policy. We would be unable to have those conversations with the Government of the United States when we can say, “Well, if we can do this on some other area, we will have a word in Brussels on this particular trade issue.” All of that would be gone.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way because I did not have time to give way to him in the end. I think he would acknowledge that it is a slight exaggeration to say that the British Government would have as little influence over deals being negotiated by the EU as a Latvian MEP if we moved into a customs union. As the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) just said, a big economy such as ours would add to the attractions of the EU market for a negotiating partner, so surely we should put in place a structure giving us far more consultation and involvement in the negotiations than my right hon. Friend is describing—not as good as now, but perfectly adequate.
Greg Hands
I think that is wishful thinking. The European Union is highly likely to prioritise the interests of its members versus the interests of non-members. That has always been the case. There are also serious arguments as to whether European Union rules would even allow a non-member to have an influence on EU trade policy. I am afraid that that is just a fact.
Entering into a customs union would be democratically unsustainable. Tariffs would be set by people who are not accountable to this House or to our constituents. That could be damaging for goods coming into the country, if those people were to set high tariffs on goods that our consumers would quite like access to. It could also happen the other way around with things such as trade remedies, as has been briefly mentioned. All these incredibly important aspects, including trade defences, would be handed over to Brussels. Now, Brussels might look after our trade remedies, but it would not give them priority. It would give the defence of its own industries—the fee-paying members of the European Union—priority over countries such as ours. This would mean that those all-important WTO investigations into, say, the ceramics industry, would be relegated below investigations to protect, for example, the German or Dutch steel industries.
On trade deals, the Turkey trap has been mentioned; this is about the asymmetry. The EU would offer access to our 65 million consumers without necessarily being able to achieve anything in return. I can guarantee that the UK asks would be the ones that would be dropped first, and that the UK items of defence would be the ones that the EU would concede first. It is inevitable because we would not be a fee-paying member of the European Union, so we would not be a priority.
Steve Brine
I am listening very carefully to my right hon. Friend. I have a lot of respect for him, I have read his article and I have listened to every speech so far during today’s debate, so I understand what he does not want, which is a customs union. But bearing in mind that Parliament has yet to decide what it does want—and has rejected all other options, and the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement and political declaration—what is he arguing for?
Greg Hands
I continue to argue for the Prime Minister’s agreement, and that is where I think we should head. People talk about a compromise; that is the best compromise, and it is the one that my hon. Friend and I have both voted for.
I am astonished that the Labour Front Benchers are supporting the idea of handing over our trade policy. They were the people most passionately against TTIP, and other trade agreements, due to the access that it would supposedly have given foreign companies to the NHS. As it happens, I do not buy into that idea, but the idea that it will now be fine because we are handing over trade policy to the EU without having a seat at the table is for the birds. I think it was Senator Elizabeth Warren who said,
“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”
That is exactly what I fear will happen in an EU customs union if motion (C) is passed this evening.
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
This has been a good debate. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) for his innovation, and to other hon. Members for the way in which they have engaged in the process.
Let me be clear: every day I am more and more pleased that Scots voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU. We could have walked away from all this, washed our hands of it and said that it was nothing to do with us, but we must engage and we have done so at every single step of this sad, sorry process. There are no winners in this tragedy of epic proportions. It is a horror show, and this process is all about us making things less bad, rather than better. However, there is one thing that has come out of this situation; this Government seem to be uniquely bad at minority government and at reaching out to other parties, and this process is forcing us to talk to one another in a more meaningful way.
The Scottish National party did not vote for an EU referendum and we did not vote to trigger article 50, and we can see why. I am pro-European. The EU is a force for good that has made us wealthier, safer, greener and fairer. I have benefited from our membership—from freedom of movement, Erasmus, and the privileges and rights that we have as European citizens. But we have to engage in what you, Mr Speaker, were right to call “part of a process”, so let me turn to the motions before us.
I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) on her proposal. It is a responsible proposal and frankly, anybody who is opposing it tonight is being irresponsible. No deal is a dangerous, damaging Brexit, and to those who call it a clean Brexit, I say this: it is the messiest Brexit possible. My hon. and learned Friend’s proposal is also the best option, and that is the reason we will back it. The motion would revoke article 50 as a reset clause and, frankly, I am astonished that the Labour party has not been able to support it tonight—I have to say, disappointed is the least I can say on that.
We are also in favour of a people’s vote, and I support the motion from the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle). As somebody who wants to campaign to remain in the EU, I would look forward to doing so.
Let me make reference to the motion from the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and pay tribute to the way that he has engaged with us in this process. I hope that he does not mind me saying that I want to remain in the EU and he wants to leave, and that we disagree profoundly on many issues, but I am very grateful for the way in which he has tried to engage with us, and I know that my hon. Friends are very grateful for the way in which he has conducted this process. We would like a referendum. I also think that a long extension is the right way to take things forward, but his reassurances about freedom of movement and the particular situation in which Scotland finds itself have been incredibly important to us, and I would like to acknowledge that. That is not a wholehearted endorsement and, as he rightly pointed out, there will hopefully be a time further down the line when there are amendments and other proposals to that purpose.
We can no longer be held hostage by a small band of Tory extremists on this. It is not the end of the line today. I appeal for Members to support the motion in the name of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West. We must find a way forward. We should right now be debating poverty, climate change and austerity, but instead, we are focused on the least worst options and damage limitation. We should not be doing that, and it is time for us to put this Brexit nightmare behind us.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
I call the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—a three-minute limit now applies, as he was advised earlier.
George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)
For some time, I favoured a simpler and swifter Brexit, based on our leaving the European Union but rejoining the European Free Trade Association, and in so doing, making our existing rights and obligations as a signatory to the treaty establishing the European economic area operable. It would mean that we would have no customs union and an independent trade policy. We would be outside the common fisheries policy and the common agricultural policy, but we would accept regulatory alignment to reduce border friction. My motion was not selected, but this evening, I will support motion (D) in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles)—the so-called common market 2.0 option—for reasons that I will come on to.
There were two ways to address the issue of Brexit. One was to self-confidently resolve from the beginning that we would leave as a third country and prepare on that basis, and be willing to leave without an agreement if necessary. I would have supported the Prime Minister in that, had she seen that through. However, if the Cabinet always believed that we could not leave without a deal, it had to recognise that that would require significant compromise with the EU, which in turn would require the development of a cross-party consensus in this House. Now that the Prime Minister and her Cabinet have signalled that they are unwilling to leave under a no-deal scenario, we must try to secure a consensus.
Last Friday, the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement was defeated for a third time, but the vast majority of Government Members voted for the withdrawal agreement, albeit unenthusiastically in many cases. My contention this evening is that hon. Members who were willing to take a second look at the withdrawal agreement should also take a second look at common market 2.0. Certainly, it envisages a temporary customs union, but so does the withdrawal agreement, first through the implementation period, then through a probable extension to the implementation period, and finally through the backstop. It also envisages some regulatory alignment through membership of EFTA and the EEA, but that would be dealt with expeditiously under the motion. Under the withdrawal agreement, the UK is already committed to aligning its regulations in relevant areas. The extent to which we have border checks would depend on any divergence from that.
I believe that this option provides a way to compromise and a way forward for the House. It is far preferable to motion (C), the proposal for a customs union, which, as hon. Members have pointed out, does not make sense for an independent country such as this. It means that we would have our commercial interests traded away in the interests of other countries, and it would not solve the border issues.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
While the headlines that greeted last week’s indicative votes, saying that they were a shambles and chaos, were patently ridiculous, given that it was the first time that we were given the opportunity to discuss these options after two and a half years of the Government failing to get a consensus, it would be helpful if we made progress today. As other Members have said, that will involve all of us not just sticking to our first preference but voting for our second preference and, indeed, any preference that we can live with. That is certainly something that I shall be doing. I will support Labour’s unanimously agreed conference policy in favour of a public vote, and I am minded to support the motion in the name of the Father of the House. However, I and other hon. Members have concern about that and about the length of the extension, because I do not want the Prime Minister to pocket it, add it to her political declaration and take us out of the European Union on 22 May. I do not think that would be acceptable.
I have similar concerns about the motion in the name of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles). It is better—it takes away all the stuff about the free movement of labour—but it still has only a temporary customs union and could still be bagged by the Prime Minister and added to the political declaration, and we would be out within a few weeks.
Sir Oliver Letwin
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that the only way in which the Government can carry this forward, if there is a cross-party consensus, is by bringing in something like the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill, which would give his party the opportunity to seek to amend it, no doubt with much support around the House, to prevent the eventualities that he is talking about.
Mr Bradshaw
I very much hope the right hon. Gentleman is right, and I take his point on that. I also want absolutely to agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett). If we get progress today and a majority on one or more of these options, my view is that basing the future of our country on a majority that has been agreed in Parliament among Members of Parliament, for whom it might have been not their first preference but their second or third, will lack not only long-term legitimacy but sustainability. It will be impossible for us as a House or for any Government to take this forward without it being ratified in a confirmatory vote by the British public. That is why, whatever happens tonight, I think we are going to have to accept the principle that the Brexit that is now on offer is so different from the Brexit that was offered in 2016 that it would be undemocratic and illegitimate not to give the people a final say on it.
I want to say one last thing about the motion in the name of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). I will support that motion and, as I said earlier, I cannot see any reason for anybody—unless they actively want a no-deal Brexit—not to support it tonight. I hope that Labour Front Benchers might support it tonight and that they will support it on Wednesday, if it comes to that, because we have to have an insurance policy against a no-deal, crash-out Brexit. More than 6 million members of our community are demanding it, and I urge all hon. Members, on both sides of the House—it is only a recommendation for Opposition Members—to vote for the motion and to do so with enthusiasm.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
I will be short and to the point. Let us go back to first principles. What was the referendum question about? It was about our membership of the EU. This country decided to revoke that membership, and therefore we must implement that decision. By doing so, we effectively become a sovereign, independent nation. Any sovereign, independent nation gets involved in international relations. We do so through our membership of NATO, which has obligations and benefits. We are also a member of the United Nations, which has responsibilities and clear benefits, and interestingly, we also make a financial contribution.
As an independent, sovereign nation, we will clearly want to enter into free trade agreements. Logic would dictate that we should start with the 30 closest countries, which are in Europe. They are our main trading partners, making up 55% of our trade. In any agreement, we would want no tariffs, regulatory alignment and access to a market of 500 million people, including some of the richest in the world. We would like agriculture and fisheries to be excluded. We would want to make sure that there was a fair competition policy, and we would want state aid rules to be fair to all participants. What a wonderful opportunity for our businesses, what benefits for our country.
Clearly, there may—and should—be some obligations. What about payments and contributions? Quite rightly, we would make contributions to the institutions, and we might even make contributions to poorer regions to help them develop, but there would be a significant saving on the amount we pay under the present arrangements. What about free movement? Yes, we would have to accept there might be free movement, but we might in fact want that, because we need employees for our NHS, workers during the summer and the opportunity to tap into that employment base in Europe. Under this agreement, however, we would also have an emergency brake, so if circumstances were such that we wanted to curtail immigration, we would be in a position to do so.
What about changing the rules? Clearly, under any agreement, there would have to be the ability to change rules, and we would have to accept them, but we could be right in at the beginning helping to frame those rules and making sure they were ones we could tolerate. If we were an independent sovereign nation, however, those rules could only be implemented through an Act of Parliament passed by this House—no other body could impose those rules on us.
What if any of this is ultimately unacceptable to us? We could say, “We’re not going to enact those policies because we are a sovereign Parliament and we are not willing to do so”; we could enter into a negotiation with those countries and try to come to some arrangement; or, as an independent country, we could give one year’s notice and leave. This is quite clearly the best possible outcome. We would confirm the revocation of our membership of the EU but also be part of what I consider to be the best free trade arrangement there is.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Many have lauded today’s exercise, but this is a hurried discussion about a wide range of possible solutions, and yet the House once claimed that the five days, and all of the Committee scrutiny, questions and statements, needed to put in place the Government’s proposal were not enough. Of course, people say, “It’s not our fault. It’s the Government’s fault”, but let us not pretend that we will reach a conclusion on these issues after any significant debate or scrutiny.
The DUP judge all the options on two grounds. First, do they deal with the toxic issue of the backstop? Secondly, will they deliver on what people voted for in the referendum? The customs union option, which we have already debated, would not deal with the EU’s objections—in the terms in which it laid them out in the withdrawal agreement—to the problems along the Irish border. Equally, the proposal in the name of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) would not deal with the issue, because the EU has made it clear that where there is uncertainty about the future relationship—whether we stay fully in the single market or whatever—it would require the backstop to be in place. Indeed, the withdrawal agreement makes it clear that even if the backstop were to be removed, it could be applied in whole or in part depending on how it judged the settlement.
Mr Fysh
Does the right hon. Gentleman also recall that being in a customs union is not a frictionless state but would require physical movements, certificates on every consignment, export declarations, import VAT, up to 200 million transactions per annum, and so on, which is not frictionless trade?
Sammy Wilson
For those reasons, the solutions before us do not deal with the backstop.
Some people would say, “Well, of course, there is no solution, other than staying in the EU, that deals with the backstop”. I do not accept that, first, because of current practice, and secondly, because of what the EU has itself said about what would happen in the case of a no deal: it has argued that it would not need barriers along the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I agree that in addition to a customs union we would probably need some modest regulatory alignment to ensure an open border in Ireland and at Dover, but the regulatory alignment would be the same for the whole of the United Kingdom. I thought the DUP’s objection to the backstop was that it would put in place different arrangements for Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK and therefore place a barrier down the Irish sea. Motion (C) avoids that.
Sammy Wilson
I said there were two criteria: first, would it deal with the issue of difference between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, and, secondly, would it deliver what people voted for when they voted to leave the EU? Of course, if we stayed in the customs union, or a customs union arrangement, with the degree of regulatory alignment required, that would not deliver what people voted for.
On the motion for a confirmatory public vote, the option emerging today is for the people to be given a choice between a deal based on whatever compromise solution comes from this remain Parliament and remaining, but that is not a choice as far as the vast majority of people who voted to leave the EU are concerned: remain or half remain. People voted the first time to leave, and the idea that we give people such a choice is not acceptable. On the SNP motion, its Members have made no secret of where they stand. They want to stay in the EU and to provide for that situation. For those reasons, we would not vote for the SNP motion either. We will not support any of these arrangements tonight because they would not safeguard the Union and they would not deliver Brexit.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Common market 2.0 is a strong Brexit, a workers’ Brexit, a no-backstop Brexit and a Eurosceptic Brexit. We would be out of the political union—out of the common fisheries policy, the farming policy, home affairs policy, taxation—and we would leave the jurisdiction of the ECJ. We would regain our sovereignty and take back control. We would not be rule takers either. Sitting on the EEA Joint Committee, we could delay, adapt or seek a derogation from any single market law or directive. EFTA states have secured over 1,100 derogations and adaptions. Between them, Norway and Iceland alone have obtained a derogation from EU law on more than 400 occasions. We would also have much greater involvement in the law-making process, with a right to be consulted on any new EU single market law.
Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend and his colleagues on the intelligent work they have done on promoting common market 2.0, and other right hon. and hon. Members on today’s debate and the sensible compromises that have been brought forward. Would he agree that it would have been much better for all concerned if the House had had this discussion two years ago to help shape our negotiations with the EU?
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend is right, though of course hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Under common market 2.0, the UK would regain its seat at global bodies such as the WTO and so be able to shape the global standards that are the basis for many EU and EEA laws. As an EFTA member, we would take back control over immigration. Article 112 of the EEA agreement gives us important safeguards that would allow us to “unilaterally take appropriate measures”. Article 28(3) would allow us to apply brakes
“on grounds of public policy, security or health”.
We would also be able to do our own trade deals outside of the EU—EFTA states have 27 deals with 43 other countries.
Common market 2.0 is also a workers’ Brexit that would allow us to keep the high standard of workers’ rights on annual leave, equal pay, maternity and parental leave and many other things, and we would be aligned with the single market, which would safeguard our economy, businesses and jobs. It would also be a no-backstop Brexit because it could be negotiated before the end of the transition period, meaning that the backstop would never need to be activated. The former President of the Court of Justice of the European Free Trade Association States, Carl Baudenbacher, said in an interview that a Norway-style deal could solve our issues relating to the backstop. There would also be no backstop because we would mirror customs union arrangements until the frictionless border problem was solved.
Common market 2.0 is a unifying Brexit. It brings together the support of remainers and leavers across the parties, from my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and the hon. Members for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock). A report produced by King’s College London about changing attitudes to Brexit shows that the most popular option is a Norway-style deal, and it is gaining traction. Since 2017, support for EFTA has increased to 43%. Among leave voters, 34% opted for the EEA option in 2018, up from 24% in 2017. In the past, it has been supported by many of the principal Eurosceptics,
Robert Halfon
I will not, because many other Members wish to speak.
Last week, the Government said that we would leave the European economic area automatically when we left the EU. However, in a January 2017 application for a judicial review of exactly this issue, they conceded in court—as can be seen in paragraph 16(d) of their legal submission—that the legal position argued by the applicant, Mr Adrian Yalland, that we would not leave the EEA automatically, but would do so by giving an article 127 notice, was in fact correct. The Government’s legal submission states
“for the avoidance of doubt, the Secretary does not rely on Article 126 as giving rise to the termination of the EEA Agreement.”
Common market 2.0 is a Brexit that can unite the Conservative party, unite the country and unite Parliament. It is a Brexit that is for everyone.
Several hon. Members rose—
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). He and I have very different perspectives on this issue—I represent a constituency that voted remain, and I campaigned for remain—but we have reached some of the same conclusions. I think today’s debate is about that spirit of compromise, trade-off and working out what each of us can live with, rather than being about our preferred option.
I will vote for all the options on the table, although I am sceptical about some of them; my biggest fear at this stage is that we will be heading for a no-deal Brexit on 12 April unless the House can reach a view about what it is in favour of—ideally more than one thing, but at least something. I think it highly unlikely that the EU will give us a longer extension, or will even contemplate that, if we are still locked into the indecision vortex that we have been locked into for so long.
Everything has its trade-offs, not least when it comes to a complex compromise such as the one put together so carefully by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and others. It is easy to target different points and to say, “I am against this little bit and that little bit and therefore I will not vote for it”, but nothing is perfect. Let me say to colleagues, as I did last week, that we should all hold our noses when it comes to a number of points that might cause us concern. We must break this deadlock before we crash out a week on Thursday with no deal.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Tonight we are being urged to seek compromise, but it is not surprising to note that—I think—only five members of the Labour party voted for the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement. I changed my vote, because I could see this coming down the road towards me. The agreement is a very imperfect beast and I have received a great many criticisms, but tonight’s votes will make the position clear. I do not wish to vote for any options that are on the table, but I am being asked to choose one. Well, I chose the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement.
Interestingly, two of the motions on which we will have a vote tonight require a withdrawal agreement, as was mentioned earlier. Motions (C) and (D) would not give us control over our immigration. I was surprised to hear the two Members who advocated it talking about brakes—those were weasel words, in my view. I am sorry to have to say that, but trying to reassure Scottish National party Members about the number of people who will come over as a result of freedom of movement and to reassure Labour Members that there are brakes is playing both ends against the middle. The reality is that we are very unlikely to have control over our migration policy. If that is what Members want, fine, but I do not think that it is what has emerged from the debates.
I am absolutely opposed to a second referendum. I do not believe that we would ask the same question. To all intents and purposes, it would be a completely different referendum this time around. I do not know how anyone could explain on the doorstep why they had chosen to ignore the too-difficult question of implementing the referendum result. Let me read these words to the House, because I agree with every one of them:
“Over 33.5 million people cast a vote…72% of the electorate. Turnout at this level has not been seen since the 1992 General Election…No matter which side of the argument won, it was inevitable that there would be people left disappointed. That is the nature of debate, elections and referendums. It is fundamentally undemocratic to argue that the process should be re-run because the outcome was not what some people wanted…arguments over turnout, the majority, or the accuracy or otherwise of statements made throughout the course of the campaign do not invalidate the result.”
Those were your words, Mr Speaker, and I agree with every single one of them.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
As politicians, we practise the art of politics, and the art of politics is the art of compromise. I have sat here for four and a half hours, and during that time, “compromise” is the word that has been used most often. It is through compromise that we will make progress, and we have made no progress for nearly three years. I think that one of the main reasons for that is the hubris—the arrogance and over-confidence—of the Prime Minister, the former Prime Minister, and leading Conservatives.
When David Cameron decided to call a referendum, Jean-Claude Juncker asked him, “Why have you done this?” David Cameron replied, “Don’t worry—I can deliver a 66% ‘yes’ vote.” Juncker said, “I could not get that in Luxembourg.” There was also hubris on the Prime Minister’s part when she called for an election in 2017. I am not criticising her for that, because by calling for the election she allowed me to get in through the back door. However, she thought that she would secure a majority of 160, and she lost her majority. The Chief Whip said today that she should have recognised the result of that election. I congratulate him on saying that: I think that he is a very wise man, and a very brave man. The same hubris was practised by the Prime Minister’s Ministers. Who remembers these quotations? “The Brexit negotiations will take 10 minutes,” said Peter Lilley. The free trade agreement with the EU would be
“one of the easiest in human history”,
according to the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox).
The election result was very close. The Prime Minister could have reached out across the Chamber and across the country, but she failed to do so, and that is why we are here today. I urge all Members to vote for compromise tonight. I will be voting for all four of the options that have been put before us, and I ask other Members to do the same.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
There are huge divisions in our country. Although I voted remain, I do not support a second referendum or revoking previous decisions because I do not believe that that would heal our divisions. However, having no deal with our largest trading partner is unacceptable. It poses huge risks to our economy and creates uncertainty on the Irish border.
I voted three times for the Prime Minister’s deal. It is a bespoke deal and to me it is the best option, but it has failed three times. Saying no to everything does not work. We need a compromise and I will support a customs union this evening. That is not the same as the customs union that we are in today. We can be in a customs union, but out of the common fisheries policy, the common agricultural policy and free movement. All those were big issues in the referendum. Yes, we would have the same tariffs on goods, but we would not have to follow the same regulation on goods. On services—the key part of our economy—we would be free to make our own regulations, and our own trade deals with other parts of the world. A customs union does not involve handing over our trade policy to Brussels because a country Britain’s size would influence Brussels policy. Even Turkey retains its own say on trade sanctions.
The fundamental issue is deliverability. We could be in a customs union, combined with the withdrawal agreement, and deal with everything with the future framework. That could all be done by 22 May and we would not need ever longer extensions or another European election.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). I suggest that there is the real rub of what is going on, or the danger we face tonight if we do not look at what is behind what seems like a lot of sensible compromise. My real fear is that unless we vote for motions (E) and (G), which I will vote for, the Government will, as the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) phrased it, put it in the bag and table yet again, for another vote, the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement and slip into the political declaration either the customs union or the so-called common market 2.0. I will not vote for the customs union because it does not deliver the frictionless trade that our manufacturing sector desperately needs. My concern about motion (D) is exactly that.
Anna Soubry
The hon. Gentleman says “Compromise”, and I hear exactly what he says, but it would not be in the withdrawal—
Mr Speaker
Colleagues, voting forms are available from the Vote Office and in the Division Lobbies. As colleagues know, voting will start at the end of this statement/announcement and will continue for 30 minutes from the moment it starts.
I will now repeat what I said the other day, for the avoidance of doubt and for the sake of clarity. The forms look very similar to deferred Division forms, except that they are blue, and they will list the title and letter of the selected motions. The text of the motions is on the Order Paper. Members with surnames from A to K should hand in their forms in the Aye Lobby at the relevant desk for their surname and Members with surnames from L to Z should hand in their forms in the No Lobby at the relevant desk. As with deferred Divisions, Members may not—I repeat may not—vote Aye and No to the same motion. If this happens, the vote will not be counted. As with deferred Divisions, Members may not hand in forms on behalf of other Members. Each Member must hand in his or her own form. Members with proxy votes in operation will need to get their nominated proxy to hand in their form.
A short note is available in the Vote Office confirming those arrangements. I will announce the results in the Chamber as soon as they are ready. Those results will be published in the same way as deferred Divisions on the Commons debates website and app and in Hansard, showing how each hon. Member voted on each motion. Voting is due to start now and colleagues have 30 minutes to cast their votes.
Business without Debate
Mr Speaker
Motions 3 to 7 not moved.
Scottish Affairs Committee
Ordered,
That Kirstene Hair be discharged from the Scottish Affairs Committee and Paul Masterton be added.—(Bill Wiggin, on behalf of the Selection Committee.)
Mr Speaker
Order. I will now suspend the House until the outcomes of the votes on motions relating to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from and future relationship with the European Union are available. The Division bells will be rung 10 minutes before the House resumes.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Votes)
(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
I can now announce the outcome of the Divisions on motions relating to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from and future relationship with the European Union.
In respect of Mr Kenneth Clarke’s motion (C)—customs union—the Ayes were 273 and the Noes were 276, so the Noes have it.
In respect of Mr Nicholas Boles’s motion (D)—common market 2.0—the Ayes were 261 and the Noes were 282, so the Noes have it.
In respect of Mr Peter Kyle’s motion (E)—confirmatory public vote—the Ayes were 280 and the Noes were 292, so the Noes have it.
In respect of Joanna Cherry’s motion (G)—parliamentary supremacy—the Ayes were 191 and the Noes were 292, so the Noes have it.
The lists showing how hon. Members voted will be published in the usual way on the CommonsVotes app and website, and in Hansard.
The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Stephen Barclay)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is now the second time the House has considered a wide variety of options for a way forward. It has once again failed to find a clear majority for any of the options, yet the result of the House’s decision on Friday not to endorse the withdrawal agreement means that the default legal position is that the UK will leave the EU in just 11 days’ time. To secure any further extension, the Government will have to put forward a credible proposition to the EU as to what we will do with that extra time. This House has continuously rejected leaving without a deal, just as it has rejected not leaving at all. Therefore, the only option is to find a way through that allows the UK to leave with a deal. The Government continue to believe that the best course of action is to do so as soon as possible. If the House were to agree a deal this week, it may still be possible to avoid holding European parliamentary elections. Cabinet will meet in the morning to consider the results of tonight’s vote and how we should proceed.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is disappointing that no solution has won a majority this evening, but I remind the House that the Prime Minister’s unacceptable deal has been overwhelmingly rejected three times. The margin of defeat for one of the options tonight was very narrow indeed, and the Prime Minister’s deal has been rejected by very large majorities on three occasions. If it is good enough for the Prime Minister to have three chances at her deal, I suggest that possibly the House should have a chance to consider again the options that we had before us today in a debate on Wednesday, so that the House can succeed where the Prime Minister has failed, in presenting a credible economic relationship with Europe for the future that prevents us from crashing out with no deal.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It would indeed be an outrage if the Government sought to bring back their deal. It really is about time they accepted reality: the deal they have put forward has been defeated three times, with the largest defeat in parliamentary history—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. No, the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to be heard and, believe me, notwithstanding the shouting from a sedentary position, he will be heard. That is the be all and end all of it. It is as simple as that: the right hon. Gentleman will be heard.
Ian Blackford
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
I acknowledge that I am disappointed that we have not won tonight in respect of revoking article 50, having a people’s vote or having a single market and customs union, but the reality is that two of the votes were won by a very small number. We need to try to see where we can find consensus and work together.
Fundamentally for those of us who represent seats in Scotland, we voted to remain in the European Union. Tonight, a vast majority of Scottish MPs voted to revoke article 50. A vast majority of Scottish MPs voted for a people’s vote. A vast majority of Scottish MPs voted to stay in the single market and customs union. It is crystal clear to us from Scotland that our votes in this House are disrespected, and it is becoming increasingly clear to the people of Scotland that, if we want to secure our future as a European nation, we are going to have to take our own responsibilities. The case is this: sovereignty rests with the people of Scotland, not with this House. The day is coming when we will determine our own future, and it will be as an independent country.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have given everything to an attempt to find a compromise that can take this country out of the European Union while maintaining our economic strength and our political cohesion. I accept that I have failed. I have failed chiefly because my party refuses to compromise. I regret, therefore, to announce that I can no longer sit for this party.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Of course I shall come to other Members. I call Sir Vince Cable.
Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is even clearer than it was the last time we had indicative votes that one compromise option has substantial support. There is the largest number of votes in the House for a people’s vote—larger than last time. Is it not possible to combine the two and therefore find a way forward through consensus?
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman’s question is of course of a rhetorical character. It invites no response from me, but he has registered his view, upon which I am sure colleagues will reflect.
Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just to remind the House, is it not the case that the only proposition that has ever had a majority in this House is the Brady amendment? That is a fact. Whatever Members may think or say, that is the proposition that has had a majority in this House and that could allow the withdrawal agreement to go through. With Chancellor Merkel due to visit the Irish Prime Minister this Thursday, there is still an opportunity for the Prime Minister and the Government to prosecute the issue that has bedevilled her withdrawal agreement throughout: the backstop. That issue still needs to be addressed. If it is addressed, we can be in business.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Having looked at the figures, I reinforce the comments from the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable). I regret what the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) has had to do, but were he to link to his proposal the opportunity to have a public vote, we would have a huge majority in this House. The idea that we would avoid doing that for fear of the democratic moment of the European elections is frankly absurd. Why would we be afraid of one democratic event and for fear of that avoid a further one? That makes no sense. The Prime Minister’s deal is dead. We should look at where the majorities in this House lie, and they lie with a softer Brexit going against a people’s vote to the country.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. With the help of the people who work with me, I have got a damn sight nearer to a majority in this House than anybody else has so far, apart from the rather curious and now historic Malthouse compromise, which I fear is dead. Three votes is quite near.
We cannot go on with everybody voting against every proposition. The difficulty is that there are people who want a people’s vote who would not vote for my motion because they thought they were going to get a people’s vote. There were people—the Scottish nationalists—who wanted common market 2.0, so would not vote for my motion. All of them had nothing against mine. If they continue to carry on like that, they will fail. I say to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) that if we added the people’s vote to a motion such as mine, we would lose votes from all over the place, and from the Labour party. We would lose more than we would gain. Those Members should accept that they do not have a majority yet for the people’s vote and vote for something that they have no objection to as a fall-back position. That is politics. I sometimes think that this particular Parliament in which I find myself sitting is not very political at the moment, and it is confounding the general public.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Ind)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. What you do not know is that a week ago an effort was made to put forward composite motions. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of a number of us, that was resisted. However, as the Father of the House rightly identifies, there is undoubtedly a way of getting this together—that is why this is a three-stage process. [Interruption.] Hon. Members should just let me explain this. As the Father of the House knows, the reason why many of us could not support the customs union was that it did not have the regulatory alignment that the Labour party had put forward, which unfortunately it did not get round to tabling anything today. If we put the customs union, regulatory alignment and the people’s vote together—[Interruption.] Hon. Members could then vote against it. If we look at the figures—[Interruption.] If Members could stop yelling in my ear, I would say that there is every chance on Wednesday that we will find a compromise.
Mr Speaker, another thing needs to be said. I am very upset, as I am sure many others are, that the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who is a fine champion for his community, has made the decision that he has. He is wrong, because he has been right in what he has tried to achieve. The reason his motion failed was that it did not have the longevity of being in the withdrawal agreement, and on that basis, again, a compromise does exist that can get a majority.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I, within the rules of order, just point out that a clear majority of Conservative MPs—no fewer than 159 including tellers—voted a week ago that we should leave the European Union without a deal? I find it very strange that everybody assumes that, because of the House’s position as a whole, that cannot be a way forward. If it was always going to be left to the House of Commons, dominated as it is by remainers, to have the final say, there was never any hope for a referendum to achieve anything whatsoever.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman has made his own point in his own inimitable way, and he gives every indication of being well satisfied with his prodigious efforts this evening.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The consequence of tonight’s votes is that the House has voted in favour of nothing. As a result, in 11 days’ time, the United Kingdom will leave the European Union without an agreement unless the Prime Minister, who has just left the Chamber, acts. One thing that we have now voted three times to tell the Prime Minister is that we will not accept leaving the European Union without an agreement—the last time it was by 400 votes to 160. The Prime Minister indicated a week ago that she would respect the will of the House. Mr Speaker, has she given you any indication that she intends to make a statement from the Dispatch Box to the effect that she will now be writing to the European Council to seek a further extension to article 50?
Mr Speaker
The short answer to the right hon. Gentleman is that the Prime Minister has given me no such indication and I have received no such indication from any other Minister. Indeed, we have just had the results of the votes—I announced them only a matter of minutes ago—and there has been no communication to me from Government Ministers, but if that were to change I would of course notify the House, or it would become apparent to the House, ere long.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is probably worth recalling that last Friday the withdrawal agreement negotiated by our Prime Minister achieved more votes than any of the options we voted on tonight.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that now is the time for a little reflection and humility. I would have expected a little more humility from the Brexit Secretary in his statement, because when it comes to the need for a majority, we are all in this together, and that includes Government, too.
The bottom line is that in the last two sessions of these indicative votes, the proposition that my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and I have offered has come top, and tonight came within eight votes of the Secretary of State’s own proposition—the proposition put forward by Government. Is it not now the case that if there is not a majority for anything outright, we have to start looking to see how minorities in this House can be brought together in order to get the blockage within the House of Commons sorted, so that we can move forward, our politics can move forward, the Commons can move forward, and our country can get the resolution it needs? Mr Speaker, can you help guide us as to how Government can start acting with humility, reaching out and working with those of us with propositions rather than sticking to their guns?
Mr Speaker
I fear that the hon. Gentleman invests me with powers that I do not claim to possess. It is late at night. I think we have to await, as Macmillan used to say, events, and see what transpires tomorrow. God willing, I shall be in my place, and I will always seek to facilitate the House, which is it is the responsibility of the Speaker to do, but I cannot say with any confidence what will happen, and in that respect I think I am, frankly, not in a minority. I think that most colleagues would say with confidence that they do not know what is to follow.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In the light of the word “blockage” that was just used, and the suggestion that somehow or other there is something wrong with our democratic system, may I simply say this? I recall the fact that section 1 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 quite clearly states, as a matter of law, that the European Communities Act 1972 is repealed on exit day, and if that exit day happens to be 12 April, so be it. That is the law of the land. That is something that we ought to hang on to, because it is the anchor of the referendum in which the British people voted.
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman. He has represented his own position correctly, and I know that because I have heard him make that point with comparable eloquence on several occasions. Whether he has entirely fairly characterised the position of the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), I do not know, but the hon. Gentleman will doubtless study the Official Report and make his own assessment.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is obviously a very disquieting evening for all of us. Unlike some other Members who have made points of order, I am not going to promote the merits, great though they are, of the motion put forward by the Father of the House. I just want to point out that the Government have an opportunity tomorrow to bring something forward to resolve this. The House has another day on Wednesday, and we might consider how we best use that, perhaps by looking at some different way of addressing these problems. We have got the time booked, so although this is desperate and last-minute, it is not the end.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This point of order may involve you. The motion that had the greatest number of votes was motion (E), on a confirmatory public vote. Although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) pointed out, that was fewer than the number of votes for the Prime Minister’s deal on Friday, may I invite you to get party leaders together to see whether there could be a run-off between those two, with a free vote across the House?
Mr Speaker
I always reflect on points that colleagues make to me, but I am not anticipating what might happen in days to come. The hon. Gentleman has made his own point in his own way. I do not mean it in any unkind or discourteous sense, but it is a point I have heard floated in parts of the popular prints in recent days; that does not invest it with the validity that it might otherwise lack.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I profess myself upset that the Father of the House’s motion missed getting a vote by three votes, particularly given that five members of my party who profess to want a softer Brexit voted against it and could have made a decisive impact on tonight’s decision. Given that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said, we are considering this again on Wednesday, can you give us an early indication of what procedural wisdom will look like, when motions can start to be tabled and whether there will be a new way of looking at this, in order to come to a conclusive outcome?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The only early indication I can give him is that I think it is reasonable, on the basis of what was passed earlier today in the business of the House motion, to suppose that the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) will be carefully contemplating the intended procedure for Wednesday. Specifically, I think it is reasonable to expect that he will be looking to table a business of the House motion and, from that, the hon. Gentleman will gather what the right hon. Member for West Dorset has in mind.
Colleagues will be able to take a view about that. Moreover, just as colleagues have spoken to each other in recent days to bid for support for particular options, it is open to colleagues to communicate with each other about these matters before Wednesday, and I rather imagine that they will do so. Precisely what procedure is envisaged I cannot say, nor is it self-evident that there can be only one procedure proposed. There may well be a number of alternative ideas circulating in colleagues’ minds, and I cannot say more than that. We will have to see. [Interruption.] There is nothing very significant about that. I hear a knowing grunt from someone on the Treasury Bench as though something remarkably significant or suspicious has been said, but neither of those things is so.
Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. To follow on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) said about the influence that you may have on the business of the House motion on Wednesday, we need now to be brutal about this. The Prime Minister’s deal was last defeated by 58 votes—that is the worst option, so that should get taken off the table. Are we going to have an eliminatory process? Common market 2.0 lost by 21 votes. A confirmatory ballot lost by 12 votes. Revocation lost by 11 votes. Clearly top of the table was the Father of the House’s motion on the customs union. Are we going to have a brutal process whereby we get to one outcome on Wednesday, and can you influence that? It needs to happen.
Mr Speaker
I do not cavil at the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I do not want him to think I am being pedantic, but I dislike the use of the word “brutal”. I am not in favour of brutality. I am in favour of clarity, of decisiveness and of resolution.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman does not need to apologise. In so far as that requires some concentrated thinking, I agree. Some colleagues will be pleased with the outcome of tonight’s votes. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is noisily yelling his approval of that observation, beaming as he stands by me. Other colleagues are disappointed. We are where we are. Nothing has won tonight.
In what do I take comfort? Well, Roger Federer put on a majestic masterclass in Miami last night. I am happy about that, and of course I am happy that, although nothing won tonight here in this Chamber, at the Emirates Arsenal won 2-0. I just have to content myself with that for tonight—I appreciate that Newcastle Members will not be so pleased—and we shall have to see what happens tomorrow. I am sorry that I cannot add to that, but I feel that colleagues have ventilated their points, and it is right that they should do so. I do not think we can advance matters further this evening, so I suggest that we look to get a decent night’s rest, recharge our batteries and try to do our duty with resolution but good humour tomorrow.
Blaydon Quarry Landfill Site
(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
If colleagues who are toddling out of the Chamber, including past the hon. Lady who has the Adjournment debate, could do so quickly and quietly, that would be greatly appreciated.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
I am very pleased to have secured this Adjournment debate on the Blaydon Quarry landfill site. It is a matter of great concern to my constituents in the communities surrounding the site.
My constituency has had more than its fair share of landfill sites, both in the past and more recently; there are landfill sites on either side of the main road from the town of Blaydon out to the west, so complaints about them are a constant. In 2016, there was a major incident at one of them, Path Head, when for months a heavy, sulphurous smell hung over large parts of Ryton, causing intense concern about the impact on health and seriously affecting residents’ ability to enjoy a normal life. Thankfully, that site has now closed and is being restored, but it has left an enduring concern about the effect that landfill sites have on our communities. In particular, it has had an effect on the established former mining community of Stargate and Crookhill, within just a few hundred yards of the site, which have had to endure odours and other problems throughout its life, but it also affects the Stella area. It is in that context that this debate and the concern of my constituents must be understood.
I turn to the subject of tonight’s debate. Blaydon Quarry is a landfill site in the west of my constituency. It is located in the village of Greenside, but is surrounded by the communities of Greenside, Winlaton, Barlow, Stargate, Ryton, Blaydon Burn and Blaydon itself. It is very close to each of those communities, and each has felt the impact of the site over many years. Over the years, there have been a number of different site operators—Premier Waste, Niramax, Octagon Green Solutions—each bringing its own problems. The site is now owned by a company called Recyclogical, but following the refusal of a transfer of the environmental permit to it last year, Octagon Green Solutions remains as the permit holder and site operator—an issue to which I intend to return later.
Over the period that my predecessor, Dave Anderson, was the Member of Parliament for Blaydon, and while I was a local councillor, residents have consistently—perhaps I should say, persistently—complained about the Blaydon Quarry landfill site, so this is by no means a new issue, but it is a very current one.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I spoke to the hon. Lady beforehand to seek her permission to intervene. As her case is very similar to ones I have had in my constituency of Strangford, I wanted to make a short intervention. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is essential that quarry landfill sites are held to the highest standards when it comes to neighbourhood issues? A little common sense and perhaps a little money as well from quarries in due season would go a long way in ensuring good neighbour relations and, subsequently, result in fewer complaints. In the council I served on, Ards Borough Council—it is now Ards and North Down Borough Council—there were some issues, and we were able to have those issues addressed. Does the hon. Lady agree that people have a right to live in peace at night and without offensive smells, no matter what their postcode is?
Liz Twist
I agree, of course, with the hon. Gentleman’s last statement, but I disagree with some of his earlier comments, because I think the time is now ripe for us to go beyond monitoring, controlling or whatever. We need a totally different approach to landfill for the benefit of our communities.
As I was saying, over the period that my predecessor was in post and I was councillor, there were persistent complaints about the site, so it is by no means a new issue, but it is a very current one. Most recently, about two months ago, as they have done on many previous occasions, many residents contacted me about a bad smell in the air. I call it a smell, because calling it an odour, as the official documents do, is far too polite. In fact, residents did not need to contact me about it, as I could most definitely smell it myself when I was at home. The smell was persistent and very unpleasant. Some people reported the smell to the Environment Agency’s incident hotline, and many more complained to me, to councillors and to neighbours.
I raised the issue with the Environment Agency team, who were responsive, as always. Residents were very pleased to hear in mid-February that the site had been stopped from receiving waste for a period of up to two weeks while the operators fixed the problem of the smells from uncovered waste that were affecting our communities. The required action was taken and the tip reopened for waste, but problems continue.
That was just one of the latest incidents at the site that have blighted our communities over several years and, frankly, our communities have had enough. They have had enough of bad smells, enough of heavy vehicles on our country lanes, enough of litter from the site and trucks being scattered in our fields, and enough of dust from the site. They have had enough of the site and want to see it closed, and so do I. That will come as no surprise to the site owner or operator as I have made my views clear in the site liaison meetings, when we have had them—they are often very heated—and elsewhere.
In early 2015, during a period of high winds and despite advice from the Environment Agency, there was a huge escape of litter from the site, with litter sprayed around the hedges, in fields and in trees. Our usually green and pleasant area was festooned with rubbish. It was, frankly, disgusting and not easy to clear, and still today the tatter of plastic bags can be seen in trees and bushes around the periphery of the site. It created a huge outcry, with residents protesting, angry at this littering of their local environment. It was environmental vandalism of the highest order. No lay person could fail to see the devastating nature of this rubbish escape. Astonishingly, after consideration by the Environment Agency legal team, we were told that it was not possible to prosecute that breach, even though the scale of the devastation was clear to local residents.
Over the years, there have been other issues too. The Winlaton Action Group was set up by local residents after many people found dust settling on their cars and became extremely concerned about the impact that this and other issues at the site were having on their health. That remains a concern for local people, particularly in the context of the major problem that I mentioned earlier at the Path Head site causing really bad smells over a long period.
Another issue is the height to which rubbish is being tipped. I met some residents recently in Stargate, Ryton, who showed me photographs of an uninterrupted view past the landfill site over to a neighbouring village. When we lifted up our eyes from the photograph, all we could see was a mound of rubbish with a digger on top. The Environment Agency has been out to check the height and I understand that some action is being taken, but the tip has changed our local landscape.
Then there are the large lorries that transport waste from other parts of the country to Blaydon. It is not even our rubbish that is being tipped at the site—it comes from all over. Our waste goes to an energy from waste site under the South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership. Not only is it inefficient for trucks to transport rubbish for miles and miles, but it is a hazard on the narrow roads immediately surrounding the site, creating mud and dust for other road users.
The Environment Agency, with whom I meet frequently, has sent me a list of enforcement actions taken since 2012—I am sure that the Minister will have a copy. It shows that there have been a number of formal interventions as well as the usual monitoring and advice that takes place.
In December 2014, an enforcement notice was served under regulation 36 of the environmental permitting regulations requiring actions following an escape of litter from the site. That ensured that any escaped litter was collected and that the site-specific litter management plan was revised. In March 2015, another enforcement notice was served under regulation 36 requiring actions following a further escape of litter from the site. That ensured that the further escaped litter was collected and that the site-specific litter management plan was again revised. Additional control measures were installed on the site.
In February 2016, a regulation 36 enforcement notice was served requiring the progression of engineering works to manage landfill gas. This notice ensured additional gas extraction wells were installed within a recently completed area on the site. In July 2017, a regulation 36 enforcement notice was served requiring improvements to the leachate management system on site. This notice ensured that more leachate was removed from the site, rather than just being recirculated around the site. In January and February 2018, two further regulation 36 enforcement notices were served, requiring the implementation of additional engineering works to manage landfill gas. These notices were served following odour issues identified from landfill gas emissions. The notices required the installation of additional gas extraction and further areas of capping.
In February 2019, a regulation 37 suspension notice was served, preventing waste inputs while remedial works were carried out. The notice was served following complaints of odour from the site. The odour complaints were linked to an area of waste not properly tipped or covered. The notice required that this area of waste be re-profiled and covered appropriately. The notice was served on 19 February. The work was completed and the notice lifted on 26 February. As we can see, there is a whole series of issues concerning smells, leachate and litter, on top of the day-to-day concerns residents have raised and continue to raise through liaison meetings and meetings with the Environment Agency.
Of course, it is not just the Environment Agency that is concerned with regulating the site. Gateshead Council also has a part to play through planning enforcement. There is quite a catalogue here, too. In May 2018, there was a report to the planning committee which summarised the outstanding issues, including: restoration of some completed areas; ecological provisions, including nesting for sand martins; and, perhaps most importantly, proposals for the drainage scheme on site. As late as last week, the council issued the company with a letter refusing to discharge all but one of the planning issues that had been raised. All that came after a stop notice was issued by the council in April 2018 requiring the removal of caravans from the site. The caravans were removed, but really they should never have been there in the first place.
On top of that, we have a very real concern that the split between the operator holding the environmental permit and the land owner, who appears to be actually working the site, represents a real danger for the effective running of the site. There have now been three applications for the transfer of the environmental permit and none has been granted. That has to raise real questions about the sustainability of the current arrangements and people are quite understandably concerned that this exposes our communities to further risks, as clearly the current operator, having sold the site itself, wishes to give up the permit.
My constituents and I are well and truly fed up with the impact the landfill site is having on our environment and our lives. We just cannot understand why repeated breaches on planning and environmental grounds cannot lead to the landfill site being closed, safely, once and for all, and the site restored. I should say that in my experience, staff at both the Environment Agency and Gateshead Council have been very good and helpful in pursuing the issues we raise, but we have had enough and believe that the site should be closed forthwith.
So what am I asking the Minister for? First, to strengthen the law covering landfill and waste sites to ensure that, where there are recurring problems, communities do not have to continue to endure the problems arising from landfill sites. We need much stronger powers for the Environment Agency to act to really protect our environment and to deal with landfill operators that fail to meet their duties as good neighbours.
Secondly, I ask the Minister to work with her colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to strengthen planning enforcement, but moreover to ensure that no landfill sites should be allowed so very near to where people live, as is the case in Blaydon. There are families living immediately around the perimeter of the site who, over the years, have suffered from incidents directly affecting their properties, as have the villages and the people who live in communities just that little bit further out. Living next to a landfill site is never going to be pleasant and we must tighten up planning to ensure that this can never happen again.
Thirdly, I ask the Minister to take practical and legislative steps to end the use of landfill sites by strengthening environmental legislation and reducing waste to landfill. Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly for my community, I ask her to work with me, my constituents and statutory bodies to see that the Blaydon quarry landfill site, like the neighbouring Path Head quarry site, is closed safely and restored, to bring an end to the years of misery my constituents have had to endure.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this debate. She has spoken with eloquence and passion in representing her constituents here today. She referred to some of the work that was undertaken by her predecessor, Dave Anderson, who was also very proactive on the subject. She is right to ask why it is taking years to sort the situation out. If she does not mind, I will set out a few ways in which action has been taken and is still proactively under way, as I think she is aware.
It is important to ensure we have clear and strong environmental regulation and planning controls that work for the environment, for people and for business. Twice in her four questions, the hon. Lady asked about practical and legislative steps, including stronger powers for the Environment Agency. I am pleased to say that, during the next Session of Parliament, in the Environment Bill, we hope to introduce powers to tackle some of the issues that she raised. An ongoing policy, and a success of both the former Labour Government and this Government, is the gradual and significant reduction in the amount of waste that goes to landfill. That has largely been driven by the success of the landfill tax. We will continue to do more to try to increase recycling.
A well-functioning and regulated waste industry is essential for us. It enables us to maximise the efficient use of our resources and to minimise the impacts of waste on the environment. The Environment Agency is the regulator for the sector in England. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) referred to an issue in his constituency, and he is right that neighbourhood relations are important for any waste operator. He will be aware that a different regulator applies. He mentioned strong community relations, which were made possible by the council on which he used to serve.
The Environment Agency issues environmental permits for waste operators and regulates against them. It particularly targets operators that do not comply with the regulatory framework and that, in turn, cause suffering to nearby communities. Environmental permits are issued for regulated activities carried out at sites. In the case of a permitted landfill facility, such as that located at Blaydon quarry, the permit will cover hazards and risks arising from the activities on the site of the landfill. The current permit has been in place since landfill activity recommenced in 2004. The permit allows for the deposit of up to 329,000 tonnes of non-hazardous waste within engineered cells on the site.
Environmental permits do not cover wider planning controls, and nor should they if we are to avoid unnecessary regulatory duplication. The site has planning permission to allow landfilling, and that was issued and is governed by Gateshead Council. I am conscious of the hon. Lady’s request to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about enforcement and location. We believe that councils already have the opportunity to do both those things. I recognise the challenges on historic sites where relocation is no longer necessarily possible.
In May 2012 the permit was transferred from the initial operator to Niramax Group Ltd. It was transferred again in May 2013 to Octagon Green Solutions Ltd, which continues to operate the site today. In 2017, two applications were made to transfer the permit, first to the landowner, Recyclogical Ltd, and secondly to a company called Midwest Solutions Ltd. A third transfer application was received in September 2018, again in relation to Midwest Solutions Ltd. All those applications have been refused, most recently just last week, because the Environment Agency has not been satisfied that the companies had sufficient competence to comply with the permit.
It is right that only properly competent people can hold a waste permit. In this instance, the Environment Agency was concerned that the applicants lacked the ability to comply with permits and to run a waste site effectively. That is in line with our work to tighten up the waste permitting and exemptions regime by raising the bar for people to operate in the sector.
Understandably, the hon. Lady read out a litany of non-compliance, which resulted in notices being served. Between 2014 and 2018, the Environment Agency served a series of enforcement notices for the identified issues on the Blaydon site. Those breaches included litter escaping from the site, for which additional control measures were installed, including the improved management of landfill gas and leachate. There were also additional engineering works following odour issues. In February 2019, it was found that odour issues were coming from an area of waste that was not properly tipped or covered, and a regulation 37 suspension notice was served to prevent waste input while remedial works were carried out. As the hon. Lady pointed out, that notice was served on 19 February, and the work was completed and the notice lifted on 26 February.
The hon. Lady is right to point out that there have been a number of breaches. By and large, the company—perhaps cleverly—has responded quite quickly to those breaches. However, we would of course rather that the breaches did not happen in the first place. A number of planning contraventions on the site are also being investigated by Gateshead Council. The Environment Agency and Gateshead Council work closely together on the site and have ongoing engagement with the local community, including through attending regular meetings. I encourage Gateshead Council to do more on planning enforcement in this regard.
The Environment Agency is concerned about the level of non-compliance with the permit. Following the issues that led it to serve a suspension notice in February, it is now investigating fully whether the operator is fit to continue to run the site, and is exploring its options regarding further sanctions. In addition to prosecution, further sanctions could include serving a permit revocation notice, which would prevent any further landfilling from taking place.
Let me turn to the wider policy context. After our consultation last year, from 7 April, all permitted waste sites will need to demonstrate technical competence through a scheme approved by the Government. This change will provide the regulator with the flexibility to use its full range of enforcement powers, such as enforcement or suspension notices, on all waste operation permits to ensure that the operators are technically competent. The Government recently announced a tougher approach to the regulation of environmental permits, including tightening up technical competence requirements and allowing the Environment Agency to take a wider range of criminal convictions—beyond environmental offences—into account when considering permit applications and variations.
Our resources and waste strategy commits us to the recommendations of the review into serious and organised criminality in the waste sector, which was completed last autumn by Lizzie Noel. We will continue to bear down on criminal activity in the waste sector and drive out of the sector the organisations that undercut legitimate businesses and make communities’ lives miserable. Let me be clear to the hon. Lady and the House that the Government and the Environment Agency take the regulation of the waste sector very seriously.
I thank the hon. Lady for raising this issue. I am very much alive to the challenges faced by residents in her constituency and beyond, as is the Environment Agency, and I will continue to work proactively with her and to bear down on those operating in a manner that causes pollution, ugliness and misery in the affected communities.
Question put and agreed to.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Votes)
Motion (C) Customs Union—That this House instructs the Government to (1) ensure that any Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration negotiated with the EU must include, as a minimum, a commitment to negotiate a permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union with the EU; (2) enshrine this objective in primary legislation.—(Mr Kenneth Clarke.)
The House divided: - Ayes: 273 / Noes: 276 - Question accordingly negatived.
Motion (D) Common Market 2.0—That this House (1) directs Her Majesty’s Government to (i) renegotiate the framework for the future relationship laid before the House on Monday 11 March 2019 with the title ‘Political Declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom’ to provide that, on the conclusion of the Implementation Period and no later than 31 December 2020, the United Kingdom shall (a) accede to the European Free Trade Association (Efta) having negotiated a derogation from Article 56(3) of the Efta Agreement to allow UK participation in a comprehensive customs arrangement with the European Union, (b) enter the Efta Pillar of the European Economic Area (EEA) and thereby render operational the United Kingdom’s continuing status as a party to the EEA Agreement and continuing participation in the Single Market, (c) agree relevant protocols relating to frictionless agri-food trade across the UK/EU border, (d) enter a comprehensive customs arrangement including a common external tariff, alignment with the Union Customs Code and an agreement on commercial policy, and which includes a UK say on future EU trade deals, at least until alternative arrangements that maintain frictionless trade with the European Union and no hard border on the island of Ireland have been agreed with the European Union, (ii) negotiate with the EU a legally binding Joint Instrument that confirms that, in accordance with Article 2 of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland of the Withdrawal Agreement, the implementation of all the provisions of paragraph 1(i) of this motion would cause the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland to be superseded in full; (2) resolves to make support for the forthcoming European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill conditional upon the inclusion of provisions for a Political Declaration revised in accordance with the provisions of this motion to be the legally binding negotiating mandate for Her Majesty’s Government in the forthcoming negotiation of the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.—(Nick Boles.)
The House divided: - Ayes: 261 / Noes: 282 - Question accordingly negatived.
Motion (E) Confirmatory public vote—That this House will not allow in this Parliament the implementation and ratification of any withdrawal agreement and any framework for the future relationship unless and until they have been approved by the people of the United Kingdom in a confirmatory public vote.—(Peter Kyle.)
The House divided: - Ayes: 280 / Noes: 292 - Question accordingly negatived.
Motion (G) Parliamentary supremacy—That (1) If, at midday on the second last Day before exit day, the condition specified in section 13(1)(d) of the Act (the passing of legislation approving a withdrawal agreement) is not satisfied, Her Majesty’s Government must immediately seek the agreement of the European Council under Article 50(3) of the Treaty to extend the date upon which the Treaties shall cease to apply to the United Kingdom; (2) If, at midday on the last Day before exit day, no agreement has been reached (pursuant to (1) above) to extend the date upon which the Treaties shall cease to apply to the United Kingdom, Her Majesty’s Government must immediately put a motion to the House of Commons asking it to approve ‘No Deal’; (3) If the House does not approve the motion at (2) above, Her Majesty’s Government must immediately ensure that the notice given to the European Council under Article 50 of the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the European Union is revoked in accordance with United Kingdom and European law; (4) If the United Kingdom’s notice under Article 50 is revoked pursuant to (3) above a Minister of Her Majesty’s Government shall cause an inquiry to be held under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the question whether a model of a future relationship with the European Union likely to ]]]]HS_COL-906]]]]be acceptable to the European Union is likely to have majority support in the United Kingdom; (5) If there is a referendum it shall be held on the question whether to trigger Article 50 and renegotiate that model; (6) The Inquiry under paragraph (4) shall start within three months of the revocation; and (7) References in this Motion to “Days” are to House of Commons sitting days; references to “exit day” are references to exit day as defined in the Act; references to the Act are to The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018; and references to the Treaty are to the Treaty on European Union.—(Joanna Cherry.)
The House divided: - Ayes: 191 / Noes: 292 - Question accordingly negatived.
Draft Food Additives, Flavourings, Enzymes and Extraction Solvents (amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
(5 years ago)
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The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Food Additives, Flavourings, Enzymes and Extraction Solvents (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.
I think I can say on behalf of the whole Committee without reservation that it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger.
The Government’s priority is to ensure that the high standards of food safety and consumer protection that we enjoy in this country are maintained when the UK leaves the European Union. This instrument is crucial to meeting our objective of a functioning statute book after exit day. Food additives, flavouring enzymes and extraction solvents are important substances referred to collectively as food improvement agents.
Stephen Hammond
These substances perform technological functions in or on food during its production or storage. Examples include preservatives, which are highly effective in protecting consumers from dangerous pathogens. They are used to improve the taste, texture and appearance of food. Common examples are artificial sweeteners and flavourings. In general, they are not sold to the final consumer but are traded between businesses.
As all hon. Members know, the Government’s top priority is to secure a deal, but at the same time it is the responsibility of a responsible Government to prepare for all possible scenarios. An extension to article 50 does not rule out no deal as a possible scenario. It is therefore absolutely right that the Government continue to prepare for no deal, and this instrument is part of that preparation. We are committed to ensuring that the UK’s legislation and policies function effectively in a no-deal scenario. It is for that scenario that these draft regulations have been laid before Parliament.
The instrument is to be made under the powers in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. It makes the minimum necessary amendments to retained legislation that governs the use of food improvement agents. It was due to be debated on Tuesday 19 March, alongside four other instruments on regulated products in food. Minor drafting errors were identified and have now been rectified.
The Government remain committed to ensuring high standards of food and feed safety and consumer protection. We will ensure that what we enjoy now is maintained in any deal or no-deal scenario. The instrument will ensure that the controls contained in the 11 retained regulations that govern food improvement agents continue to function effectively after exit day.
There will be no change in how food businesses are regulated or run. All existing food improvement agents permitted for use in the UK prior to exit day will continue to be permitted immediately after exit, and conditions and requirements attached to their use will be preserved. That will ensure continuity and clarity for UK food businesses and for those exporting their food products to the UK, and will maintain existing levels of public health protection and food safety.
I wish to make it clear to the Committee that, as with previous statutory instruments presented to the House by the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), the instrument makes no policy changes. It makes only essential changes that are necessary to ensure that we have an effective and fully operative statute book on exit day. The instrument’s primary purpose is to ensure that legislation continues to function effectively after exit day. The amendments are critical to ensure minimal disruption to food controls in the event that we leave the EU without a deal. The changes also ensure that a robust system of controls will underpin the ability of domestic businesses to trade, both in the UK and internationally.
I stress that food safety will not be affected by the short delay caused by the instrument’s withdrawal and re-laying before Parliament. The existing list of permitted substances, along with their specifications and conditions of use, will be retained by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The Food Additives, Flavourings, Enzymes and Extraction Solvents (England) Regulations 2013, which provide for the enforcement of provisions relating to those products, remain operable.
In the unlikely event that urgent action is required on unsafe foods in any short interim period between exit and the coming into force of the instrument, the Food Safety Act 1990 and retained EU food law will continue to provide food safety protections for consumers. That legislation, which has already been corrected, allows for enforcement action to be taken against placing any unsafe food on the market.
The instrument makes no changes to policy, beyond the minor and technical amendments to correct deficiencies arising as a consequence of the UK leaving the EU. Those deficiencies concern the assignment of functions to EU institutions on processes to which the UK will no longer have access and on which it can no longer rely. The instrument assigns powers and responsibilities that are currently incumbent on EU entities to the appropriate UK entities.
Under EU legislation, the European Commission currently holds a range of powers and functions to enable new substances to come on to the market, to amend the current conditions of use and purity criteria, and to remove substances from the permitted lists. The instrument transfers those powers from the Commission to Ministers in England, Scotland and Wales, and to the devolved authority in Northern Ireland. It also transfers responsibility for risk assessment from the European Food Safety Authority to UK risk assessors. The Committee should note that all powers in that category relate to technical, scientific and administrative adjustments that may be necessary to respond to changing circumstances.
Risk assessment and the oversight of food controls will be essential to ensure that food remains safe, whether it is imported or produced in the UK. The Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland are responsible for protecting public health in relation to food, and will continue to be independent science and evidence-based Government departments. Those functions will be delivered through an increased risk assessment capacity that has already been put in place.
The instrument will revoke EU regulation 257/2010, which places no obligations on the UK. That regulation established a programme for the European Food Safety Authority to re-evaluate the authorised food additives that were assessed for safety prior to 2009, which ensured that those substances remained safe for the general population in the light of the latest scientific data and technological developments. To date, re-evaluations for all colours, preservatives, antioxidants and aspartame have been completed, while re-evaluations for remaining food additives are ongoing. The official deadline for the completion of the re-evaluation programme is the end of 2020. All the EFSA’s re-evaluations are published online and will remain accessible to the UK after it exits the EU. Through the Foods Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland, the UK will continue to scrutinise the European Food Safety Authority reports as we do now, alongside other robust scientific evidence, and will consider if action on the UK authorised list is necessary.
By way of further assistance, the Committee may wish to know that article 26 of regulation (EC) 1333/2008 will be retained on exit day. It preserves the duty placed on producers or users of a food additive to immediately notify the UK of any new scientific or technological information that may affect the safety assessment of a food additive. The UK has sufficient safeguards and expertise in the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland to ensure that food additives on the UK authorised list are actively kept under review on an ongoing basis. Consequently, there is no need to establish a UK re-evaluation programme and replicate work already far advanced by the EFSA.
This instrument will have no impact on the food industry, as there are no changes to the controls on the use of substances. There are also no changes to the authorisation process for any new substances, except that the roles of the European Commission and the European Food Safety Authority will be replaced by relevant UK entities. To support the changes, the Food Standards Agency intends to publish detailed guidance on the UK authorisation processes. Scientific data requirements in support of applications will remain the same, and the same package of data can be submitted to the UK and the EU, avoiding any unnecessary additional burden.
This instrument is a necessary measure to ensure that the high standard of food safety and consumer protection we enjoy in this country is maintained, and that the relevant regulations continue to function effectively after exit day. Due to the instrument being laid under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, the scope of its amendments is limited to achieving that objective. At an appropriate point in future, the Department will review whether the UK’s exit from the EU offers us opportunities to re-appraise current regulations while continuing to ensure that we protect the nation’s health and food safety standards. I urge hon. Members to support the instrument, which I commend to the Committee.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger. We are very happy that you joined us by stepping in for your colleague. I thank the Minister for introducing the statutory instrument and summarising its provisions after it was withdrawn two weeks ago. I welcome him to his position, although I am not sure if it is permanent. I know he was already a Health Minister, but by taking on the public health brief, he will know he has big shoes to fill. His predecessor and colleague, the hon. Member for Winchester, who resigned from his ministerial position last week, was a formidable and accomplished Minister who I had a lot of respect for, and I wish him well.
Things are constantly changing and developing with Brexit, as we know. I would like to express once again my severe regret that almost three years since the referendum, the Government have failed to significantly prepare or lay sufficient Brexit legislation before the House in a timely manner. As I am sure the Whip especially will know, we have been very busy of late, and we have missed the 29 March deadline. Unless the Government can compromise on a way forward and secure support from across the House today or very soon, we are heading towards no deal on 12 April. In that scenario, this legislation will be vital. I hope that this week—I have been saying this for many weeks now—will be the week we achieve a good deal with the EU that will protect jobs, workers’ rights, our environment and, most importantly, our economy.
This SI was due to be debated two weeks ago, but was withdrawn from the Order Paper at the last minute. Can the Minister please illuminate and explain why that was? So far, an explanatory memorandum has accompanied all the statutory instruments that we have debated, apart from this one. Is that because the explanatory memorandum for the original draft still applies, or because the Government have omitted to provide one? I would be grateful if he could explain the reason for the delay and set out the differences between the two versions of the SI.
Throughout the debates on SIs, I have raised concerns about the time available to scrutinise them. This SI perfectly highlights my point that without a clear summary being available to the Opposition of what the SI is designed to achieve and what consultations the Government have undertaken, it is almost impossible to scrutinise the legislation properly in the given timeframe. There has been a lack of time to scrutinise properly the Food Standards Agency SIs that the Government have brought to the House and crucial details have been omitted from them, which industry representatives have raised concerns about, too. Now that the leaving date has changed, what conversations has the Minister’s Department had with the industry about what these SIs will mean for their businesses and day-to-day working, and has the Department provided more information and reassurance to them?
Food improvement agents are used in or on food for a technological purpose during its production or storage. They are also used to improve the taste, texture and appearance of food. Examples include artificial sweeteners, preservatives and flavourings. The majority of us will come into contact with food improvement agents daily. However, the Minister must appreciate that, for medical reasons, not everyone is able to consume food improvement agents. The relevant legislation provides specific labelling requirements for certain food products sold to consumers. An example would be mandatory warnings on products containing aspartame, as it is a source of phenylalanine, which could be detrimental to those suffering from PKU—phenylketonuria. Any reduction in standards for food labelling and mandatory warnings on products could be dangerous for people with dietary requirements. What may seem unnecessary to people who do not have those dietary requirements will be vital to those who do. What assurance can the Minister give that this legislation will not put PKU patients, in particular, in danger? I am particularly concerned that it could make the PKU diet even more difficult to maintain if warnings are removed from food labelling.
This SI will revoke for the whole of the UK a regulation that established a programme for the re-evaluation of approved food additives, as it is not thought appropriate or necessary to retain that legislation for the UK. Will the Minister elaborate on why that is? The SI goes on to say that there are other mechanisms by which new and emerging scientific data must be brought to the attention of decision makers by applicants. Will he please tell the Committee what those mechanisms are? The former Minister wrote to me about this SI, saying:
“I would like to reassure you that the UK will continue to monitor scientific evaluations and outputs from international assessment bodies such as EFSA and The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives…to ensure that we remain alert to emerging scientific analyses.”
Has this Minister made any assessment of how long it would take to update regulations in the event of any new scientific analysis? What will happen if our European neighbours decide that a food additive is unsafe? Will we follow the lead of our neighbours? How will those decisions be made? Under these changes, if an application is made for a new additive to be introduced, will that be made public, and if not, why not? What will be the arrangements for collecting data, monitoring the effectiveness of the regulations and regularly reporting?
The Food Standards Agency will take on a lot of responsibility in this area after Brexit. Is the Minister confident that the agency is prepared and properly resourced to take on that extra burden? The health and safety of the public is paramount in all this, and I hope he ensures that safeguards are in place so that food containing any food improvement agents that are found to be harmful is quickly removed from the market. I look forward to his response.
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. May I, too, express my delight at your arrival? This is the latest in the seemingly never-ending procession of statutory instruments we have had to examine because—let us be frank—the Government’s self-imposed, ideologically driven red lines led them stubbornly to refuse to take no deal off the table, despite that being the will of Parliament.
Like the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, I am not surprised in the least that the earlier SI was pulled because errors were found. The speed and volume in which SIs are being put through the House makes such mistakes almost inevitable. I am genuinely pleased that the minor drafting errors were spotted and have been rectified, but what about the inevitable mistakes in the hundreds of other SIs we have discussed? Which errors have not been picked up? It will be left to others after us to pick up those mistakes, wherever they may be.
Given where we are, we acknowledge that preparations for a potential no deal have to continue. It is important that existing food improvement agents permitted for use in the UK prior to our leaving the European Union will continue to be permitted for use, and that all conditions and requirements attached to their use will be maintained. For that reason, like the official Opposition, we do not oppose the SI. However, we do have some questions.
Although it is right that European legislation will be preserved in UK law, the falling away of EU frameworks that we have come to rely on will mean that, where the EU decides to ban or strictly regulate an item, that will not automatically be the case here. That will create an uneven playing field between the EU and the UK. I fear we may be heading down a path whereby a weaker regulatory regime and standards develop in the UK. I hope the Minister can address that.
What resources have the Government made available to ensure that the new bodies will have the power to undertake their new duties adequately? Although the regulations may provide for the same powers, surely staff will have to be trained to implement those new powers. What steps have the Government taken to train them? I read in some of the background to the regulations that the Government estimate it will take less than 60 minutes for staff to read and understand the proposed regulations, and to disseminate the key information onwards. How was that estimated? Is the Minister satisfied that, if the organisations involved in the regulation of food look at the guidance for less than an hour, that will cover all bases? Given the paltry amount of time the Government claim that will take, is he satisfied that nothing will slip through the net?
I also seek clarity about exactly what will replace the EFSA. How will it operate, what teeth will it have, and how confident is the Minister that those new organisations will stand up robustly to both the industry and special interest groups? This is another piece of hasty legislation that is being pushed through. Sadly, once again, it is indicative of this Government’s utterly shambolic approach to Brexit.
Stephen Hammond
Let me try to address hon. Members’ questions and comments. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West asked what errors were identified in the SI and what has been done to rectify them. As I said in my opening remarks, they were relatively minor drafting errors, mainly due to style rather than content. For instance, there was a drafting error in regulation 16(b), where an obligation to inform the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland of the receipt of an application for a product to be included on a list was not included for smoke flavourings. That has been corrected.
There was a comment about the failure to comply with proper legislative practice, which related to whether some text should have been prepared and presented as a footnote instead. Although it was considered that we did not have to follow that practice, we have followed it. I hope the hon. Lady will be satisfied that they were relatively minor drafting errors. She was right to make the supposition that the original explanatory memorandum still applies to this, as it did to the other three regulations that were introduced in this batch.
The hon. Lady asked about the impact on industry. As I hope she took from my words, the instrument will have no impact on the food industry. There are no changes to the controls on the use of substances or to the authorisation process for new substances, except, as we have said and as I tried to explain—I hope she took the point—that the roles of the European Commission and the European Food Safety Authority will be replaced by the relevant UK entities. I have also made the point that scientific data requirements in support of applications remain the same, so the package of data that must be submitted remains the same. Therefore, there should be no unnecessary additional burdens.
The consultation that took place with industry was open for six weeks between 4 September and 14 October, but, because it is so important that food safety and standards are maintained, it was left open for another week so that any latecomers could be included in the analysis. In total, 50 responses were received, of which some 82% supported the Government’s approach. I hope the hon. Lady is reassured that industry has been consulted, that it understands the impact on it—that is, that there is very little impact—and that it is satisfied.
The hon. Lady asked about aspartame and the PKU impact. No changes are being made to labelling. Therefore, PKU sufferers will continue to see labelling as they do now.
Both the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute raised the subject of the European Food Safety Authority. As I said at the beginning, the instrument will not change the FSA’s top priority in the UK, which is to ensure that UK food remains safe. The FSA has strengthened its risk analysis. The hon. Gentleman asked whether capacity has been strengthened, and I can tell him that capacity and resource for risk assessment and risk management have been strengthened. The FSA is also expanding its access to scientific experts who can provide the necessary scientific advice and other scientific services to meet any potential increased need for risk assessments.
Brendan O'Hara
On a point of clarification, are the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland expected to take over all the existing functions of the EFSA?
Stephen Hammond
As I pointed out, the UK will still have access to the re-evaluation programme until the end of 2020. All those re-evaluations will be undertaken through the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland. The draft regulations, along with other instruments, will transfer the functions of the EFSA to those bodies—[Interruption.] Inspiration has reached me to confirm that point.
The hon. Gentleman asked how we will ensure that we have the required expertise and resource to maintain standards in the UK. As I said, we have already put in place extra capacity and access to extra scientific advice. We are also looking at expanding the role of scientific advisory committees, to help us to uphold the principles of protecting public health and maintaining consumer confidence through openness and transparency.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Food Additives, Flavourings, Enzymes and Extraction Solvents (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.
Draft Protecting Against the Effects of The Extraterritorial Application of Third Country Legislation (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
(5 years ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Trade Policy (George Hollingbery)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Protecting against the Effects of the Extraterritorial Application of Third Country Legislation (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.
The existing EU regulation that we are seeking to transition, No. 2271/96, is commonly known as the EU blocking regulation. As its formal name suggests, it is designed to protect UK and EU businesses from the harmful effects of the extraterritorial application of legislation adopted by another country. That refers to a situation in which a country has enacted certain laws, regulations and other legislative instruments that purport to regulate activities of natural and legal persons outside its jurisdiction who are not its citizens and who are not legal persons incorporated in that jurisdiction. It could, for example, result in penalties against a UK citizen for carrying out activities in the UK that we consider to be fully legitimate under our law. The UK and EU have long opposed the extraterritorial effect of sanctions legislation on our businesses and the dissuasive impact that that can have on legitimate trade.
The blocking regulation is designed to protect UK businesses in two key ways. First, article 4 guarantees that courts in EU member states will not recognise or allow the enforcement of judgments against EU businesses for fines that they incur in a third country for breaching sanctions with extraterritorial effect. Secondly, article 6 enables businesses to seek damages through the courts in any member state should they be negatively impacted by the application of extraterritorial legislation within the scope of the blocking regulation.
There may be occasions on which compliance with third-country sanctions regimes is necessary—in the interests of businesses and our wider Government policy to continue to trade with Iran, Cuba and Libya. Where those instances occur, the EU has the power to issue authorisations for businesses to comply with third-party sanctions regimes. How is that done? The EU considers requests for compliance authorisations in accordance with the process and criteria set out in Commission implementing regulation 2018/1101 of 3 August 2018, referred to as the implementing regulation.
Using powers under section 8 of, and paragraph 21(b) of schedule 7 to, the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, this draft SI amends the blocking regulation and the implementing regulation as retained in UK law and fixes them for the UK-only context. Generally speaking, the draft SI transfers the functions of the European Commission to the Secretary of State, as would be expected of all SIs made under the EU withdrawal Act. For instance, once this draft SI enters into force, UK businesses will be able to apply to the Secretary of State for permission to comply with US extraterritorial sanctions and the Secretary of State will be able to grant that permission, according to whether they judge the applications to be consistent with criteria set out in legislation. Such criteria include considering whether, if an authorisation were denied, a company would face significant economic losses that might threaten its viability or pose a serious risk of bankruptcy, or whether it would lose access to essential inputs or resources.
Currently, the Commission defines the scope of the blocking regulation—that is, which specific pieces of legislation it applies to—through tertiary legislation amending and updating the annex to the blocking regulation. The draft SI transfers that power to the Secretary of State through the mechanism of the laying of an SI under the negative procedure.
As we leave the EU, we must ensure that we continue to protect UK businesses from the effect of extraterritorial legislation. Our opposition to extraterritorial legislation is of long standing and predates the blocking regulation. The UK has had legislation making that evident on the statute book since 1980; I am referring to the Protection of Trading Interests Act 1980. We firmly believe that our operators should be able to continue legitimate trade free from the harmful effects of the extraterritoriality that we consider to be illegal under international law. These draft regulations are a key part of that policy stance and are particularly relevant given our foreign and trade policy stances on Cuba and Iran.
I welcome the opportunity for full scrutiny of this draft statutory instrument and look forward to hearing colleagues’ contributions.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. Thank goodness the Government were defeated in their attempt to prevent the business of the House motion from going through; otherwise this debate would have been held on the Floor of the House rather than under your chairmanship. I think this is probably the right way around.
The statutory instrument appears to be a sensible piece of proposed legislation. It is necessary to ensure that British legal and natural persons are not subject to judicial overreach by the courts or judiciaries of foreign countries when implementing their Governments’ foreign policy objectives. I thank the Minister for his opening remarks and for taking us through the detail of what is quite a technical set of draft regulations. I saw him outside, and while I will not say that he was sweating in his preparation, he was certainly going through it with a fine-toothed comb. He may not be the only member of this Committee to have been through such a process.
A number of concerns flow from the Minister’s opening remarks about how the draft regulations might be applied in a domestic setting, and whether what he has expressed as the Government’s desire is indeed what will happen. It is right and proper that the United Kingdom should determine our own approach to foreign policy and the treatment of our citizens and those legal and natural persons who call the UK home.
The draft regulations address the continued disapplication of third-country laws that might have an impact on our citizens. In particular, they refer to listed sanctions measures imposed by the United States on Cuba, Iran and Libya. The underlying EU regulations were introduced as a response to the Helms-Burton Act 1996, which allows US-based companies to sue foreign persons for trade relating to expropriated US-owned goods or assets. Such trade is considered trafficking under that Act and claims may be brought under title III by US companies even where the link between that trade and what may have been expropriated is tenuous.
Similarly, Canada, Mexico and Argentina have applied blocking measures in their respective jurisdictions, showing a similar level of concern to the EU in doing so. Such was the international uproar over the measures when they were introduced that successive United States Presidents have suspended the application of title III for a period of six months on a rolling, concurrent basis. I think I am right in stating that no such cases have been brought against British companies to date.
The current President of the United States, however, has demonstrated that he takes a rather different interest in and approach to international diplomacy and international law compared with his predecessors. In January, he determined that the suspension of title III would be continued on a 45-day basis only. That period has now expired, and it seems it is now open season for US companies to take action against foreign companies. It is against that backdrop of the very real threat of legal proceedings and substantial financial claims being made against British individuals and companies that we consider these important draft regulations.
The draft regulations seek to replicate the EU’s existing list of third-country legislation to which these measures relate. However, as one might expect, they allow the Secretary of State to add to or delete from the list. Given the imminent threat faced by British businesses, can the Minister confirm that the Government do not intend to delete anything from that list once we have left the European Union? Perhaps he could also indicate whether he has any intention of adding to that list, and whether he is aware of any further extraterritorial legislation that may be in the pipeline, particularly given the approach of the current United States Administration with respect to Venezuela.
British businesses will rightly be concerned about the risk of extraterritorial judgments being awarded against them, encouraged by a White House that has declared open season for US investors. Can the Minister tell us what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of such claims and of the exposure of British entities to them?
Under the existing EU measures, namely Council regulation 2271/96—the so-called blocking regulation—and Commission implementing regulation 2018/1101, which have been implemented into our domestic law by statutory instruments 1996/3171 and 2018/1357, EU persons are specifically forbidden from complying with the judgments, actions or proceedings of any judiciary of those third countries, unless otherwise authorised to do so by the European Commission. The blocking regulation obliges any EU person who may be so affected to notify the Commission within 30 days, so that a determination as to whether to authorise may be made.
In order to clarify the Government’s policy intentions, I ask the Minister whether either he or the Secretary of State intends to regard authorisations already given or refused by the European Commission as precedent to follow, and whether any future decisions by the European Commission will inform our own.
The current list of extraterritorial legislation to which these draft regulations apply includes only laws and regulations introduced by the United States. The Secretary of State has had many conversations—both formal and informal—with his counterparts in the United States. The Minister may have had similar conversations. During those discussions, what conversations have taken place on matters covered by these draft regulations, and what representations has the Secretary of State or the Minister made in defence of British businesses against potential title III claims?
On the face of it, these draft regulations appear relatively straightforward, largely replacing references to European Union institutions that remain in retained EU law with references to the United Kingdom. Such amendments will ensure that the provisions, which currently seek to disapply the effects of extraterritorial third-country legislation, will continue to apply in a UK-specific context after Brexit.
In so doing, however, the Government have made a number of amendments to the original European wording and have sought to delete provisions that provide for a degree of scrutiny by the European institutions, without suggesting similar scrutiny measures to replace them. That should be a matter of concern to members of this Committee.
Under article 5 of the blocking regulation, the Commission may authorise that a person complies with third-country legislation, to which these draft regulations apply, where to not do so
“would seriously damage their interests or those of the Community.”
Draft regulation 3(6) seeks to transfer that power to the Secretary of State, who may make such authorisation by way of a statutory instrument.
The Government have also sought to amend the powers under article 5 by further allowing the Secretary of State to make, by way of regulation,
“provision in connection with the making and consideration of applications to be so authorised.”
Such extra powers appear to be wide in scope, and it is unclear precisely in which circumstances the Government envisage they would need to be employed. I would be grateful, therefore, if the Minister explained the Government’s intention and whether these powers will be used without the further approval of either House of Parliament.
Under article 7 of the blocking regulation, the Commission is obliged to
“inform the European Parliament and the Council immediately and fully of the effects of the laws, regulations and other legislative instruments and ensuing actions mentioned in Article 1, on the basis of the information obtained under this Regulation, and make regularly a full public report thereon”.
Draft regulation 3(8)(c) seeks to transfer those powers to the Secretary of State but removes the obligation to inform Parliament immediately and fully of the effects of the laws, regulations and other legislative instruments and ensuing actions mentioned in article 1. It retains the obligation to make a public report, but removes the sense of urgency by removing the reference to “immediately” for the new arrangements.
Why has the Minister removed the obligation to immediately inform Parliament? Will he set out when and how such public reports will be delivered, including under the reporting obligations set out in article 4 of the Extraterritorial US Legislation (Sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Libya) (Protection of Trading Interests) Order 1996, as amended in 2018?
Article 7(b) and article 8 of the blocking regulation make provisions for the European committee on extraterritorial legislation to be consulted in respect of authorisations that are to be made compelling a person to comply with the extraterritorial application of third-country legislation. The draft regulations omit those provisions and contain no proposal for any corresponding committee to have such a role in the United Kingdom.
Can the Minister tell us whether there are plans to create such a committee? If not, how will existing European Union committee scrutiny be replicated in respect of the regulations? The Government pretending to return sovereignty to our Parliament, while repeatedly applying powers withdrawn from European institutions exclusively to the Executive, has become a familiar occurrence. As an aside, I draw the Minister’s attention to what we think is a drafting flaw resulting from draft regulations 3(8)(c) and 3(8)(d), which suggest that article 7 requires no additional paragraphs.
Turning to other proposed changes, draft regulation 3(7) amends article 6 of the blocking regulation, which sets out the powers of an affected person to seek redress or recovery of damages. The clause has been referred to as the “clawback clause”, as it allows affected counterparties to initiate proceedings against the foreign entity by which they have been affected. A judgment may be made that results in the awarding of damages and legal costs, and in the potential confiscation of assets to settle outstanding liabilities.
The blocking regulation dictates that such proceedings must be made in accordance with the Brussels convention, which requires claims to be made in the jurisdiction of the member state wherein the person causing the damage, or an intermediary or assets held thereby, is located, as the Minister mentioned in his opening remarks. It would be helpful to understand why the Government have sought to remove that section entirely, and how they propose to administer penalties for failures to comply with the obligations set out under the blocking regulation.
Draft regulation 3(12) seeks to amend article 11 of the blocking regulation, which sets out to whom it applies. Draft regulation 3(12)(g) inserts a new definition:
“For the purposes of this Article, a natural person is resident in the United Kingdom where that person has been so resident for a period of at least six months within the 12-month period immediately prior to the date on which, under this Regulation, an obligation arises or a right is exercised.”
The question of residence has been debated many times by hon. Members in this House and has been clearly defined in statute, with the most familiar test being whether a person has been present in the United Kingdom for at least 183 days in a 365-day period. The definition presented in the draft regulations does not appear to apply the same test, in that it suggests that a person must be resident for at least a six-month period. I ask the Secretary of State—[Interruption.] No, not the Secretary of State; he is not here. If only he were.
Bill Esterson
As the Secretary of State is not here, we will settle for the Minister. Can he clarify whether it is the Department’s intention that persons must have been resident for a continuous six-month period or is the 183-day test to be applied?
These are serious and complex matters and I welcome the opportunity to debate them today. As the United Kingdom seeks to be a stronger voice in defence of the rules-based system that underpins global trade and international relations, it is important not only that such legislation is in place, but that the Government address the matters raised in this debate and put their policy intention on the record.
George Hollingbery
As a small matter of fact, the Burton-Helms Act is not back on the register, but 17 April is just around the corner, so I absolutely take the point made by the hon. Member for Sefton Central. That is why Cuba is included on the list.
The hon. Gentleman asked a number of questions. I was asked to confirm whether the Government have any intention of deleting from or adding to the list, and the answer is no. I have had no conversations to that effect that I am aware of, and my officials advise that that is the case as far as they, too, are aware. He asked whether there was any Government assessment of the potential effect on UK companies of any such claims coming forward. The answer is that it is impossible to know without knowing how many claims would come forward, when they would come forward, to whom and on what issues. Therefore, it is impossible to make that sort of estimate.
However, I cannot think it would necessarily change any policy decisions, certainly in this regard. This draft instrument is designed to demonstrate to the United States that we do not respect the extraterritoriality of its legislation. That is the principal issue we face; I do not think that doing that assessment would have changed our mind about that, and in any event I cannot see how we would calculate it.
Bill Esterson
I am sure it is not an easy thing to do, but presumably some assessment must have been carried out when the EU originally brought in the blocking regulations. Of course, we are staying consistent with that approach, but presumably there is some sense of intent on the part of the United States Government, or of companies in the United States, that would inform the decision and why it is so important that these regulations are transferred.
George Hollingbery
One could argue about this for hours. Quite straightforwardly, we have not done such an assessment. The regulations are there, for example, in addition to the penalties and fines that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, to ensure that the United States or United States-based companies cannot sue UK companies in UK courts. I do not know how one would assess the level of return and/or cost that that might represent.
To my mind, this is about a base principle: we do not recognise the extraterritorial power of the US regulations, and we are therefore legislating to ensure that British companies do not have to comply with them in our courts or indeed elsewhere. I am not at all aware that any cost analysis was done when the measure was previously put in place, but I do not believe we would add much to the mix by doing another one for a UK context, particularly given that it has been in place for the best part of 20 years. It is what it is; it has been in place for 20 years, and we are seeking today to transfer it into a UK context.
The hon. Gentleman asked about notification and the amount of time within which it is expected that people will tell the Government. The answer is 30 days. He also asked whether I have had any conversations with the United States trade representative, Bob Lighthizer, and others. In a personal context, I can answer that I have never had such conversations, nor am I aware of any other such conversations having taken place with others.
We will publish a list of those who have been authorised and what they have been authorised for. The EU does not currently publish such a list, so we believe that will be a useful piece of information and that it will apply transparency to our suggested arrangements. We went over the issue of legal cost to jurisdictions and other member states. Plainly, there is no equivalent item for ensuring that the member state in which that person lives is notified to the Commission, because that person is living in the United Kingdom as a citizen, so I cannot see why that section is required.
I will speak quickly about enforcement. The Department for International Trade does not carry an investigation directorate. If we found that a complaint merited further investigation, we would pass the details on to the police and they are entirely entitled to investigate it. If companies feel that they have been disadvantaged by other people complying with the extraterritorial legislation of the United States, they are entitled, if they wish, to bring an action against that company in civil courts. That is provided for.
Finally, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his pointer towards the drafting errors in draft regulations 3(8)(c) and 3(8)(d). I have no particular knowledge of that, but I have no doubt that the lawyers will look at it carefully.
Bill Esterson
I asked the Minister about the transfer of the current scrutiny arrangements. The specific institutions of the EU that scrutinise the operation of the regulations in the EU have not been replicated in the UK; they have just been taken on by the Secretary of State. On the issue of the immediacy of reporting to Parliament, the requirement for the EU to report immediately is not replicated in the proposed regulations.
George Hollingbery
It is the UK Government’s intention to publish, as I have described, in every instance. We have not yet determined the exact method for that, or the period in which it will be done, but I can say that the Opposition and others have my absolute commitment that those names will be published along with what those names or companies are allowed to do.
Question put and agreed to.
The future of maintained nursery schools
Byfleet and West Byfleet’s remaining Green Belt
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Leaving the European Union
(5 years ago)
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Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petitions 241584, 235138 and 243319 relating to leaving the European Union.
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and to lead this incredibly important debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. As hon. Members will be aware, the Committee decided to schedule a single debate on all three Brexit-related petitions because we wanted to ensure that all three, having reached the 100,000 signature threshold, were debated as soon as possible, so that they would not be overtaken by events.
It is entirely coincidental that the date is 1 April, but I must confess to hoping right up until noon that the Prime Minister was at some point going to reveal to the nation that the Government’s entire handling of Brexit has actually been the most painstaking and elaborate April fool’s day hoax in history, and that she does in fact have a plan to get us out of this mess. Regrettably, that did not happen, and we are still in a national crisis.
Of course, as is now inevitable for anything related to Brexit, one of the e-petitions has already been overtaken by events: 29 March has been and gone and, three days later, we remain members of the European Union. As such, with just under two weeks to go until the next deal or no deal deadline, we find ourselves through the looking glass, debating potential Brexit outcomes here in Westminster Hall at exactly the same time as colleagues in the main Chamber deliberate the ways out of this ludicrous situation. A national conversation should clearly have been led and listened to by the Prime Minister right at the start of this historic process, rather than one being commenced against her will just before midnight on the Brexit clock.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has been utterly fantastic on Brexit from start to finish. I am sure she will mention this later, but our constituents have been signing up to the big petition to revoke article 50, including 32% of my electorate in south Edinburgh. She will be as disappointed as I am that the Prime Minister and the Government, given that they are in such a mess, have simply dismissed those people and will not action anything they say.
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend raises an important point. That is why this debate is so important: to get these issues aired and make sure that we get answers from the Minister. I will make sure that he is clear on the questions and issues that we need answers for.
As I said, we are discussing three petitions. Despite being overtaken by events, e-petition 243319, calling for the UK to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 come what may, secured 175,121 signatures as of 3.30 pm today. I make that point because the petitions are all still open. That figure undoubtedly reflects the great unhappiness and frustration felt by many people across the UK that we did not leave the European Union on Friday, as the Prime Minister repeatedly pledged that we would. Indeed, I know that many thousands signing these petitions, alongside a small minority of hon. Members, strongly advocate that the UK should have left the EU on Friday without a deal, and that we should now do so on 12 April, leaving us to trade on the much-heralded World Trade Organisation terms.
It clear that, for some, leaving the EU as quickly as possible has become of paramount importance in order to deliver on the narrow outcome of a referendum held almost three years ago, regardless of whether there remain any coherent, cogent arguments for pursuing that course of irrevocable action and regardless of the circumstances in which that might take place or the potential consequences for our country. There are some who suggest that every one of the 17.4 million people who voted in good faith back in June 2016 to leave the European Union did so safe in the knowledge that it could well mean exiting the world’s largest trading bloc after 46 years without a deal. Indeed, the wording of the e-petition suggests that both main parties pledged that in the 2017 general election.
However, I only need point them in the direction the Vote Leave campaign, which quite clearly stated:
“Taking back control is a careful change, not a sudden stop—we will negotiate the terms of a new deal before we start any legal process to leave.”
Or the pledge made in the 2017 Labour party manifesto:
“Labour recognises that leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ is the worst possible deal for Britain and that it would do damage to our economy and trade. We will reject ‘no deal’ as a viable option”.
Or, indeed, the 2017 Conservative party manifesto, which said that the Prime Minister would deliver:
“The best possible deal for Britain as we leave the European Union delivered by a smooth, orderly Brexit.”
There were many other occasions when those playing leading roles in the campaign for our departure from the EU suggested what doing so would or would not involve. Perhaps the most notable example is Daniel Hannan MEP, who declared:
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.”
Regardless of what each person voted for at that time—I have spoken to many leave voters who voted for a variety of legitimate reasons and have completely different visions of what Brexit means—I know with absolutely certainty that nobody was discussing the need to set aside £4.2 billion to prepare for the ramifications of no deal, whether that means awarding a £108 million ferry contract to a firm that has no ships or our becoming the largest buyer of fridges in the world, in order to stockpile medicines, vaccines and blood products.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
To reinforce my hon. Friend’s point, according to the Bank of England, two-thirds of warehouses have already been filled; we actually do not have the capacity to stockpile, because our system does not work like that. In the context of no deal, the economy will shrink by 8% and inflation will go up—[Interruption.]
James Gray (in the Chair)
As the sitting was suspended for 15 minutes, 15 minutes will be added to the end as injury time, so the debate will finish at 7.45 pm instead of 7.30 pm. We were listening to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell).
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) was in the middle of her intervention when we were interrupted for that vote, so I am more than happy for her to finish her intervention.
Rushanara Ali
I wanted to highlight the fact that, according to the Bank of England, warehouses are already running out of space—two-thirds are full. We do not have the capacity to cope with the kind of system that a no-deal Brexit would pose. If we have a no-deal Brexit, the worst-case scenario is an 8% reduction in our economy, with unemployment and inflation rising. Some 6 million people have signed the e-petition on revoking article 50, including 24,000 in my constituency. People are adamant that if we cannot settle this in the House in a way that protects their interests, jobs and livelihoods, then revocation should be on the table. I support my hon. Friend’s speech.
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend speaks from the experience that we have shared as members of the Treasury Committee, scrutinising in agonising and often frustrating and concerning detail the economic impact of the Brexit proposals, and in particular the potential ramifications of a no-deal Brexit.
If anyone had told me when I was first elected to Parliament in 2010 that less than a decade later the Government of this country would be pursuing a policy that necessitates the stockpiling of body bags, I would have questioned my own sanity. Yet this is the appalling position that we now find ourselves in, because the Prime Minister has remained resolutely of the belief that refusing to rule out the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, thereby threatening to drive her own country off a cliff, somehow represents a bargaining chip when conducting an international negotiation. That is precisely what she would be doing to so many businesses in my region, with around 60% of our exports currently going to EU countries, leading the North East England Chamber of Commerce to state that its 3,000 members
“have been clear, North East businesses do not want a messy and disorderly exit from the EU.”
They are perplexed that, despite all the evidence, the Government have allowed a no-deal scenario to be seen as a credible Brexit outcome.
Many people will have wanted the UK to leave the EU last Friday, or just as soon as possible, and not because of an arbitrary date set by the Prime Minister, having triggered article 50 when she did, but because they are frankly sick to the back teeth of hearing about this issue, day in, day out. They have had enough of Brexit dominating every single news bulletin, newspaper headline or radio discussion. Understandably, they just want what has turned into a national nightmare to be finally over.
I, too, am angry. I am angry that we have spent three years not properly focusing on the myriad issues that we know desperately require our attention: climate change, the NHS, public transport, child poverty, food bank use, social care and universal credit. To provide just one example of how all-consuming this exercise in futility has become, it was reported over the weekend that two-thirds of staff at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are now working on Brexit, instead of focusing on other crucial issues, such as tackling poor air quality or rising food poverty.
I am equally furious that billions of pounds can be found by the Treasury to prepare for a Brexit scenario that can never happen, while schools in my constituency are making teachers redundant and women across the country born in the 1950s are facing dire financial circumstances.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that those are the other important issues that we should be directing our energy and focus on. Of course, Brexit will make them all more difficult to solve, because we will be poorer as a country and have less influence in the world. Does she think that that is one reason why 49 of the 65 polls taken on Brexit since the referendum have found a majority for remain? We have to go as far back as June 2017 to find the last poll that had more people supporting leave. Is it not entirely possible that the will of the people has changed?
Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Lady makes some excellent and important points. It is good that they are now on the record.
The reason I say all this, and why I have spent so much time holding the Government to account on this issue since 2016, is that I know that if we get Brexit wrong, it will significantly diminish our capacity as a country to fund our public services—to tackle the “burning injustices” that the Prime Minister once pledged to fight. I say to those who, quite understandably, just want Brexit to be over that if the UK leaves in the coming weeks, it is not over—Brexit and all of its ramifications has not even begun.
Turning to the second e-petition that we are debating, in the week after we were due to leave the European Union, and following two and a half meaningful votes on the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement, the only thing that is clear is that Parliament remains in Brexit gridlock, although today’s further indicative votes may help to provide some much needed clarity on a potential way forward. However, as things stand, we still face this cliff edge on 12 April. It is unclear how the Prime Minister’s agreement can be passed by Parliament before that date, given the scale of the challenge she continues to face, unless she is finally prepared to change course.
I have long believed the answer to this seemingly never-ending and hugely damaging parliamentary gridlock lies in what is advocated by the second e-petition that we are considering. Signed by 185,542 people as of 3.30 pm, it calls for a second referendum to be held to enable the British public to choose whether to accept the Prime Minister’s deal—the one that she and the EU have repeatedly told us is the only and best Brexit deal available—or to remain in the EU with the deal that we already have.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on an important issue. Does she agree that, with the CBI and TUC calling this a national emergency, we need to take urgent action, decide on something and make sure that it goes to a public vote?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend succinctly says what I will say in more words.
I agree, and hon. Members are aware that I have campaigned for that outcome for the best part of a year. I have pressed for whatever deal the Prime Minister negotiated to be put back to the British public, given the enormity of the implications for our country’s future for decades to come. I have subsequently voted three times against the withdrawal agreement, because I simply cannot support something that I and the Government know will make constituents in Newcastle North and the wider north-east poorer. Indeed, as the Government’s analysis shows, the north-east will be hardest hit by any form of Brexit.
Catherine McKinnell
I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova)
Marsha De Cordova
My hon. Friend is making an eloquent speech about the petitions and the need for us to remain part of the European Union. My constituents voted 78% remain, and thousands have signed petitions to revoke article 50 or call for a second referendum. Does she agree that if the Prime Minister can keep bringing her deal back to the House for us to vote it down, it is about time that she put her deal back to the public with the option to remain?
Catherine McKinnell
It is a strong point. I have been clear about the potential ramifications of the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal and my concerns about exiting with no deal, but I am prepared to accept that many people in my constituency voted to leave and want to leave the European Union. That is why, if this Brexit deal is the best deal available—the only deal available, as the Prime Minister and the EU have told us—the Government should have the courage of their convictions and put it back to the people for them to have the final say.
Ged Killen (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about people who still want to leave the European Union. Is it not the case that, given all the water that has gone under the bridge, if we do not put it back to the people, the deadlock that we in Parliament are trapped in will continue through the next stage of the negotiations? It will never be over unless we give it democratic legitimacy. Even if people want to leave, at least they can confirm it.
Catherine McKinnell
Absolutely. So much has become evident since the referendum vote in 2016 and we all, including the public, those in Parliament and those in the European Union, know more about what Brexit means. If the Prime Minister is confident that her deal is the best deal available for the country, we must surely go back to the public to ask if it is what they want for their families and communities, and for our country.
Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. Hearing your speech—
Andrea Jenkyns
Hearing her speech makes me believe that she is trying to give the public the option of Brexit in name only, with the Prime Minister’s deal, or no Brexit. Is that fair to the 17.4 million people who voted to leave? She says that she is prepared to accept that her constituency voted to leave, but is she prepared to accept that the country overall voted to leave?
Catherine McKinnell
Absolutely. We had a referendum in 2016 that put the basic question, “Do you want to leave the European Union?”, and 17.4 million people voted to leave. I have said clearly that I respect all the different reasons on which those people based their vote to leave. I have spoken to many people who have given many different reasons why they wanted to leave the European Union and why they voted in that way.
We are three years on, however, and the hon. Lady’s Government have spent two years negotiating an agreement with the European Union. That is the only Brexit agreement that exists for us to leave with a deal. Given that we in this House have voted three times to rule out the catastrophic prospect of a no-deal exit from the European Union, I have made it clear, and many hon. Members share the view, that we must find a deal that Parliament can agree to.
In my view, if we are confident—as the Government say they are—that the Government’s deal is the best available, we should put it back to the public and let them have the final say. That is why I was proud to join many hon. Members and more than 1 million people to demonstrate in London on 23 March to call for the withdrawal agreement to be put back to the British public via a people’s vote. That is the only democratic way out of the impasse.
In contrast with the ugly, angry, threatening and sinister behaviour outside Parliament on Friday by people who have clearly hijacked the Brexit campaign for more dangerous ends, the People’s Vote march was fantastic. It was a positive advert for Britain and full of people who care deeply about the future of our country and its place in the world. As I have since made clear to my constituents, and to the Prime Minister directly, however, I recognise that we all now need to compromise in the national interest if we are to get out of this crisis.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
My hon. Friend mentions what happened last Friday afternoon. It is extraordinary that Parliament was closed down in the middle of the afternoon and our staff were sent home. I was with a party of schoolchildren who, ironically, were the chief debaters who had won a competition in the London boroughs, and were looking forward to their tour of Parliament. They were mainly black, Asian, and minority ethnic youngsters, including identifiably Muslim and Jewish children, who were then asked to leave the estate and filter out into the crowd. Is it not extraordinary that we can be brought to such lengths by a few extremists and thugs?
Catherine McKinnell
Yes; many hon. Members were disturbed by the scenes they witnessed on Friday directly and on the news. As many have made clear, those people do not reflect the people who voted leave, but they professed to be the spokespeople for the leave campaign on the streets of London.
Here in Parliament, we have run out of road. We cannot keep going round in ever-decreasing circles while the international standing of our country diminishes further by the day. For me, compromise means allowing the passage of a deal through Parliament that I know will make my constituents poorer. I will allow that, however, to get past the gridlock, on the condition that we put it back to the people to make the final decision in a confirmatory, binding public vote.
Some people feel that the Beckett or Kyle-Wilson proposal somehow undermines the outcome of the 2016 referendum, the conduct of which has become increasingly suspect, and which was in some aspects downright illegal, or that it undermines the integrity of our democracy as a whole. It does not. Democracy cannot be undermined by trying to resolve an issue democratically or by holding a vote in which every single person in the country can participate. Democracy is surely an ongoing process, not one moment frozen in time to which our entire country’s future must for ever be held to ransom, regardless of the consequences that emerge.
Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Ind)
People talk about the divisiveness of a second referendum, which seems to be the biggest reason not to have one. To follow on from the hon. Lady’s point, however, I would argue that nothing could be more healing than involving the entire country in the decision about what to do next. Everybody’s voice is equal—nobody loses and nobody wins—because that is democracy. Fortunately, we do not live in a country where some voices are more important or more valid than others.
Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Lady makes the point well. There are people who think that the radical approach of democratically asking the public what they think would unleash an almighty backlash and all sorts of dangerous extremism, but I say to them that such extremism clearly exists already. We saw it on the streets of London on Friday and I am certainly not prepared to roll over and appease it.
However, there is always the prospect that the Prime Minister will refuse to change her approach and that she will lurch ever closer to 12 April with the threat of our crashing out of the EU still with us. That brings me to the third e-petition that we are considering today, which calls for article 50 to be revoked and for the UK to remain in the EU.
As hon. Members will be aware, this petition has been supported by an unprecedented number of people, although that is not surprising, because we live in unprecedented times. Indeed, this is the most signed petition ever received on the petitions website of the House of Commons and the Government. As of 3.30 pm today, it had received a staggering 6,034,845 signatures, over 26,000 of which come from my city of Newcastle.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
That is indeed an extremely impressive total of petition signatories. Therefore, would the hon. Member like to suggest that instead of having held the referendum in the first place, it would have been sufficient to put an e-petition in and get that particular fraction of the population voting for it, in order to set aside a democratic vote by a much larger number of people?
Catherine McKinnell
Clearly not. Before turning to the content of this petition—
Andy Slaughter
My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way, but that was a bit of sophistry that we have just heard. Six million people—an extraordinary number—signed this petition as against some of the leave petitions, just as there was a 1 million-person march as opposed to the pathetic little leave march, showing a change in the zeitgeist, if I am allowed to use European words. Are we not seeing the people speaking up at last and saying, “We are not going to allow some of the people in the House of Commons to ruin the country, economically and politically, for the future”?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend has put that very well.
Before turning to the content and substance of this petition, I will first put on the record my gratitude to the Government Digital Service, which worked hard to keep the petitions website up and running under the strain of the highest usage it has ever experienced, which at its peak saw the petition receiving around 2,000 signatures a minute. I am keen to emphasise that, contrary to some of the rumours that have been put around to try to undermine the integrity of this petition, the Government Digital Service has a number of automated and manual systems in place to detect bots, disposable email addresses and other signs of fraudulent activity.
Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Ind)
On this point about the number of signatures—in my constituency, there were more than 9,500 signatures—I understand that General Data Protection Regulation rules mean that I cannot necessarily see who has signed that particular petition. Normally, however, in a petition we get a sense of who has signed. Is it possible that the House authorities would at least be able to email back those people who have signed the petition, to give them some feedback about what has happened to it in Parliament, because, like many others, I would like them to know that, yes, I am prepared to support revoke and remain, rather than have us crash out of the EU?
Catherine McKinnell
I am sure that is now on the record and the Petitions Committee, which is a formal cross-party Committee of the House that processes the petitions tabled by members of the public which reach the threshold for a petition to be debated, will obviously notify the people who have signed it, to tell them that the issue has been tabled for debate or that there is a response from the Government.
When someone signs a petition, they are directed to their MP, so that they can let them know if they want to. I have been contacted directly by constituents who have signed the petition and who want me to know that they have signed it, and obviously they can then receive feedback from me as a Member of Parliament. I am sure that there are many members of the public who have signed the petition who will be watching the proceedings today with great interest.
Dr Lewis
The hon. Lady is being terribly courteous and I really appreciate it. Let us just try this new form of democracy a bit more. Let us suppose that her party—the Labour party—gets its wish and there is a general election. Guess what? The Labour party wins and the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) becomes Prime Minister. Then, some of us who did not like the result set up a petition and get 6 million people to say, “No, we ought to revoke that result and do it again”. Would she be satisfied with that?
Catherine McKinnell
May I clarify matters for the right hon. Gentleman, because he does not seem to understand the nature of a petition, which is a very long-established process in Parliament and a way for our constituents to express their view on matters, and for many years—probably since it began—Parliament has processed petitions and tabled them on behalf of MPs’ constituents? The nature of our modern democracy is that the petitions process has gone online and it was indeed the former Prime Minister who created the Government’s online petitions system in 2010. Since then, it has grown in popularity and use.
As a member of the Petitions Committee, I know that it processes a range of petitions on any subject that Members can imagine, but no petition has received the number of signatures that this petition has, and the right hon. Gentleman seems somewhat irked by that. However, a petition does not replace our normal democratic processes. It is simply a reflection of the level of interest in this issue and the strength of feeling among the public, for which, as representatives of our constituents, we ought to be very grateful, as they have the means to make their voices heard—and this petition is a roar.
Christine Jardine
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and I will just reinforce that point. As someone who was elected here to represent my constituents, I find it extremely useful in the difficult decision-making process that we are going through to have the figures to show that more than 15,000 people in my constituency signed this petition and that they want us to reconsider matters, not blindly go off a cliff and crash out of Europe. It behoves us well to pay attention to what our constituents are telling us.
Catherine McKinnell
Indeed, because what this petition —combined with the million-plus people who gave up their Saturday to march here on the streets of London just a week ago—demonstrates is that there is a very large number of people in this country who are extremely concerned about Brexit, the Government’s approach to this process and the implications of all this for the future of our country.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The hon. Lady is generous in giving way. I come back to the suggestion that after each election somebody could launch a petition to reverse the result. The extraordinary thing about the 2016 referendum is that the Government, and many Members in this House, insist that the result of that referendum can never be changed, whereas we have elections every four or five years, so decisions can be reversed. However, in this case it seems that we can never, ever change our mind about the referendum in 2016.
Catherine McKinnell
That is an important point, which is now on the record.
Andrea Jenkyns
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. To raise a contrary point to the one just made by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), does the hon. Lady agree that this petition and those in this place who support it actually have only one goal, which is to overturn the referendum result?
Catherine McKinnell
No, I completely disagree with that. I have already set out very clearly my views and my concerns, which I think are shared by a huge number of people. However, I absolutely share the concerns that have been expressed by those calling for a public vote on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, because I did not come into politics to make my constituents poorer and I did not get elected to this place to drive my country and its economy off a cliff.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Perhaps, then, the hon. Lady would like to tell us why the remain Bank of England/Treasury forecast for what would happen in the first two years after a leave vote—it was said that there would be a recession, big job losses, an investment collapse, a share market collapse and a housebuilding problem, and the reverse of all those things happened, with jobs up and no recession, and we now have better growth than Germany or Italy—was so wrong and why we should believe her pessimistic forecast for 15 years’ time, when they could not get the first two years right.
Catherine McKinnell
Many of the predictions that were made—for example, that we would see a stall in investment or the economy being affected—have happened, and even when there is an increase in jobs, which the Government often like to talk about, we see more and more people using food banks and struggling to make ends meet. So, if anyone suggests that we are somehow better off now than we were in 2016, they are wrong. All the projections show that we will be only more greatly affected and that investment and economic growth will be further deflated.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) makes his point, and he makes it regularly. I recognise that the economy was not the driving factor for many people when they voted in 2016, nor was it their determination that we must leave the EU as soon as possible at whatever cost. All the parliamentary sovereignty in the world will not make up for the impact of rising unemployment, reduced living standards and lost opportunities, not least in a region such as the north-east, which has been abandoned to the economic scrapheap too many times.
Rushanara Ali
Does my hon. Friend agree that since this whole affair began there has been no parliamentary sovereignty? It has been sovereignty for the Prime Minister and her Cabinet, trying to ram through a deal that has been rejected three times. It has been an obsession of the Tory party, and a division within that party. The whole country and its future are being roped into the collective breakdown that the Conservative party is having. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) will know, from his own party’s history and his part in it, about the Tory party’s tearing itself apart for the last three decades. And it continues, but this time it is destroying our constituents’ livelihoods.
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend speaks with great wisdom and insight.
From speaking to my constituents, I am aware that many deep and entirely unresolved issues underpinned the leave vote back in 2016, including a huge sense of being left behind and not being listened to for far too long, but ploughing ahead with a damaging Brexit will not enable anyone to deliver on the pledges that were made during the referendum campaign. They will not address those issues, not least if the approach taken does not even have a clear democratic mandate, as is the case at the moment.
I have equally serious concerns about what continuing down this path could mean for the integrity of the United Kingdom, as it is currently formed, and I strongly urge others to consider whether that is more important than the outcome of one vote held three years ago, which—my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) put it very well—was to shore up the Conservative vote and Conservative party support in the 2015 general election.
Anna McMorrin
As we have heard, the Electoral Commission found Vote Leave and Leave.EU guilty of corrupt activities. Does my hon. Friend agree that until the National Crime Agency has done its investigation we cannot take the result of that vote as clear?
Catherine McKinnell
Those concerns are being expressed by many members of the public as they watch the reality of the 2016 referendum campaign and vote unravel. As we get closer and closer to 12 April, I have been making it clear to my constituents that I am prepared to support the revocation of article 50 if necessary, to prevent our country from leaving the EU without a deal.
It is because I am as patriotic, and care as passionately about the future of my city, my region and my country, as anyone that I cannot stand back and watch us crash out of the EU in that way. Allowing such a scenario would be a dereliction of my duty as a Member of Parliament, which is clearly set out as that of acting in the interests of the nation as a whole, with a special duty to my constituents. It would be contrary to the responsibilities of Members of the House as set out by Edmund Burke as far back as 1774:
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
And, indeed, contrary to the guidance of Sir Winston Churchill:
“The first duty of a Member of Parliament is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain.”
Those duties weigh heavily on us all, and they are responsibilities that I take very seriously.
Dr Julian Lewis
There is one slight difference between the hon. Lady’s examples and what happened in 2016, when the MPs, the Government and the Opposition—everyone—agreed that they would take the view of the electorate directly and obey the verdict that they gave them. That did not apply in the scenario she describes relating to Edmund Burke, great constitutionalist though he was.
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Gentleman seems a bit stuck in the past. What we are talking about today is what we directly face. We could rerun the 2016 referendum campaign. We can debate the rights and wrongs, and the arguments for and against, over and over. I did not vote for the referendum or to invoke article 50, for the very reason that I could see us setting a clock ticking on a negotiation without an agreed strategy or plan. Many Members did not vote to invoke article 50, and many Members who are in the House now were not even elected at the time of the referendum. We had a general election subsequently, and that general election returned a hung Parliament, so we are where we are. The petition considers the immediate possibility that is staring us in the face—a no-deal exit from the EU, which is the legal default position if nothing changes today, or this week, to remove that possibility for 12 April.
Rather than going over the history, I am interested to know what the right hon. Gentleman thinks. Is he genuinely happy for this economy just to be driven off a cliff, with all the ramifications that flow from that?
Catherine McKinnell
I was hoping the right hon. Gentleman would make a speech.
Dr Lewis
I am sorry; I thought the hon. Lady wanted an answer now. I think there are three possibilities: the Government’s deal, leaving on World Trade Organisation terms and revoking the result of the referendum. I, together with 158 of my colleagues, which is more than half the parliamentary Conservative party, voted in the multiple options we were given about a week ago that we should leave on WTO terms, and I think that would be the right solution.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I will congratulate the hon. Lady properly later. She mentioned that things had moved on and that there had been a general election. Will she remind the House what the Labour party’s position was, in that election, on respecting the result of the referendum?
Catherine McKinnell
What is so difficult about the debate is that it has wedded itself to events in the past, rather than looking at the reality right in front of us.
Our country remains in a crisis. The situation is completely unacceptable and intolerable, and I am hugely aware of the costly uncertainty and anxiety that it is causing for businesses and people up and down the country, but I am also clear that, despite the Prime Minister’s disgraceful and inflammatory attempts to lay the blame at the feet of democratically elected representatives doing their jobs, this appalling mess is entirely of the Prime Minister’s, and the Government’s, own making.
The time-limited article 50 process was triggered without any plan or agreed strategy for where we wanted to end up—I voted against it at the time for that very reason—and months of valuable negotiating time were wasted on a general election that resulted only in a hung Parliament. After that election, there was a complete failure to listen and to reach out to or engage with MPs—either by party, geographically or according to their views on Brexit—to build that much-needed consensus, with every decision taken by the Prime Minister in her narrow party interest, rather than with the greater good of the country in mind. Yet more time was wasted by repeatedly postponing, or simply ignoring, meaningful votes on the agreement, even though it was clear some four months ago that it would not command Parliament’s support.
I implore the Minister not to respond to this important debate simply by trotting out the same tired old lines that we have heard from those on the Government Benches today, or what we have heard time and again about the Government’s approach to Brexit. I implore him to engage with the fact that this Government’s total failure to steer the country through this historic process has resulted in 6 million people signing a petition in a matter of days, calling for the only policy that this Government have pursued for the past three years to be reversed.
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
Has this petition not shown clearly what the People’s Vote is about, and made its veil drop? One could argue that the People’s Vote has no grand ambitions such as, “Let’s have democracy,” because this has nothing to do with another vote; it is about revocation. Will the hon. Lady now be honest and say that what she and others have been supporting through the people’s vote is revocation, not some grand democratic rerun of a vote?
Catherine McKinnell
I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman has been here for the full debate. [Hon. Members: “He hasn’t.”] He has not, so he was not here when I set out the three petitions that we are debating. This one is about revoking article 50; the previous petition was in relation to a second referendum on the EU debate. I take great exception to his suggesting that, in some way, I am being dishonest in what I am saying.
James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. I am perfectly certain that the hon. Gentleman was not suggesting that the hon. Lady was being dishonest in any shape, size or form, and therefore I think we need not ask him to—
James Gray (in the Chair)
I think he did not. However, Hansard will tell. But I am sure that he was not intending to do so.
Catherine McKinnell
Thank you, Mr Gray. The hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) did suggest that I should be honest. I have been honest, and I am being honest. This petition calls for the option of a revocation of article 50 to avoid us crashing out of the EU without a deal. The campaign that I support, which is for the Brexit deal that Parliament arrives at to be put back to the people in a public vote, is obviously connected to that, but is an entirely different proposition. I hope that has clarified it for the hon. Gentleman.
Instead of more dithering and delay, it is incumbent on us to urgently find ways to put a stop to this crisis. I believe that the only democratic way to move this process on for the country is one that would require an act of true national leadership by the Prime Minister: she must now agree to put her withdrawal agreement back to the public for a final confirmatory vote. If she is not prepared to do that, she—or we—must step back from the precipice and revoke article 50 in the short-term, medium-term and long-term interests of our still-great nation. It is clear that, however this Brexit saga ends, things have to change. As a country, we have an enormous amount of work and listening to do. We must rebuild to put our economy and our society back together and give everybody a stake in, and hope for, the future. The sooner we can all get on with that, the better.
James Gray (in the Chair)
A glance around the Chamber demonstrates that a great many Members wish to take part in this debate. While I do not intend to impose a formal time limit, an informal limit of five minutes would be a courtesy to each other, and would make good sense.
Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Ind)
The petition that I particularly wish to address is that signed by over 6 million members of the public, calling on the Government and Members of Parliament to be prepared to revoke article 50 in the face of a Brexit catastrophe and support remaining in the European Union. Over 8.6% of my constituents—some 9,500 people in my constituency—have signed that petition. In December, I and other Members whose constituencies will come back to me—I could name them, but I am trying to think of their constituencies —took a case to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. We took a risk and prosecuted the case that, as the United Kingdom, we had the unilateral right to rescind the notification of article 50 if we needed to do so. We took that case despite many people saying that we should not do it, that it was impossible, or that the decision to trigger article 50 was a one-way street.
We expected that once the mythology of Brexit—the unicorns—was held up to the light, and once Members of Parliament and other people looked at this question, we would find ourselves in the situation that we are in this week. We predicted that the concept of a jobs-first Brexit, or a Brexit that promised all of those wonderful things that were on the side of the big red bus, was a mirage that would prove impossible to deliver. There was a notion that Britain could pull up the drawbridge and everything would be fine: that we did not need to worry about our European alliances, or care particularly about the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, because these things could all be ironed out and it would be sorted out. We now know that is not the case.
Many of my constituents, and many hon. Members present, have looked at some of the options that we are debating in the other Chamber today: a customs union, the Norway option, the Canada option, or a supposed managed no deal. They have looked at the evidence, as they should, and have concluded that every single form of Brexit will make our constituents worse off. Therefore, how can I in good conscience say to my constituents, “That’s fine—no problem at all,” especially as they voted for remain? How can I possibly allow that situation to continue without giving them, at the very least, the right to sign it off through a form of final consent? They should have the final say.
I found myself finally having to leave the Labour party because I could no longer continue with the charade that somehow the Labour party was going to eventually get to the position of offering the public a vote. That option has remained on the ballot paper; it looks as though there has been some movement, and many good Labour MPs have been trying their best to get their Front-Bench team to support it. However, that was one of the reasons why I could no longer stay in the Labour party and had to join the Independent Group. Our view is that the public, if they so choose, should have the right to instruct their Government to revoke the article 50 notice and support remaining in the European Union. We are in a difficult set of circumstances, but if we want to truncate them and bring this situation to a conclusion sooner, a referendum is the best way to do so, rather than entering into four, five, six or seven years of long negotiations about our future relationship with the European Union.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman may know that I tabled the Terms of Withdrawal from the EU (Referendum) Bill on 6 July 2016, and that my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) is putting forward that proposal now. It is taking time, but we are getting there.
Mr Leslie
My hon. Friend has been very prescient on this issue. He has been consistent throughout—as have many hon. Members present—and I give him credit for that.
Faced with this petition, which has been signed by 6 million people, it is our duty to ensure that these views are not pigeonholed and sidelined in Westminster Hall, but that they are heard by the Government. It is not just a junior Minister—with respect to the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris)—who needs to hear the voices of the people, but the Prime Minister and senior Cabinet Ministers. When we come to the end of this debate, I do not believe we should simply nod through the motion that this Chamber, Westminster Hall, has considered this petition. It is important that we fight for those who have signed it, and take this issue to be considered in the main Chamber of the House of Commons. That is the position that I will be taking today.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I rise in particular to speak on the petitions on the public vote and revoking article 50. Some 14,824 of my constituents have signed the petition to revoke article 50 to date. I keep watching as the numbers rise. It is a significant number of my constituents, and my constituency voted overwhelmingly to remain in 2016.
It seems that we have reached a real impasse in Parliament at this juncture. For all the political games that we are seeing played today, we need something clear and pure that moves forward. I am witnessing political fixes by the political elite for political survival, and that simply will not do. If Brexit gets through on the margins we are seeing in the votes as they progress—it may be meaningful vote 5 or meaningful vote 6—the country will never forgive Parliament for the economic disaster we see ahead of us. I have met employers in my constituency to discuss the impact that Brexit will have.
Rachael Maskell
No, I will continue. I met a manufacturing employer just over a week ago. We are also due to lose 300 jobs in one of the agencies as a result of leaving Europe. We are in real need of high-skilled jobs in our city. There will also be a real impact on the university, not to mention our public services and our hospital, which is 500 staff short. The hospital recruited a cohort of 43 nurses from Spain. Only a handful remain today, because of what is happening over leaving the European Union. It is putting my local city at risk, so I will stand up for how people in my city voted back in 2016 to ensure that we do not end up in a disastrous Brexit mess.
The reality is that we are not seeing clear, cool, calm heads progressing the debate. We saw that clearly when the Prime Minister came to the podium and started pitching MPs against the people. We have seen it with her decisions, such as her catastrophic miscalculation on Friday. She thought that separating the political declaration from the withdrawal agreement would help to progress her deal, but we could all see that it would be a blind Brexit, with no leadership or certainty. People did not know what future they were voting for or who would be leading the negotiations.
It is absolutely clear that we need to move forward in a calmer way, and that will not be achieved over the next few days. It is clear that the country divided in 2016, but that has not yet been addressed by the Government. In fact, we have seen greater polarisation of our country with the austerity measures that have been brought forward. That has had a real impact. When people call for a different process to be exercised, and when people say, “Do not press this through,” it is Parliament’s duty to listen. It is unprecedented to see more than 6 million people take time out to sign a petition. As a result, it is so important that Parliament listens to the public.
I have questioned the Prime Minister, and I am confused. Why does she think it is okay for MPs to change their mind and vote time and again, yet it is not okay for the people of our country to do that? After all, every five years we expect the country to change its mind in voting in general elections. In fact, the Prime Minister wanted the country to change its mind so that the Government had a stronger majority. Clearly that did not go well for her, but that was after just two years. We are now nearly three years out from the 2016 referendum. My constituents are absolutely right to call for a public vote with the second petition.
Short of real political fixes, it seems inevitable that we will move to a longer extension. That would be the right move, giving us time to put our country back together and to decipher the relationship that we need with Europe as we move forward. Brexit will have a serious impact on our country. In the early stages, an amendment came forward for citizens’ assemblies. That would be a helpful way of proceeding, before then moving to a further public vote to decide how to take things forward. I thank my constituents for signing the petitions, and I trust that Parliament will hear them.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
It is a big honour not only to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray, but to speak in this debate. More than 6 million people have signed the petition. Let us reflect on the extraordinary circumstances that have led to this debate and the extraordinary number of people who have expressed their will in this way, combined with the 1 million people who marched peacefully just over a week ago in the streets of London to voice their opinion. They are unashamedly and for good reasons voicing their opinion that they want to stay members of the European Union.
Throughout the past three years, I have campaigned to remain. Within two weeks of the 2016 referendum, we set up Bath for Europe with like-minded people. We understood that democracy is not only about majorities, but about people being represented. I have proudly represented the will of the 48% who wanted to stay in the European Union. I believe that the number of people who want to stay in the European Union is now more than 48%, and it would be wrong not to openly represent that view. It would be wrong to be demonised for that.
It is also true that the referendum happened, so my preferred choice has always been to put the issue back to the people. My view is that revoking article 50 is the last thing we can do, in extremis, if we do not get the people’s vote over the line. I believe very much—I would have to test it with the people—that those who have signed the petition agree with that view. Many millions of people probably hope that we will get to a people’s vote where they can express their opinion.
Wera Hobhouse
I will not, because many Members want to speak.
One reason that people have been inspired to sign the petition is the fear of no deal. It exercises a lot of people, and that is why we need to put a people’s vote on the table now, not as our preferred option, but because no deal could happen. If no deal happens, the blame will lie firmly at the Government’s feet, because they have options. They could agree to a people’s vote. If that option was combined with the Government’s deal, it would go through Parliament. Alternatively, they could revoke article 50.
If we crash out in two weeks, the blame will lie with the Government alone. I am proud of all the people who have signed the petition, including 18,000 in my constituency. That is the will of the people in Bath. Anyone who refuses to listen to the will of the people in 2019 is not a true democrat. Saying that the people have spoken once and should never be allowed to speak again is a travesty.
I am proud to hear the will of people and to hear them voice their concerns. I definitely listen to them, and I have not given up on the possibility of us staying in the European Union. I will fight to the end. I hope we get a people’s vote, but in extremis we need to revoke article 50.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. The Brexit negotiations over the past two years have culminated in a constitutional crisis and the inability of our Government to resolve the single biggest issue that our country has faced in a generation. Our Prime Minister has refused to take any responsibility for her role in that crisis, yet it is she who has led us to the current impasse. Faced with a country split down the middle in its opinion on Brexit, the Prime Minister said almost nothing on Brexit between July 2016 and January 2017, except “Brexit means Brexit”. She failed at that early stage to chart a way forward that could bring the country together: a basis for negotiation with the EU that placed the national interest and protecting our economy, employment rights and environmental protections at the heart of the negotiating objectives.
In January 2017, the Prime Minister finally announced her Brexit red lines, which were essentially the red lines of the European Research Group—a hard-line sub-group of the Tory party not in any way representative of a majority of the country and advocating for the most divisive and damaging version of Brexit possible.
Heidi Allen
I am sure the hon. Lady is as curious as I am about tonight’s documentary with Laura Kuenssberg, in which the Tory party Chief Whip says that his recommendation in the early days after the referendum result and after the 2017 general election result was that the Prime Minister could deliver only a softer Brexit that would reach a cross-party compromise in the House of Commons. It will be interesting to watch.
Helen Hayes
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. It will indeed be interesting to see that documentary.
It was the Prime Minister who took the UK into a snap general election in June 2017 and sought a mandate from the British people for her own explicitly hard interpretation of Brexit. She failed to achieve that mandate, but refused to accept that the will of the British people was not for a hard Brexit. It was the Prime Minister who negotiated with the EU on the basis of hard-Brexit red lines, and secured the only deal that could be secured on the basis of those red lines, when a negotiation genuinely based on the national interest might have yielded a different outcome. It was the Prime Minister who, despite facing the biggest defeat in parliamentary history on her deal, and two subsequent enormous defeats, recklessly and stubbornly failed to acknowledge that her deal cannot command support.
The vast majority of my constituents do not support Brexit—77% voted to remain in the European Union. They believe it will be utterly disastrous for our country and do not wish us to leave the EU. It is therefore no surprise to me that more than 26,000 of my constituents signed the petition calling for article 50 to be revoked, which is around 33% of the electorate. The many people who have been in touch with me about the petition support revocation because they oppose Brexit and because it is an essential protection against a no-deal Brexit, which is entirely within the power of the UK Government to implement. For those reasons, I support motion (G) and will vote for it tonight. Parliament has rejected no deal. If no deal and no extension can be agreed, revocation is the only responsible course of action for the Government to take to protect our country from the calamity of a no-deal Brexit.
My constituents are, however, hugely supportive of the opportunity for the British people to have a final say on Brexit by way of a confirmatory vote. The only democratic way through the terrible impasse in Parliament is to allow the British people to express a view on whether they wish to leave the EU with a deal capable of being agreed by the EU, or whether to remain in the EU. Those who support leaving the EU with a deal have nothing to fear from such a process. They would be free to campaign and vote according to their views. I would, of course, campaign for remain in any such referendum.
Three years on from the EU referendum, it is clear that the leave campaign lied, promising many things: additional money for the NHS and multiple trade deals with other large economic powers that have simply not materialised. We now know things that were simply not discussed in 2016, chief among them the risks presented by Brexit to security in Northern Ireland. The official leave campaign has now accepted that it broke the law to win by a very small majority. It simply cannot be claimed in this context that the 2016 referendum result can accurately be read as the will of the people for ever and a day.
Dr Julian Lewis
I merely point out that the remain campaign heavily outspent the leave campaign and the Government sent a letter—a leaflet—to every household in the country at a cost of £9 million with an entirely one-sided pro-remain argument in it, so the hon. Lady cannot claim that leave got the better of the options in getting propaganda out to the masses.
Helen Hayes
I simply say to the right hon. Gentleman that only the leave campaign was found by the Electoral Commission to have broken the law. That is the point.
The Government must act to stop the damage that Brexit is doing. The democratic way to do that is to renew the mandate to proceed any further by giving the British people a final say. If they will not do that, and we stand at the edge of the no-deal cliff, the Government must revoke article 50.
Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and also a pleasure to follow my neighbour, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). I agree with every single word she said. I want to speak to e-petition 235138 on holding a people’s vote, but, most of all, I want to talk to e-petition 241584 on revoking article 50 and remaining in the EU, which, as has been said, has been signed by more than 6 million people, including more than 25,000 people in my constituency, which is just under a third of the registered electors in Streatham.
I do not want to speak for long, but I will make these points. There is clearly no mandate whatever for the chaos that we have seen unfold in this country since the vote in 2016. Whether people voted leave or remain, there is simply no majority in the country for the mess that has unfolded, despite the comments that we have heard in this debate. Given that there is not a mandate for this mess in this House, hopefully the indicative vote process will indicate what there is a majority for. I very much hope it will be for a people’s vote. However, if there was no resolution, and on either 11 April or 21 May we faced falling off the cliff, it is clear that no responsible Government would allow this country to leave the European Union without a deal. I want to explain why, with particular reference to the Government’s own documents on the implications of our leaving the European Union with no deal. I want to draw attention to four or five of the points made in the documents that the Government—I hope the Minister will speak to this—have published.
First, we are told:
“Despite communications from the Government, there is little evidence that businesses are preparing in earnest for a no deal scenario”,
and the evidence indicates that small and medium-sized businesses in particular are unprepared for such a possibility. Secondly,
“individual citizens are also not preparing for the effects”
of our leaving the European Union with no deal. According to the evidence that the Government have published—their own economic impact assessments—if we were to leave without a deal on an orderly basis, we would be looking at the economy being 6.3% to 9% smaller than it otherwise would have been, but one of the things missed in the commentary is that that is an assessment of an orderly departure. If we were to leave and crash out on 11 April or 21 May without a deal on WTO terms, the contraction in the economy is likely to be far bigger.
Look at the practicalities:
“Every consignment would require a customs declaration, and so around 240,000 UK businesses that currently only trade with the EU would need to interact with customs processes for the first time”.
I quote directly from the Government’s own briefing papers. If we read between the lines, we are looking at an increase in food prices, panic buying by consumers and tariffs in the region of
“70% on beef... 45% on lamb... and 10% on finished automotive vehicles.”
And that before we look at the non-tariff barriers and their impact on the majority of the economy, which is service based. Based on the things that I have quoted from the Government’s own document, I do not see how any responsible Government could say that they had a mandate to bring about the disaster that they have published in their own papers.
[Steve McCabe in the Chair]
Chris Heaton-Harris
The hon. Gentleman raises important points from the paper. I am sure he saw the Treasury Monetary Policy Committee minutes last week that said 80% of businesses were ready for a no-deal scenario. He might have misread the number: it is 145,000 businesses that trade solely with the European Union and the Government have contacted them on three occasions so far. So, there has been some progress since the paper that he quotes from was published.
Chuka Umunna
I am just quoting from the Minister’s own document. Technically, he is—dare I say it?—the Minister for no deal. He is responsible for ensuring that we are prepared if we leave in those circumstances. Never mind no responsible Government allowing us to leave without a deal; I cannot see how any Member of this House who held the post that he does as the Minister responsible could stand in the way of article 50 being revoked were we on the cusp of the disaster that he is supposed to be preparing for.
Chuka Umunna
I will finish on this point: above all, the people who will be most angered by us allowing the country to crash out with no deal are the younger generations. For all the impact that this will have on older generations, the younger generations are the ones who will have to live with the results of Brexit for far longer than the rest of us. To my increasing surprise, every time we debate these matters, those people are never discussed. I think I am the first to mention them today; I am sure that they have been in everyone else’s minds. They are the ones who, above all, will never forgive this generation of politicians if we allow this catastrophe to happen.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
As I mentioned, on 6 July 2016 I introduced the Terms of Withdrawal from EU (Referendum) Bill to give people a vote on the deal, in the knowledge that what they were voting on in good faith might not be what was delivered. We have certainly found that to be the case. It is now clear from the evidence that Britain will be poorer, weaker, more isolated and more divided if we Brexit.
I stand here on behalf of people in Swansea West who voted to leave. They voted for more money, more trade, more control over migration and our laws, and they are getting none of those things. They see a £40 billion divorce bill and an economy projected to shrink by 10%. It has already shrunk by 2.5%—around £360 million a week, when we were promised £350 million a week for the NHS. Under the Prime Minister’s deal, we will still be controlled by EU laws. Under the absurd and irresponsible idea of no deal, we would be controlled by the WTO, which has 260 members, a massive commission, and an unelected pool of judges who would force various laws on us so that we could not, for example, choose to bring the railways and water into public ownership.
Migration will not be controlled, with an open border in Northern Ireland, and the no-deal scenario is a sort of Evel Knievel irresponsible madness. People who voted to leave did not know that Trump would be elected. They did not know that Trump would undermine trade, whether it is steel or Bombardier, undermine the Paris agreement, or undermine our world security by withdrawing from nuclear deals with Iran and so on. We are in a completely different scenario. They did not know that the Chinese would abolish the limited amount of democracy that they had, and that in any trade deals—
Geraint Davies
No, I will not give way—we have heard enough from you already, thank you. [Interruption.] We did not know that we would be crushed between China and the United States in terms of the EU’s ability to negotiate.
Geraint Davies
I am sorry that Government Members have decided to leave, after multiple interventions to hear some logic. This is not the will of the people; this is a curse on the people by those such as the Members who have now left the Chamber, who do not really agree with democracy at all. We can see the empty Benches. They do not really care about the 6 million people who have seen that this is a complete shambles. Frankly, the people who vote for this will never be forgiven for what they are pushing on the country.
Heidi Allen
I appreciate that everybody’s diaries are incredibly busy in Westminster, but I find it extraordinary that there is now literally nobody on the side of the House that is responsible for responding to the petition, given it is of such a size. Does that not tell us how poorly the 6 million people in this country who are terrified by the prospect of Brexit feel? This is supposed to be democracy—I find it absolutely startling.
Geraint Davies
I completely agree. We have seen 6 million people in a matter of days saying, “Enough is enough—we want revocation.” A million people were on the streets, and for every one of them, there are probably 20 more. I personally could not make it; due to various commitments, I could not come along. We must have a vote of the people. Clearly there is a crying need for us to move forward.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Further to the previous intervention, in the last debate in Westminster Hall we had exactly the same situation; very few Government Members attended. Does my hon. Friend agree that the petition shows a real passion on the side of people who want to remain? They do not want a fudge. For them, remain means remain, and that is what we should do.
Geraint Davies
People have the right to exercise their views, whether to leave or to remain, and increasingly people want to remain. They can see how awful this is. We have been talking about this matter endlessly, and if we do not revoke or have a public vote, we will spend another 10 years talking about it, with ridiculous deals that will push us down the economic toilet in my view. It is time to put Brexit out of its misery. It is time to let the people decide.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe, in what has been an interesting, highly topical and well-attended debate, although I note that the leavers have now all left, after making a few interventions and, bizarrely, no speeches—something that I am sure that the public will have noticed.
I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for opening on behalf of the Petitions Committee, on which we both serve. I echo her thanks to the Committee staff and the digital staff for all their hard work in surviving the petition. The number of signatories and the interest shown have certainly improved our processes. Few people will not have heard about the Petitions Committee as a result of the viral “Revoke Article 50” petition, so the Committee may become a tad busier in future. I also pay tribute to the cross-party and cross-Parliament Scottish parliamentarians whose work has given us legal certainty on the ability to revoke article 50, without which the debate would almost be a moot point.
As of this morning, the “Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU” petition has been signed by 10,156 of my constituents—a staggering number, although it seems almost paltry compared with some of the numbers that we have heard from other constituencies—the “Hold a second referendum on EU membership” petition has been signed by 229, and the “Parliament must honour the Referendum result. Leave deal or no deal” petition has been signed by 129. I am sure that all Members will have been inundated with emails about Brexit in general of late, and about the petitions and today’s debate in particular over recent days. The overwhelming majority of emails and messages that I have received are from people who wish to remain in the EU, and who would support revoking article 50 and/or going back to the people in a second referendum.
That is no surprise, given the volume of signatures on today’s petitions and the fact that 62% of Scotland voted remain, as did an estimated 58% of my constituents at the time, including me, I might add. I think it would be considerably higher if we had another vote today. During the 2016 referendum, and over the years since, I have seen nothing to shake my belief that staying in the EU is better than any of the possible alternative deals. Access to the EU single market and freedom of movement are vital both to protect jobs and to meet Scotland’s need for key workers in public services such as health and social care.
Much of the problem with the 2016 referendum was the result of its rather hasty nature. It was a relatively short campaign of a very vacuous nature. There were vague mantras and slogans on the side of a bus, the proposal was ill defined, and the reality is that, as other speakers have mentioned, Brexit means different things to different people; the number of emails that I have received from Brexiteers and leavers has proven that. As a consequence, agreement even among leavers is nigh-on impossible, as has been demonstrated through the parliamentary process and the impasse in this building to date.
People who voted to leave in 2016 did not vote to leave on 29 March or 12 April, as there was no date on the ballot. We need to pause and think seriously about the consequences of what we are about to do. I am reminded of the expression “act in haste, repent at leisure”. In this scenario, we may regret pressing on regardless with these arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines, and find ourselves unable to rectify mistakes after the event.
Quite a number of constituents have been saying that the debate should have taken place in the main Chamber. Although I agree with them, the reality is that the Committee does not have the ability to bring debates to the main Chamber—something that perhaps needs to change. Hopefully the powers that be in Parliament are listening to that. Today we are debating in Westminster Hall, while other crucial Brexit-related business takes place in the main Chamber: the latest round of indicative votes—a process that I look forward to taking part in later tonight. Unless a withdrawal agreement is approved by the Commons, the UK must decide within days whether to ask for a long delay to Brexit that would involve holding elections to the European Parliament. The only remaining alternatives would be to leave without an agreement or to revoke the formal article 50 exit procedure altogether.
Time is not with us. Today is 1 April, the EU Council will meet on 10 April and, unless something is agreed, we will leave without a deal on 12 April. Ultimately, this is a political choice. Crashing out of the EU with no deal need not be the default—it is not the only alternative to the PM’s deal. It is imperative that we choose to revoke article 50 and put the question back to the people, because we must ensure that the UK does not crash out without the express consent of our electorate.
As I have pointed out, Scotland did not vote for Brexit and we should not be dragged out of the EU against our will. Revoking article 50 would honour the wishes of the majority in Scotland. If this UK truly is a Union of equals and a family of nations, as Scots were promised during our referendum on independence, our different views must be respected. I implore the House to listen to them. If that is not possible, the UK is not fit for purpose and its days are numbered.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. May I put it on record how proud I am that Hornsey and Wood Green currently ranks as the constituency with the second-highest number of signatories to the petition to revoke article 50? That is the main argument that I will make in this debate, because I know that other hon. Members wish to contribute.
Andy Slaughter
I cannot compete with my hon. Friend—Hammersmith has only 22,346 signatories, although that is 30% of my constituents. However, I must observe that even New Forest East, whose hon. Member stormed out earlier, has 7,245 signatories. Is it not shameful that hon. Members cannot represent their constituents, who are desperate for a resolution and for us to take the lead?
Catherine West
My hon. Friend is correct. Even though a very small percentage of my constituents voted to leave the EU, I have tried to engage with them and talk about what happened in the election and why they felt like that. That is the spirit that we need to move towards as a Parliament, but it is difficult to do that when hon. Members leave the Chamber.
On the Saturday after 23 June 2016, I hired a small room in the old Hornsey town hall for any EU nationals who wanted to discuss their worries with me. When I opened the door, it was biblical: 500 people had come. They were not all connected to the EU in a personal way; for some, it was just a general feeling. That is the sort of constituency I have, but I still want to engage with those who hold the opposite argument, who may feel just as passionately even though there are fewer of them. I hope that this debate will take place in a spirit of co-operation and of listening to one another.
When 1 million people took to the streets of London on 23 March, it was quite an amazing day. Only last Monday, MPs voted to take control of the Order Paper in response to a Government who have failed to deliver a deal that protects the interests of the British people. Yesterday, the petition that we are debating surpassed 6 million signatures—as it is 1 April, Mr McCabe, you may be amused to hear that this morning my other half came into the room and said, “It’s at 9 million!” I leapt out of bed and he said, “April fool.” At least we can try to maintain a sense of humour in these difficult days.
We know that the Prime Minister intends to make a fourth attempt at bringing her deal back—possibly on Wednesday, although the Minister may enlighten us further—and tonight MPs will take part in a second round of indicative votes. It seems completely nonsensical that the people should be prohibited from speaking again at this moment of intense crisis.
Nearly three years have passed since the narrow result, and we understand from commentators that with every passing week a further £600 million is wiped off the national economy. How can something like new computer systems for our ports—to give one example from my time on the International Trade Committee—be more important than providing free dental care for children in our most deprived areas, free university education for our students or the crucial funds that our local authorities need to fight knife crime? There are so many things that £600 million per week could be used for—it is enough to make one weep.
Each hour, £171,000 is spent on preparing for a no-deal Brexit, which we know would have a devastating effect on the economy and inflict disproportionate harm on deprived communities. To put it into context, that money could be spent on recruiting 85,000 nurses, 50,000 teachers or 49,000 police officers—a move that would begin to repair the damage done by eight-and-a-half years of austerity.
On 14 March, the Commons voted to extend article 50—an important step to ensure that the UK did not crash out of the EU last Friday. That action was necessary, but it is not a long-term solution. There are now 271 hours left of the short extension to article 50, so we must ensure that we have an insurance policy to protect the UK from a catastrophic no-deal scenario. As other hon. Members have said, that insurance policy is the revocation of article 50.
I was proud to support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), not least because he chairs the International Trade Committee, on which I sat until recently—I am sure that hon. Members will correct my faulty Gaelic pronunciation of his constituency. Many hon. Members present will be giving a lot of thought to a similar motion on the Order Paper this evening, which was tabled by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and has the same aim. If we are heading towards no deal, revocation seems the most sensible, straightforward and logical course of action. Her amendment would not preclude hon. Members from continuing to pursue a second referendum, as I shall, or from advocating a Norway or Canada-style deal.
I am proud to be voting for the revocation amendment tonight, along with the second referendum amendment that it will enable. I encourage all hon. Members to join me in the Aye Lobby—although I feel that I may be speaking to the converted in this funny debate, in which the Minister, as the only Conservative Member, is looking a little lonely.
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Ind)
Our relationship with Europe continues to divide communities and generations. Many people see the relationship in terms of Europe’s economic value to us; some see it as a way of putting to rest forever the terrible wars that divided Europe for centuries, while for others it is a bulwark against oppressive regimes and it is a protection of citizens’ rights. Yet others see membership of the EU as a threat to national sovereignty and identity.
In the 1975 referendum, the British people voted to stay in Europe, with 62.7% voting yes. The referendum split the country and the then Labour Cabinet, and did not settle the question: almost immediately afterwards, anti-marketeers began their campaign to overturn the result. In the 2016 referendum, the people voted to leave Europe by a smaller margin; in my constituency, 53.2% voted to remain, compared with 46.8% who voted to leave.
I conducted a survey of constituents shortly after that vote, and I have just conducted another poll to see how people feel two years on. I sent out surveys to 4,500 households; 71% replied that they now feel that the people should have the final say on the Brexit deal, while 72% said that remaining in the EU should be an option in another referendum. The young were much more pro-Europe than older people: 83% of 25 to 49-year-olds said that there should be an option to remain, compared with 50% of those aged 64-plus. Of those who voted to leave, approximately a fifth either would now vote to remain or are undecided, with those in the 25-to-49 age bracket being most likely to have changed their mind.
The issue of sovereignty and what it means to be British, which was so important in 1975, continued as a strong thread in the replies to my 2016 and 2018 surveys. The latest survey contained many opposing views. For example, one respondent said:
“As a sovereign nation, I want the UK to remain in a community and work together to share information and provide mutual support”.
Conversely, another respondent said:
“We want our country back, our sovereignty, our laws.”
I voted to stay in Europe in 1975, partly for economic reasons. The economy—as probably no one present will recall—was in a very bad state, but my overriding reason was that as a young person I saw belonging to Europe as a break from the past, with the possibility of a better future. As a child, I was brought up in the shadow of the war because of the traumatic experiences of my parents and grandparents. Peace in Europe was an overwhelming prize for our generation. I wanted us to be a nation that took our place alongside other countries and contributed to the responsibility that the international community has to resolve some very challenging issues, such as climate change and migration.
Clearly, it was always going to be difficult to get support for the deal that the Prime Minister has brought back. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any deal that could win overwhelming support, because we all want very different outcomes. It is not very satisfactory for any option to be the majority view of the House by a handful of votes, which is why I believe that having another vote by the public on whatever option the House supports, together with the option to remain, is the only way forward. I do not think that another public vote will settle the issue of what our relationship with Europe should be; communities and generations will continue to be divided.
I believe that the younger generation will, in time, have a more settled view of what its relationship with Europe should be. It is only when that happens that this issue will be resolved. The only long-term solution to the issue of identity is time. However, in a public vote, people would be voting this time on proper, detailed options for the way forward, with the full knowledge of what a deal with the EU would look like, and with the option of voting to remain in the EU if that appeared a better option. Perhaps that could put back into the debate a space for rational consideration, which would be welcomed by many members of the public.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I thank the Petitions Committee for the debate on the three petitions and my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for introducing it. We have heard a lot of very interesting arguments, and I extend my thanks to the 98 people in East Lothian who signed the petition asking to respect the original referendum—they have a right to a voice. I thank the 356 people in East Lothian who signed the petition to hold a second referendum. I thank the 13,099 signatories—nearly 12.5% of my constituents—who signed the petition to revoke article 50.
I offer the same thanks to all three groups, because this is a debate in which we need to listen to all sides. We need to address the concerns. It is not a debate in which time should be wasted with interventions and shouting down to try to silence the other side; that is a problem we have had in previous years, and we are not getting any better at it.
I also thank the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who reminds us that the precursor of the EU was an organisation to keep peace—that was its fundamental purpose. People looked to countries across Europe that were devastated by war and said, “How can we make things better?” We came up with the idea of trying to share, and we liked it; it worked. The UK was instrumental in the creation of that organisation, then we sought to join. We were shunned, but we did not take that as a no; we went back and asked again. We did so because we saw that what was happening there was the right thing for the future. It was the right thing for young people then the way it is the right thing for them now. It was right for industry then, just as it is now.
We live in a world where we have a growing challenge from the west and a challenge in the east. Standing together makes us stronger, which is important. I was going to pick up on a variety of comments such as, “Oh, it’s in your manifesto,” and so forth, but, given the shortage of time, I shall not give them the dignity that they do not deserve.
I shall instead answer my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North, who said that petitions have been used in Parliament for ages; they have, and date back to 1832. The very first petition was drawn up by the suffragettes, who wanted a vote, and presented to the House. I suggest that if we had listened to that petition then, some of what happened subsequently might have played out very differently and been more respectful of the sort of community and society that we want to live in today.
I want to look briefly at what article 50 says and why it should be revoked. It is a very simple clause:
“Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.”
It is those last two words—“constitutional requirements” —that have, as much as anything else, caused us problems. We have a challenging constitution; it is unwritten, but it is also versatile. It allows people to say, “This is what I think it is, and you disagree with me at your peril,” but our constitution works because we all agree on certain elements of it.
One of those elements is democracy. If we revoke article 50 as the petition requests, we will create space in which we can perhaps have a better discussion with people who are involved. Some young people in my constituency —primary schoolchildren—wrote to me, and one of them said, “We really should have another vote. We’ve talked about this; it makes sense.” Another boy wrote to me and said, “Why don’t we give the vote to everyone who didn’t have the vote then, but has the vote now? Let’s ask them.” Those young people are looking at adult problems that they know affect them, and coming up with solutions.
Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that should article 50 be revoked, that needs to be in conjunction with a people’s vote? We need to maintain people’s faith in democracy. If people are to have faith in democracy if we decide against something that was decided, albeit with a very small majority, we need to have another vote to be able to confirm the decision.
Martin Whitfield
I very much agree; we cannot have enough democracy. One of the questions that needs to be answered is what sort of democracy we want going forwards. We have looked at the referendum, and a group of people say, “The original referendum is sacrosanct; we can’t have another.” We have people who say, “We’ve had a general election—it’s sacrosanct, and we’re not going to change it.”
Very serious constitutional questions need to be addressed urgently. One way to do that is to create a space for that discussion to happen. The request to revoke article 50 does not mean that we will never leave the EU; it means that we can start to reconcile the country away from screaming and shouting and towards a situation in which discussion takes place and we can move forward together.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Businesses are affected, and many of them do not know who they will employ in the future, what supply chains they will use and which regulatory regime they will use. Surely we need to have space to allow them to have certainty.
Martin Whitfield
Absolutely; I agree. The handling of the no-deal nightmare cliff edge has not been the greatest moment in parliamentary history. We can have a great moment in that history by opening up the discussion again and trusting our voters—the public—to take it forward.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe.
“If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.”
Those are not my words, but those of our first Brexit Secretary, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who is one of many. The ability to change one’s mind is a beautiful thing and something that we should particularly value in parliamentarians. As Maynard Keynes said:
“When the facts change, I change my mind.”
Having a sealed mind—the inability to change one’s mind—is something that we should be very careful about. That is where we are at the moment, I am afraid. We are in a situation in which people seem incapable of changing their mind, but the public are not.
It is very difficult to quote a figure for the number of people who have signed the petition to revoke article 50, because it is changing. When we started the debate, it was 6,036,045, but the last time I checked—a couple of minutes ago—it was 6,037,286. Some 10,804 of those signatories are in my constituency, which is almost 16% of the electorate. I pay tribute to the 355 people who signed the petition to leave with or without a deal, because we should recognise their voices in the debate. I also pay tribute to the 496 people who signed the petition for the second referendum.
There are lots of reasons to change one’s mind. A good reason to change one’s mind is that the circumstances have changed. Another is that one has looked at the evidence. I come to this seeing both sides of the debate, because I started out—originally, when the referendum campaign was launched—as a soft-leave Eurosceptic. However, as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, I heard the evidence of harm week in, week out, and I came to the view that I was wrong. I was not afraid to say that. In fact, many colleagues said to me, “Don’t tell people that you’ve changed your mind. Just put a cross in a different box. It will be very bad for your political career if you change your mind.” It is astonishing that we have come to that—that parliamentarians are not honest and are not prepared to change their mind when they have looked at the evidence.
We focus on the idea that this is all about a WTO Brexit and trade, but from chairing the Health and Social Care Committee it became obvious to me that there is clear evidence of harm to social care, science and research from unpicking a close relationship that has brought enormous benefits for more than four decades. I looked at the harm that Brexit would cause to science and research. There is no version of Brexit that will benefit science and research, improve the situation for our health and social care workforce, or do anything positive for NHS funding.
Of course, the biggest, most remembered non-fact of all the referendum campaign was the £350 million a week for the NHS that never was. Those who led the leave campaign not only know that that was wrong, but valued the fact that people were quoting that figure and that there was a debate. I was in rooms with people who said to me, “Yes, we know the fact is wrong. It’s not a fact. It’s a gross figure, rather than a net figure,” but they were prepared to keep saying it. Many of those people now sit on the Front Bench. It is quite extraordinary.
We must consider the big picture and the extent to which people were misled knowingly and deliberately during the referendum campaign. We must consider the very real evidence that has emerged in every area of the degree of harm. We must be honest about the fact that there were many different versions of Brexit. I am a former clinician—I have said this before—and it would be ridiculous to take someone into an operating theatre more than 1,000 days after they had signed a vague consent form for an operation of some sort. The surgeon would be struck off. The surgeon in this case, I am afraid, is our Prime Minister. Now that we know all the circumstances of Brexit, she has a duty, once we have settled on a version, to allow people to go back and weigh up the risks and benefits of a known deal. That is what is required to give consent.
That is particularly true for young people. We are taking people into the operating theatre kicking and screaming with a consent form signed by their grandparents. We owe it to the British people to check that we have their valid consent before we carry out this extraordinary act of constitutional, social and economic surgery on the population. We have time to do so. We should take that time, and revocation is one way we could do that. We should revoke and reflect. As the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) said, that does not cancel Brexit altogether; it just gives us the chance to pause. This is a significant decision, and we should take the time to ensure we get it right.
There are many good reasons to change one’s mind, but there are some that are less honourable, such as changing one’s mind because it suits one’s leadership ambition or because this has all become about the unity of the Conservative party. The country is looking on in horror; it does not see those as reasons to change one’s mind or to stick rigidly to a point of view when all the evidence to the contrary is compelling. Many of my constituents have said to me over and over again, “Why is it that all of you get to change your mind so many times but none of us does?” They just want the ability to reflect the fact that many of them have changed their mind.
Last weekend, I was with the million people—an extraordinary, positive outpouring from all around the country, walking past the Prime Minister’s door peacefully and asking her to put this to the people. I contrast that with the crowds that were outside the gate when I cycled out last Friday, screaming at me, “Traitor!” and “Bitch!”, and referring to other parts of my anatomy in a disgusting outpouring of hostility.
I hear the Prime Minister and others say that we cannot put this back to the people because it will unleash dark forces and division in our society, but those dark forces and division are already out there. We counter the far right not by appeasing them but by standing firm. Since when did this country not have a democratic process because we were afraid of the far right? I and many colleagues in this House have had to face that blast full on. I will not be quiet; I will keep saying loud and clear that it is time we put this back to the people.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on her brilliant opening speech and on being a brilliant MP for my dad. I want to make four brief points, although there are some sub-points—things that might be a bit short.
It is three years since 37% of the eligible electorate voted to leave, and two years since the Prime Minister triggered article 50. Someone earlier described that as premature, but that is an understatement—it was reckless in the extreme. I voted against triggering article 50 and am proud to have done so. Everything we have seen since justifies the decision that I and all those who voted against took at that time.
I speak in support of the petitions in favour of a new people’s vote and revoking article 50 on behalf of an inner-London constituency with a more significant economic cushion. Other hon. Members have spoken about the harm, or the potential speed and depth of the harm, to their constituencies that comes from Brexit. I also want to challenge the idea that there is a north-south divide here, or that this debate is more affluent versus more disadvantaged communities, because that is simply not true.
In my constituency, some wards have 43% child poverty, there are hundreds of working people reliant on food banks under this Government, and there is a very significant homeless and rough-sleeping population. We should all be speaking about the additional damage that Brexit will do to our constituencies. No constituency will be better off as a result of any form of Brexit.
We would be doing people a disservice if we ignored the demographics of the 2016 referendum or the change that we have seen since. It should surprise no one that the vast majority of our black and minority ethnic voters chose to vote remain. They are sick of the foul press narrative, emboldened by this Government, on immigration. Immigrants make a positive net contribution to this country, and we should not be ashamed of making that case. More women, a majority of every group of employed people—full time, part time, self-employed, you name it—and overwhelming numbers of young people, where they voted, voted to remain. The two significant groups that voted to leave were older people and unemployed people. The Government ignore the change since 2016 at their own peril. Where will their voters come from in the future? The demographic change helps to explain why they are scared of going back to the people for a new vote.
I want to highlight some of the damage I have seen, even in an inner-London constituency. I have talked to employers and businesses from across my dynamic and vibrant constituency. Hospitality, construction and the public sector are struggling to recruit already, even before we get to any potential deal or crash out with no deal. I have seen two financial sector firms move to Frankfurt, and I have seen investment from different businesses go instead to Amsterdam when it would otherwise have gone to Elephant and Castle.
We have also seen damage in terms of democracy and the rise in hate. I echo the points made by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who spoke about events we saw on Friday. I think it deeply shameful that a neo-fascist was allowed to speak anywhere near the Cenotaph in our capital city.
We have also seen hate grow elsewhere. We now know more than we did before about Putin’s influence and about the depth of lawbreaking, overspending and criminality. Although some of us knew that those were lies on the side of that bus, we had no idea of the depth of the lying and criminality that was going on inside the bus just three years ago.
Voters are now being treated as though they are stupid. It fools no one that the person who, as Home Secretary in 2016, told voters that leaving the European Union would damage our national security and our economy is now, as Prime Minister, pretending that her deal, or any other offering, does anything different. Voters are not stupid and should not be treated as such. It is absurd to have made one claim then and to make a complete counter-claim now.
Those are some of the reasons that the revoke petition in particular has grown so fast and so furiously since it was launched. In my constituency of Southwark, 25,000 people have signed the petition and, in the borough as a whole—across two and a half constituencies—some 75,000 people have signed the petition to revoke article 50. That is more than double the number of people in our borough who voted leave back in 2016.
The Prime Minister claims that she has the support of the people for her pitiful offering, but there is no petition for her deal. That petition does not exist, simply because the public support for it does not exist. I would wager that, even were public support for any such petition to increase, it would still have fewer signatories than there were members of the Cabinet, given what we have seen over the past few weeks.
Finally, even in Bermondsey and Old Southwark—a heavily remain constituency—I have spoken to multiple people whose views have shifted since 2016, as well as many more who still support leave but do not support the Prime Minister’s deal and do support a public vote. Voters whose views have shifted include a prison officer, a banker and a teacher. On Friday, I met a man and his best friend, who is Portuguese and is worried about her future rights in the UK. They recognise the crisis that we are in and the damage that we have seen. They want to revoke article 50 and they want a say on whatever course this country chooses to take. For those reasons, I will be voting today with those people in mind.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr McCabe. There have been some terrific contributions in the debate. I particularly appreciated that of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), which was wide ranging and covered a great many points that I very much agreed with. Something that really stuck out was what she said about the very different visions of what Brexit meant and how no one was trying to pull those visions together into some sort of whole. I will address that further in my speech.
The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) spoke of a mirage of Brexit, which I thought was a terrific term. It really describes the nonsense, in some cases, that we were told by those who supported Brexit and which was offered to those who would eventually vote for it. Describing that as a mirage is particularly apt. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke of the country never forgiving and mentioned citizens’ assemblies, which are certainly something that should be considered more closely.
The hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) quite rightly reminded us of the younger generation, of the importance of these decisions for their lives and of how we, as those who are in power now—and of a certain generation, in my case—must remember and consider them at all times. We in this place are creating their future and, frankly, if we pursue this Brexit, it will be a very poor future—I include my own children in that consideration.
My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) gave a terrific speech, for which I thank him. It was very measured and considered and I agreed with everything that he said. The hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) reminded us that, ultimately, Brexit is a political choice. That must be remembered during our votes tonight and in all our consideration of this incredibly important issue.
I must highlight in particular the contribution from the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), which was extremely frank. She, too, spoke of the many different versions of Brexit, and her condemnation of the hostility that has arisen in recent weeks hit the nail right on the head. She spoke of the whole Brexit debate unleashing dark forces and division. We must stand up to the far right rather than appease it.
The call rings out from Brexiters that we must respect the will of the people in the 2016 referendum. The question that keeps occurring to me is, “What was the will that was expressed?” For some, it was perhaps the £350 million a week for the NHS, and they may be very disappointed when that does not arrive. For others, it may have been the higher wages that were promised during the leave campaign, which is a benefit that does not seem to be appearing any time soon. Some may have been wooed by the promise to scrap VAT, about which we have heard almost nothing since, or perhaps by the easy-as-pie trade deals, of which we were supposed to have dozens by now. Alternatively, was it the UK-EU trade deal or the new immigration system that we were supposed to have by May next year?
One thing that we still have is the pledge that there will be no change to the operation of the Irish border, as promised in a Vote Leave news release of 1 June 2016 by the right hon. Members for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and for Witham (Priti Patel). The one promise left standing is the one that seems to be causing all the problems between the Tories and the DUP.
Despite all the fluff and flannel since 2016, it is fairly clear that leave never meant leave and Brexit never meant Brexit. In the blizzard of reasons for voting one way or another, there was never a manifesto; there was never a plan for what happens afterwards; and there was never any vision of the future. No one was selling truth or honesty, but there was plenty of prejudice and imagined slight on offer, and plenty of gung-ho hot-headed invective, but very little sober reflection.
Since then, however, we have all had a chance to take stock. From hearing other hon. Members today, I know that they, like me, have spent time talking to constituents and have received a range of different responses. I have met people who wanted to leave so that our laws would be made at home, but who still wanted to keep freedom of movement. I spoke to one lady who did not like the control that she thought the EU had over our lives, but thought we should have common standards for goods across Europe. There was no settled will of the people, no single movement, and no collective decision-making. There was no plan to vote for, no manifesto to be held to, and no vision of a new constitution. Any politician who says that they are simply respecting the will of the people is actually just hijacking an advisory plebiscite for their own personal or political advantage.
My constituency of Edinburgh North and Leith is decidedly in favour of the EU. More than a quarter of the population signed the online petitions to revoke article 50. That reflects what is said to me across the constituency on a regular basis. People are worried about whether their doctor will still be here in future. They are concerned about whether their neighbours and friends will face pressure to leave. Concerned constituents have made countless representations to me about how the community will be affected if we no longer have the flow of fresh faces and if we cannot hang on to the new Edinburgh North and Leithers that we have currently.
The wife of the regius keeper of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh contacted me because she was concerned about her right to stay. She did not work much while she was bringing up their children, but her husband served with distinction in the Marines, and was invalided out at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is also a member of Her Majesty’s Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, but that cuts no ice. A constituent who does not want to be named because she fears the repercussions came to me in fear of being deported to the EU country that she left as a toddler to come to the UK even before that country joined the Common Market. She raised her family here and looks after her grandchildren while her children work, but her status here is now uncertain.
Catherine West
Does the hon. Lady agree that there is a real risk of another Windrush situation developing if the Government do not get a handle on this?
Deidre Brock
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I hope that the Minister is hearing this, because it greatly concerns many people in my constituency and hers, and across the United Kingdom. The situation needs to be taken a grip of right now, so that those people can be reassured.
Martin Whitfield
I will be swift. I am sure that the hon. Lady will confirm that the substantial majority of those in her constituency are indeed EU nationals, as she said, but does not their angst about article 50 and this situation show their commitment to wanting to stay here to contribute to our society?
Deidre Brock
Absolutely. I completely associate myself with that comment. My constituency is particularly multi-dimensional, with a number of ethnicities across the board. That is something I relish the most about my constituency, and it goes back hundreds of years, because Leith is a dock area. The embracing of new people on our shores is particularly obvious in Edinburgh North and Leith, and I am proud to be associated with that.
The sentiment repeated to me regularly by my constituents, with very few exceptions, is that they want to keep our links with the EU, preferably remaining a full member state. That might be because we understand the benefits of the EU, freedom of movement in particular. As I am about to elaborate, just under 10% of the population are non-UK citizens of the EU—we have more than twice the UK average concentration—and we understand the benefits of immigration and the added cultural and economic value that immigrants bring. We understand how damaging Brexit will be—a chaotic one in particular. Parliament should heed such voices and we in this place have a duty to look out for their best interests.
We know that the deal negotiated by successive, legendary Brexit Secretaries, who all seem to have resigned in disgust at their own failures, has been disowned three times—and the cock has not yet crowed. There will be no rehabilitation and there is yet time for another denial if the deal is brought back a fourth time. I hope that the Prime Minister is willing to listen to the advice of the Lord Chancellor at the weekend and to acknowledge that the deal has no chance of passing and that she should be looking at other options. I certainly recommend heartily to her the revocation of the article 50 notification letter, a judicial inquiry into the conduct of the 2016 referendum and whatever follows from that. We could top it all off, as I said, by copying Ireland’s citizens’ assembly model to determine a way forward.
We should certainly make certain that no future referendum on such an important matter is allowed to proceed on the basis of hearsay, speculation, fevered invention and blatant prejudice. A proper position based on things such as facts and expert testimony should be set out by anyone advocating major change—there are precedents for that. In any case, revoking article 50 seems to be the most sensible course of action. There is no point trying to carry this nonsense any further forward.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe.
I thank all the Members who have contributed and made such excellent speeches with great passion and insight. It is great to be in a debate in which MPs are so at one with their constituents over an issue—but I must correct myself: I called it a “debate”, but clearly we have not had a debate. Our sharing of perspectives has been among people who broadly agree with one another, and the counter-arguments have not been heard because those who came initially to put them decided to leave. I am sad about that.
I am particularly sad for the 175,000 people, I think, who signed another of the petitions that we are also meant to be discussing—the one on leaving with or without a deal—because their champions walked away today. They need to reach their own conclusions about that, but I certainly regret that this has not been the opportunity that it might have been for the kind of discussion that is possible in this space but sometimes not possible in the main Chamber. That can often be the beauty of these events in Westminster Hall, as opposed to those in the main Chamber of the House of Commons. I regret that.
Nevertheless, we have had outstanding speeches. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on introducing the debate so well and comprehensively. Her constituents will be very proud of her for the job that she did today. Many people present have heard her speak on this issue in the past, and she maintained her high standard of contribution this afternoon.
We heard excellent speeches, too, from my hon. Friends the Members for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) and for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), and from the hon. Members for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), for Streatham (Chuka Umunna), for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), for Stockport (Ann Coffey), for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock).
Without doubt, the three petitions that we are here to discuss represent a range of views from across the country: from those who want to revoke article 50 immediately and to stay in the EU, to those who want to have left already, last week, with or without a deal. There are also those who want to hold another referendum between the Prime Minister’s deal and remain. I also recognise, of course, that one of those petitions has received astronomical and unprecedented support. We cannot deal with each of the petitions equally in the debate, because of the overwhelming support received by one of them—something that we have never seen before.
I hope that that is a trend that continues. It is great to see so many people take part in a process that, until Brexit came about, was not gaining much traction with the public. But my goodness people seem to know about it now. The strength of feeling shown by so many people about this cannot be dismissed—6 million signatures is an enormous amount. Even if we accepted that not everyone who signed it did so with exactly the same motive as one another, a clear message comes from such a large number of people taking time to sign a petition.
Dr Wollaston
Will the hon. Lady clarify what Labour’s position is tonight on voting in favour of the revoke motion?
Jenny Chapman
Yes. We are treating tonight as the opportunity to vote for something—a way to find whether there is a majority in the House of Commons for a particular deal as a way forward. We do not necessarily disagree with the proposition made by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), but we will abstain on it this evening, while acknowledging that it is something that we might need to confront in the future.
Jenny Chapman
Gosh, the hon. Lady invites me to make comments way above my station. I am sure she will understand that what happens with whipping is a matter for my Chief Whip. I do not know the exact position on how we will enforce it. But I will abstain on that motion this evening, as a shadow Minister, but I hope that she accepts in good faith what I am explaining: that I recognise—as, I am sure, do my colleagues—that that decision point might be something that we need to confront in future. It is not something that we need to do tonight, because for us tonight is about trying to find a majority for a way forward. I hope we arrive at that this evening.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I can confirm that my party has a free vote on that, apart from members of the Cabinet, who seem to be abstaining—something I do not quite understand myself, I have to say. Is the hon. Lady saying that her party is abstaining while trying to talk up a petition of 6 million people who wanted something else?
Jenny Chapman
I am admiring and respectful of the petition, and I understand the reasons for it. I also do not discount the proposition put this evening. The Minister should not read too much into the fact that I am not voting for it. I would add that the Labour party will whip its Members this evening, unlike the Government, who dare not whip even their own Cabinet. If I were the Minister, I am not sure I would bob up and down quite as much on this particular issue.
Neil Coyle
Perhaps some clarification would help: my understanding is that there is no Whip for Labour MPs on this particular vote. Many of us will join colleagues from across the House—and, I am sure, the Minister—in supporting revoking article 50.
Jenny Chapman
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s advice, which I am sure he would have given regardless of advice from his colleagues in the Whips Office.
What I interpret from the fact that 6 million people—thousands of them in my constituency—have signed the petition is how concerned, angry and frustrated people are with how the Brexit process has been mishandled by the Government. I do not think there has been the same amount of public support and cut-through for a petition at any other stage in the Brexit process.
Catherine West
In the last two weeks, figures have come out showing that Brexit is costing £600 million to £800 million a week. Does my hon. Friend think that might have influenced some people to sign the petition?
Jenny Chapman
There is definitely more of a sense of urgency. People feel that if they are to have their voice heard to make their case, they need to do it now, perhaps in a way that they did not feel previously.
Sandy Martin
My hon. Friend talked about the anger of some of those out there. Does she agree that there is a lot of anger from some people who voted leave as well? If we believe in democracy and we want to ensure that we can deal with the anger on both sides from people who feel they are ignored, the only way to do that is to have another vote, to enable people to vote on fixed propositions rather than simply nebulous concepts.
Jenny Chapman
I agree that there is anger on both sides. We have not always heard it, but in this debate colleagues have been at pains to make sure that when they talk about the far right, or the scenes outside Parliament last Friday, in no way do they characterise all leave supporters in that way. That has happened in the past, and it is a good thing that we have not seen that this afternoon. I credit hon. Members for making sure they have not in any way allowed that perception to be taken away from this debate.
The number of people who have signed this petition and others, and who have gone on marches and protests in recent weeks, shows how many people feel left out or ignored in this process. That has to be because, after the referendum, the Prime Minister was quick to say, “I will stand up for one side of the argument alone. The 52% will get what they want and to hell with everybody else.” That is a dreadful way to attempt to lead a country. In that situation, a Prime Minister ought to have tried to work through a way that is respectful to the outcome but listens to and bears in mind the concerns and anxieties of the 48%. I am elected but I do not represent just the people who voted Labour. I do not check how people voted before I work on their behalf. We are here to serve the whole country, however they vote at elections and in the referendum.
From what people are seeing, they think that Westminster is not working. They see a Prime Minister who, rather than listening to different views, keeps putting the same deal back to Parliament, hoping for a different result. I hope the Minister reflects on that and will set out how the Government plan to go forward. The Minister and I have been in a few of these petition debates, so I will not get my hopes up, but who knows.
On the first petition, to revoke article 50, we recognise the huge amount of public support and why it has touched a nerve with so many people. Any discussion about revoking article 50 would have to be considered in the context of a final choice between that and leaving without a deal. We recognise that, given the Government’s intransigence, we could get to that point, which was almost inconceivable a year ago. In particular, I have in mind the contribution made by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) in a recent debate, when he said that he used to think that the Prime Minister would not take us out without a deal but no longer holds that view. He knows her far better than any hon. Member here does, and his assessment is that she would consider taking us out without a deal. For that reason, as a final choice, revoking article 50 would be preferable to leaving without a deal, but we are not there yet. I am glad we are not, and I hope we never get to that point.
Our clear preference is for Parliament to have the time and the opportunity to debate credible alternatives that can command a majority in Parliament. The next stage of that begins today in the Chamber. I wish it had begun earlier, and I hope progress will be made. I do not think that Back Benchers should have had to initiate it; the Government should have initiated it or a similar process two years ago, to find a mandate on which they could have negotiated, while being obliged to engage with Parliament if the Prime Minister had managed to successfully negotiate. That is not what happened, and unfortunately we have had to take control as parliamentarians. I hope we produce a positive outcome today from this exercise. We will see at about 10 o’clock this evening.
Revoking article 50 at this stage without consulting the public in either a general election or a referendum, which is what the petition asks for, would not bring the country back together. I can understand why people are so frustrated that they reach that conclusion, but without having some kind of democratic process, that would not achieve the reunification that we should all desire. It is not the preferred approach at the moment, but I recognise it is an issue that we might need to return to in future. That will not be enough for some colleagues, but it is the most straightforward explanation of Labour’s position that I can manage.
The second petition calls for a referendum on the Prime Minister’s deal. Labour would support a public vote, which we would call a confirmatory ballot, to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit or no deal. Labour colleagues here will have had several discussions over the months about the desirability or otherwise of another referendum.
Ann Coffey
Can the hon. Lady confirm that the confirmatory vote would have remain on the ballot paper?
Jenny Chapman
I do not see any point in going through another exercise such as that without having remain on the ballot paper. Everybody seems to have their own view on exactly what ought to be on any such ballot paper—whether two or three options, a single stage or multiple stages—but the principle of engaging the public further in that decision is gaining support. I do not know if it has a majority yet—perhaps we will find out later today—but the specifics of what goes on a ballot paper would need to be quickly resolved. There would need to be a process in Parliament to help inform that, but yes, if remain is not on the ballot paper, it is difficult to see the benefit of the exercise.
We have spent two years making the case for a Brexit approach that we believe could have commanded support in the Commons, but I have to recognise that, at this late stage, if the Prime Minister forced through her deal, probably after multiple meaningful votes, that would need further confirmation from the public, as would any deal that came at the 11th hour from the indicative votes process. We have also said that we would include remain as the default option against a credible leave option, so we sympathise with the petition—especially the part that states:
“Whether you voted leave or remain, you didn’t vote for us to leave the EU in disarray, with no deal, putting many peoples livelihoods and living situations at risk.”
That brings me to the final petition, which calls for the UK to leave “deal or no deal”. I represent a seat that voted 56% to leave, and many of my friends and members of my close family voted to leave, so I know how strongly many people feel about that. However, I do not believe that leaving without a deal is what voters were promised in 2016, and I do not think it would be in the best interests of our country, or of my constituents or anyone else’s. It would cause huge damage to jobs, the economy and trade, and create enormous difficulties in Northern Ireland. That is why Labour has always said that we will not countenance no deal, and why we will be putting forward options to prevent it.
I thank everyone again for taking part in the debate, but these debates are always primarily about the people who signed the petitions. We could not have these events if it were not for so many people taking part and putting their names to petitions. It is great to see that people made time to attend the debate as well; I know some people may have travelled a long way to be here today. It is sometimes hard to find an upside of the last two years, but if there has been one, it is that people are more engaged than ever and keener to participate in what happens in this place. I am very pleased that their voices have been heard today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Chris Heaton-Harris)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe, which is a first for me. I shall try to be as well behaved as I like to think I normally am. I hope you will pass on my thanks —and I think everyone else’s—to Mr Gray, who chaired the first part of the debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman).
I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. She did so amazingly courteously and politely, taking into account all the petitions appropriately. I am sure she, like me, is pleased that there have been a number of people in the Public Gallery for the debate. I thank them both for being here and for not stripping off to make a point, as people did in the Gallery of the main Chamber this afternoon. I very much appreciate their attendance and their clothes.
The hon. Lady spoke, as she always does—I admire her for it—in a very honest and brave way. She represents a seat that voted leave in quite some numbers—something like 56.8%, I believe, not that I check these figures.
Catherine McKinnell
I would be interested to know where the Minister got that figure. Officially, Newcastle as a city voted remain, and the votes were counted on a city-wide basis, so there is no breakdown for my constituency. I wonder whether he has been reading the Daily Mail.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I always read the paper that my mother reads; it is very important to know where she is going to come at me next time. I apologise if that is not the correct figure, but I maintain that the hon. Lady is an honest and brave parliamentarian.
Sandy Martin
I know the estimated percentage of my constituents who voted leave. It is 56.7%. However, I have told them that my role is to represent their best interests, and that is what I am trying to do. I am trying to represent the best interests of them all—not just the people who voted for me, but the people who did not vote for me; and not just the people who voted leave, but the people who voted remain.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I think that is a completely honourable position for the hon. Gentleman to take. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North, who has been straightforward throughout this process, is similarly honourable. As she said, she did not vote to activate article 50, and she has sometimes been quite outspoken, in a very polite way, about the process we have gone through in the House.
I hear the hon. Lady has had many conversations with people in her constituency, and many Members who contributed to the debate mentioned the many conversations they have had with leave voters. There are lots of reasons why people voted to leave, so we cannot say that everybody came behind one reason. Actually, there are lots of different reasons to vote to remain as well. People might have voted to leave because they wanted us to set our own laws—to have them set by this place, not by the European Commission—or to make our own choices about how to spend our money, or because they wanted to end freedom of movement. A number of people might vote for the Common Market 2.0 option today, knowing full well that means continuing freedom of movement, which their voters might well have been quite strongly opposed to. A number of people have said over the past couple of years that they voted to leave because they were concerned about how their wages had deflated against overall wage growth. People voted in the way they did for a huge number of reasons, and they are all legitimate. We must not debase the legitimacy of people’s actions.
I am very pleased that the hon. Lady was proud of the people who demonstrated last week, and I am quite sure she was proud to have the full and uncompromising support of her party leader at the front of the march. Oh, he wasn’t there, was he? I think he was in Morecambe. Perhaps she was nearly led from the front by her party leader.
Nineteen Members intervened in the debate, which I think is the most interventions I have experienced. The hon. Member for Darlington talked about the many petitions debates we have had in the Chamber. It is nice to have a full house of people—even on one side—talking about the petition, because these are very important decisions that we are making on people’s behalf.
I thank the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) for his contribution. As long as he is on the other side from me, I feel—no, he is a very good gentleman, and I entirely understand his view on this subject. He said this debate should have taken place in the main Chamber. I have no disagreement with that whatsoever. Perhaps when so many people—more than a million, or whatever it might be—sign a petition, the Petitions Committee could consider whether the Floor of the House might be the best place for the debate. I am in agreement with him on that, but obviously it is a House matter, so it is up to the Petitions Committee how it goes about that.
Catherine McKinnell
On a point of fact, it is not up to the Petitions Committee where the debates are held. The Committee has an allocated slot on a Monday afternoon here in Westminster Hall. This is where we are allowed to hold the debates on petitions that we decide have passed the relevant thresholds. It would be for the House authorities to negotiate how that might be changed, but it is purely a matter of the procedure that the Committee has at its disposal that we have the debates here in Westminster Hall.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I hear what the hon. Lady says. We have a Speaker who believes in the evolution of parliamentary process at a very speedy rate, so I am sure there is a way that very popular petitions could get time on the Floor of the House. I do not think anybody would necessarily disagree with that. The process might be slightly more interesting behind the scenes, but that is one for those who deal with those matters.
I thank the hon. Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), and for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). I will spar one day with the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) on no-deal preparation. Actually, no-deal preparation has gone well—much better than he might care to make out.
Dr Wollaston
On no-deal preparation, one thing that has been quite frustrating is the use of non-disclosure agreements—gagging clauses. It is very difficult for the Health and Social Care Committee to assess the extent to which no-deal planning for medicines supplies has been a success, as people have had to sign those agreements. Is the Minister prepared to sweep those out of the way so that we can see whether there is adequate planning for supplies of vital medicines and medical equipment in the event of no deal?
Chris Heaton-Harris
Perhaps the hon. Lady missed the email update last week to 19,000 doctors by Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, who said:
“I know that many of you will have been watching the news about Brexit…with feelings of uncertainty and increasing alarm…I have been considerably reassured by governments’ preparations relating to medicines supplies…governments, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the NHS have been working hard behind the scenes…and we believe that our medicine supplies are very largely secured”.
His biggest concern was panic buying. As far as I am aware—I will happily take this up with the hon. Lady offline—NDAs have not been a practice of no-deal preparation for quite some time. I will happily correspond or have a conversation with her afterwards about that, because if she has concerns I would like to bring them into the open a tiny bit.
Dr Wollaston
Is the Minister saying that everybody who has been asked not to disclose any issues to do with the supply of medicines is now at liberty to disclose them?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I have said what I have said in public, and I will happily take that up with the hon. Lady after the debate.
I also thank the hon. Members for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), for Stockport (Ann Coffey), for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) and for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). The hon. Member for Totnes cited a whole host of reasons why she is allowed to change her mind. I will not go back and quote all the things she said to her electorate in the 2017 general election. I also thank the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), and the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), who missed the point that wages are rising ahead of inflation at this point in time, and obviously I thank the hon. Member for Darlington, who informed us about Labour’s whipping.
More importantly, I thank the number of people who have expressed themselves to the Government in the three petitions we have debated, which ask us to reverse the 2016 referendum result, whether by revoking article 50 or holding a second referendum, as well as the exact opposite: that the Government ensure that we deliver the outcome of the 2016 referendum no matter what. The Government’s position remains clear: we will not revoke article 50 and we will not hold a second referendum. We remain committed to leaving the European Union and implementing the result of the 2016 referendum.
Parliament’s position is now also clear. In the series of indicative votes on 27 March, Parliament voted on the options of revoking article 50 and holding a second referendum. Neither option achieved a majority in the House. Indeed, the House voted, with a majority of more than 100, against revoking article 50.
The Government really do acknowledge the substantial number of signatures that these petitions have amassed. We also recognise the hundreds of thousands of people who marched in London on 23 March in favour of a second referendum. In particular—I do not think anyone has done this—I congratulate Margaret Anne Georgiadou, the creator of the revocation of article 50 petition, for starting a petition that, at current count, has attracted more than 6 million signatures. That is a considerable achievement in anyone’s terms.
I want to take a moment to note that I, the Government and, I am sure, everyone in the Chamber, were disgusted to hear the reports that Ms Georgiadou has received threats and abuse for starting a petition. That is utterly unacceptable. Everyone should feel and be able to express their opinions and participate in political discourse without fear of intimidation or abuse. That is integral to our democracy and it should be at the front and centre of our minds when we debate and discuss all issues, including Brexit. It is those democratic values that underpin the Government’s commitment to uphold the result of the 2016 referendum.
Although I have elaborated on this process before, let me do so again, to reinforce exactly why it is that we must uphold the result. In 2015, Parliament voted overwhelmingly to give the British people a choice on whether to remain in or leave the European Union, allowing them to express a clear view to Government. Before we asked them to vote, the Government wrote to every household, committing to implement whatever decision they made.
On 23 June 2016, the British people expressed their view to Government. With nearly three quarters of the electorate taking part, 17.4 million people voted to leave the European Union. That is the highest number of votes cast for any single course of action in UK electoral history. More British people than ever before or since amassed in agreement on a single, clear outcome: they wanted the Government to deliver the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.
Of course, Parliament also made a commitment to uphold the result of the 2016 referendum. In the 2017 general election, the British people cast their votes again, and more than 80% of voters voted for parties who committed in their manifestos to uphold the result of the referendum.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I will happily give way to all three hon. Members, beginning with the hon. Member for East Lothian.
Martin Whitfield
I refrained from raising this in my speech, but the Conservatives also stood on a manifesto saying that they would not separate the withdrawal agreement from the political declaration. How can they keep to one bit of the manifesto but not the other bit further on in the same paragraph?
Chuka Umunna
I thought the Minister might want to reply. The point he continues to ignore is the reason why he and his Government are in the mess they are in. Ultimately, the 2016 referendum gave a view on whether a majority of people participating in that referendum wanted to leave the European Union, but how to leave was reserved to Parliament. His Government put a very hard Brexit to the British people and lost their majority. The clash of those two mandates is why we are going through all this chaos right now, and yet again he is sticking his head in the sand and ignoring that fact. It is all very well asserting the result of the referendum, but it did not tell us how the country wanted to leave the European Union. That has been the essential problem in this process.
Chris Heaton-Harris
Forgive me for not answering the point made by the hon. Member for East Lothian. I was going to take all three interventions first, but let me do what the hon. Member for Streatham would want. Our manifesto was quite clear, and Labour’s manifesto was quite clear. My party wants to deliver on its manifesto commitment.
To respond to the hon. Member for Streatham, absolutely, things did move on between 2016 and 2017, and that is why his party—then—and my party made the commitments they did. People understood that we would be leaving the single market and the customs union.
Chuka Umunna
The Minister is also ignoring what his own Chief Whip will say on BBC 2 later this evening: the Government have refused to alter course and change their red lines in light of the fact that they lost their majority. They cannot get measures and propositions through the House of Commons. That is why they are in the mess they are in.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I tend to disagree. First, obviously I have not seen a programme that has yet to air.
Chris Heaton-Harris
Forgive me—it is a tiny bit busy at this moment in time. Obviously I will watch and read every word that the Government Chief Whip might say and put that in the context in which it might have been said.
The hon. Member for Streatham might not have enjoyed reading his former party’s manifesto in 2017 at the general election, and I might not have enjoyed reading mine; but as well as spending a lot of time in my own seat, I canvassed across the country, from Bolsover to Coventry South, in Northampton and through swathes of south London, where people whose doors were knocked on rightly thought that Brexit was in the process of being delivered, because everybody agreed they were going to respect the result of the referendum. Yes, I do believe that there has been a bit of a democratic disconnect, but in a slightly different way from the way the hon. Gentleman believes it.
Wera Hobhouse
The one thing I struggle with is why, if the Prime Minister says with so much passion and conviction that her deal is what the people voted for in 2016, she is too worried to put it back to the people. If she believes it is what people voted for, she should proudly present her deal and just check that with the people.
Neil Coyle
The Minister seems to be struggling to split the hypothetical from what happened in the election. Perhaps he has the figures for the number of people who downloaded or bought the Conservative manifesto; however, as to the simplistic suggestion that the vast majority of voters read any party’s manifesto, we all know it to be untrue. The practical reality in constituencies such as mine was that in every leaflet I put out—in every interview and article, and at the hustings—I said I would continue to oppose Brexit, full stop, so it is completely false to pretend that in the election voters only voted in the knowledge that Brexit would be delivered. It is nonsense.
Chris Heaton-Harris
In a way the hon. Gentleman is making the point that I was trying to make to the hon. Member for Streatham, because people did pay attention to what individual MPs were saying in their constituencies —at least, more people than ever before attended hustings in my constituency, and I should like to think that that was reflected elsewhere. The disconnect comes from the fact that in the end lots of people vote, as the hon. Gentleman knows, for a party rather than an individual. If a candidate’s party, nationally, says something loud and clear, they are almost disrespecting their party’s manifesto by saying something different locally.
Sandy Martin
Surely the point of a manifesto is to let the voters know what the party will do if and when it forms a Government. We wrote our manifesto in the hope and expectation that we would be able to form a Government and carry through the manifesto that we wrote. Unfortunately for the British people, we were not able to form that Government or to take control of the Brexit process. Clearly, over the past two years, the present Government have not been able to take control of it either, but we can hardly be blamed for that, and I do not think that the electorate should be able to blame us for the fact that the Government have not been able to control their own Members or bring forward a feasible, viable Brexit process.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I do not think that I was blaming hon. Members collectively. I was just making a point about what people might well have expected. It is not just the Government but many colleagues who stood on manifestos promising to uphold the result of the referendum who have an obligation and mandate to do so.
Dr Wollaston
Does the Minister agree that it was the publication of the manifesto that was the tipping point for the Conservatives, and it was all going quite well until then, when things fell off a cliff? That was my experience.
Chris Heaton-Harris
The problem is that people sometimes do not like it when politicians say one thing and do another. We all recognise that, and it is a difficulty that we all might have at some point in the future. What if a Member goes round during a general election campaign saying
“this constituency voted by 54% to leave. I think this is one of the things that annoys people, is telling them that they didn’t know what they were voting for. That was the purpose of the referendum, we accept the result…We have to go into this, absolutely understanding that the principle here is that we respect the outcome of the referendum and I think it would be a huge mistake to go into this promising that I’d be prepared to vote to actually overturn the deal and send us back into Europe”?
That is what the hon. Lady said to her constituency.
Jenny Chapman
I remind the Minister that we are being observed here by members of the public in the Gallery, and also by many people watching at home, because they have a certain level of engagement with this debate, perhaps more than others. What they do not want to see is an attempt to undermine, one by one, Members who have made a case on behalf of the petitioners today. They would like the Minister to address the substance of the petition.
Chris Heaton-Harris
That is what I had started to do. Failing to deliver on the commitments that we, as politicians, have made to the people we serve, would be hugely damaging.
Deidre Brock
The Minister talks of a commitment to people’s original voting intentions but, at the very least, the accusations and, indeed, proof of illegal activity undertaken by the Vote Leave campaign, surely mean that a reconsideration of that vote by the Government is entirely appropriate?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I am afraid I completely disagree.
Let me be clear. To revoke article 50 or to hold a second referendum would be failing to deliver on the commitments we have made. Parliament once again rejected those motions last week. Second-guessing or otherwise reversing the outcome of the 2016 vote damages the trust that British people place in their Government. It gives cause for British people to lose faith in politics and politicians and in the most important democratic practice of all—voting. I recognise, in the midst of the uncertainty, that the petitioners question why the British people should not have a chance to have a second say —a second vote—on Brexit. However, I ask Members what guarantees we could give, if we cannot show that we can uphold and respect the results of one referendum, that we could respect and uphold the results of a second. Would we need a third, or the best of five? What would prevent a third referendum? When would the uncertainty and the back-and-forth asking of the question end? When could we consider ourselves to have settled the question?
The Government believe we have settled the question. It was settled by the British people in the 2016 referendum. To question that vote and try to undermine what was expressed in it is a harmful precedent to set, and one that the Government are firmly unwilling to set. However, people have expressed an important message to us through the petitions. Through them, we recognise the frustrations and concerns caused by the current uncertainty. It is our view, and Parliament’s view as expressed in numerous votes last week in the indicative vote process, that the solution is not to revoke article 50 or hold a second referendum, thereby irreparably damaging the relationship between people and politics, but to try to move forward with certainty as we deliver on the instruction that was given to us. That is what the Government are trying to do.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank the Minister for his reply. I was perhaps being a little unfair on him when I picked him up on his reference to Newcastle upon Tyne North being a leave constituency, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) pointed out, there are projected figures for demographic analysis, and I know from the conversations I had on many doorsteps during the referendum campaign that many of my constituents were voting leave.
The discussion and the level of debate from those on the Government Benches have been disappointing throughout this debate, in terms of engagement with the substance of the issue. The point that gets forgotten is a reality check on where we are, rather than going around in ever-decreasing circles, arguing tit for tat about how we got here. We know how we got here. There was a referendum question put to the country that did not specify in any way how it would be delivered, and we had a Government who went ahead and held a general election, and lost their majority. We have a Prime Minister who has completely failed to engage with anyone but those within her own party on this issue, and to reach out and form a consensus.
We know why we are where we are. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), I was disappointed that the few Conservative Members who initially attended the debate, to whom I gave many opportunities to intervene, got up and left before the end without making any substantive contribution. If I am perfectly honest, their contributions were like those in a school debating club—point scoring rather than engaging with the substance.
I marvel, horrified, when I find Conservative Members of Parliament dismissing out of hand the concerns expressed by the CBI and by chambers of commerce up and down the country that the facts around a no-deal Brexit put so many of our jobs and industries at risk, and that they are not ready, as they have said with absolute clarity. The Conservative party used to pride itself on being the party of business; now it dismisses the concerns of businesses and treats those businesses as though they, and their concerns about a no-deal Brexit, are of no relevance to the Brexit preparations.
That is how we have ended up with this petition. To try to dismiss it as some kind of assault on democracy, which we heard in some hon. Members’ contributions, is not only deeply insulting to every single member of the public who took the trouble to go and sign up on the petitions website, but it ignores the deep, gnawing anxiety of so many people in our country who are terrified of the prospect of a no-deal Brexit and want to know that—as politicians, as Members of Parliament, as a Government—we will not stand by while that happens to our country, with all the consequences it would bring.
Anyone who stands there and says, “I have no fear of a no-deal Brexit; it’ll be absolutely fine,” clearly has nothing to lose and is completely insulated, but I know that my constituents are not. I go back to the point that the Minister made about mine being a leave constituency: the honest answer is we do not know. The vote was calculated as a city, so we know that Newcastle voted remain very marginally. What I do know, as a Member of Parliament who represents, lives in and has children growing up in the constituency, is that I will not take any action if all the evidence, including the Government’s own analysis, points to its damaging my constituency’s prospects.
Even if it means not getting re-elected, the only basis on which I will make this decision is knowing that I have done the right thing in terms of all the evidence I am presented with. That is why this revoke petition has been so popular, but it is also the reason that the call for a confirmatory referendum on whatever Brexit deal the Government arrive at has gained so much support. I recognise, as do my colleagues, that there was a vote to leave the European Union, but how that would happen was not decided upon; that is something Parliament has to decide. We have seen the evidence. We have seen that every single Brexit option will make our constituents poorer, and the impact will be greatest on those in the north-east.
Therefore, my view and the view of many of my colleagues who will support the motion tonight is that we should allow Parliament to have that process, to pass it back through Parliament and give it back to the people to make the final decision. Given that they started the process in 2016, they can now make the final decision on how it ends. That is how I will find out whether this is a Brexit that my constituents support, because they will have the opportunity to vote for it in a referendum—a referendum that every single citizen of this country who can vote can take part in. That is a democratic resolution to the impasse that we find ourselves in here in Parliament.
We know how we got here; we know how to get out of it. It is about time that the Government stopped burying their head in the sand and going around in circles, engaging in a debate that is not taking us forward in any way, but only leaves us stuck in this Brexit chaos. I implore the Minister, rather than engaging in the tit-for-tat that is driving the country to distraction, to compromise and come to an agreement that Parliament cannot take this historic decision without the confidence that it is something the public support.
Written Statements
Bilateral Loan to Ireland
(5 years ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
HM Treasury has today provided a further report to Parliament in relation to the bilateral loan to Ireland as required under the Loans to Ireland Act 2010. The report relates to the period from 1 October 2018 to 31 March 2019.
A written ministerial statement on the previous statutory report regarding the loan to Ireland was issued to Parliament on 15 October 2018, Official Report, column 33WS.
In line with the agreed repayment schedule, the first repayment on the principal of the loan from Ireland falls due on 15 April 2019. HM Treasury will update Parliament when this payment has been received, and report on it fully in the next statutory report.
[HCWS1473]
Contingent Liability: Notification of Reduction
(5 years ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Philip Hammond)
The Term Funding Scheme (TFS) was introduced in August 2016 and indemnified by HM Treasury as part of the Bank of England’s (Bank’s) Asset Purchase Facility (APF), which also included the Corporate Bond Purchase Scheme (CBPS) (£10 billion) and gilt purchases (£435 billion). The TFS provided funding to banks and building societies at a rate close to bank rate for a term of up to four years. This supported the transmission of the August 2016 cut in bank rate to lending rates faced by households and businesses. The maximum authorised size of the TFS was £140 billion, and the actual size of the scheme when the drawdown window closed on 28 February 2018 was £127 billion.
In view of the scale of potential losses on TFS holdings relative to the Bank’s level of loss-absorbing capital at the time, the HM Treasury indemnity over the APF was extended to include all assets held under the TFS. The increased indemnity was duly notified to the chairs of the Treasury Committee and Public Accounts Committee on 4 August 2016, and a full departmental minute was laid on 15 September 2016. The most recent increase in the APF indemnity, following the increase in the authorised limit for the TFS to £140 billion, was notified to Parliament by laying a full departmental minute on 20 November 2017.
Under the new Finance Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which was agreed in June 2018 between the Bank and HM Treasury and notified to Parliament on 21 June 2018, it was agreed that HM Treasury would provide a £1.2 billion capital injection to the Bank, bringing its total loss-absorbing capital to £3.5 billion. This additional capital would allow the TFS to move from the Treasury-indemnified APF to the Bank’s un-indemnified balance sheet, and would result in the end of the Treasury’s £140 billion contingent liability with respect to potential losses in the TFS.
The Bank received the £1.2 billion capital injection on 22 March 2019 with the result that the TFS has now transferred to the Bank’s un-indemnified balance sheet. At the moment the capital injection was transferred, HM Treasury also notified the Bank that the £140 billion contingent liability associated with the TFS portion of the APF had been extinguished. The risks associated with any gains or losses on TFS holdings will now be managed against the Bank’s augmented loss-absorbing capital.
HM Treasury will continue to monitor risks to the Bank’s overall capital and financial position (including the TFS) through regular meetings with the Bank as set out in the new Finance MoU. The enhanced risk control framework previously agreed with the Treasury with respect to the remaining Treasury-indemnified APF schemes (gilt purchases and the Corporate Bond Purchase Scheme) will remain in place.
A full departmental minute is laid in the House of Commons providing more detail on this contingent liability.
[HCWS1472]
Modern Service Life
(5 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Gavin Williamson)
Three new initiatives, aimed at modernising the living and working arrangements for Armed Forces personnel will be launched today, 1 April. Our people are at the heart of Defence and these measures, including flexible working arrangements, expanded accommodation options and new cohabitation rules, are designed to modernise our Armed Forces and ensure they remain a competitive employer that meets the ever-changing needs and expectations of service personnel and their families.
First, from today, the Ministry of Defence is introducing flexible service to regular service personnel from all services. Personnel can apply to work part-time—reducing their normal working pattern by 20% or 40% and or request restricted separation—which limits the amount of time spent away from their normal home base to no more than 35 days per year. Pay and annual leave entitlements will be amended accordingly. Flexible service periods are subject to operational capability, limited to three years and individuals cannot exceed four years of flexible service in a 12-year period.
Secondly, current accommodation policy is being amended from today, to allow couples in long-term relationships, to live together in Service Family Accommodation (SFA) subject to availability. Service personnel who have more than four years’ service in the Armed Forces and who are in a long-term relationship or have residential responsibility for a child and are able to provide appropriate evidence of this, will be eligible to apply to live together in surplus SFA at all UK bases where properties are available. They will retain their marital status category but will not become eligible for wider allowances. This important change in policy to allow cohabitation will benefit all services and all ranks.
Finally, the Future Accommodation Model (FAM) will be launched in September, at the first pilot site, Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde. Two further pilot sites, Aldershot Garrison and RAF Wittering, will be launched in 2020. The pilot will last approximately three years and evidence will be gathered over the pilot period to refine the policy as the pilot develops. FAM will provide more choice to service personnel regarding where and with whom they live, making use of the private rental sector (including housing associations), alongside existing options of single living accommodation, SFA and home ownership. Accommodation entitlement will change to reflect the size of the family, rather than one’s rank as in current policy, promoting fairness and ensuring homes are fit for purpose. The FAM policy has been designed so that the cost to service personnel to rent property will be broadly the same as the equivalent type of SFA.
[HCWS1471]
Clinical Negligence Indemnity Cover
(5 years ago)
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The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)
I am today updating the House on recent developments regarding indemnity arrangements for NHS general practice in England.
The Government have today launched the Clinical Negligence Scheme for General Practice (CNSGP), operated by NHS resolution on behalf of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. The regulations establishing the scheme are at:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/334/contents/made. NHS resolution have published guidance covering the scope and operation of the scheme:
https://resolution.nhs.uk/services/claims-management/clinical-claims/clinical-nealigence-scheme-for-general-practice/. The new scheme delivers a key component of the GP contract for 2019-20 and is expected to contribute to the recruitment and retention of GPs in the future. The scheme provides comprehensive cover to all GPs and their wider practice team for clinical negligence relating to NHS services occurring from 1 April 2019. All GPs and others providing primary medical services are automatically covered under the scheme. In addition, GPs and their practice staff providing other types of NHS services as part of their GP practice are also covered. There is no charge for this cover.
In parallel, to deliver on our commitment to put in place an existing liabilities scheme (ELS), we have agreed commercial terms with the Medical Protection Society covering claims for historic NHS clinical negligence incidents of their GP members occurring at any time before 1 April 2019. NHS resolution will have oversight of the arrangements for the new scheme and for an interim period claims handling will be retained by the MPS. Discussions are ongoing with other Medical Defence Organisations.
The Department will keep the operation of both CNSGP and the ELS arrangements under close scrutiny to ensure an effective service for GPs and the value for money of both schemes.
[HCWS1470]
Serious Violence: Prevention
(5 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)
Tackling serious violence is a top priority for the Government. In April 2018, we published the “Serious Violence Strategy” that set out the need for a multi-agency approach to effective action against serious violence. The Government are today announcing the publication of a consultation on a new legal duty to support a multi-agency approach to preventing and tackling serious violence.
We know that different risk factors can impact on an individual’s vulnerability and susceptibility to becoming a victim or perpetrator of serious violence. These risk factors include domestic abuse, truancy, school exclusions and substance abuse. Evidence suggests that targeted interventions that can help mitigate and protect children and young people against these factors. It is with this in mind that a duty to prevent and tackle serious violence should reinforce an emphasis on early intervention and prevention with young people.
Our vision for a duty is to ensure agencies are focused on and accountable for preventing and tackling serious violence through a multi-agency preventive or ‘public health’ approach. This would include:
different organisations working together through partnerships to prevent and tackle serious violence as a priority;
involving and consulting communities and young people;
regular sharing between agencies of data and intelligence and identify those most at risk of becoming affected by serious violence;
using that information to develop a programme of early interventions;
partnerships that are not constrained by organisational, professional or geographical boundaries;
partners working together to agree joint funding for services;
using evidence including relevant evaluations to inform decision-making; and
organisations being held accountable for their work on serious violence, including being subject to inspections.
The Government welcome responses to the consultation document from the public, those with expertise in working with young people at risk of criminal involvement and or re-offending or victimisation, those involved in law enforcement and, more generally, the communities affected by serious violence including the voluntary and community sector. This includes relevant professionals, such as those working in social care, education, law enforcement, local government, community safety, youth services, offender management, public health and healthcare; and, in recognition of multi-agency approaches outside England and Wales, we would also welcome responses from across the UK.
The consultation, which launches today, 1 April, will run for a period of eight weeks, closing on 28 May and can be found on the gov.uk website at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications?'>https://www.gov.uk/government/publications? departments%5B%5D=home-office&publication _filter_option=consultations.
This consultation fulfils the commitment for the intention to consult on a new legal duty made by the Home Secretary on 2 October. The other measures announced included the £200 million youth endowment fund and the review of drug misuse.
These measures build on the Government’s Serious Violence Strategy published on 9 April 2018. The strategy represents a step change in the way we think and respond to serious violence. The approach establishes a new balance between prevention and rigorous law enforcement activity. It shifts our approach towards steering young people away from crime in the first place and put in place measures to tackle the root causes. We believe that the approach set out in the strategy, with a greater emphasis on early intervention, will address violent crime and help young people to develop the skills and resilience to live happy and productive lives away from violence.
More recently, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced on 13 March that an additional £100 million funding in 2019-20 will help in the police’s immediate response to the rise in serious knife crime, enabling priority forces to immediately begin planning to put in place the additional capacity they need. The funding will also be invested in violence reduction units, bringing together a range of agencies including health, education, social services and others, to develop a multi-agency approach in preventing knife crime altogether.
The consultation will be placed in the Library of both Houses and an online version will be made available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications?'>https://www.gov.uk/government/publications? departments%5B%5D=home-office&publication _filter_option=consultations.
To help analyse the responses please submit your response using the following online form: https://www. homeofficesurveys.homeoffice.gov.uk/s/N1VZW/.
Stop and Search: Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
The Government are also announcing greater powers for the police to use stop and search to help tackle violent crime. The Government have lifted two conditions set out in the Best Use of Stop and Search Scheme (BUSSS) regarding use of Section 60 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) 1994 powers in seven force areas particularly affected by serious violence.
We have been clear that we support the necessary and proportionate use of stop and search powers to tackle serious violence and are determined to work with the police to crack down on serious violent crime.
Therefore, we are making it simpler for police to use section 60 (s60) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) 1994. Section 60 powers allow all individuals, within a specific area and for a limited amount of time, to be searched for weapons in anticipation of serious violence without suspicion. Such searches, when used correctly, are an important operational tool that enable forces to dissipate potential violent situations or recover offending items, for example, in anticipation of retaliatory or escalating levels of gang violence.
The Home Secretary chaired a meeting with senior police chiefs from Merseyside, the Metropolitan Police, Greater Manchester, South Wales, West Midlands, South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire on 6 March. The officers cited the potential benefits of lifting conditions placed on the use of s60 powers by the Government’s Best Use of Stop and Search scheme. Introduced in 2014, the Best Use scheme is signed up to by all forces in England and Wales.
The police must be supported to help protect the people, and therefore as of 31 March 2019 we have lifted the conditions placed in these seven force areas particularly affected by knife crime, so as to:
reduce the level of authorisation required for a section 60 from senior officer to inspector;
lower the degree of certainty required by the authorising officer so they must reasonably believe an incident involving serious violence ‘may’, rather than ‘will’, occur.
This will mean there are 3,000 more officers able to authorise the use of these powers, and forces will feel more confident using them where appropriate—as judgments as to where violence definitely “will” take place can be hard to make.
These changes will be reviewed after six months, and a year—at which point we will decide whether to make these changes permanent and national. The College of Policing will also work alongside forces to create new guidelines on how best the police can engage with communities on the use of stop and search. We will also continue to support the use of stop and search where fair and effective, by all other forces.
[HCWS1469]
Vaccine Hesitancy
(5 years ago)
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Lord Faulkner of Worcester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report in the European Journal of Public Health on 25 February that there is a link between anti-establishment politics and vaccine hesitancy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford) (Con)
My Lords, while there has not been a specific assessment on the link between anti-establishment politics and public confidence in vaccination, we take the issue of misinformation about vaccines extremely seriously and are working across government to tackle this. We are aware of global concerns regarding confidence in vaccinations knowing the protection that they give against deadly diseases, and I am pleased to say that in this country confidence in our vaccines is very high.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for that positive Answer. She will know that the World Health Organization has declared the anti-vaccine movement as one of the top global health threats for 2019. That follows the tripling of the number of measles across Europe and the sixfold rise in the United States. The paper in the European Journal of Public Health, to which my Question refers, says that there is a direct link between the rise in populist politics and vaccine hesitancy, and cites particularly Greece, Italy and France, and of course one would add the United States as well. There is also much disinformation about vaccines spread on Twitter and other social media. Will the Government make vaccination compulsory as their response to this, as over one-third of countries have done and as we did in Britain in 1853 to combat smallpox? Secondly, what progress have they made in forcing the social media companies to take down this misleading information about vaccines?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I thank the noble Lord for an important question. The UK has one of the most sophisticated vaccination programmes in the world and we constantly guard against threats that may reduce vaccination rates. I am pleased to say that 93% of parents trust NHS staff and advice. The Government recognise the threat posed by disinformation and the upcoming online harms White Paper will set out a new framework for tackling this. PHE’s monitoring data on patient and public trust, however, shows that there is no loss of trust in vaccination, which is to be welcomed. On compulsory vaccination, vaccination programmes in the UK currently operate, like all other medical care, on a system of informed consent. At the moment there is little evidence that compulsion would lead to an increased uptake and so the Government have no plans to introduce such a system but instead intend to work with those who have concerns about vaccination.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, any distrust of experts sends out a terrible message to all those young people who spend years of study and thousands of pounds becoming experts. Does not our education system fail unless it produces a population who can properly interrogate scientific evidence?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The noble Baroness is right that we should have great confidence in experts and ensure that young people coming through our education system have that same confidence. This is why we can be proud of the high uptake of vaccinations in this country. A number of key components have achieved the high coverage of vaccination. They include national co-ordination of our vaccination programmes, fully trained staff and access to relevant information. We must ensure that this continues so that high level of confidence among parents and patients continues.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, in the study the noble Lord referred to in his Question, the correlation between populist voting and vaccine hesitancy in the United Kingdom was less than in a number of other European countries, but a study in America demonstrated that what was most likely to lead to a positive response from parents was time spent with paediatricians. That is about finding doctors who have the time to explain the purposes of vaccination and to respond to any parental concerns. Will the Minister look at the extent to which family doctors can have that time incorporated into, for example, their Quality and Outcomes Framework remuneration?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
My noble friend is quite right that one of the things that was highlighted in the recent survey about public trust in vaccinations was that 93% of parents trust NHS staff and advice and that 93% of parents remain confident in the immunisation programme. So in order to cover that last percentage, we need to ensure that those parents have access to a GP programme. I therefore encourage parents to speak to their GP or a health professional about vaccinations and to look to credible sources, such as NHS Choices, for their information. I will certainly consider the point raised by my noble friend.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, by coincidence, tomorrow here in this House I am hosting an event about vaccine policy, specifically about how we improve vaccine coverage in this country because, in spite of what the Minister said, there is room for improvement. Some of us are really quite worried about the decline in some communities and in some parts of the country. Does the Minister agree that much better use of social media is extremely important and necessary if we are to get the positive message about vaccine out there to counter the negative scare stories which do so much harm? Does she agree that more should be made of the intergenerational message? Older people—I refer not simply to Members of this House but to the older population—often have memories of the terrible impact of infectious diseases, whether we are taking about yellow fever, polio or measles. They can tell those who are still young all about them. Surely this will reinforce the importance of the vaccination programme.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The noble Baroness raises a very important point which is that while social media can be used to spread disinformation or misinformation, it can also be used in a positive way to spread the positive value of vaccinations. That is why we want to work with those who have doubts about vaccination to highlight the benefits of vaccinations, the protection that they bring from the very serious diseases which she highlighted and how safe they are. A wealth of information is available online through trusted NHS channels which will enable parents to make well-informed decisions about getting their children vaccinated. I encourage the noble Baroness to highlight in her event next week some of the channels which are available and which we will continue to push.
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, vaccination programmes are the most effective public health measures we can imagine. I have two questions. First, what are the Government doing to ensure that pharmaceutical companies are encouraged to develop new vaccines for diseases? Secondly, I understand that some schools have made it imperative for parents to ensure that their children are vaccinated before they can attend the school. Is this something that we can extend?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The noble Lord raises an important point. There are global shortages of some vaccines on occasion and, when that happens, discussions with manufacturers are ongoing. There is also ongoing work to develop new vaccines. That is part of the life sciences strategy and sector deal, which the noble Lord may be aware of. Public Health England advises clinicians on how to prioritise available vaccines when these situations occur.
I think that I covered the question of compulsory vaccinations and schools that restrict access to vaccinations in my first Answer. Public Health England and clinicians do not believe that this is the appropriate route, as medical care in the UK is delivered by informed consent. Generally, those who are hesitant about vaccinations respond better to people working closely with them to explain the benefits of vaccines and how safe they are; otherwise, the risk is that children will be withdrawn from schooling entirely, which would be a much worse outcome for the children involved.
Tax: Short-term Lets
(5 years ago)
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Baroness Gardner of Parkes
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to ensure that all providers of short-term lets are identified by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and are paying an appropriate amount of tax.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I remind the House of my interests as declared in the register.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, the Government seek to prevent non-compliance with tax through targeted education and support, and by responding strongly to those who break the rules. HM Revenue and Customs has dedicated teams looking into those who have not voluntarily made themselves known—known as the hidden economy—including those who let property on either a short-term or a long-term basis.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I thank the Minister for that Answer. However, will HMRC be persuaded to introduce an express declaration on all tax returns, with short-term let property addressees and income having to be disclosed in full, and will it provide that information to local councils? That will then help to enforce the 90-day limit. That is important following the “Inside Out” programme on BBC1, which identified how you could go way beyond 90 days with impunity if you followed its advice.
Lord Bates
People already have to make that declaration via tax form SA105. For the latest two years for which numbers are available, the number of people in that position was 2.48 million, and that rose to 2.58 million, reflecting the increase in the number of people earning income from a property, to which my noble friend referred. However, the number of days for such lettings is limited to 90 in London. It is very important that people declare all income, because it is taxable.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, Airbnb, a significant company in this field, is apparently being looked at closely by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but it seems to be engaging in a practice that we associate all too easily with multinationals: transferring profits outside the UK taxation regime. Are the Government tackling this fully, and do we not need international support in getting control over these companies?
Lord Bates
That is a good question. Whether it is Uber or Amazon, we are genuinely wrestling with how to capture the income due here. We have made some changes to taxing digital companies but, with the spread of technology and the sharing or online economy, all Governments will have to do more in this area.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, the Minister talked about people making these declarations as part of their tax return. However, if people do not complete a self-assessment tax return while still letting property, they do not fill in such a form. That is one weakness in the Minister’s answer. The response to a freedom of information request said that HMRC’s Let Property campaign produced just a fraction of the number of disclosures that HMRC was expecting. The Government estimated that up to 1.5 million landlords had underpaid or failed to pay up to £500 million in tax in 2010. At the same time, people on low incomes cannot find a place to live.
Lord Bates
We have done some work on that. The tax return I referred to is SA105, which is the self-assessment tax form. The HMRC Let Property campaign, to which the noble Lord referred, has encouraged 35,000 more landlords to register and yielded an additional £150 million for the Exchequer. It is not quite the full extent, but it is a step in the right direction.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
We have a long-term rental licensing scheme whereby landlords have to register long-term lets. Why can the Government not devise a scheme for short-term lets on the same basis? That would help HMRC to gather the money due to it.
Lord Bates
It is an interesting idea. There is a scheme in Newham and there was one in Westminster. We are open to looking at whether more needs to be done. We also recognise however, that short-term letting—the Airbnb-type sharing economy—is filling a useful gap in the market. Schemes such as property allowances and Rent a Room exist to help people take advantage of it.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
Did the Minister see in the Times last week—the story was also broadcast—that the Hilton hotel chain claims it has been so undermined by Airbnb that it is killing the tourist industry in New York? That chain is about the biggest there is. Does the Minister agree that it is important to keep a watching eye on this? Local authorities would seem the best people for the job.
Lord Bates
Local authorities have responsibility for enforcement if they feel the schemes are being abused, but it is not our responsibility to defend large international hotel chains. We should look after people who may be able to get valuable extra income into their homes as a result of a legitimate activity.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that anyone who evades, rather than avoids, paying United Kingdom tax would not be permitted to sit as a Member of the House of Lords?
Lord Bates
The noble Lord asks a leading question. I would worry about giving a precise answer, but tax evasion is wrong and it is against the law. All Members, who are responsible for legislating, must be held accountable to a higher standard for upholding the laws that they pass.
Rough Sleeping
(5 years ago)
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Lord Roberts of Llandudno
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will take immediate steps to tackle the issue of rough sleeping.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are committed to ending rough sleeping by 2027, with the aim of halving it by 2022. We are already taking action. Last year we published a cross-government strategy backed by £100 million of funding. The rough sleepers initiative launched a year ago has provided over 1,750 new bed spaces and 500 staff to support rough sleepers since March 2018. It is making an impact: in rough sleepers initiative areas, rough sleeping has decreased by 19% in the last year.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, but it does not add up to the figures I have. I have been told that in 2010 we had 1,786 rough sleepers, but last year we had 4,677—nearly triple the number in 2010. Even if, as a result of the new strategy, we halve the number sleeping rough, the figure will still be higher than in 2010. Why is this? There are many reasons, but one of course is loss of hostel beds. In Tower Hamlets, for example, 1,400 hostel beds have been lost in the last three years. It does not add up. I suggest that we look at this again. We should also look at the Vagrancy Act 1824, which has seen the arrest of thousands of people sleeping rough, some of whom are imprisoned. That should certainly be revoked, so I ask the Government—
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
I am sorry that I take too long; it is never my fault. We certainly need two things: a massive investment in those organisations that provide the beds and the end of the Vagrancy Act.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the noble Lord referred to the statistics and said that there were 4,677 rough sleepers in 2018, but he did not go on to say that that was a fall since 2017, when there had been 4,751. The trend is in a downwards direction, which the noble Lord omitted to say. Also, he cited Tower Hamlets, which is of course receiving money as a rough sleeping initiative area, which he will be pleased to know. That money will have a continuing impact as we see those figures coming down. He is right that more needs to be done, but we are investing more money. We have just announced another 53 areas that are benefiting from the rapid rehousing pathways money, which is part of the initiative. We are looking at a review of the Vagrancy Act. I can offer the noble Lord comfort on that point.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, a few months ago the Secretary of State for HCLG acknowledged that there might be a link between rough sleeping and so-called welfare reform. He said that we,
“need to ask ourselves some very hard questions”.
What steps are the Government therefore taking to investigate and act on the links between social security cuts and rough sleeping, identified by both research and organisations on the ground?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I know that the noble Baroness has done much work in this area. Indeed, we have done some work in a related area. I know she will be pleased about the money being invested, particularly regarding women rough sleepers, which is part of this area. There are many different aspect to this; it is across the board. Obviously in MHCLG we are focusing on money specifically for the housing aspects, but she is right that we need to look at a broader front, and we are doing so.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of a particular problem in Westminster of rough sleeping in tents? Two things arise from that. First, there is the concern that drug dealing might be going on in the tents. Secondly, although they have powers, the police are reluctant to be too aggressive in addressing the problem.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, once again, my noble friend refers to a different aspect of this. He is right that sensitive policing often helps to tackle these issues. I know that police throughout the country are very aware of that. He is also right that there is a complex range of issues, including addiction, which is very much related to rough sleeping. We are intent on trying to deal with that, as we are with other aspects. For example, a lot of people who sleep rough have come from a secure background, sometimes prison and sometimes the Armed Forces. It is a much more complex issue than just the finances, although that is an important part of it.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I refer the House to my registered interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. In addition to the figures that the noble Lord gave about individual change from year to year, could he set out why he believes homelessness has more than trebled since 2010?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the noble Lord is right that the figures have gone up relentlessly over a period of time, until this last year, which I think was in response to the money that has been invested and the concentration the Government are putting on this. As I indicated in my earlier response, it is a much more complex issue than just the money. It is related to addiction, mental health and people in a secure environment. We are looking at this on a broad front. As the noble Lord will appreciate, it is a very complex problem, but I am pleased that the money we are spending on the rough sleeping initiative and have invested in the rapid rehousing pathway has succeeded in bringing the figures down by assigning, for example, individuals to look after particular people who are rough sleeping to see what is the particular issue for them, because every person is an individual and every case is different.
The Lord Bishop of Peterborough
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the answers he has given so far and for the Government’s investment. In the city of Peterborough we have seen, as in many other places, a large increase in rough sleeping. The third sector groups, including the churches, have been doing a great deal to support rough sleepers, but one of the problems we are very conscious of is how tight money is for local government. Does he agree that local government financial settlements could be part of the solution, with targeted money to local government specifically to help rough sleepers?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate makes a perfectly fair point. He will be conscious of the fact that, by a relatively small amount, the financial settlement for local government this year was an increase in resources for core funding in real terms. Also, I can offer him some very good news in relation to Peterborough, which is again a rough sleeping initiative area, as he is probably aware. The Government are also putting in direct funding related to integration in Peterborough, because it is one of our five integration areas.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, raised a point about the Vagrancy Act, which is often a point of contention with the police and those who live on the street. Can the Minister tell us when the review that he mentioned will conclude? I have been asked to chair a debate in the next two weeks about the decriminalisation of living on the streets. It is not about all aspects of the vagrancy laws, but specifically about living on the streets, and blaming a person for something that, generally, they have no control over.
A point was just raised about living in tents. I have recently heard that some people released from prison are being given a tent because they cannot get accommodation. I do not expect the Minister to be able to answer that easily, but can someone from the Government see whether that is accurate? It sounds unfair and not a good idea.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, to begin with the noble Lord’s second point—I know nothing of that. It sounds, on the surface, alarming. If the noble Lord has further information, I would be grateful if he could see me, and then certainly I will investigate.
Regarding the Vagrancy Act, again, I will have to write to the noble Lord. I do not know when the consultation and review are ending. I agree with him that there are aspects which require attention, but once again, it is probably more complex than it looks. However, I will write to him on that issue.
Employment: Automation
(5 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Henley) (Con)
My Lords, the work of the ONS demonstrates the significant transitional challenge posed by automation but overlooks the considerable opportunity for the creation of new, highly skilled employment opportunities. The industrial strategy sets out the Government’s vision to make the UK a global centre for AI and data innovation, alongside measures to ensure our people are equipped to capitalise on those opportunities.
Lord Fox (LD)
I thank the Minister for his Answer, which looks at the benefits—and there certainly are benefits from automation—but there are also risks, not only in gender terms but also in geographic terms. In addition to the study that came out last week, the Centre for Cities last year issued a study highlighting that those economies in the United Kingdom which are already weakest will be the ones whose jobs are most at risk. Therefore, I repeat the Question with a geographical bent. What in the industrial strategy and what in the Government’s plans is focusing specifically on the danger to further diversity and on the danger of putting further issues on to our weakest economies?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord recognises that there are very positive sides to developments in this field. As he will know, the World Economic Forum estimates that, although there might be some 75 million jobs lost globally as a result of change of this sort, another 133 million could be created. However, the noble Lord is right to point out that there will be disadvantages for people, particularly for those who are low-skilled and particularly—he mentioned the gender point—for women. Therefore, as the industrial strategy makes clear, it is very important that we look to retraining. I refer the noble Lord to large parts of the industrial strategy that point in the direction of retraining and upskilling our workforce as much as possible.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, can my noble friend tell us what happened to all the women who were employed as secretaries and personal assistants when the introduction of the word processor made them all redundant?
Lord Henley
My Lords, my noble friend is quite right: they found new jobs, better jobs, more highly skilled jobs and, probably, more interesting jobs.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have quite rightly tried to deal with the issue of skills training in the UK, but it is quite clear that the FE colleges have been starved of resources for the last few years. What are the Government going to do to put that money back into the FE sector so that it can provide the skills that we need?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I could go on at length about what the Government are doing in terms of funding for new training, starting with the £506 million we have offered for maths, digital and technical education including, and including the £100 million we have committed to the first stage of developing the national retraining schemes to support people vulnerable to technological change. With the seven minutes I have, I will leave it there. There is a great deal going on. That is what the industrial strategy is all about.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, predictions of worklessness as a result of innovation have been coming round monotonously decade after decade—since at least the days of Ned Ludd—and have been proved wrong again and again. In fact, it is evident that innovation produces more and better jobs over the long run. Is it possible that the current alarm is because, for the first time, artificial intelligence is affecting the jobs of doctors, lawyers and people like us? Does my noble friend agree that the way to deal with this problem is to encourage people to retrain as easily as possible to take advantage of new opportunities in the new economy?
Lord Henley
My noble friend is an optimist, as the House will be aware. He is a rational optimist—if I may give a little plug for his book—but he is quite right to mention that there have always been worries that, with each new wave of automation, jobs will be lost. As my noble friend has said, what has happened is that, with each new wave of automation, we have seen jobs go but it is the boring, repetitive jobs that have disappeared to be replaced by machines. It might be that, as he points out, some of the boring, repetitive jobs that solicitors do, such as conveyancing, can be more easily done by machine.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, only 19% of the digital technology workforce is female, as are only 15% of computing graduates and only 17% of fintech founders. In an age where automation will become dominant, is it not time that the Government abandoned relying on these sorts of piecemeal, scattered or small-scale initiatives to increase diversity and launched a holistic, well-resourced and high-profile strategy, along the lines of the anti-smoking campaign, to challenge everything from unconscious bias to the lack of training and role models, and to de-risk change generally?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I do not quite take the almost semi-Stalinist approach that the noble Baroness is putting forward. What I am saying is that society will change as a result of these things but the Government must also recognise that it is going to change. That is what the industrial strategy is all about, and we will go along with that.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, it is all very well to be optimistic, and even to be rationally optimistic, but however boring some jobs may be to those who have better and more highly paid ones, those jobs also pay wages which keep people out of poverty and ensure that families are supported. These are serious issues; we are talking about 1.5 million people losing their jobs and likely to be affected. I hope that the Government have more than some forward thinking about where they might find educational support for these people. In a practical sense, however, is it not possible that this sort of challenge—a big challenge for society as a whole—should be referred to those experts who are able to give us advice on where to go? Will the Minister suggest that this be a central issue in the work of the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, which has just been established?
Lord Henley
My Lords, the point I was making is that it is not just government that will lead on changes here but the employers themselves. If we take some of those boring jobs, such as checking out at a supermarket, many of those are being replaced by the self-checkout mechanism. That allows the employers, as is happening in supermarkets, warehousing and elsewhere, to shift employees to more interesting jobs.
Arrangement of Business
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
My Lords, I would like to make a statement to update the House regarding next week and the Easter Recess. Following on from the vote on Friday in the House of Commons we know that the end of our current extension of the Article 50 period, and therefore the default day on which we leave the EU, is Friday 12 April. Noble Lords will be aware that there is another European Council on Wednesday 10 April, when any further extension would need to be discussed and agreed. As this House did so ably last week, we may need again to react swiftly to consider any necessary legislation to ensure continuing legal certainty.
I can confirm that it is our intention to sit next week to ensure that this House is able to respond to any emerging developments. I will come back later this week with more precise details, following conversations with the usual channels, but I thought it right to give the House the earliest possible notice. I am grateful to all noble Lords and, of course, to the hard-working staff of this House for their understanding.
Lord McAvoy (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Government Chief Whip for this statement and confirm that, in the usual channels, Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition have indicated they will co-operate in any further discussions or legislation required, with the proviso that it is genuine business arising from the constitutional debate on Brexit. I also ask him to maintain a strict review of what is required so that, as he has mentioned, any potential disruption to Members and, more importantly, staff is kept to a minimum.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I understand the point that the noble Lord is making. He and I sit in the usual channels, together with the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, the Convenor of the Cross Benches. I promise to keep regularly in touch with all. I suspect we will be talking about this every day until this Thursday and then into next week. For the time being, I am grateful for the support that the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, has given.
Brexit: The Customs Challenge (European Union Committee Report)
(5 years ago)
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Baroness Verma
That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee Brexit: the customs challenge (20th Report, HL Paper 187).
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the EU Committee’s report, Brexit: The Customs Challenge, this afternoon. As chair of the EU External Affairs Sub-Committee, I extend my thanks to the members of the committee for their important contribution to this report, to Members speaking today, and to everyone who provided written and oral evidence to the committee. I also thank the committee’s secretariat, as it was constituted at the time—Jennifer Martin-Kohlmorgen, Julia Ewert and Lauren Harvey—for its assistance with the inquiry and preparation of this report.
Last year, the EU External Affairs Sub-Committee investigated the customs challenges in the event of no deal and considered the Government’s Chequers proposal for a facilitated customs arrangement. I strongly regret that—even though the committee published its report in September 2018, and despite the rule that commits the Government to respond within two months of a report’s publication—more than six months on the committee is still awaiting a response. Not only is the response outstanding, but the Government have not proposed an alternative date for its submission. I urge the Minister, who I know will take this seriously, to provide the official government response as soon as possible and ask him to confirm when he expects to provide it to the committee.
The first half of the report covered what trade with the EU under WTO rules, commonly referred to as “no deal”, would look like. Despite the various votes in the Commons on avoiding no deal, a no-deal Brexit will continue to be a risk unless and until a withdrawal agreement is passed. I also remind the House that, even if there is a transition period, if the two sides fail to agree on their future relationship, there could still be a delayed no-deal Brexit.
Our report warned that no deal would cause significant disruption and be costly. Tariffs would apply and traders would be required to make customs declarations, with customs and regulatory checks also to be carried out. Overall, HMRC has estimated that if customs declarations were introduced between the UK and the EU, there would be a cost to businesses running into billions each year. The completion of customs declarations would raise the cost of UK-EU trade by £13 billion a year. Half of that—£6.5 billion— would be shouldered by UK businesses. There would also be additional tariff costs. HMRC originally estimated an additional £5 billion per year in such costs, though the UK Government’s intention to reduce 87% of tariffs by value in the event of no deal should lower the amount somewhat. Having said this, UK businesses will still face tariffs on most exports to the EU by value. Although EU tariffs are generally low, some sectors, such as the agricultural and automotive sectors, will be disproportionately affected.
I also emphasise the report’s finding that no technology currently exists, or will be available in the short term, which would dispense with the need for border checks. In all cases, some form of physical infrastructure will be required. This is of particular relevance to the Northern Ireland/Ireland border, where trade under WTO rules risks reintroducing a hard border. We also found that the introduction of new customs checks at the border under no deal would cause congestion and delays at roll-on roll-off ports. The Port of Dover’s ability to handle its trade volume, for example, depends on vehicles flowing through the port without stopping for customs controls. Even if the UK adopts a light-touch approach to these checks, roll-on roll-off ports such as Dover operate in a closed loop with their French counterparts in Calais or Dunkirk. Congestion on the French side will inevitably have a knock-on effect on the UK. This poses a significant challenge to just-in-time production and agri-food businesses, and could lead to the disruption of highly integrated supply chains. In turn, this could make UK businesses that are part of such supply chains less attractive.
Mitigation options are limited, but it is critical that the UK Government have contingency arrangements in place to manage the negative impacts of no deal. While no specific plans were in place at the time of publication of the report, I welcome the fact that the UK Government have now set out their contingency arrangements and provided guidance to businesses. Last month it was announced that, in the event of no deal, the UK would set temporary tariff rates that would be in place for up to 12 months from exit date, leading to the elimination of tariffs in 87% of imports by value, which compares with 80% before Brexit. Consequently, in practice many importers will be exempt from paying customs duty, yet this approach is not without risks. While there are some protections for the car industry and the agricultural sector, this unilateral reduction of tariffs, which under WTO rules applies to EU and non-EU goods, could affect the competitiveness of UK production. Will my noble friend confirm when the Government intend to publish an impact assessment of their tariff reduction plan?
The elimination of 87% of tariffs will go hand in hand with simplified customs procedures for traders importing goods from the EU into the UK. These simplified transitional procedures will be in place at least until July 2020. However, they will not eliminate the need for customs declarations altogether, but simply reduce the amount of information that importers will have to provide during a defined period. In summary, the costs, the disruption to the flow of goods and, potentially, the imposition of customs checks on the Northern Ireland/Ireland border in the case of no deal all underline the need for the Government to reach an agreement with the EU on the terms of our withdrawal and the future economic relationship.
As regards the future economic relationship, a facilitated customs arrangement was put forward by the UK Government in July last year. However, the initial reaction from the EU has been sceptical at best, and the parliamentary deadlock over the terms of the UK’s withdrawal has all but sidelined it. Since the proposal, the political declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the EU and the UK has been published, even though it has not yet been agreed. The section on customs calls for “ambitious customs arrangements” and is worded in a way that could be used to support a wide variety of negotiation outcomes. Can my noble friend say whether the facilitated customs arrangement is still the Government’s preferred option? What further thinking, if any, has taken place?
Other members of the committee will raise a number of further questions, so I will leave it at that. However, many of the witnesses who gave evidence to us were very concerned that this uncertainty was having a large impact, not just on businesses but on supply chains.
Lord Triesman (Lab)
My Lords, it was a pleasure to serve on the sub-committee chaired so effectively by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, whom I thank.
After all these months of delay, waiting for the Government to respond, we should consider where we are overall. The Government are hardly prepared for the customs arrangements that would be needed for any version of hard Brexit, and the businesses and individuals who will have to operate in this environment have few clues as to what to expect. People in haulage, ports and administration have a sense of application to do their best, but nobody has been able to tell them which best they should do.
All the time, the clocks are ticking. Complex supply chains face multiple difficulties without any real prospect of resolution. With the small cavalcade of lorries in Kent, the appointment of a ferry company with zero experience, zero ships and zero port agreements, the emergency plans for food and medical shortages and the declaration of the possible need to contain civil unrest with military deployments, it is hardly surprising that nobody is oozing confidence. The sunny uplands are a fantasy. We Brits are a pragmatic and phlegmatic lot, but this has felt to me like launching Eddie the Eagle down a precipitous slope to jump against seasoned athletes, our best aspirations amounting simply to hoping he will survive.
In the area of customs, I still do not know what our national vision is. How does that vision, if there is one, link trade and customs provisions with economic performance, and thus with other vital interests such as security, defence, foreign policy, justice, home affairs and other key sectors? Customs and trade are essential components of a successful economy, and a successful economy holds the key to everything else.
In all markets between nations, including the WTO’s often dysfunctional system, we generally acknowledge that there must be rules so that everybody knows the standards within which they will trade. Even outside the EU’s customs union, checks and intrusive procedures are still inevitable. How else will we deal with, for example, the enduring compliance with preferential rules of origin? If we are to enjoy the frictionless benefits of being inside, do we really think it right to do so without accepting that there are both rights and responsibilities?
Customs arrangements underpin many of the things the United Kingdom values very highly: mitigating risks to public health, reducing environmental risk, food safety, the operation of financial regulation, the social market and decent workers’ rights. None of these is a second-order issue for the quality of our social fabric.
The sub-committee pulled me back to thinking about our national strategy. The United Kingdom may no longer be a great power, but we can be a very good second-tier power and project ourselves internationally with effect. To do so we need to demonstrate our ethical trustworthiness, and this must be underpinned by serious intellectual endeavour. We need credible forces, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and my noble friend Lord West often remind your Lordships’ House, and the foundation for it all is a sustainable economic capacity to deliver on these other interlocking attributes. No nation on earth can do these things on its own—not one.
Let the House be candid about the economic world we inhabit today. Customs problems are not the only problems on the economic horizon, and we had better understand the cumulative effect of all the problems we may well face. China’s growth is now far weaker than it was before 2007, and in essence has been driven only by the injection of a $586 billion stimulus in 2009. That is now impacting on much of the world’s economic prospects. The recovery of the United States is evidently unstable. The poor are becoming poorer. Average wages last year retreated to the purchasing power of 1978, and US retreats always have their effects in Europe and Japan. Europe is sluggish at best. Germany had zero growth in Q4 last year and barely sidestepped recession. Italy has negative growth, and the UK’s growth was the weakest since 2012. There is a correction as the post-2007 recovery regimes are changed and monetary tightening takes effect. The yield curve has inverted, showing how anxious investors have become—always a warning of recession. The eurozone crisis deepens.
Private debt once again threatens the stability of many major economies. In the United States, private debt is higher than before the housing and mortgage crisis of 2007, and is now fuelled by borrowing to speculate. Global debt is three times global GDP. It impacts on corporations and individuals, and in China on just about everything and everybody. Growth is squeezed out by unsustainable and unpayable debt. Investment in wages and productivity continues to be in grim decline. In short, the predictive indices that have preceded past financial collapses are as visible today as the queues once were outside Northern Rock.
This is the economic climate into which we want to add the uncertainties of trading without proper customs arrangements, reintroducing significant friction between us and our nearest huge markets, and our political, trading and security partners. It is hard to believe that anyone would take such a course willingly. Of course, there may be no certain and smooth economic path open to us, but following the worst options could well be the straw which breaks the camel’s back.
Our country has been served very poorly, both by its Government and by the Official Opposition, but it would surely prefer to meet its global and domestic strategic objectives in leadership and values, intellectual capability, security and defence through a viable military—to meet its obligations in the world as it has always tried to do. While customs may appear to be just a piece of this jigsaw, it is about economic capability and therefore about the interplay of the overall strategic fabric. We can do without cutting unmendable holes in that fabric.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for introducing this extremely useful and comprehensive report this afternoon. I also thank the members of the excellent committee secretariat for all their hard work and commitment, as well as for their dogged determination to seek out the facts in this constantly rather opaque process.
When I was rereading the report yesterday afternoon, ahead of today’s debate, as well as reading my own notes from our committee’s extremely informative visit to the port of Dover last July, it was difficult not to feel both angry and depressed. The lack of progress since the report was published last September is shameful. Clearly, the debate taking place at the other end of the building this afternoon, and the second set of indicative votes, will have a direct impact on these issues, not least if the proposal on the customs union passes.
The fact that more than 6 million people have now signed a petition calling for Article 50 to be revoked shows just how concerned people are by Brexit, and in particular by the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. As the Brexit debate has increasingly taken on the quality of a quasi-religious fundamentalist debate rather than an analysis of the facts, it is not surprising that people—most especially people working in small and medium-sized businesses—are increasingly in a state of despair.
I shall focus my remaining remarks this afternoon on the impact on businesses and the preparations for a no-deal Brexit. An estimated 145,000 businesses in the UK trade only with the EU, and an estimated extra 100,000 more may be in the same situation. These are businesses which, over past decades, and certainly since the creation of the single market in 1992, have been accustomed to trading with our EU partners without barriers or friction. Trading with Hamburg or Lyon has been little different for those companies from selling their products from Newcastle to London.
A no-deal Brexit would involve those companies acquiring expertise in customs procedures that they previously never needed. It would involve them facing urgent training, delays and costs. Indeed, as the report makes clear, HMRC estimates that the cost to UK businesses of a no-deal Brexit would be £18 billion per year. Given the reports over the weekend that a number of Cabinet members are now actively calling for a no-deal Brexit, what measures are now being put in place ahead of the new date of 12 April to help small and medium-sized businesses prepare for this situation?
As the report sets out very clearly, roll-on roll-off ports such as Dover will be particularly strongly impacted by a no-deal Brexit. The evidence we heard from the experts on the ground at the port of Dover was extremely powerful. Currently, in the eastern dock in Dover, lorries coming in to the UK from the EU take an average of two minutes to process. In the western dock, where non-EU lorries are processed, the average time for a lorry to be processed is one hour and 15 minutes. At the moment, only 1% of the traffic coming through Dover is non-EU. The port currently handles up to 10,000 trucks per day.
It is a slick operation at the port of Dover, which has developed over many decades, and it currently works as a well-oiled machine. There are 60 crossings per day, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said, any delay at either Dover or Calais has a direct impact on the other port. A no-deal departure without any transitional arrangements in place could, it is estimated, result in up to 17 to 20-mile queues of traffic in Kent. The knock-on impact to just-in-time deliveries, food, pharmaceuticals and other industries is of genuine concern to both businesses and ordinary people.
I declare an interest as a resident of the very beautiful town of Broadstairs on the Isle of Thanet in Kent for the past five years. Broadstairs is next to Ramsgate, where the now infamous Seaborne Freight—the ferry company with no ferries—is based. In recent years, Ramsgate has lost its channel ferry crossing to Ostend and its international airport at Manston. Both of those losses have had a very negative impact on the local economy. The Isle of Thanet voted strongly to leave the EU, and it is one of the ironies that, like many other regions, such the north-east of England, it is those areas that voted strongly to leave the EU that are now most likely to be negatively impacted by a no-deal Brexit.
One of the relatively few visible signs of contingency planning for a no-deal Brexit in Kent has been Operation Brock. The results so far have been mixed. The trial run carried out at the abandoned Manston international airport in Ramsgate in January this year saw only 89 of the planned 150 lorries turning up. Given that Dover deals with up to 10,000 lorries a day, a rehearsal with only 89 surely cannot be seen as anything other than tokenistic. The rollout last week of the new contraflow system under Operation Brock on the M20 has also caused concern locally, not least regarding access for emergency vehicles. Can the Minister—who I fully appreciate is one of the good guys and in no way responsible for this mess—update us on contingency planning in the light of these recent events?
The solution to this is in the hands of the other end of the building as we speak. Remaining in the European Union, or at least remaining in the customs union and single market, would solve this customs challenge.
Lord Lilley (Con)
I congratulate the noble Baroness and the other committee members on the report. She mentioned the current delays at Dover. I noted in the report that they relate to lorries from Turkey, which is in a customs union. Last week, I met a number of customs agents who told me that the paperwork involved in trade with Turkey, with its customs union, is worse than that for trade with America or China. Do the noble Baroness and her party think that a customs union would solve these problems?
Baroness Suttie
I do indeed—not least because of the figure I just gave: 1% of all traffic currently going through the port of Dover comes from non-EU member states. The other 99% goes through in a slick operation. With a no-deal Brexit, that will change overnight—not necessarily because of the Dover side but because of the Calais side, which will have to introduce restrictions.
To conclude, as the report makes clear, the consequences of a no-deal Brexit would be not merely “a bit bumpy”, as some Brexiters have claimed. They would have a real and damaging impact on businesses and the lives of ordinary people for generations to come.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lady Verma on her excellent chairmanship of our committee. I thank my colleagues and our ever-diligent staff for their contributions to our long and sometimes exhausting —but sometimes rather exhilarating—meetings.
This is our third report on customs and trade. It is right that we concentrated so much attention on this, because whether we remain in a customs union or not, the issue is central to the binary choice that the Government are, I am afraid, not making at the moment, and which we will have at some stage to make. The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, has just made the point that down the Corridor a very important debate on indicative votes is taking place. The most popular Motion so far, as we saw last week, was moved by my right honourable friend Ken Clarke in favour of remaining in the customs union.
On the point just made in an intervention, I make a distinction between remaining in the customs union and, like Turkey, having a customs union with the customs union. That is a different and separate point. As I understand it, Ken Clarke was arguing for us remaining in the existing customs union, which is the only way to maintain the entirely frictionless trade we have enjoyed with our colleagues in European Union countries for 45 years—and the only way to avoid a hard border in Ireland and keep the United Kingdom together. I fear that if there were a hard border in Ireland, the problem of Scottish independence would loom its hoary head. Therefore, this is a way of keeping the United Kingdom together.
We should not forget the value of inward investment into this country. As an economist, I am extremely aware of this. It exists simply because we are part of a huge market of 500 million people. It is the jewel in the United Kingdom’s crown. We have far more inward investment than Germany, and twice as much as both France and Italy. That would undoubtedly be threatened—indeed, is already being threatened—if we removed ourselves from these arrangements. Politically, this may well be the ultimate compromise we have to make. I voted remain; if the remainers can accept that we will leave the European Union, as we are targeted to do, perhaps the Brexiteers could accept a soft, sensible Brexit that we could support. The 52% to 48% split in public opinion suggests that that is one possible way forward, and I note that the Chief Whip is going to be revealed on television this evening as saying that it is something which the Prime Minister should have thought about when the results of the last general election became apparent.
However, it has to be acknowledged, and I do so now, that important arguments can be made against remaining in the customs union. We would not be able to have our own independent trade policy, and of course we would be a rule taker—the “vassal state”, as it is called: the “servile state” is another phrase that is used—but I would argue that these are overrated as disadvantages. The idea of no independent trade policy is too strong a point to make. In fact, having an independent trade policy from where we are now would be a disadvantage. That is because, if you have an independent trade policy, you are selling entry to a market of 65 million people, whereas at the moment we are selling entry to a market of 500 million people. That is a hugely easier sale than if we had our own independent trade deal. So that is not really an argument that can be sustained.
The other argument is about the vassal state and how we would have to accept regulations decided by the European Union. That is to misunderstand the way in which regulations are made inside the European Union. They are made in expert committees. On those expert committees sit not only Members of the European Union but Members of European countries that have an interest outside the European Union. Norway has been represented on 200 expert committees, even though it is not in the customs union. Britain, given its size, could expect to be on expert committees of that kind, making the rules as we go along—even though ultimately we would not have any say in the parliamentary committees.
However, as the House will fully appreciate, it is very rare for a parliamentary committee to get involved in the detail of what is put before it by experts. Such committees tend to accept the proposals, with only the occasional disagreement. The fact is that, as long as we were in the customs union, we would have a strong position inside the system of making regulations in Europe even if we were not actually in the European Union. Fundamentally, when the question of sovereignty and the right to rule ourselves is discussed, you have to make a trade-off in business between access and sovereignty. If you want access, you have to give up a bit of sovereignty. If you have no access, you can keep all your sovereignty but you will have no access. That is the trade-off you have to make, and we should recognise the reality of that.
A bigger objection to remaining inside the customs union is that others in the European Union may not agree to give us such a deal. They may argue that it is too good a deal for Britain, because once again we would be getting many of the advantages of being inside the European Union without actually being a member. That is something which would have to be explored in the negotiations which I hope would take place. The EU could say, for example, that the UK has to remain inside the single market, and it may want to retain control of our fisheries and agriculture. Once we go down that path, I agree that the issue of “Brexit in name only” is raised. At that point we would have to consider whether we wanted a clean break and a free trade area. Another factor is that the Cabinet is split on this and there is no sign of a resolution.
Finally, I bring good news to noble Lords. Agreement was reached before lunchtime today on the “Politics Live” programme on BBC television between a hard Brexiteer, a remainer who is willing to be a Brexiteer, and a remainer. The three people involved were Steve Baker—there is no harder Brexiteer—Margot James, the industry spokesman, and Jonathan Powell who was Tony Blair’s chief of staff when he was Prime Minister. They agreed—that is the good news. The bad news is that they agreed that there is bound to be a long extension—so I am afraid that, whether we like it or not, we are in for further debates on this subject.
Lord Dykes (CB)
My Lords, in this House we are fortunate to have had many reports about Brexit and all its complications from the various sub-committees and the main European Union Committee. I am sure we are very grateful to all Members who have worked hard on those reports. They are of immense detail and complexity, but also immense conviction and persuasion. That does not gainsay my feeling at the end of reading them all carefully, which I try to do if I can: one comes to the inevitable conclusion that there is no substitute for actually staying in the European Union.
I very much congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, on leading this discussion of the report and the other three members of the committee who have spoken so far. I thought the concluding remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, on the numbers were very relevant and need looking at again. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Horam, for his words highlighting the dangers and difficulties of producing the customs union concept in the way that my great friend Kenneth Clarke was trying to explain properly on the radio this morning. He did a very good job but there are many minuses as well as many pluses.
On the report itself, I agree very strongly with all the remarks made by the three ensuing speakers, with their worries and anxieties about what this all means. I hope the Minister will kindly look at the report’s conclusions, on page 48. I am particularly concerned about paragraph 191, which states:
“The UK Government’s estimate that 96% of UK goods trade would be able to pay the correct or no tariff up front and not go through the repayment mechanism has been challenged. We call on the Government to clarify the methodology it used to arrive at the 96% figure”.
Then, on a totally different subject, paragraph 193 states:
“We welcome the Government’s stated intention to uphold current UK food standards and not lower them in free trade agreements with third countries”.
All that is a danger if we go ahead with this matter. I beg to differ, and conclude with a few remarks about the broader scene now facing us in what is yet another—although not the final—emergency, drastic week for this House, and particularly for the House of Commons.
Lord Wigley (PC)
Will the Minister address the difficulties arising from the lack of infrastructure for customs dealings between Ireland and the UK using the UK as a land bridge, particularly at Holyhead? I do not think it was visited by the committee; nor did witnesses from Holyhead come before the committee.
Lord Dykes
This is not the first time I have agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on these matters, and I do so strongly—partly in the nervous realisation that I know much less about Holyhead than he does. The noble Lord has referred to this in a number of speeches; I agree with the broad outline of his comments and thank him for intervening today.
The background to what is happening is a tragedy and a matter of great sadness for this country. No Prime Minister with any wisdom and good sense would have set out to totally ignore the wishes of almost 50% of those who voted in what was only an advisory referendum, even though David Cameron said he would abide by the decision. Even after the futile election of 8 June, after she had lost her mandate and was able to carry on only artificially via a dubious deal with and huge bribe to the DUP, the Prime Minister defiantly carried on. She chose not only to ignore the wafer-thin majority in the first referendum but to deal just with the ERG—not even with the whole of her own Conservative Party. The ERG came first in all her dealings and all her discussions. This again reveals the huge weaknesses in our now totally dilapidated political and parliamentary system, which can be removed only with drastic and radical reforms, which should not be done by politicians—they would never agree—but by sensible outside experts and professorial characters of distinction, men and women. We have to get rid of this bandit politics disease in Britain and come back to reassuring the public.
In that context, I conclude by saying something in contrast to the miseries we are all experiencing with this Brexit process—Brexit is on the verge of being registered with the NHS as an official disease, and anti-Brexit is part of it. However, public opinion has changed, and it was, at last, reassuring to go on the march on 23 March with over 1 million like-minded people from all over the country, including many former leave voters who now grasp the looming disaster of Brexit. The 6 million-plus signatories to the petition underline the huge change in public opinion on this matter. None of these reports is rendered less important and valuable because of this, but that is the reality.
This is especially true for our precious and increasingly internationally minded younger generation, and often, at the other end of the age scale, for the many thousands of UK citizens working and living elsewhere in the European Union—perhaps a more relevant union for us than that other union Mrs May refers to. The European Union is precious to the modern populations of its modern member states.
Finally, I want to quote Margaret Beckett, speaking in the Commons debate on 27 March. She said,
“I invite colleagues who … resist a confirmatory vote to look starkly at … what they are saying. They are willing … to terminate our membership of the European Union even if it may now be against the wishes of the majority of the British people”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/3/19; col. 391.]
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I did not have the privilege of being a member of the committee responsible for this excellent report, but it is a very interesting read. It is, unfortunately, a historical document, and it would have been a lot more appropriate to debate it some months ago. It is striking that, in the six months since it was published, although we have learned a lot more about the problems associated with customs arrangements, there have not been any solutions. Therefore, what the committee advises is as relevant now as it was then.
The report draws attention to the fact that, as my noble friend said, there are 145,000 VAT-registered businesses in the UK, and a further 100,000 under the VAT threshold, that currently trade abroad but exclusively with the EU. That means that they have not had to deal with the paperwork and bureaucracy associated with international trade. In addition, the report draws attention to the huge cost to business of no deal, estimated by HMRC at £18 billion per year. It is a pity that figure was not on the side of a bus.
The report also emphasises that all the talk of using technology to overcome border issues, particularly in Northern Ireland, is basically so much hot air—those are my words, not the report’s. There is no technological solution. Essentially, there are bound to be hold ups at the border, and, however brief they are, they will have a huge impact. Since the publication of this report, we know quite a lot more about the details of that impact.
I will start with Dover, which has already been mentioned, the largest roll-on roll-off port in the UK. Noble Lords will be familiar with the expectation that there will be long queues. The report acknowledges that there is no space for additional checks, examination sheds, checkpoints or additional barriers, and no space for lorries to park as they wait. Of the UK’s total trade in goods, 17% goes through Dover, and it depends on going through without stopping. Indeed, both Dover and Eurotunnel market themselves as a continuous, non-stop motorway to Europe. Some weeks ago, I met the Road Haulage Association. Its representative told me that an Amazon lorry can have 8,000 individual shipments on it, and would normally have an individual customs declaration for each of those 8,000 shipments. Each customs declaration has 36 different fields that must be completed. The RHA estimates that it would take 170 staff one day’s work to process that lorry. The implications on a grand scale are serious.
The Government have sought to combat these problems in two ways. One is by saying, essentially, that we will ignore the need for border checks and everything will continue as it always has. There are a couple of problems with that. First, why are we leaving if we are going to continue exactly as we have done? Secondly, as a representative of the freight industry said to me, the moment we do not apply the rules we lose control of the border. That will lead to various kinds of smuggling—of people, drugs, armaments and so on, as well as ordinary, everyday goods. It will also lead to the introduction of substandard goods—a serious issue for those trying to produce good-quality goods in the UK.
The Government have also attempted emergency preparations—the M20 being turned into a giant lorry park and the use of Manston Airport for emergency long-term parking—and we are all familiar with the fact that they have not gone well. Then there is the Seaborne ferry company with no ferries, which seemed to think it was providing the Department for Transport with pizzas rather than ferries.
The serious point is that the subsidy for ferries led to Eurotunnel seeking compensation for its products and services being overtaken by the subsidy for ferry services. Last week we discovered that the contract the Government signed with the ferry operators started on 29 March, even though we have not left the EU. I am told that tickets for these additional ferries are now being sold on the open market. It might be a good time to catch a ferry in the next week or so but, if you meet a tall, bald man called Chris trying to flog a few tickets in the ferry terminal, it would not be good value for money.
It has already cost £89 million for the ferries; £6.5 million for the extra weeks of the ferry subsidy that the Government have to cover until we leave the EU; £800,000 for the financial advice; £33 million in compensation to Eurostar; and £30 million for the design, build and operation of Operation Brock on the M20. By my calculations, that is almost £160 million, and counting, as the cost of Brexit to the DfT alone.
I have dealt with the costs to us—the taxpayer—but most importantly we should remember the costs to the businesses of Britain. The SMMT referred to the production of a single fuel injector. To make it takes 35 components from 15 countries and it requires 39 border crossings between the UK and the EU. Now we can see why the automotive industry is thinking of leaving this country fast and why the producers in the supply chain are extremely concerned about their future.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, this report once again illustrates that the best deal for this country by far is the deal that we have at the moment as a member of the European Union. When the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, introduced her committee’s report Brexit: the Customs Challenge, which was published on 11 September 2018, I was shocked that more than six months later the Government have not provided an official response. Will the Minister, who I respect greatly, explain why that is the case?
On 17 January 2017, the Prime Minister famously put down her red lines which involve leaving the European Union, the single market and the customs union. Then she progressed towards a facilitated customs arrangement. Throughout this Brexit process the Government’s approach has been to continue to try to have our cake and eat it. The 27 countries of Europe have given a clear mandate to one individual, Michel Barnier, and they have stuck to their guns. They have been intransigent but fair in that they have not moved on their position that we cannot leave and expect to have the same terms as if we are a member.
HMRC has said that the estimated annual cost to UK traders of no deal is £18 billion, which is more than twice what we contribute annually for membership of the EU and which I would pay for the peace we get thanks to being a member of the European Union. If we go for WTO rules, there is no question that it will be disruptive and costly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said earlier. Tariffs will apply and although they are low we will see them go up in many areas. We have heard that 145,000 VAT-registered UK businesses and potentially a further 100,000 businesses under the VAT threshold currently trade exclusively with the EU. That is a huge number of businesses, and we are reliant on roll-on roll-off ports. The introduction of any new customs checks under no deal will be highly disruptive. There is no question about it. We have heard in this debate that many companies rely on just-in-time. Many manufacturers send products backwards and forwards to and from the EU. It is quite frankly—what word should I use?—laughable that when Dominic Raab was Secretary of State for Brexit, he said that he did not realise how important the Calais-Dover corridor is for frictionless trade. That is astonishing, to put it mildly.
Then we have the implications for the UK-Ireland relationship. The UK’s role as a bridge between Ireland and the EU has already been mentioned in the debate. It is 10 hours door to door for a lorry leaving Dublin for Calais using the land bridge. If it has to go all the way round, it will be 40 hours. At the moment there is no technology that will sort out the issues and keep the Irish border frictionless and open. Will the Minister confirm that I am not mistaken and that HMRC has admitted that it does not have the technological ability to cope with a no-deal Brexit, even with a two-year implementation period?
Here is the reality: the EU is the UK’s largest trading partner for goods. Last year exports to the EU accounted for 49% of the total value of UK goods, and imports from the EU were worth 55% of the value of all UK goods imports. That is 50% of our trade, whichever way you look at it. The Government are openly admitting that they have limited options to mitigate any no-deal scenario, yet more than 170 MPs signed a letter saying that we must go for a no-deal situation—that we must commit suicide as a country. That is what they are saying.
The ports of Dover and Calais operate on a closed-loop system. The Government spoke about temporary tariffs on 13 March, but the reality is that tariffs will still apply to 13% of goods and some of them will be really high for products such as beef, lamb, pork and poultry. Half the UK’s food is imported: 30% comes from the EU, and another 11% comes from non-EU countries under terms of trade negotiated by the EU. Brexit is likely to result in an average tariff on food imports of 22%. Does the Minister agree with that? All the trade agreements that we have with more than 56 countries cannot easily be rolled over. As we have seen, the Government will hardly be ready to roll over six of them.
The political declaration is a wish list—it is wonderful. It says:
“The Parties envisage having a trading relationship … The economic partnership should ensure no tariffs ... The Parties will put in place ambitious customs arrangements”.
Nothing is definite. It is not a legal document; it is a wish list full of platitudes. Professor Catherine Barnard of Cambridge University and Professor Anand Menon have said:
“WTO terms provide a basic floor for world trade … However, the inadequacies of these arrangements provide incentives for countries to go further and seek preferential access to tackle issues inadequately covered through WTO rules”.
That is why we have free trade agreements, and it is why we are part of the European Union. They continue:
“The WTO option alone would have a significantly disruptive impact on trade between the UK and the EU, and even on some UK trade with other parts of the world. Falling back on WTO terms would be, to say the least, suboptimal politically, economically and socially”.
Pre-Brexit, we know that—we have low tariffs. However, let us look at the average EU tariffs on agricultural products. Some of them are very high, so our agriculture sector is protected by our being a member of the EU. The EU explains that its customs union has very clear principles: no customs duties on internal borders between EU member states; common customs duties on imports from outside the EU; common rules of origin for products from outside the EU; and a common definition of customs value. UK businesses are therefore saying, “Please, please, let us remain in the customs union”. The EU says that it is ready for no deal but, quite frankly, the Irish Government are not. Angela Merkel is going to Dublin. Whatever happens with Brexit, the EU wants to make sure that the Irish border is properly protected.
To conclude, Simon Jenkins has said today that it is time for common sense on Brexit—that a customs union must prevail. He says:
“May will be accused of repeating Robert Peel’s split in 1846 over the corn laws. She should remember that Peel faced down his backwoodsmen and created a Conservative party fit for the Victorian age. He was in the right”.
The Conservative Party was also out of power for 28 years. The Evening Standard has just said:
“Titanic crash looms for the Government”.
Finally, the UK chief executive of German manufacturer Siemens is pleading with Britain, saying:
“Brexit is turning Britain into a laughing stock”.
Siemens turns over £5 billion and employs 15,000 people in this country. He is asking for us to stay in the customs union.
However, the customs union itself is not enough. We need to stay in the single market as well, and the best option by far, if we had the guts, would be to revoke Article 50 and then to put it to the people, saying, “Now that you know everything, are you sure that you really want to damage our economy, our livelihoods, and our citizens’ and our children’s future?” I am convinced that the public would say, “Absolutely not. Now we know, we would rather remain in the European Union”.
Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, I was not a member of the committee but, having read its report several times—it is not an easy read—I am impressed. First, as many speakers have pointed out, it provides convincing evidence once again of what would be the disastrous consequences of a no-deal Brexit, and I trust that the Commons will rule out that option conclusively.
The report should be, or should have been, compulsory reading for those who plan to vote for the Clarke amendment, for a form of customs union presumably on the lines of the facilitated customs arrangement analysed in this report. This, the Government claim, would enable the UK to control its own tariffs for trade with the rest of the world. It is the option which seems to be the present favourite to win the Commons beauty contest to be voted on today.
However, that option has many serious snags. As pointed out in chapter 5 of the report, the present EU customs union requires a common commercial policy—in effect, a single market. To allow for the freedom to make separate trade agreements with the rest of the world, the customs union proposed by the Government, and, one must assume, by the Clarke amendment, seeks to avoid this. But the committee tells us that, for this kind of customs union to work and for us to enjoy a frictionless border with the EU as a non-member, there would still have to be convergence of regulations. We would, we were told, become “a regulatory satellite” of the EU. Would this be acceptable to most Brexiteers, or to those who support a soft Brexit? Instead of winning back control, we would, we are told, be subject to control by satellite.
The facilitated customs arrangement would also be immensely complex, involving different tariffs for EU and non-EU countries, including possible payments and repayments collected or paid on behalf of other countries. Compliance would, as many other speakers have pointed out, be a very hard and costly task for small to medium enterprises. Being part of a customs union without being a member would also require very complex negotiations, which are hardly likely to be welcomed by the 27 after their recent experience of endless delays and changes of tack by a succession of incompetent Brexit negotiators.
But what all Brexit advocates—even soft Brexit advocates—ignore is the most important development of all, to which the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, referred. There is strong evidence that the people’s will has changed since the referendum and is no longer the people’s will today. The evidence is not just the march by over a million people, or the petition to revoke Article 50 signed by some 6 million. Professor Curtice, who is much invoked by the Government and Brexiteers, long maintained that opinion had not shifted. He has now changed his view. A vote today, according to his findings, would be 54% to 46% in favour of remain; according to YouGov, it would be some 56% to 44%.
This shift should not come as a surprise, and there is every reason to suppose that it will grow. Nearly all Brexit news is bad: on overseas investment; a growing number of manufacturers and service companies which are planning to leave the UK; a likely crippling shortage of nurses and other professionals in the NHS, caused by the exodus of EU citizens; and so on. It is true that there are lots of leavers crying, “We want out”, and “Why haven’t we left yet?” No evidence will change their minds. However, there must be many of the 52% who voted leave who care about the future of their jobs and the prospects for their children, and they will not be impervious to what manufacturers such as those in the motor industry and Airbus tell us.
There was an extremely extensive poll of intending leavers on the eve of the referendum about the reasons why they intended to vote “out”. Many gave different reasons, but they all agreed that leave would have no downside—no prospect but that of life in the sunlit uplands. Now it is becoming plain what Brexit means: any form of Brexit, however soft, will make us poorer, especially the most vulnerable. It would be a strange twist to the present confusion if we left the EU because MPs believed they were obeying the people’s will, when—
Lord Dykes
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, as I agree strongly with his words, but in the context of what he was saying two sentences ago can he estimate the number of people who accompanied Nigel Farage on his long trip from Sunderland?
Lord Taverne
It was not exactly over a million; I cannot give more details.
It would be an extraordinary travesty of justice if people who voted to leave because they thought that was what public opinion wanted now find that most want to remain. The only way to ensure that such a travesty of justice will not happen—and indeed to solve the present impasse among Government and MPs—is to give the final decision to the people.
I much admire the MPs who have spoken out for this cause, in defiance of party pressures: those Conservative MPs who cannot support a party 170 of whose public representatives have recently signed a letter in which they seem quite happy to tolerate the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. What an extraordinary retreat from sanity by a once-great party. No wonder people abroad feel we have gone mad. Similarly, I admire the Labour MPs who decided they could not support a party that aimed to make its leader Prime Minister, a role for which they believe he is totally unsuited.
Finally, I want to mention one other MP—one of Labour’s strong leaders in the battle against Brexit and the cause of a new people’s vote. It is my old opponent in Lincoln, who nowadays has my admiration and respect, Dame Margaret Beckett. More power to her elbow.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
I will make a small and typically unpolemical point in the gap. This admirable report says at paragraph 17:
“The UK Government has repeatedly ruled out entering into a customs union with the EU on the grounds that this would tie the UK to the EU’s Common Commercial Policy”.
That statement is true, but what the Government say, as reported in that statement, is not true. The customs union and the common commercial policy are completely separate in the treaty. They are legally distinct. The example of Turkey shows that you can have a customs union with the EU without having the EU running your trade policy. The Turks are outside the common commercial policy. Customs union means no tariffs between you and your partners and common tariffs against the rest of the world. It does not mean that the Commission would be negotiating for us with the rest of the world. It does not mean that we would benefit from existing EU free trade agreements. It does not mean that any new EU trade agreements would apply to us.
We know all that; why am I saying it? It is because next door in the other place, the issue of a customs union, as the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, said, is being talked about right now. Do not get me wrong: I still believe that Brexit plus customs union is a complete disaster and a dreadful thing to do, but it would be wrong to argue against a customs union on the grounds that it ties you to the EU’s trade policy, because it absolutely does not, even though the Government have frequently said that it does. We would be entirely free in the areas of services, intellectual property, public procurement, regulatory barriers and data. The only area where we would be bound by the EU’s decisions would be on the level of tariffs in goods—a relatively small proportion of world trade now.
I repeat: do not get me wrong—it is still a very dangerous way to go. However, when the House of Commons considers the customs union amendment written into the Trade Bill, it would be good if the Government, when they took a view on it, took a view on the merits of a customs union. We said nothing in our amendment this time to the Trade Bill or last time in the withdrawal Bill about losing our ability to do trade deals around the world or acceding to the common commercial policy, which is a completely separate question. The question of a customs union should be addressed solely on its merits.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for not being polemical, but being very precise in helping us with our arguments. It also gives me a chance to share with the House my favourite moment of the march last Saturday, which was more than 1 million strong as far as I could see—certainly if you counted the people who were not able to get on to the march without wandering around and making London their home for the day. There were many placards, many of them very witty and erudite, some rather clever, and some a bit rude and certainly not to be repeated in polite company. My favourite, because I am sure that we all have one, was one I saw just about half way round. Of course, stupidly, I managed to drop my camera and could not pick it up in time to take a picture of it to give it to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. It said very simply, in bold Times font: “I concur with John Kerr”.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I hear calls that it was he himself; it was not. I actually have no idea what it means, but it says quite a lot about the debate. I thought it was rather good.
This has been a useful and helpful debate on a report that probably had its peak impact a few months ago, but is nevertheless important. I want to explain why as we go through it.
Today we have been reminded of what was in that report and heard speeches from four of the committee members. These helped to explain why it was such a good report. They all said that it was a well-run and well-organised series of sessions with good evidence. Out of that, a fine report, crafted by the staff but signed on by the committee, was done.
We have also attracted an equal number of external Members who have contributed to the debate. That is always to the good and does not always happens in these debates on committee reports. Our committee system is one of the strengths of your Lordships’ House. It is a source of tremendous information, evidence and good and important things that we need to consider. It is therefore very sad that the Government have not honoured it here with a response. That is disrespectful to the committee itself, to the House and to the country. I hope that when the Minister comes to respond, he will have a satisfactory explanation as to why we have been let down in this way. Unless the Government are prepared to support the committee system by providing timely responses to its work, we will lose the quality which we currently have.
The debate today has ranged far and wide, because I think we all share a worry about how to respond to a report that was of its time and is perhaps no longer quite so on the debate. With events happening only a few yards away in another place, it is difficult to be precise and draw conclusions from this report in relation to what we might hear later and which is probably pinging out on the news channels as we speak. However, the evidence that was presented to the committee from those who wrote in to submit it, as well as those who attended, provided a very interesting narrative about the situation described in the report. We would be foolish not to learn lessons from that for any scenario going forward. There has been a tendency in some speeches to use the committee report for a wider debate, but I will try to restrict my comments to the report itself, and hope that the Minister will respond in kind when he comes to reply to the debate as a whole.
The first section is about what happens if the UK fails to secure a deal with the EU. This is still relevant, and therefore it is quite important to understand what the committee was saying. It would be interesting to get a response from the Government to the recommendation in paragraph 86, regarding the administrative burdens that businesses involved in trade will have. Have the Government made any assessment of that and, if so, where might we find consideration of it? There will be considerable extra work for anybody involved in trade, whether or not it is on WTO terms. These burdens need to be assessed.
In paragraph 88, there is a familiar point for the Minister, who I think has had to answer this question on a number of occasions. I am sure he is well briefed on this occasion. Of 145,000 VAT-registered UK businesses trading only with the EU, and 100,000 businesses under the VAT threshold who may be trading—we do not know that—how many have now registered on this magical form which will give them all the answers they want? I think the last number was just 52,000. I am sure that it has gone up, and that he will be able to update us. This is important.
In paragraph 90, the report records that HMRC has estimated that the cost to UK businesses under no deal would be about £18 billion per year. I would be grateful if the Minister could respond to the point made in the report that HMRC could provide an itemised breakdown of those figures. The committee was keen to see it but were unable to get it. It would be helpful if we had that read into the record. If it is not possible to provide it today, perhaps he could write to those who have spoken in this debate.
In paragraph 92, there is a question about technological solutions. This comes up a number of times in the report, here with reference to the Northern Ireland border, where trade under any sort of rules requires, or at least might imply, the reintroduction of a hard border. At the time the committee was meeting, technological solutions were being prepared. Could the Minister update us? Is it still the Government’s assertion that in the event of no deal a technological solution is available to help with that problem? In relation to the points made on paragraph 93 by a number of members of the committee—including the chair—about the impact of checks at ports, particularly the Port of Dover, we all understand that there has clearly been further work on that, including various trial runs. Again, it would be helpful if the Minister could support that.
The main issue in this part of the report was a bit difficult for the committee to get into because it did not know what the tariff regime would be. Many of us in this House have been asking for a number of weeks and months for such detail; it is now available and has been published. I cannot remember the total number of pages but it is very large and there are 4,000 lines of tariff information, which have to be read and understood if one is to get to its basis. Luckily, most of the tariffs are zero so it is a relatively straightforward issue but the reason that they are zero is sometimes elusive. I am sure that the Minister will want to respond to that.
The best comment I have seen on that issue is from the UK Trade Policy Observatory at Sussex University. That organisation has done a number of pieces of work on the customs impacts that are likely to arise from deal or no deal. Its conclusion on the tariffs—I will not quote it but put it in general terms—was that even these tariff arrangements, which I think most commentators have broadly welcomed, will result in a negative impact on the UK economy. Although there are some positives in having a more liberal policy with regards to tariffs, there will still be additional costs, competitive pressures on firms and difficulties. The results also highlight that the policy means that with zero as the main tariff line, even though there are exceptions for certain goods which are protected, the scope for using those tariff lines for any future negotiation in any trade is very limited.
One wonders why we go on and on about how tariffs in relation to goods are going to be so important to any future negotiations when it is quite clear that, when all tariffs are at zero or close to it, you have no room for negotiation as far as goods are concerned. That has always been the case in the UK’s economy; the issue is about non-tariff regulations in services, about which the Government are still very quiet. No doubt this agenda item might be recommended to the chair of the committee as something that it might want to look at in its next workload.
Having dealt with that I can move on to mitigations, where there is only one issue which I wanted to ask the Minister to respond on. It is to make sure that, as in paragraph 120, there is some sense of what the Government’s plan will be,
“to ensure fair and equal treatment of all imported goods coming in on most-favoured nation terms”.
If he is able to respond on that, it would be helpful.
On the third and final part of the report, which is the broader discussion about the facilitated customs arrangement, two points need to be answered. First, when Ministers were giving evidence to the committee, the information from the Government was predicated largely on the role that was to be played by authorised economic operators. I think that scheme is not yet fully developed so I would be grateful if the Minister could give us a bit of an update on where it has got to, in particular whether there is any chance that special arrangements will be made for SMEs. It is argued in the report that SMEs will have difficulty accessing that scheme. Clearly, if they are to be successful—they may well be the way forward—AEO schemes will need a lot more support from government. Where is that going to come from?
Secondly, in paragraph 189 there is a very important question about the rules of origin, which perhaps do not get as much discussion as they need in the customs debate. In that paragraph there is the suggestion that the Government should elaborate on their intended definitions for the “sufficient transformation” of intermediate goods. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister could help us on that.
It is clear that the majority view in the debate today, at least for those who have participated in it and possibly in the House, is that we should be staying in the EU. I do not dissemble from that but it is not an option that this House will be able to exercise much influence on, given that the responsibility must lie with the elected House. For instance, the noble Lord, Lord Horam, and others made the point that even if we are leaving the EU we should stay in a customs union because of the need to maintain frictionless trade, because of the way that it solves the Irish problem, because of rules of origin difficulties and because, as he put it, we actually benefit from the ability to secure deals with other nations based on being within a market of over 500 million people, compared to that of our own.
These are all crucial points, and I end with one thought to which I invite the Minister to respond. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, and others, the ambition of the Government in their deal is to have a free trade agreement with the EU that is sans pareil. It is the best, most inclusive and intensive deal, so much so that it would appear able in many ways to be judged by the WTO as a customs union. If that is the case, why is it not possible for the Government to accept that that is where we need to be? A customs union and the ability to be part of the single market are what industry wants and what the trade unions have argued for. It is clear to just about everybody in the country now that that is what we want. There is little point in trying to argue whether there is a difference between a fully-fledged FTA plus engagement with the single market and staying in the EU, but if we are moving out that must be the way forward. Perhaps the Minister could respond.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, I begin with one or two points on which we can all agree. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned the work of the committees in your Lordships’ House, how outstanding it is and thorough they are. Nowhere is that more the case than in the European Union Committee, its six sub-committees and the External Affairs Sub-Committee—chaired by my noble friend Lady Verma—whose report we are discussing today. They do an incredible amount of work. I commend Appendix 2 to anyone who has not had the opportunity to study the full report, where they will see the list of people who gave oral evidence. The quality and range of people from whom evidence was taken have contributed significantly to the strength of the report, if not also to the difficulty of the Government being able to respond—a theme to which I will return shortly.
It has been good to have this debate. Although narrowly focused, it has managed to touch on all the key points that needed to be raised, in a systematic way. My noble friend Lady Verma, began the debate with an excellent speech, in which she set out the terms and focused particularly on tariff policy. My noble friend Lord Horam spoke about the challenges of Northern Ireland; the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, about the implications and risks of no deal; the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, about the impact on business; the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, about standards; the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about technology at the border; the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, about the importance of supply chains; the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, about the common customs policy; and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, about the facilitated customs arrangement.
Rather than using the set response that I have, I will zero in with a short update on where Her Majesty’s Government are at present with a statement of policy. Then I will respond to as many of the questions that have been asked as possible. I also give notice that it would be good for the committee and the House to have a written response to this high-quality debate, and I will ensure that that happens in a timely way.
The Government always seek to provide the committee with the latest and most comprehensive information possible. The ongoing negotiations with the EU and recent developments within Parliament can sometimes make providing the most up-to-date information difficult. My colleagues in the Department for Exiting the European Union regret the lengthy delay in responding to this report, but I assure noble Lords that a response will be sent to the committee as quickly as possible.
Before discussing the detail of this report, I will touch briefly on the broader context for this debate. The Government’s clear preference is to leave the EU with a deal and we remain committed to doing so. We were disappointed at the result of last week’s vote on the withdrawal agreement. Nevertheless, our priority is to press the case for an orderly Brexit that delivers on the result of the referendum.
In addition, while a no-deal scenario, mentioned several times in the report, is not the Government’s preferred outcome, preparations are continuing for such an outcome. Indeed, in relation to the report, leaving the EU without a negotiated deal would result in customs controls at the UK’s borders and tariffs on our exports to the EU. This is why the Government have been focused on putting a deal in place.
I turn now to questions that were raised and I start with further explanation of the delay in responding. The report, as has been said, was published in September. A response would therefore, in the normal routine, be due sometime in December. Noble Lords will recall that December was a pretty fast-moving time, with discussions taking place, and it was not possible to get clearance between the different departments for the release of the response at that time. We thought that that might ease in January but it did not: it is a story of that nature but I emphasise that this is not normal. I have responded in debates in your Lordships’ House to a number of reports from committees, so this is not normal government practice: we take reports very seriously and this is merely a reflection of the times. I convey again my apologies to my noble friends Lady Verma and Lord Horam, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, and the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, who were members of the committee, and to all members of the committee.
My noble friend Lady Verma asked about the impact assessment and tariffs. The impact is summarised in the tax information and impact note published alongside the temporary tariff. Tariffs are a tax and therefore a tax information and impact note is, we believe, the most appropriate document for communicating tax changes. The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, and others asked about the implications for roll-on roll-off ports. Although it was mentioned in the context of Dover, and I know the committee visited Dover, I take on board the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, in an intervention, about the importance of Holyhead. The Government recognise that roll-on roll-off locations depend on a fast flow of traffic, which could be significantly affected if customs controls and regulatory checks were reintroduced for EU trade. Maintaining frictionless trade is therefore a priority for the Government.
In a no-deal scenario the Government have been clear that we will prioritise trade flows at the border, but not at the expense of security. HMRC has continued to carry out targeted checks on goods entering the country, as we do now. In the event of no deal, the Government’s day one roll-on roll-off model aims to move customs formalities away from the border, easing the pressure at the ports and at Eurotunnel, helping to avoid delays. We have published roll-on roll-off bridging guidance, last updated in March, to support businesses to understand fully how to comply with the new model. We will continue to update business on these matters.
My noble friend Lady Verma asked about the facilitated customs agreement. It is still the preferred outcome. The political declaration on the framework for the future relationship between the UK and the EU, agreed with the EU, set out a plan for a free-trade area for goods, including no tariffs or quotas, with ambitious customs arrangements. The Government recognise the need to discuss the future customs model in detail with the EU in the next phase of discussions, in line with the commitment set out in the political declaration. The Government are aware that there is currently a live debate in the House over the future relationship and we will contribute to that ongoing debate.
My noble friend Lady Verma and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, talked about the need for technology and asked whether such technology is currently available. The Government will continue to consider the potential application of technological solutions to streamline customs processes. There is a range of technologies that could help facilitate trade over the Northern Ireland/Ireland border—for example, by streamlining any requirements that may emerge after the UK leaves the EU.
Lord Kilclooney (CB)
As one living near the Irish border, I realise that it has two sides. Sometimes I get the impression that people in London do not realise this. Can the Minister confirm that Her Majesty’s Government have decided that there will not be any infrastructure on the United Kingdom side of the border? On the Irish side, it is a matter for the European Commission. Has the Commission yet confirmed that it will have no infrastructure on the Irish side of the border?
Lord Bates
The noble Lord will be aware that this is a fast-moving situation. There have been some statements by the Taoiseach on this in relation to the Republic of Ireland. The Good Friday/Belfast agreement states that there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland. I know that that does not answer the noble Lord’s question; he asked in particular about the differences in how tariffs might be collected between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. We have made some statements on that; given that it is such a delicate matter, I will cover that point in my written response at the end of the debate. The Government continue to be committed to developing alternative relations to replace the backstop, and we have agreed a specific negotiating track with the EU which will form part of the next phase of negotiations.
The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, asked whether the Government’s estimate that 96% of UK goods will be able to pay the correct tariff up front has been challenged. The Government published further detail on this calculation on 21 December 2018 in response to the request of the UK Statistics Authority. The publication set out:
“Up to 96% of UK goods trade would be likely to be able to pay the correct or no tariff upfront under the FCA”.
These goods would be:
“Trade (imports and exports) with the EU or exports to non-EU countries”.
I think the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was discussed during one of the regulations on the EORI registrations. At that point it was 52,000; I can report that it had risen to 67,000 as of the week ending 22 March—so we are making some progress.
This has been an excellent debate, in response to a very thorough report with some 31 recommendations. I reiterate to the committee and to those Members who have been party to the report’s production that our delay in response is due to what are the hopefully understandable challenges of the present time, and in no way takes away from how valued this is.
Finally, I will respond to two comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, and the noble Lord, Lord Triesman. The noble Baroness said that our discussion on this topic resembled a fundamentalist debate, with no ground being given and an absence of facts. The noble Lord, Lord Triesman, was fair-minded in recognising that none of us can say that we have distinguished ourselves in this very difficult situation in which the nation finds itself. I am sure that I speak for the whole House in saying that past performance does not necessarily guarantee future performance. I remember that my father often used to say to me as I left the house, “Remember, this is the first day of the rest of your life. Treat it as such”.
This is an opportunity for us to look forward and do something different. This debate on Brexit has descended into a bitter courtroom divorce battle in which the parents’ hatred of each other has meant that they have forgotten their shared love and responsibility for their children. We hope that now is the time to seek selfless solutions that will put the well-being of all the people of this great country at the centre of our deliberations. We hope that that starts today, and continues tomorrow. I thank my noble friend for her debate.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for his—as usual—very polite and considered response. The debate has been excellent, highlighting once again the complexities facing us as a nation. As the Minister said, it is time for us to reflect in a much more considered manner on how we approach this debate.
I will quickly give my own thoughts. Colleagues on the committee—the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, and my noble friend Lord Horam—all said that it is essential that we look at customs and trade. They are essential to our economy, and it is critical that they are properly protected, especially our small and medium-sized businesses and the supply chains. As my noble friend Lord Horam said, inward investment is the jewel in the crown of the UK, which is why it is so critical that every Member today spoke of the importance of that. We do not have the technology today, and we are marching faster and faster towards leaving Europe without all the processes in place, and none of the protections that small and medium-sized businesses are asking for.
I urge the Minister to take back to his department and to his colleagues across government that, if this debate is to bring people together, because we are an incredibly divided nation, they have to look at what committees’ reports are saying. They are considered, they take time, evidence is given and, as the Minister said, the evidence sessions he saw, along with the recommendations he has witnessed, mean that we ask government to look long and hard and then respond in a timely manner. I know that the Minister will have read our report page by page and word for word, and I hope that he will recommend it to his colleagues across government, because it will be helpful to them. On that note, I beg to move.
Yemen: Giving Peace a Chance (International Relations Committee Report)
(5 years ago)
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Lord Howell of Guildford
That this House takes note of the Report from the International Relations Committee Yemen: giving peace a chance (6th Report, HL Paper 290).
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, in this debate we are dealing with a short report—or rather, it might be said, a list of observations and questions—on the deeply troubling issue of the continuing conflict in Yemen and its hideous humanitarian consequences. These are on a scale unmatched in modern times, with 60,000 or more civilians killed directly by the fighting over the four years or so, and thousands more dying of starvation, and rampant cholera and other diseases. In the words of various United Nations agencies, it is the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis”, with up to 22 million people facing a severe food and water shortage, vast displacement of people, and many constant tragedies.
The much deeper issues of British and western involvement in the whole ongoing turmoil of the Middle East region were addressed by your Lordships’ committee in an earlier report, as indeed we addressed the question of whether this area is still in the western sphere of influence at all or is increasingly turning eastwards, towards the rising power of the Asian nations and networks, which the 21st century has propelled to dominance. Here we simply focus on the specific matters of the unparalleled horrors and suffering in Yemen, aspects of the complex struggle there, the ways it has been conducted and the British role.
This is a continuing conflict in which all sides are acting with extreme ferocity. The Houthis—the rebel group that sprang from the priest and cleric Houthi of 10 to 15 years ago—control their areas of the country with savagery, and neighbouring Saudi Arabia has a right to defend itself against direct attacks, which it has received with missiles which have been validated as of Iranian origin. No one wants hostile and aggressive powers right on the neighbouring borders, and the fears of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates must be fully understood. I think we understand them. Despite the flood of military equipment and the back-up of technical trade support and training being poured into the area, no side is winning and a stalemate of horror persists as the situation dissolves into a fragmentation of local wars and blockades.
The British contribution to address the suffering in line with our international duty must be commended, and we do so in our report. The UK aid total to date over the four years adds up to £511 million, which is not a small sum by any standards. There are, it is true, problems about our food aid getting through to the right hands rather than being diverted or just blocked at the ports, but the overall commitment by the British Government is undoubtedly strong and evident. The Foreign Secretary himself has visited Yemen, and our commitment to alleviate the suffering is clear.
However, when it comes to British involvement with the parties to the war, which is causing all the suffering in the first place, by virtue of Britain’s colossal arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the situation is much less clear. Our short report does not say that British arms shipments should be immediately suspended, as some of the more sloppy media reporting suggested, although other countries have indeed imposed a de facto embargo—Norway, certainly, and Germany for at least six months ahead. We are saying not only that future licensing of arms exports should be kept under intensely tight review but that this process and pressure should be used to keep pushing the combatants harder to end armed conflict and returning to politics and negotiation under the Stockholm process.
Our Government claim that their overall position is, to cite ministerial witnesses,
“narrowly on the right side of international humanitarian law”—
apparently accepting by implication that our weapons, including combat aircraft and munitions, are not being used for persistent and large-scale air strikes and civilian casualties. The question must be: how good is that evidence? Is the Saudi review process, from which these propositions come, good enough? How are the investigations of the horrific civilian casualties collected, assessed and made available?
We need to know more precisely how approval decisions on specific arms exports are matched against the evidence received. How does the licensing approval system work in situations such as this? It would also be good to learn more accurately exactly where British weapons end up and in whose hands they are in this many-sided struggle. For instance, are British arms actually going to various Yemeni militias as well as to the Saudi and UAE Governments—possibly through the UAE—or even to jihadi groups, several of which are operating in Yemen, notably al-Qaeda? There have also been reports of British Special Boat Service units operating in northern Yemen. I shall not ask about them, and the Government would not answer, but can we be assured once again that we are not being sucked into becoming a direct party to this hideous conflict?
As of now, without greater clarity on these issues and in the light of worrying reports of the use of British arms in indiscriminate airstrikes, we suggest that the narrow balance leaves British policy—however unintentionally—narrowly on the wrong side of international humanitarian law in an appalling situation. We should like to be assured that every effort is being made to turn war and terror into peace. We should like our efforts combined with others internationally to help rebuild a destroyed nation and restore a hideously wounded nation and people.
It would be good to have confirmation that the UK’s role as a so-called pen-holder—I think that is a sort of rapporteur but I may be corrected on that—in the UN is being used vigorously to put UN authority firmly behind an escape from the bloody status quo of stalemate. We support fully the work of Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy, but it is not nearly enough to bring the vital peace and end to suffering, alas.
Above all, I hope that we can be given clear assurance that, as well as doing our utmost to alleviate the suffering, British policy is doing nothing to prolong or intensify the conflict, and that such influence as we have with both the Saudi Arabians and the UAE is being used to counsel care and restraint in avoiding civilian casualties—while of course recognising fully the deep concerns of those two countries and the need for stability and government legitimacy in their neighbourhood. I await with great interest the Minister’s comments on these questions and the tragic issues behind them.
Baroness Amos (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, and the committee for the report, particularly for setting out so clearly the complexities of the situation in Yemen. I support all the recommendations, particularly with respect to the need for the UK Government to be more robust and vocal in condemning violations of international humanitarian law. Over time, we have seen worrying erosions of long-held humanitarian principles—for example, regarding medical facilities, educational facilities, the denial of access to humanitarian aid workers and the targeting of such workers. Such significant breaches of these principles should not have happened.
There is also the importance of the UK Government redoubling their diplomatic efforts. That is why I was so pleased to see the special envoy get the parties round the table in Stockholm in December. The consultations in Stockholm marked the resumption of the political process. Two and a half years have passed without peace talks, during which time parties never sat together. The agreement reached in Stockholm proved what can be achieved through dialogue, mediation and diplomacy. It showed that something was beginning to happen on Yemen. The most important element of Stockholm was the agreement on Hodeidah, which prevented a battle that would have had both a political and humanitarian cost in the form of famine. The parties agreed on a government-wide ceasefire and the mutual military redeployment of forces from Hodeidah port and city. If implemented, this would be the first military withdrawal since the war started. It would also give the UN permanent access to the Red Sea mills, where metric tonnes of food sit. Everyone agrees that there is no military solution, but the threat of famine remains very real.
I was at the UN and watched with horror as the world allowed the crisis in Syria to unfold. The people seemed to come last. I hope that will not happen again in Yemen. When I was at the United Nations, I visited those who had to flee their homes and who were being targeted by parties to conflict. I was asked many times why the world had abandoned them. We have to make sure that this does not happen to the people of Yemen.
Since the Stockholm agreement, the ceasefire has broadly held. When compared with the 12 weeks preceding it, the post-agreement period has seen a 50% reduction in civilian casualties, in contrast to the rest of the country, where civilian casualties have increased. However, military deployments have not happened yet and the implementation of the Hodeidah agreement has been slow. The United Nations is still shuttling between the parties as they have yet to agree on an operational plan to make the redeployments a reality, and there is deep mistrust between them, which makes implementation slow. Hardliners in each camp have also taken advantage of the implementation phase to prevent progress. It is tedious work, which needs a lot of convincing, so patience is needed. I have seen that happen time and time again.
However, outside pressure is also essential. In his report to the UN Security Council in February this year, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Mark Lowcock, said:
“About 80 per cent of the population—24 million people—need humanitarian assistance and protection. Some 20 million people need help securing food, including nearly 10 million who are just a step away from famine. Almost 20 million people lack access to adequate healthcare, and nearly 18 million don’t have enough clean water or access to adequate sanitation. More than 3 million people—including 2 million children—are acutely malnourished. Some 3.3 million remain displaced from their homes”.
The noble Lord, Lord Howell, has already referred to some of these figures. Mark Lowcock could not have painted a bleaker picture because behind every single one of those statistics is a child, a woman or a man.
We must find a way to move this forward. The parties do not want the UN to hold the next round of political consultations without any, as they call it, tangible progress on Hodeidah. The implementation of the Hodeidah agreement is a test to assess whether the parties can be trusted to deliver on their commitments. It is a demonstration of will. If the special envoy and the parties manage to implement what was agreed in Stockholm, we may be on the path to a comprehensive political solution in Yemen. It is doable. The issue in Yemen is not necessarily finding a solution but finding the way to get to that solution. There is a wealth of knowledge about the possible political solution. In 2016, the parties spent three months in negotiations in Kuwait. The question is whether there is the political will. I hope so because the alternative is much worse: war, famine and terrorism will flourish. The UN Security Council is united on Yemen. The role that diplomacy plays has been very positive. It has complemented the special envoy’s efforts and the council being united has meant that the United Nations has been able to use its diplomacy efficiently.
Perhaps I may put three questions to the Minister. The first relates to the humanitarian situation and the financial resources agreed at the conference in Geneva. Urgent disbursement is required, so I ask the Minister when DfID and the UK will disburse their contribution. Secondly, I turn to the role of women in the peace process. I was horrified to see that there were no women in the delegations in Stockholm. How will the UK Government use their influence to encourage the parties to include women in those discussions? Finally, it is clear that we need the United Kingdom to support the efforts of the special envoy. How can the UK use its influence with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to prioritise progress towards a political settlement, as well as using their influence with Oman, which has some influence over the Houthis?
Lord Luce (CB)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, who speaks with enormous authority and experience on this issue, having served with such distinction at the United Nations and in tackling humanitarian issues. I too warmly welcome the report of the Select Committee and the excellent introduction from the noble Lord, Lord Howell. It is certainly refreshing to be talking about an issue outside the European Union, looking more outwards, which is what this country needs to do again. I hope that in due course we will follow this Select Committee report with other ones about our role in the rest of the world—the sooner, the better.
Four and a half months ago I put down a Question for Short Debate. We have since had the Stockholm agreement, as the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, referred to it; the efforts of the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, in his tour of the Gulf countries, and I commend the efforts of Her Majesty’s Government; and the valiant efforts of Mr Griffiths and others. But we have to recognise the condition of Yemen before we decide how to move forward. It is a failed state. I have described it before as a kind of Dante’s Inferno for the people who live there. At the moment it does not have the makings of a nation state. I have to confess that I have watched this for over 60 years, since I first went out as a young student in the late 1950s when my father was governor of Aden. At that time there was the imam ruling north Yemen, and the British with the colony and the eastern and western protectorates of Aden.
Since then, after the unhappy departure of the British—it was a very unhappy situation indeed after we left—there has been civil conflict of major proportions between north and south. The unification of north and south under President Saleh was absolutely disastrous and has led to warring factions of one kind or another from the separatist tribal south to Aden, Hadramawt, Ta’izz, the Houthis and so on. It is a fragmented country with desperate humanitarian challenges.
The report and the noble Lord, Lord Howell, referred very fully to the Stockholm agreement. I agree with the recommendations in the report of the Select Committee, although I ask for more than just a review of export licensing. We are facing an extremely serious challenge there, and where export licensing may conflict with humanitarian law we should take action and suspend those licences.
There is no military solution whatever to the problem in Yemen, as the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, said, but I commend the role of the British Government. This is the kind of role we should be playing in different parts of the world. Our humanitarian contribution of over £500 million in four years has been outstanding, but I want to say a word about the role of diplomacy by the United Kingdom. Of course, the precondition for any progress at all is the fulfilment of the various first stages from Stockholm, and thereafter a ceasefire. But the people of Yemen want hope, and they need to link that with the prospects in the longer term—so even though the immediate situation is very grave, we need to think too about the longer-term strategy. We have to start by recognising the gravity of the fragmentation and considering how the various groups in that country will find a way of living with each other and what form of governance will emerge. I recently met a man called Mr al-Zoubaidi, the president of the Southern Transitional Council, which is strongly supported by the UAE. He said he is looking forward to an inclusive political process because the south has been marginalised for so long. The groups have to find a way of living and working together—obviously with the help and encouragement of outside powers.
The point I stress is this. The role of regional nations is critical; Europe is there to back up, but the front row of the scrum is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Our job is to back that up where we can, and to engage with Kuwait and Oman so that there is a very strong international effort behind finding a long-term way forward. To my mind, a key is the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is vital that the international community does whatever it can to press those two nations to find a way of living together. The rivalry is doing an immense amount to undermine stability in the Middle East, and certainly in Yemen.
Then there is the question of the longer-term role of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their coalition. It looks as though Saudi Arabia’s interests are to see stability in the north of Yemen, whereas the UAE is already showing more than an interest in the south. The question is: how much are we and the international community engaging with those two nations on the kind of role they can play that would help to stabilise that region and not colonise it?
The last point I want to raise is the lessons of the wider region. The strategic importance of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb is obvious to the international community, but both sides of the seas are very unstable. In the Horn, you have Eritrea and Somalia and the work of al-Shabaab; by contrast, you have Yemen on the other side. It is worth reminding ourselves that we, along with other naval forces, have played a positive role through the naval task force in trying to reduce piracy in those seas, and that has been successful. We have also played an important role in helping to build up Somaliland as a more stable part of Somalia. There could be lessons to be learned here. For example, in the port of Aden, there could be areas in which we could work to help build up greater stability.
I hope the Minister will reassure me that the Government are thinking seriously about longer-term strategy as well as the immediate.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, who bring such expertise about both the region and the UN. I have the pleasure of serving on your Lordships’ International Relations Committee, and the noble Lord, Lord Howell, as chairman, has introduced the report very effectively. I thank him for chairing this short report. As a committee, we are still relatively new. We have had some long reports but we have also tried in a few shorter reports to bring issues of urgent importance to your Lordships’ House. This report was printed only in mid-February, so it is a great opportunity to be able to debate it today. I am grateful to the usual channels for allowing the debate to come forward in such a timely fashion.
As the noble Lord, Lord Luce, intimated, there is a danger at the moment that we in the United Kingdom spend so much time focusing narrowly on our future relationship with the European Union that we do not have time to think about the wider world. While we focus on whether or not we have a relationship with the European Union that is about a customs union, a free trade area or anything else, millions of people are facing starvation in Yemen. There is a man-made catastrophe; some 24 million people are in need of aid—three-quarters of the whole population. The noble Baroness, Lady Amos, indicated just how many individuals are facing starvation and medical need. She also pointed out that each one of those statistics is a human life.
The situation in Yemen is of grave concern, but it is not sufficiently on the front pages of our newspapers. In the years since the crisis began five years ago, GDP per capita has gone down 61% and fuel and food prices have gone up 98% and 110% respectively. They are dramatic figures that we need to think about, because each further day of this conflict means more children dying, not only as civilian casualties but through starvation, which should not and need not be happening. There is food in the ports, but is it getting to the people concerned? There are clearly issues about how far food is able to get through. What reassurances can the Minister give that British aid is getting through? We were given evidence that 99% of food is getting through, yet suggestions from Saferworld and other organisations indicate that it is perhaps not that much. What is happening on the ground? Can the Minister reassure us?
We have already heard that Her Majesty’s Government have made significant humanitarian aid available to Yemen—and that is true—but we are looking at figures of £170 million in aid, alongside arms exports to Saudi Arabia in the same amount of time of £4.7 billion. Surely something is going wrong when the countries involved in the conflict, whether as part of the coalition or supporting the coalition, are engaged in serious arms exports and arms trading while, at the same time, giving humanitarian aid at a much lower level.
The United Kingdom is the fifth-largest donor of humanitarian aid to Yemen at present, after the United States, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. If the war stopped, we could begin to focus on ensuring that the humanitarian situation is not just mitigated but resolved. As the noble Lord, Lord Luce, suggested, perhaps we need to think about more than simply reviewing our arms export licences to Saudi. Is the Minister satisfied that the United Kingdom is currently on just the right side of humanitarian and international law, as the former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, believed, or may we have tripped over to the wrong side?
This was a short inquiry, consisting of one evidence session. However, it was a rich evidence session because the key evidence giver was the former Minister of State, Alistair Burt, who brought a great deal of wisdom and expertise. We are most grateful to him for his evidence and he will be greatly missed as a Minister. He reminded the committee that Her Majesty’s Government’s position is that we cannot resolve the situation in Yemen through military means or external action; it needs to be resolved by the Yemenis.
Our conclusions included the suggestion that Her Majesty’s Government need to do more to resolve the situation rather than simply trying to mitigate the crisis. What do they propose to do to enable us to go beyond the conflict and the Yemenis to take control of their own future? The visit of the Foreign Secretary to Yemen and the surrounding region is important. How far will he be able to take a lead in working beyond the Stockholm process to ensure that we do not face another five years of conflict in Yemen but will be able to resolve the issue and work together with the international community to overcome the crisis, rather than simply coming back in a year’s time, for example, and bemoaning the difficulties that the international community has been unable to resolve?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Howell for setting out so clearly the main points that underpin our report and recommendations. It was such a pleasure to serve on the committee under his chairmanship. As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, just said, this is a timely debate, coming just a week after the Foreign Office and DfID set out their joint statement on the fourth anniversary of the intervention by the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen conflict.
I shall focus today on the impact of the war on women and girls, who have been disproportionately affected by the conflict and the humanitarian crisis, and the role they could play in the peace process. I welcome the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, on the peace process. The International Committee of the Red Cross says:
“80% of Yemen’s population rely on aid to survive. Yemen’s entire economic system has collapsed. This can’t be substituted by humanitarian organisations”.
Of course, it is right, but humanitarian assistance is vital today for the very survival of Yemenis. I congratulate the Government on their contributions to humanitarian aid in Yemen. Can the Minister update the House today on the result of the recent pledging conference in Geneva? What have other European Union countries pledged? Have they matched the UK’s good example?
I am grateful to the International Rescue Committee for its written briefing on the humanitarian concerns and to Ciarán Donnelly, the IRC’s vice-president for international programmes, for his presentation to the joint meeting of the APPGs on Women, Peace and Security and Yemen last month. I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was able to attend and give a presentation of the committee’s short report.
While all Yemenis are clearly affected by the war, women and girls are bearing the burden. This is particularly evident in the context of the country’s malnutrition crisis, to which other noble Lords have referred. Some 2 million children and more than 1 million pregnant women and new mothers are acutely malnourished. The war has also exacerbated pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities for women and girls. Incidents of gender-based violence have increased by more than 63% since before the conflict started. The rate of early and forced marriage of girls has risen dramatically, tripling since 2015.The breakdown of public services is having a major impact on women’s ability to gain access to healthcare. Only 35% of maternal and new-born health services are fully functional. Health services that are available are simply not equipped, staffed or trained to deal with the needs of women and girls affected by violence.
Does the Minister agree that it is important for the UK and other humanitarian actors to increase the priority given to the needs of women and girls, paying specific attention to preventing and responding to gender-based violence and to ensuring better access to maternal healthcare? If so, what action do the Government intend to take? For example, will they increase dedicated funding to end violence against women and girls? Will they press for the UNFPA’s Yemen humanitarian response plans to be fully funded? Will the UK encourage the UN to appoint a gender-based violence adviser to be based in Yemen to be responsible for ensuring that a gender perspective is applied to assessments and that UN co-ordination on gender-based violence is improved across the work of UNICEF and UNHCR?
As our report makes clear, we commend the Government for their ongoing humanitarian contribution and the work of DfID and British volunteers who risk their lives every day to deliver assistance, but we can do more to help to resolve the crisis. We could, for example, put our weight behind the UN peace process in new and imaginative ways. I would be grateful if the Minister could respond to our committee’s recommendation, at paragraph 69 of the report, that the UK,
“should consider appointing a Special Representative, based in London, to speak to all the parties concerned, both internal and external, to reinforce the efforts of the UN Special Envoy”.
This could provide an impetus to work on including women in the peace process more effectively.
I welcome the fact that the UK has supported the Yemeni Women Pact for Peace and Security to increase women’s leadership and inclusion in the official peace process. The group now has official status as a consultative body for the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy. However, I suspect that they will not sit round the table to negotiate peace until and unless there is a change of attitude among all parties to the conflict. A UK special representative could be an influence for good in shifting the dial.
As long as the voices of Yemeni women are relegated to the periphery, it is unlikely that any peace process will have a lasting effect. To create lasting peace, we need women’s voices. From conflict prevention and conflict resolution to reconciliation and economic recovery post conflict, women’s meaningful participation in peace processes increases by 35% the likelihood that an agreement will last more than 15 years.
Meaningful participation requires that women are at the table when negotiations take place, that women’s interests and lived experiences are fully reflected in peace processes, and that women are equally considered in recovery efforts in the aftermath of conflict. As my noble friend the Minister said last month in New York when he attended the Women for Women International meeting at the Commission on the Status of Women:
“We don’t just want women involved; they have to be involved in conflict resolution ... Let us deliver on this noble objective”.
He was right. How are we going to do that?
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I follow a number of other members of the committee in thanking our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for his very crisp and clear introduction of our report. I echo much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, has said, and I am delighted also to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, whose work at the United Nations was something that we should all be grateful for. She deserves much credit for it.
Today’s debate is long overdue; nevertheless, it is welcome. It is particularly welcome that the Government have scheduled this debate ahead of the two-month limit for the submission of their response to our report. That makes the Minister’s reply today all the more important, and no doubt it will be followed by the Government’s formal response to our recommendations. It is overdue because in this country, as elsewhere, the situation in Yemen has tended to be marginalised and overlooked, despite the copious evidence of appalling loss of life and suffering in the civil war that continues there.
It has been very easy to think of Yemen as a far-away country of which we know little, but that is a mistake. This is a conflict in which Britain has been playing a role—admittedly, an indirect role and not that of a combatant. Therefore, I begin by unstintingly praising the work of DfID and the British-based NGOs in mitigating the humanitarian catastrophe brought about by the war. The impressive sums that we are devoting to this mitigation need to be sustained, and I imagine that the Minister will say something about that. However, mitigation is, frankly, no longer enough, if it ever was. What is needed now is a major concerted international effort to bring this war to an end, because it will not be ended on the battlefield; it desperately needs a political solution.
Britain’s position as a permanent member of the Security Council is an important aspect of that international effort, particularly as we are the penholder for Yemen in New York. Being the penholder is not so much a matter of pride; it is a responsibility. I have to say that holding the pen is not much use if the hand that holds the pen is paralysed. Through much of 2018, that was indeed the situation; the Security Council did not do much to deal with a situation that was deteriorating all the time or with the suffering, which was so great.
With the adoption of two resolutions at the United Nations on the basis of the Stockholm talks, I accept that this is no longer so. But it must not become so again. We must not fall again into a state of palsy. With the first fragile and tentative steps towards a peace process at Stockholm not progressing very far, or very fast—not registering much progress—the Security Council’s intervention may well be needed again. It would be good to hear from the Minister something about the role of the Security Council in the period that now lies ahead.
We need then to consider how best we can back up the praiseworthy efforts of Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy. Our reports suggested, and the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, mentioned—I mention it too—that the Government should contemplate the appointment of a special representative, who could be in continuous contact with all the parties to the conflict, both internal and external; our ambassador to the Hadi Government, in Riyadh, clearly cannot be. Perhaps the Minister could give us a response to that suggestion.
On the ground, the UN is playing a modest verification and monitoring role and function in and around Hodeidah, which is crucial for access to humanitarian supplies for the rest of the country. I am sure it would be helpful if the Government could make it clear in this debate that they would be willing to provide equipment and expertise additional to that which we are already providing for that mission, not just in Hodeidah but elsewhere in the country if, as is to be hoped, the ceasefire can be extended more widely.
In this debate, as in our report, the issue of arms supplies to those involved in the conflict—particularly to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—cannot be ducked. There is too much evidence that material we have supplied has been used in what amounts to breaches in international humanitarian law and, thus, to a contradiction between our obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty and the commerce that we are conducting. I have to say—the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said it too—that our committee was not a court of law. We had no access to confidential material, but it seemed to us that a line has been crossed, and that the Government’s assertions to the contrary lack credibility. This, after all, seems to be the view of the German Government—who have suspended their arms supplies to Saudi Arabia—and of both Houses of the US Congress; that is quite a combination.
We have suggested that the Government make it clear, in private and without grandstanding, to all the external players, that if they were not to give their backing, in deeds as well as words, to the peace process that began at Stockholm, and if aerial bombardment or the blocking of humanitarian supplies—food and medicine most importantly—were to resume, there would be negative consequences for our bilateral relations, and that would include some suspension in the supply of arms. I hope very much that the Minister will say that the Government share this view and will act accordingly. That would be a real boost to the prospects for peace.
I end as others have done with a tribute to the former Minister of State, the right honourable Alistair Burt, whose tireless efforts, and evidence to us, were so invaluable. His best legacy would be if the Government were to give a real strong helping hand to the efforts to resolve the conflict in Yemen, and give it the same priority that he always did.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I too am a member of the International Relations Committee and am grateful that we have been given the opportunity to debate this report so soon after its publication, given the urgency and extreme seriousness of the situation in Yemen.
I shall focus on just two issues. As the first is the position of women, I have just deleted several parts of my speech, not to repeat the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, with which I wholeheartedly agree. We know from various sources that women and children are, not surprisingly, bearing the brunt of the violence and its consequences, including starvation and the lack of healthcare. For example, the International Rescue Committee reports that over a million women who are pregnant or breastfeeding are currently acutely malnourished. The UN has warned that the maternal death rate is likely to be double what it was in 2015.
Against this appalling background, the committee’s report was able to record some impressive aid programmes being delivered by DfID; it goes without saying that these are more than welcome. For example, last September, Her Majesty’s Government announced that almost £100 million would fund a nutrition programme, treating 70,000 children with acute malnutrition and providing antenatal care to 800,000 women.
I do not, however, want to focus on women solely in relation to their suffering in the conflict. I also wish to stress how important it is that women form an integral part of the peace process to resolve that conflict—an issue also raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Amos and Lady Anelay.
In a recent Written Question, I asked what action Her Majesty’s Government have taken, or plan to take, to ensure that the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on the involvement of women in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction are being fully complied with in the Stockholm agreement process aimed at ending the war in Yemen. The Minister provided an encouraging Answer, saying that the UK has indeed lobbied the parties in the conflict to include more women in formal peace talks and explained why—although, in the light of the observations of the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, we should perhaps be talking not about more women but about any women at all.
In addition, he pointed out that, through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, the UK helps to support the Yemeni Women’s Pact for Peace and Security. I thank the Minister for this information. Can he update the House on any progress being made by Tawafaq, the Yemeni women’s pact, especially in the light of the championing of its work by the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Yemen?
Looking at other ways of increasing—or perhaps I should say achieving—the participation of women in peace talks, I draw the Minister’s attention to the meeting a few weeks ago which members of the International Relations Committee held with the president and other members of the Southern Transitional Council of Yemen. He will know that the STC is currently excluded from the Stockholm process and I appreciate that there are dilemmas to be addressed. At the same time, it was clear that the STC has an inclusive attitude towards women and at its 2017 assembly agreed an explicit policy on women’s rights. So can the Minister tell us the Government’s current view on including the STC in official peace talks, with specific reference to the inclusion of women?
The second issue I want to raise, like most other noble Lords in this debate, is that of arms sales by the UK to Saudi Arabia. As others have said, we concluded in our report that we disagreed with the Government’s view that the UK was,
“narrowly on the right side of international humanitarian law”,
to quote the former Foreign Secretary. We also concluded that UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia are,
“highly likely to be the cause of significant civilian casualties in Yemen”.
Since the report was published, further doubt still has been directed at Her Majesty’s Government in this regard. The international NGO Saferworld has argued that the UK’s assistance to Saudi Arabia in targeting strikes is potentially leading to more, not fewer, casualties, and that the UK is guilty of a lack of transparency in how decisions on arms licences are made, putting the UK out of line with several other European countries, which, as we have heard, now have a de facto embargo on arms sales to Saudi.
Does the Minister still stand by the Government’s position that they are on the right side of international humanitarian law in this case? Secondly, echoing the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, will the Minister clarify how political approval for arms licences is reached? I look forward to his reply to my questions and those of other noble Lords.
Lord Jopling (Con)
My Lords, I am afraid that I was unwell in the week the committee had its hearing on the Yemen problem, but the report we are debating demonstrates extremely well the continued horrific situation in that part of the world. I congratulate the Government on bringing forward this debate so quickly. Many noble Lords have already referred to the detail of the horrific situation that confronts us. I will not enlarge on it—the widespread hunger and food shortages, the growing threat of disease, including cholera, typhoid and other maladies associated with the deprivations of this nature, the shortage of medicines, and, of course, civilian deaths as a result of military action.
A number of noble Lords have talked about the Stockholm agreement. It seems inadequate in meeting the crisis. Of course, we have always known that it was only the first step in the process of achieving a peace. In spite of it, the port of Hodeidah, contrary to all the intentions of the Stockholm negotiations, continues to be blocked as a conduit of food aid and other humanitarian assistance to the stricken 24 million people who comprise 80% of the population. I hope that, in spite of some pious hopes, we can see a little more evidence that there will be significant troop redeployments around the city of Hodeidah by the Houthi leadership to ensure full delivery of essential food and medicines to the beleaguered millions.
The Foreign Secretary referred a short time ago to the 50,000 tonnes of grain that sit in stores in Hodeidah and remain there as the millions starve. Following on from what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, I hope the Minister will update us with the latest figures on relief supplies, especially food, entering the ports of Yemen—and Hodeidah in particular, which is much the most important—as well as on the movement of those items from the docks and the stores to where they are urgently needed. An update of that sort would be most welcome.
We have heard continually that there is no military solution, and we know what a divided country Yemen is. As a background to this, I hope noble Lords will remember that at the heart of the Yemen crisis lies the centuries-old rivalry between the Muslim factions of Sunni and Shia. I was in Riyadh not too long ago, where we met virtually all the key leaders, including the King. We did not meet the Crown Prince because he had other distractions, with the President of China in town at the same time, so that was understandable. But I was struck that almost wherever we went in Riyadh we were regaled with tales of how dreadful and evil the Iranians were and of the malevolence of those in Tehran. Surprisingly, only once during our visit were we retold the familiar view of their attitude to Israel. Indeed, since that visit, there have been stories about very high-level visits by Saudis to Israel and suggestions that a visit could have been made by the Crown Prince himself.
So, it is this Saudi-Iranian rivalry that lies behind so many of the problems that confront Yemen. The frequent Houthi missile attacks on Saudi territory, around Riyadh as well as other places, must alarm us all. The situation could surely escalate, leading to a much wider conflict between the rival Islamic Middle Eastern states themselves. Hence, the UK Government must do everything in their power, and in the United Nations, to give full effect to the Stockholm agreement and then to move on to a wider settlement of this dreadful situation.
While I am not opposed to us selling armaments to the Saudis, I am alarmed at the committee’s conclusion that they are, as it has been quoted,
“narrowly on the wrong side”,
of the law. The Government need to review this situation urgently and take steps to ensure that this accusation cannot be made and maintained. Especially, I ask the Minister to tell us what the situation is about our arms sales to Saudi and the United Arab Emirates, which is also actively engaged with the Saudis in Yemen. Is he satisfied that the UAE sales in particular are within the law?
I end by saying that the Saudi regime has continually told us that UK arms sales are compliant with the rules of international law. The chairman of the committee, my noble friend Lord Howell, I think referred obliquely to the problematic veracity of some of the things the Saudis say. I hope the Minister will tell us that whatever assurances we are given by the Saudis will be thoroughly examined for their veracity. We have had recent cases over the death of Mr Khashoggi that lead us to the conclusion that they do not always mean what they say.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure I speak for very many in expressing deep appreciation for this report from the Select Committee, which is setting a very high standard for hard-hitting, effective reports, repeatedly introduced so well and constructively by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I am also greatly cheered to be sitting in front of my noble friend Lady Amos, who has more than proved herself by being there at the UN carrying so many heavy responsibilities and doing so positively and cheerfully. It is therefore very important to listen to what she has to say.
My noble friend emphasised the importance of will in this situation, as indeed have others. That is crucial. Without will, nothing effective will happen. It is always a matter of negotiation and policies, but these must be there as a means to fulfil the will, which is paramount. She also referred to the special envoy, as indeed have others. He has unstintingly done a heavy job, and received great credit for how he has performed it. There have been some comments that the trouble with the Stockholm settlement agreement was that it was too general, and did not include enough specifics to pin it down. But if you have not had people around the table for years, you have to get something going. I am not sure I would join in criticising the approach that he took. It is incumbent on the rest of us to face the disappointing reality that in recent months the situation has deteriorated.
I was reading a report from the International Rescue Committee, which points out that other areas as well as Hodeidah have seen persistent clashes and air strikes, with heavy civilian tolls and damage to civilian infrastructure, reflecting a trend throughout the war. It also says that a hospital in the north-west of Yemen supported by Save the Children was reportedly hit by an air strike on 26 March, killing seven people, including four children. Figures from the Yemen Data Project suggest that SLC airstrikes have killed 8,338 civilians—1,283 of them children—and injured 9,391 others over the past four years. The IRC and others have also referred to the heavy toll and impact on women, which is striking. Women in pregnancy and lactating have paid a heavy punishment for what has been happening. We should take this very seriously indeed.
There has also been reference to the importance of women in negotiations. I share the clear frustration of my noble friend Lady Amos that no women were involved. There is no way we can build peace without the full involvement of women. This needs acute attention.
There has also been considerable mention of the arms issue. I am glad that the committee grappled with this so firmly. The remarks by the Government about remaining on the right side of the law are very defensive and unconvincing. We need a much more fulsome and honest debate about this. I am one of those who believes that it is one thing to have arms trade treaties—indeed, the European rules on the export of arms are a very important element backing up the Arms Trade Treaty—but it is not just about treaties. It is rather similar to the point about will. Are these minimal approaches? Is this Governments being able to say that we are within the letter of the law, or are they positive, dynamic proposals ensuring that our arms are not contributing to the ongoing suffering and conflict?
I am convinced that this is a deep cultural and economic issue in Britain which we have never faced under successive Governments—I plead guilty because I have been a Minister at the Ministry of Defence and at the Foreign Office. We have got to be honest with ourselves. Arms are dangerous—lethal—exports. In the volatility and instability of the world, of which Yemen is an acute example, they are particularly dangerous. We can never be absolutely sure about end use. This is one of the crucial issues that one has to pursue, whatever the good intentions. We might eventually say that arms may be necessary—they may be essential in certain situations—but are to be used only by our own services or by those in alliances of which we are a member for action which we specifically support and only ever for specific, positive purposes that we are convinced about. But when arms start reaching beyond that, we are inviting deep humanitarian trouble. It is good that in the report, the NGOs and many others have drawn our attention to this. I want to place on record my admiration of DfID as a humanitarian agency working to such good effect. However, so much of that is threatened and undermined by the arms issue.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in the aftermath of António Guterres’s assertion that Yemen is,
“the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”,
the International Affairs Committee has provided the House with a succinct, brave and timely report. Yemen’s victims are disfigured by grinding poverty, caught in a cycle of declining GDP, the collapsing Yemeni rial, accelerating food and fuel prices and, as the United Nations Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs described in a recent report, it has,
“A higher percentage of people face death, hunger and disease than in any other country … Eighty percent of the entire population requires some form of humanitarian assistance and protection … Twenty million Yemenis need help securing food and a staggering 14 million people are in acute humanitarian need … Ten million people are one step away from famine and starvation … Seven million, four hundred thousand people, nearly a quarter of the entire population, are malnourished, many acutely so … Two million malnourished children under five and 1.1 million pregnant and lactating women require urgent treatment to survive ... Conditions are worsening at a nearly unprecedented rate”.
In what is, increasingly, a breeding ground for the next wave of ISIS recruiting sergeants, it is reported that in western Yemen hidden landmines have taken the lives of 267 civilians, also claiming the lives of five charity workers who were demining the area. Aid agencies estimate a 63% increase in gender-based violence, 1.3 million suspected cases of cholera—the worst outbreak in modem history—with coalition airstrikes destroying water treatment facilities, crippling access to clean water. In a war crime warranting prosecution, five medical facilities run by Médecins Sans Frontières have been bombed since 2015. Despite the three-month-old truce in Hodeidah, according to UNICEF,
“At least one child dies every 10 minutes in Yemen from malnutrition and preventable diseases”.
In December, UNICEF reported:
“Over 6,700 children were verified killed or severely injured. Nearly 1.5 million children have been displaced, many of them living a life that is a mere shadow of what childhood should be. In Yemen today, 7 million children go to sleep hungry every night. Every single day, 400,000 children face life-threatening severe acute malnutrition and could die any minute. More than 2 million children are out of school; those who are in school often have to settle for poor quality education in overcrowded classrooms”.
As the conflict and the humanitarian crisis rage on, the estimated cost, as we have heard during this debate, has reached staggering sums of billions of dollars. In evidence to the committee, the then Minister Alistair Burt—an old friend of mine—described Iran’s and Saudi Arabia’s,
“huge existential fears for their states”,
but, as the report says, he also said that,
“Opponents of the Saudi-led coalition had used a ‘very easy narrative’ that had ‘misunderstood the nature of this conflict’”.
He insisted that the UK was,
“not a party to the military conflict as part of the coalition”,
but this is a very elastic definition. Last week, as we have heard, national newspapers reported:
“Members of the Special Boat Service … were shot while fighting in the Saadah area in the north of the country”.
How is that not taking part in the military conflict?
However, it is far worse than that. Over four years, the coalition has carried out over 19,000 air strikes—one every 106 minutes. In 2019, the UN panel of experts on Yemen said that precautionary measures to protect civilians are “largely inadequate and ineffective”. The UK has provided training in targeting weapons, along with liaison officers at Saudi headquarters, resupplied Saudi air capability and provided technical maintenance and spare parts. We have licensed £4.7 billion of arms exports to the Saudis, along with a further £860 million of arms to their coalition partners. As only second to the United States in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, we have stoked the fires of this conflict by selling arms to a country which has exported terror and ideology. We have acted as quartermaster to the conflict and then salve our consciences by boasting about how much aid we have given to the suffering people of Yemen.
Although Ministers have played a constructive role in promoting United Nations Security Council Resolution 2451 and encouraging the work of the admirable Martin Griffiths, special envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General, in brokering the Stockholm agreement our own credibility in this process is damaged when, as the report says, in their licensing of arms sales to Saudi Arabia the Government are “narrowly on the wrong side” of international law,
“given the volume and type of arms being exported to the Saudi-led coalition”.
The report goes on to say that these sales,
“are highly likely to be the cause of significant civilian casualties in Yemen”.
When he comes to reply, I hope that the Minister will respond to the call of the 25 Yemeni and global NGOs which have called on Germany to extend its moratorium on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and tell us whether he is comfortable that we have not done the same. The UK’s response and that of France—countries which both produce arms that require parts and components of German origin—has been for the UK to actively lobby Germany to lift its moratorium. This demonstrates again how we are stepping over the line, and it risks weakening international standards for arms control. Indeed, it may violate our obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty including:
“Respecting and ensuring respect for international humanitarian law”,
and preventing human suffering. I might add that, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, the US Congress has voted to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen—although the White House has signalled that, if necessary, it will veto this.
Knowing of the attacks on civilians and atrocities in Yemen while still providing the weapons to Saudi Arabia makes Her Majesty’s Government complicit in those atrocities. Your Lordships may recall that both Yemen and Saudi Arabia are accused of having committed war crimes; hence, Her Majesty’s Government could fall within the ambit of complicity. Contrary to Yemen and Saudi Arabia, Her Majesty’s Government are subject to the International Criminal Court, and Ministers should urgently seek the advice of the Government’s law officers on this matter. If they seriously want to see an end to the carnage and suffering in Yemen, the Government should immediately end their complicity in this disgraceful business and make it clear that this appalling campaign of killing is not to be conducted in our name.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has vividly set out the case that enough is enough. The horrendous number of deaths and casualties, the displaced and the lack of access to drinking water are an absolute catastrophe. As the Minister so rightly once said at the Dispatch Box, one death is one death too many.
The Saudi-led coalition’s goals remain elusive, and, while conditions on the ground deteriorate, with the humanitarian situation worsening and disease spreading, the Houthis are more entrenched, with Iranian influence growing. Good-faith negotiations on long-term political and security arrangements, with support from Secretary Pompeo for UN-sponsored talks, are welcome, but it is concerning that the December confidence-building measures contained in the Stockholm agreement for a ceasefire in the port city of Hodeidah, along with an end to the siege of Ta’izz and prisoner exchanges, faltered. Some suggest that consideration of moving forward with a more detailed road map might have been usefully addressed to assist the Stockholm process advancing.
UN special envoy Griffiths has cultivated a relationship of trust with the Houthis, which is a major asset. It will require herculean Houdini-like abilities for the United States to express itself as an ally of Saudi Arabia and in parallel manage Iran, when the Administration’s agenda is to instigate regime change in Tehran. The United Kingdom’s reputation is also tarnished by the continued supply of arms to Saudi Arabia, defying comprehension. More particularly than ever, our future policy should be to play our cards as an honest broker.
Reputational damage is enhanced when we do not take account of Germany, Spain and Denmark, supported by the European Parliament, encouraging the suspension of the supply of arms to Saudi Arabia. Is the US requesting us to continue with that supply of arms? Did I understand correctly that Foreign Secretary Hunt had requested that Germany continue the supply of weaponry and spare parts? If that was the case, by what reasoning was this request made? The Minister should offer a robust explanation of why the United Kingdom continues with this practice.
It would appear that the UK-Saudi relationship is to be placed in the spotlight, with Channel 4’s “Dispatches” airing this evening. To state that the Saudis’ continuing bombardment is an image disaster for Saudi Arabia would be an understatement. I suspect that Saudi Arabia will stop the air strikes only when the United States indicates that continuation will adversely affect the relationship between the two countries.
Then there is the question of Iran. If it is believed that Iran is part of the solution to the misery and it believes it can contribute, then engagement with that country is mandatory; however, if you think that Iran is part of the problem, a solution must be arrived at. I am pleased to observe that the Iranian political attaché has taken an interest in our proceedings by attending this debate.
With their military takeover in 2014, the Houthis are under the influence of Iran, but the report of the International Relations Committee concludes only that,
“it is known that there is some relationship between the Houthis and Iran”.
It continues that it was a matter,
“of academic difference as to the degree of that control, but our assessment is that the Houthis are very independent minded”—
and so it went on. Iran is often figure-pointed as the origin of the supply of missiles. The report noted that when the Houthis captured Sanaa they assumed control of Yemen’s stock of missiles, which included weaponry from the former Soviet Union and North Korea. How certain is the Minister about the reports that the missile attacks on Riyadh emanate from Iranian supplies?
I applaud Foreign Secretary Hunt’s past visit to Tehran and the talks conducted in Muscat. The committee’s report drew attention to Iran being in the sphere of influence but did not refer to E4 meetings with Iran about Yemen. It is important to Iran that it does not consider itself neglected. The UK has more experience than most in the affairs of the Middle East and we should not compromise our continuing ability to engage, now and in the future, with the two regional powers. Will the UK provide a draft of a statement at an upcoming meeting in Jordan, and will the Minister confirm that he anticipates it being couched in balanced and neutral terms?
Mr Griffiths, to whom participants and observers have paid tribute, has not yet visited Tehran, I believe. He might wish to consider doing so, particularly as Iranian influence in Yemen is growing significantly. This becomes more critical as Shiites in other countries embrace the Houthi cause as part of what they see as a larger struggle against Sunni predominance. With all that said, as the report rightly points out, it is for Yemenis to determine their political future. Peace must be restored but not imposed.
On a more personal note, I remember well my visits to Yemen over the years. It is a beautiful country, reminiscent to me of Arabia of old. This whole affair is tragic, and another example of where the innocent suffer with diplomacy faltering. An outcome that would not be in the interests of the West but has been seen elsewhere in the region is for additional external players to weigh in.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, following the powerful contributions from the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on the humanitarian situation and their personal reflections, the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on the geopolitical situation, the noble Baronesses, Lady Amos and Lady Anelay, on highlighting the failings of a process that is actively excluding the majority of people, women—I will touch on that later—and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, there are limited areas on which I can make an original contribution to this debate. It has been very powerful, even if it has been brief. I have the pleasure, as do others, of serving on the committee so ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and I concur with all of the contributions from my colleagues on the committee today.
I direct the House to my entry in the register of interests. Yesterday afternoon, I returned from a two-country visit to the Middle East. It was said to me then, as others in this debate have remarked, that we have lost with his resignation a Minister who is widely respected, not only in this House but, more importantly, in the region. A week on from his resignation, it is depressing to see there is no Minister for the Middle East to replace him in the Government. It is not acceptable that the Middle East is now covered by a Minister extending the scope of Africa and a Minister extending the scope of Asia. I hope the Minister will give the positive response that the Prime Minister will appoint a Minister for the Middle East as a matter of urgency.
I want to address the first element on which many noble Lords have commented, our arms and defence relationship with Saudi and the UAE. Any reader of the FCO website on GOV.UK will see two articles. The first has the headline:
“Britain has been shaping the world for centuries. That won’t change with Brexit”.
That is immediately followed by:
“Yemen crisis won’t be solved by UK arms exports halt”.
There is a jarring visual element to reading the articles by the Foreign Secretary, not just from looking at the website. I commend the Foreign Secretary for visiting the region, taking a strong special interest in this and supporting Michael Aron, our ambassador for Yemen, and his excellent team based in Amman, who are doing hard work.
The article by the Foreign Secretary said that the “strategic relationship”, by which he means our arms and defence relationship,
“allows us the opportunity to influence their leaders”,
by which he means Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He wrote that, if we stop this relationship, our position would be “morally bankrupt” and we would be bystanders. He gives the impression—in fact he states—that Stockholm would not have happened and we would not have the peace process. That is a regrettable article and it undermines some of the humanitarian work that the UK has provided in that area. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, it jars with the position of Germany and the United States Congress.
If countries buy over £5 billion of work from us, most objective people will wonder who provides the influence. Is it the seller or the buyer? There are questions on not just the use of the armaments that we sell but also, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has said, on the down-the-line impact of the training on those weapons and targeted training, and the deeply ingrained relationship we have. It is right for the committee, if not to say it explicitly, to ask for a serious and urgent reconsideration of our defence relationship, given this conflict.
I declare an interest in that I chair the UK board of Search for Common Ground, which has worked in Yemen since 2010, with consistent and active programming throughout the conflict cycles, not only of the last four years, but the last nine years. It has active projects running across seven different governorates, in both north and south, covering stabilisation, countering a culture of violence, conflict sensitivity among the humanitarian sector and trying to support the national peace process. In addition to the UK Government, work there has been supported by diverse UN agencies, USAID and the foreign ministries of the Netherlands and France, among others, showing that it is an international area of consistency. It is also an international shame that this crisis can still exist in the 21st century.
I commend the UK, however, for its government support and humanitarian aid delivery. I would like to see the Government moving beyond a do-no-harm approach to humanitarian assistance and more into the development sphere. From the many visits I made to northern Iraq when Mosul was occupied by ISIS, I saw that insufficient consideration of good governance work post peace process means that those who have been most affected will not be involved in the long-term reconstruction and rehabilitation of communities.
Other noble Lords have mentioned the three-phase process of the UN envoy. Phase one is the redeployment of forces away from Hodeidah. Phase two is a prisoner exchange, which is complex, as I understand there are high-value prisoners from the Saudi side. We know from the situation in Northern Ireland over many years that prisoner exchange is a highly charged and problematic issue. Perhaps we can offer some good lessons on the second area of prisoner exchange. The third phase is for a joint committee for Taiz which, I hope, will meet soon to agree a peaceful way forward.
As indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, and others, the confidence process is one of incremental stages. If it does not create a degree of momentum, which can be buffeted by wider political considerations of other partners, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, it will be hard to consider what progress is. It would help if the Minister can say what areas of progress the Government consider are sufficiently robust to reassure both sides that there can be movement to the next stage of the peace process.
It is worth putting on record the good offices of the Omani and Jordanian Governments, but I also return to the point mentioned so powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and others. Over recent years, we have seen the negative impact, both in Iraq and Libya, of processes that exclude women. This does not have an academic element, nor is further research needed. We know for a fact that the majority group has been excluded and that these peace processes are less robust because of it. Even in the last week in Amman, an event took place in which no women participated, contrary to the UN principles indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins. It may be time for the UK to say to the United Nations that an empty-chair approach could be necessary until women are actively part of the process.
As Mark Lowcock indicated, 24 million people need assistance. A population the size of London will be hungry tonight in that region, and we consider most of those victims to be women. It is simply not acceptable anymore, in how we go about our diplomacy and peacebuilding work, that women are considered a group that deserves to be consulted but not to participate. I hope the Minister says that our approach to look for an opportunity for the participation of women in this peace process before Ramadan will start to see some urgency.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank all members of the committee for this excellent report, and the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for his powerful introduction. Since UN Resolution 2216 the UK, alongside the US, France and others, has consistently supported the war aims of the Saudi-led coalition and has continued to authorise the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and its partners for use in the conflict. My noble friend Lord Judd referred to the independent Yemen Data Project and it is important to note its analysis, according to which there have been 18,000 air strikes on Yemen since the start of the conflict up to April 2018. It found that roughly one-third hit civilian targets, one-third hit military targets and one-third hit targets of unknown designation. A UN expert panel report released last September said that all sides in the conflict may have committed breaches of international humanitarian law.
As we heard so powerfully in the debate, as a result of the conflict and the Saudi blockade, Yemen has been sinking deeper into a humanitarian crisis. Your Lordships’ committee rightly concluded that the situation is “unconscionable”. This side has long called for all UK arms sales to Riyadh to be suspended because of the evidence of breaches in international humanitarian law in the conflict. The Government argue that it is “on the right side” of IHL because of the Saudi-led coalition’s processes for investigating possible errors. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, reminded us, your Lordships’ committee said that the Government are,
“narrowly on the wrong side”.
As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Howell, its conclusion on the likelihood of civilian casualties was based on the volume and type of arms being sold by the UK to Saudi Arabia.
As we heard, the UK has licensed more than £4.7 billion-worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, and £860 million-worth to its coalition partners, since the conflict in Yemen commenced. We are the second-largest exporter of arms to Saudi Arabia after the US and, as we have heard, the fifth-largest donor of humanitarian aid. This year we have committed an additional £200 million of aid, bringing our total commitment to more than £770 million since the conflict began. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, it is that contradiction which the Government must address as a matter of urgency, and I hope that the Minister will respond specifically to his question.
Last Tuesday, my right honourable friend Emily Thornberry, shadow Foreign Secretary, asked an Urgent Question in the other place, following press reports at the weekend that members of British Special Forces were engaged in gun battles with the Houthi rebels in Yemen while providing support to the coalition forces. One disturbing allegation in the Mail on Sunday report was that our forces were providing support to locally recruited, Saudi-funded militia and that many of the fighters—up to 40%, it was alleged—were children as young as 13 years old. If these allegations are true, it would confirm that our forces were not just party to this conflict but witnesses to war crimes. In response, Mark Field said in the other place:
“I am keen that we get to the bottom of those allegations”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/3/19; col. 187.]
In a subsequent letter to Emily Thornberry on Friday, he wrote:
“We have an ongoing defence engagement relationship with Saudi Arabia which includes training courses, advice and guidance. However, we are not a member of the SLC and do not have any role in Coalition policy. We are committed to supporting the legitimate security needs of Saudi Arabia, including defending itself against ballistic missiles fired by Houthis into civilian areas, and guarding against the danger of regional escalation. To this end UK personnel are involved in providing information, advice and assistance to Saudi Arabia on mitigating the threat from Houthi missiles as well as assisting them in other areas including on measures to support compliance with International Humanitarian law”.
He said that,
“the UK’s position on child soldiers is categorical … We raise allegations of human rights abuses or violations of IHL, including the use of child soldiers, with all parties to the conflict in Yemen. We have been clear that all parties must comply with IHL”.
Have the Minister or the Government been given evidence of breaches of international humanitarian law by Saudi coalition forces from British sources? That was raised by the committee. If we have been, how does he think we should meet our international treaty obligations? Surely we must act on such evidence, and we should all condemn the failure to do so, as we have heard in the debate.
My noble friend Lady Amos—I too pay tribute to her work at the United Nations on the humanitarian fund—highlighted that we are all concerned at the fragility of the agreement reached in Stockholm. On this side we welcome the steps that the Government have made through the UN to bolster the team in Hodeidah charged with overseeing that agreement. What difference does the Minister expect that increased force to have on the ground? Are we shoring up the peace, as we hope we are?
I conclude by saying that peace will not be won on the battlefield, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said. We all want the Stockholm agreement to succeed, but if it does not—if we are back to square 1 in terms of ending the war and the humanitarian crisis—will the Government consider bringing forward a new United Nations resolution requiring a nationwide ceasefire, with robust penalties against all parties who breach it?
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated, particularly my noble friend Lord Howell for securing this debate on the conflict in Yemen and for his long-standing commitment to the subject, not just as chair of the International Relations Committee but in his engagement and involvement with the field of foreign affairs. The Government welcome the committee’s report and thank it for its detailed examination of the issue. I am especially grateful that we have been able to have this debate before the formal response from the Government. As ever, I am grateful for the insight and expertise that noble Lords have provided.
I assure noble Lords that achieving progress in Yemen is a top priority for the UK. That is why my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary visited Yemen earlier this month. I am sure many noble Lords acknowledge his shuttle diplomacy. It is why he also attended the Stockholm peace talks in December, and why we are using our unique position—as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, with his deep insight into the United Nations, reminded us—as penholder at the UN Security Council to find a way to end this devastating conflict. As Minister for the United Nations, I acknowledge the importance of our role.
Before I go into the report itself, I shall first address the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, in particular, regarding recent media reports of the involvement of UK military personnel in Yemen and the use of child soldiers in conflict. I hope noble Lords will recognise that I cannot comment in detail on specific deployments, but I can clarify that a small number of British personnel are working in a liaison capacity in Saudi headquarters. They are not, as some have suggested, based in so-called command centres. British personnel have no role, to repeat what my right honourable friend said in the other place, in setting coalition policy or executing air strikes in Yemen.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, also raised the issue of child soldiers. I reassure the noble Lord that the Government give priority to this matter. He will no doubt recall, as will other noble Lords, that the office of United Nations special representative Virginia Gamba is funded by Her Majesty’s Government. I continue to work very closely with the special representative on this issue. I assure all noble Lords that our position on the recruitment and use of child soldiers is clear and unequivocal: it is simply unacceptable. We condemn it, and I assure the noble Lord that we are committed to ending it in all circumstances. If we have reports to this effect, we will continue to raise the issue vigorously with all parties concerned.
Unfortunately, regrettably and tragically, this is not the first time we have heard reports of child soldiers being used in the Yemen conflict. The UN group of eminent experts found that the Houthis had also forcibly recruited children—some, tragically, as young as eight—in schools and hospitals, and had used them in combat and to plant explosive devices. We raise our concerns about this with all parties to the conflict in Yemen, as I have said, and I can state as Minister for Human Rights that our officials also raised the use of child soldiers as a key issue in the last universal periodic review of Yemen.
I turn to the specific recommendations of the report and the issue of arms exports raised by several noble Lords, including my noble friends Lord Howell and Lord Jopling, the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins. The Government do not accept the report’s assertion that our actions on arms exports are,
“narrowly on the wrong side”,
of the law. The UK will not export items if there is a clear risk they may be used in a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
I assure my noble friend Lord Jopling, among others, that all export licence applications for Saudi Arabia are assessed rigorously on a case-by-case basis, using much fuller information than is available to others. In addition, to answer my noble friend Lord Howell, we have provided training and advice to support Saudi compliance with international humanitarian law. We also regularly raise the importance of compliance on this issue directly with the Saudi Arabian Government and other members of the coalition.
My noble friend asked what tests and factors we apply. In the interests of time, I will write to him specifically on this but, to give an insight, our forward-looking assessment looks at the situation in the round. We include: Saudi attitudes to compliance with international humanitarian law; how the key principles of international humanitarian law such as military necessity, distinction and proportionality are implemented; how incidents of concern are investigated; and, importantly, how those responsible are held to account and how lessons are learned. My noble friend will be aware that, in response, the Saudis set up the Joint Incidents Assessment Team on 29 February 2016. The Saudi Arabian Government have also publicly stated that they investigated reports of alleged violations using this vehicle, and that they act on lessons learned. To date, the assessment team has made over 100 statements from its investigations.
I assure noble Lords once again that the UK Government continue to review all arms exports and take our arms export control responsibilities very seriously; we remain confident that our arms exports are consistent with our licensing obligations. To be absolutely clear, particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, we continue to raise these issues regularly and will continue to review all applications according to these criteria.
Turning to humanitarian aid, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have raised the important role played by DfID and Her Majesty’s Government in this regard. I share totally the sentiment of noble Lords that this is a tragedy beyond all scope; anyone who has visited, reviewed or been involved with the crisis in Yemen—seeing children deprived of vital food and medicine—will know it to be heart-rending. I am therefore proud of the role the United Kingdom Government are playing. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that, for Her Majesty’s Government and the Foreign Office, this will remain at the forefront of our priorities on the world stage, notwithstanding the domestic issues of what is happening with Brexit and the Foreign Secretary’s recent engagement. I returned from another United Nations meeting on important issues regarding peace- keeping and the role of women, which I will come on to, only last week. My travel schedule probably reflects the fact that this will remain a high priority on the world stage.
The noble Baroness was quite right to ask for reassurance that aid is reaching those in need. The statistics cited on Hodeidah and Saleef concern the aid that has been delivered, but I fully acknowledge that there is a real challenge in the distribution of aid within the country. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked about additional support; that is why additional support is going in. The UK has a zero-tolerance policy on the diversion of UK aid funds, and all the UK Government’s partners and programmes are subject to rigorous and regular due diligence. However, I fully admit that this remains a major challenge for all Governments, not just the United Kingdom. We will continue to work with all parties to ensure that this happens. This concern about how we are ensuring the distribution of aid was also expressed by my noble friend Lord Jopling. At the moment we are working stringently with the UN and NGO partners to ensure that we get full reports of any delays in accessing necessary permits and agreements to deliver vital assistance. I will continue to inform the House regularly on how this situation is unfolding.
At the UN’s Yemen pledging conference in February, we committed an additional £200 million of support for the next financial year. The noble Baroness, Lady Amos, asked about its distribution, which will start shortly; this figure will build on the aid that has already been distributed from our previous year’s commitment. As noble Lords have acknowledged, this takes the overall commitment of the UK to Yemen to over £770 million since the conflict began in 2015. Our support will continue to focus on providing life-saving aid to millions in a country where a staggering 80% of the population are now in need of direct humanitarian assistance. I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, in this regard; I will continue to look to her deep insight and expertise as we provide support and assistance on this programme.
As my noble friend Lady Anelay also mentioned, the conflict in Yemen has further exacerbated the vulnerabilities faced by women and girls. It is unacceptable that the number of incidents of gender-based violence, for example, have reportedly risen by more than a staggering 60% since the start of the conflict. The UK fully supports women and girls across Yemen through our funding of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration. My noble friend is absolutely right; women have to be involved at the table—not in some corner room or a room in some remote part of a conference centre or hotel. They must be present. As the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, rightly pointed out, they have been absent. This was a key area of focus at the UN Commission on the Status of Women recently, where I represented and led the delegation. We continue to implore both parties through the good offices of the special envoy to ensure that women play their rightful role at the heart of conflict resolution. It is not an option. It is a necessity, and we will play our part to try to make it happen.
I also assure noble Lords that we are working with special envoy Martin Griffiths. In acknowledging his work in this respect, we ensure that his priorities in support of the initiatives we have already set up, such as those acknowledged by noble Lords, including the Yemeni Women’s Pact for Peace and Security, continue to be strengthened. We are also extremely concerned about the recent increase in cholera cases, and are working closely with all levels of the UN response, which is currently being scaled up to the 38 most affected districts in Yemen. Last year the UK contributed 25% of the costs of the first ever cholera vaccination campaign in Yemen through our funding for the global Vaccine Alliance. We will continue to prioritise these schemes as we support humanitarian efforts across the country.
The committee report also recommended a further UK contribution to the UN, including support for the UN verification and inspection mechanism, or UNVIM. I can confirm that we will provide a further £1.3 million to UNVIM this year to support its work in facilitating commercial imports into Hodeidah and Saleef ports and ensuring that weapons are not smuggled in on commercial ships. We have also deployed UK experts to Djibouti, whose presence has increased the number of ship inspections more than tenfold. This has helped to stabilise the level of vital imports going into the ports of Hodeidah and Saleef. In February, for example, the total commercial and humanitarian imports into Yemen met 114% of the country’s monthly food needs. However, I totally acknowledge that distribution is a vital part of that—it is not just about getting it through the ports but about ensuring that it is distributed.
Noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and my noble friends Lady Anelay and Lord Jopling, raised the important issue of the political process. We note that the committee called on the Government to redouble our diplomatic efforts to achieve peace. I assure noble Lords that we continue to believe—as all noble Lords have pointed out, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—that a political settlement is the only way to address the worsening humanitarian crisis and bring long-term stability to Yemen. Important progress has been made in this regard. The December talks in Stockholm were a landmark—the first time the parties had come together in over two years. The significance of that cannot be overestimated. The ceasefire in Hodeidah has largely held; challenges remain, but it has led to a significant reduction in military activity across the governorate.
I assure noble Lords that we continue to engage with all parties. The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, raised the issue of keeping dialogue open, not just with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other parties, including the Houthis, but directly with Iran. I stress that Her Majesty’s Government continue to engage in relationships across the piece to ensure that all parties to the conflict are engaged and play their part in bringing a resolution to it. I also assure noble Lords that there has been sustained British diplomatic effort in support of the political process at both ministerial and senior official level, including urging parties to refrain from provocative action in Hodeidah and to maintain the ceasefire.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly raised the unfolding issue of the humanitarian crisis. I assure him that our diplomatic efforts are beginning to pay dividends. The situation is vulnerable and still fragile, but we are encouraged by recent steps that have been taken, at least with regard to the increase in humanitarian aid on the ground in Yemen itself.
This year, visits to the region have been made by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, and the former Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, my good friend and former colleague in government, the right honourable Alistair Burt. I join the tributes that have been made from across this House and elsewhere to the unstinting work, focus, dedication, application and expert knowledge that he has shown in the discharging of his duties. He is a colleague and friend who will be sorely missed, and, as someone who led several initiatives in the Middle East, his expertise and insight were vital. I hope that, whatever prevails, in the near future we will see him return to the Government Benches.
I assure noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, whose insights on the UN I always welcome, that we continue to use our seat on the UN Security Council to good effect. Indeed, following the Stockholm agreements, we recently put forward proposals for a mandate to establish a UN mission in support of the Hodeidah agreement. Our work at the Security Council on resolutions has galvanised international support, and it was no small feat to get unanimity behind those resolutions.
I assure noble Lords that the Government have also carefully considered the committee’s recommendation, raised by my noble friends Lady Anelay and Lord Howell and the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, to appoint a London-based special representative on Yemen. At present, in light of my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary’s personal efforts to advance peace in Yemen, it has been decided not to make such an appointment, but we will keep the situation under continual review.
The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, asked about the Government’s position on southern inclusion. Governance arrangements for southern Yemen are ultimately a question for the Yemeni people, but I assure the noble Baroness that the UK’s position on southern inclusion is clear: their voice must be heard to ensure lasting peace in Yemen, and the UN special envoy has publicly acknowledged this important role. He has advised his office to help to support the work by including all southern groups, including, as the noble Baroness rightly noted, the STC.
In conclusion, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords for their contribution. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, gave his perspective. I know that he believes strongly in the attributes of the United Nations, and I listened carefully to his words. On the sentiments raised with regard to arms sales, I assure noble Lords that we take that seriously. I strongly believe that the committee’s report is both timely and important, and we will certainly take note of the contributions made in this debate to ensure that they are also reflected in the formal government response.
I assure noble Lords that the UK is doing all we can to bring parties to the table, to sustain the delivery of humanitarian and fuel aid into Yemen and, ultimately, to find a way to end this devastating conflict. We are at the forefront of diplomatic efforts, including at the UN Security Council, to find a political solution to the conflict—as I know from direct experience—and we are leading on the humanitarian response. I assure all noble Lords, and indeed everyone across this House and the other place, that we are putting our full weight behind the work of the UN special envoy Martin Griffiths—to which I pay tribute—and the UN-led peace process. We are constantly engaging with him to ensure that our efforts are aligned, and we will continue to show leadership as part of international efforts to end this appalling conflict, which has gone on for far too long and has caused millions to suffer.
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, it only remains for me to express my warm gratitude to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate, and I express gratitude to the Minister for his summing up and customary skilled handling of what is undoubtedly a difficult situation, full of grave dilemmas and indeed tragedies. Several of us have expressed sorrow that Alistair Burt has gone; this seems to happen rather often nowadays, but no doubt he will return. I also thank the members of my committee, not only for their speeches but for their enormous expertise and experience, which quite often out-trumps some of the experts sent to brief us—that requires careful handling at times.
I am particularly grateful that the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, was able to join us today—we all admire enormously what she has done at the United Nations. I always admire the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on the world arms situation, which he gave today. We got a sharp and devastating position from the noble Lords, Lord Alton and the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, which added to the spice of our debate. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, said that the bigger issues behind all this—the Saudi-Iranian and Sunni-Shia rivalries, and the thousands of tribes fighting against each other—create an impossible context.
Finally, I think it was President Obama who once observed that he had been briefed that “everything in the Middle East relates to everything else”. The whole thing is a gigantic, connected puzzle of difficulty, tragedy and turmoil. We cannot solve all this, but the message from this afternoon’s debate to the Minister, if I may say so, is perfectly clear: the position needs constant and rigorous attention so that it does not get out of balance. It is not quite right in the public view, and there are horrors and dangers here; we are doing our best to meet the horrors, but are we doing our best on the political, strategic and trade sides to make sure that this conflict does not burn up into a dreadful horror in the Middle East, which it might yet do? Again, I thank all noble Lords involved in the debate.
Brexit: The Erasmus and Horizon Programmes (European Union Committee Report)
Lord Jay of Ewelme
That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee Brexit: the Erasmus and Horizon programmes (28th Report, HL Paper 283).
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, the committee’s report on Erasmus and Horizon was published on 12 February, so it has not yet received an official government response. None the less, due to the interest and concern among the public and in this House about the potential impact of Brexit on participants in the Erasmus and Horizon programmes and on the UK’s research and education sectors, I hope that Members of the House will understand why the committee wanted to bring this report to the House for debate now.
The report was drafted following agreement by negotiators on the withdrawal agreement and political declaration in the closing weeks of last year. It therefore considers the implications for UK participation in Erasmus and Horizon of leaving the EU under the terms of the withdrawal agreement compared to a no-deal scenario. Despite the turmoil at the other end of the Palace at the moment, the withdrawal agreement remains the only negotiated deal on the table, and the Prime Minister has certainly shown tenacity in sticking with it.
The inquiry found that, if the withdrawal agreement, or one with similar provisions for UK participation in EU programmes, were to be ratified, our involvement in Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 could continue largely unchanged until both programmes draw to a close at the end of 2020—an encouraging conclusion, but the end of 2020 is alarmingly close. In a no-deal scenario, which cannot, alas, be ruled out, the situation would be much trickier. At the time our report came out, the Government had said that they wanted to preserve access to both programmes and had issued a guarantee to underwrite funding for UK participants until the end of 2020. This guarantee was, however, contingent on the EU agreeing to continue UK participation as a third country. It was also unclear how the Government intended this guarantee to operate in practice.
Since that time, the EU has pressed forward with its own no-deal contingency plans. For Erasmus, the EU has agreed that Erasmus+ placements active at the point of a no-deal Brexit can continue up to a maximum of 12 months. It is unclear how this would be administered and what advice and support is being offered to UK Erasmus participants. There is no equivalent contingency measure for Horizon 2020. The EU has, however, published a proposal to maintain the UK’s eligibility to receive funding from EU programmes for agreements entered into before the withdrawal date in a no-deal scenario. If adopted, this proposal should ensure that UK research projects, including those funded by bodies such as the European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, which are not open to third countries, could continue to be financed in 2019. This is subject to the condition that the UK commits to contribute to the financing of the EU 2019 budget and agrees to EU controls and audit requirements. Will the Minister confirm that the Government intend to fulfil those conditions and so avoid disruption for UK beneficiaries of EU spending programmes in a no-deal scenario? I should be grateful if he would also confirm how such a system would be administered.
Whatever the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, it is in our mutual interest to preserve current close levels of UK-EU co-operation on research and innovation to provide opportunities for young people and teachers to study, work and train abroad. The inquiry found—no surprise, perhaps—that the UK is a respected and important partner in the Erasmus and Horizon programmes. It is a popular destination for students from the EU and a world leader in research, with an exceptionally strong science base. It is clear, however, that the benefits of UK participation in these programmes do not flow only one way and that their value cannot be measured simply in financial terms. The inquiry received 50 evidence submissions, as well as oral testimony, and witnesses were unanimously positive about the impact of Erasmus and Horizon on the United Kingdom.
In the first two years of the current programme, Erasmus+ supported nearly 5,000 UK projects and 128,000 UK participants took part in internal exchanges. Although best known as a mobility programme for university students, Erasmus+ also supports study, work and training placements in vocational education and training, adult education and schools. Witnesses to the inquiry called Erasmus,
“an overwhelming force for good”,
and,
“one of the most important achievements of the EU”.
For participants, going on an Erasmus placement leads to better employment outcomes, increased confidence and independent thinking and greater cultural awareness. There are also wider positive implications for the UK including “tangible economic benefit” from international students and higher standards of education resulting from international collaboration, shared innovations and best practice.
Equally important, Erasmus helps to increase opportunities for people from disadvantaged or under- represented groups. Time and again, throughout the inquiry, we heard how much they gain from outward student mobility and how much they would lose if the UK loses access to Erasmus as a result of Brexit.
As for Horizon 2020, the UK has been the second most successful country in terms of funding received and the most successful in terms of participant and co-ordinator numbers. According to statistics published just last week, the UK was the most successful country in the most recent funding round of the European Research Council, with 47 of a total of 222 projects to be hosted by UK institutions.
The UK’s research community does not just benefit financially from participation in Horizon 2020. As the largest multilateral international research programme in the world, Horizon 2020 provides a platform for international research collaboration, providing access to large-scale research infrastructure and facilities and supporting the mobility of the most talented researchers across Europe.
Horizon adds value in other areas, too. For example, the prestigious reputation of EU research programmes helps to attract the best staff from around the world to UK research institutions, and the critical mass and strategic co-ordination across Europe has increased efficiency and reduced duplication. Being part of Horizon and its predecessors has been pivotal in raising the standard of research in the UK and developing the thriving science and research community we enjoy today.
Given the strength of the evidence that the inquiry received on the importance of the Erasmus and Horizon programmes to the UK, it is unsurprising that the committee concluded that the UK should make every effort to remain involved in these programmes. Fortunately, this is, in theory at least, a perfectly feasible option. Negotiations are under way on the successor programmes to Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020—Erasmus and Horizon Europe, which will run from 2021 to 2027. The draft regulations for both provide for full or partial third-party access to them.
The committee concluded that, to preserve current close levels of co-operation on research and innovation and educational mobility, the UK should seek full access to the Erasmus and Horizon Europe programmes as an associated third country. This would of course mean making financial contributions to the programme budgets, but the committee concluded that this would be an essential investment to maintain UK access to all Erasmus and Horizon funding streams and international collaboration opportunities, which raise the standard of education and support excellent science in the UK.
Associate membership would not give the UK voting rights on the budget and strategic direction of the programmes, but the committee was reassured that the strength of the UK’s science base would ensure that the UK remains an influential player in European research and innovation. Association is also the only option that would allow the UK to access the key European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie schemes, which currently account for 44% of the total UK receipts from Horizon 2020.
The committee concluded that alternative UK funding schemes would be needed if the Government are not willing or able to secure association to these programmes. However, it would be a formidable and risky challenge to try to replicate at a national level the substantial benefits that participation in Erasmus and Horizon brings to the UK. Happily, statements made by the UK Government and EU institutions in recent months indicate that both sides want a close future relationship on science and innovation, youth, culture and education, which we welcome.
It is not possible to begin negotiations on association agreements to the 2021-27 Erasmus and Horizon Europe programmes while they are under negotiation and while the UK is still a member state, but our report calls on the Government to confirm as soon as possible that they intend to seek association. That will maximise certainty and stability for UK students and researchers, and enable them to plan for any changes. I hope that the Minister can give that assurance. In this context, I would be grateful if he could comment on the Written Statement made to this House on 26 March by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, on the Adrian Smith review and its implications for future UK association with Horizon Europe.
Erasmus provides huge benefits to the next generation of British citizens. Horizon supports the excellence of research in our universities. We simply must, in both our and the wider European interest, maintain as close co-operation as we can with Erasmus and Horizon in the future. I beg to move.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I will not rehearse the many benefits of the UK’s participation in the Horizon and Erasmus programmes. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, has already done that admirably and they are set out in detail in his committee’s report. I will simply say this: they have been very successful programmes in which the UK has played a hugely important part. There can be no doubt that our participation in them has been beneficial to the UK and UK universities, colleges and others. I know that the Minister will not demur.
Of course I support the committee’s recommendation that we should seek to remain part of those programmes in the future, but I want to focus on the possibility that we may leave the EU without a deal on 12 April. By the end of this week, we may be able to rule out what I believe to be an awful prospect, but it clearly remains possible—some might even say likely. This House must use its influence to press the Government to do all they possibly can to prepare to mitigate the consequences of that outcome. Just three weeks ago, I asked a Question about the continued funding of these two programmes. I was supported across the House but I received no reassurance from the Minister. He referred to the Spring Statement but that did not give any answers either. I followed it up with a Written Question. I make no apologies for trying again.
I will use my intervention to ask the Minister to answer four extremely important, pressing and specific questions relating to both Horizon and Erasmus. First, will the Government commit to provide funding for a UK alternative to the European Research Council and Marie Curie grants in 2019 and 2020 if we cannot take part in those schemes following a no-deal exit? No such commitment has yet been given. If we are shut out of these elements of the Horizon programme, the UK research system will lose more than £1 billion compared to what we might have expected to win if we remained eligible. That would be a significant cut and there would be no time to prepare. Many research stars who will have already prepared applications may decide to go elsewhere in Europe to ensure that they can still draw on these prestigious grants. Will the Minister use his influence with his colleague the right honourable Damian Hinds MP, to urge the Treasury not to allow this to happen?
Secondly, what will happen to researchers in the middle of the grant preparation process with the European Commission or the European Research Council if the UK leaves the EU without a deal? Will these so-called in-flight applications be covered by the Government’s financial underwrite?
Thirdly, will the Government commit to funding opportunities for UK students to study abroad in 2019 and 2020 if we cannot continue to be part of the Erasmus scheme? Students expecting to go abroad in 2019 will have already made plans. Around 17,000 UK students would have been expecting to call on Erasmus grant funding to support their studies abroad. They are now in limbo. Will the Government commit to funding a UK alternative scheme for these students if we are frozen out of Erasmus?
Finally, can the Minister confirm the fee status of EU students who want to study in the UK, beginning their courses in 2020? The recruitment cycle is now well under way and we still do not know what universities should tell prospective EU students. This is for the Government to decide because it is a matter of law. It is likely that EU student recruitment will be hit because of Brexit. The UK Government risk making this worse by refusing to state one way or another the status of EU students and whether they will pay home or international fees.
These are just four of the many hundreds of questions that universities and their representative bodies, including Universities UK, have been asking the Government. They are questions to which only the Government can provide an answer—unlike many other areas of uncertainty, which are dependent on negotiations with the EU. Together, they represent four areas in which the UK risks inflicting further and unnecessary damage on our universities and research system over and above what would follow from a no-deal exit, which may be outside the Government’s control.
Where my questions relate to financial issues, I want to spell something out: the Government have committed to provide funding via the EU to allow UK universities to participate in Erasmus and Horizon if there is a deal. In the no-deal scenario, in which money would not pass from the UK to Brussels but would remain in the UK, the Government could decide to use it for the same purpose. In short, the Government appear willing to pay for the ERC and Erasmus if there is a deal, but will use that money for something else if there is no deal. That cannot be right. “Taking back control” should not mean inflicting further unnecessary economic damage on ourselves.
I was not able to give the Minister these questions in advance as I would have liked. I doubt that he will be able to answer them all, although I know that they have been much debated in Whitehall, so I urge him to commit to returning to this House with answers as soon as he can—certainly before 12 April if that really does look like it will be the day of our departure. I promise to stop asking the questions if we get some answers.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for bringing forward the debate and for chairing the committee—of which I am a member—inquiry into another range of issues that must be addressed urgently if they are not to be disrupted by the Brexit process. This would be a great loss to UK students and universities, as well as to the UK, whether in financial, reputational or economic terms.
These are two huge success stories of EU achievement and UK participation. Erasmus offers individuals mobility of study and benefits in gaining skills and jobs, and offers universities the establishment of international bases for courses. It also provides opportunities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, or with disabilities or special needs. Horizon 2020, with its major contributions to research and innovation in the UK, enhances the UK’s reputation on an international stage, enabling access to world-class research facilities and attracting top-class academic experts and researchers to the UK and UK institutions.
Erasmus+ and its predecessor are of particular interest to me as I am a former language teacher. I believe that the programme is best known for providing international opportunities to study for HE students, particularly in terms of learning foreign languages, the understanding and appreciation of diverse cultures, the acquisition of globally recognised skills and learning, along with the gaining of successful employment and future opportunities. It also provides opportunities to work and study abroad for a whole range of other participants, including college students and adult learners who may be in full or part-time study, and students from disadvantaged backgrounds, many of whom may never have travelled further than their own town. As a teacher I encountered many young people who learned so much from having their horizons broadened. The report cites an example of a young woman who spent time in Seville. She went on to become student of the year at her college.
It is important to point out that the next multiannual financial framework, for 2021 to 2027, makes proposals for major investment in the greater participation of students with disabilities or learning difficulties. This will be a key priority. Equally, pupils in schools or in youth work schemes have been funded by Erasmus+. An example is instanced in the report of a partnership working with youth groups in Northern Ireland, rebuilding relationships within that community following the Troubles there. No other project offers such flexibly funded opportunities to these students, who would lose out significantly should there be any downgrading of the UK’s commitment to Erasmus.
Although our witnesses welcomed the commitment by the Government to underwrite the funding for successful bids to EU programmes, if the UK leaves without a deal, great concern will be expressed without exception for the likely impact on both programmes of this happening, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, has just told us. The consequences are well documented in the report. They range from complete disruption in the event of a failure to agree terms with the EU for UK organisations to continue to participate; to the potential of students to end schemes early and go home, resulting in the need for universities to review and perhaps discontinue courses at short notice, with a subsequent lack of jobs followed by measures to limit spending on projects, again at short notice. This could result in a lack of confidence in UK educational institutions that will take many years to recover from, in terms of their international reputations.
The report recommends that the Government should urgently clarify how they intend to operate the underwrite guarantee to minimise disruption for UK participants changing over to a new system. As has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Jay, the withdrawal agreement offers hope for the programme to continue on to 2020, but 2020 is getting very close. As he also said, all our witnesses were convinced that the only way forward would be in a full partnership association with both projects.
Third-country status would greatly limit the UK’s ability to influence the Erasmus programme strategically, although we were reassured that the meetings operate collaboratively and that all countries are treated as valued partners. As a third country, the UK would have only observer status in the Horizon Europe programme and, again, no strategic influence on its direction.
The witnesses we heard from were all extremely concerned that both the immediate and the longer-term future involvement of the UK in those two highly successful projects was at risk in current circumstances. The Government’s assurances of support are welcome but as yet unspecified and without detail, so that existing participants in these schemes are unclear as to how they are to continue. The next cycle is about to be finalised, with even greater resource investment planned for the next six years, but yet again the UK’s position is far from clear.
I too would like to put some questions to the Minister. What progress is being made in settling the terms for UK organisations to continue to participate in Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 projects as third-country entities following exit from the EU? Will the Government clarify the terms of the underwrite guarantee by saying how payments will be made and by whom? Also, what terms and conditions will apply to organisations in order for them to benefit? What actions have the Government taken with regard to UK involvement as a closely associated third-party partner in the proposals for 2021 to 2027?
I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some replies to these questions, but if that needs to be done in written form, that will be helpful too. These are two of the most successful, prestigious and high-profile projects. The UK has participated in them and has gained great reputational value by showing the excellence of our own educational and research institutions. I very much hope that we will be given a firm commitment that they should continue.
Lord Ricketts (CB)
My Lords, this is becoming a debate with a single message for the Minister. I think that this is a compelling report. I declare an interest as a member of the sub-committee of my noble friend Lord Jay and I pay tribute to his chairmanship. The report is a clear statement of a complex set of issues with, to my mind, a great deal of compelling evidence. As the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, has just said, it demonstrates that these are two of the most successful EU programmes from which the UK has derived enormous benefit. Down the years they have had a real impact on the lives of many thousands of young people—including, incidentally, my two children. They have also enabled the British university sector to establish its unrivalled international networks and countless projects that probably would not have been funded without Horizon 2020. It would be a disaster if access to all this were cut off or seriously reduced, just as both programmes are expanding enormously for the period 2021 to 2027.
As others have said, at least if the withdrawal agreement is agreed, there is a breathing space until the end of the transition period at the end of 2020. That is a short time, but it is better than nothing. However, I am much more concerned about what will happen in the event of no deal, which is certainly not impossible if the gridlock in the House of Commons continues until 12 April.
Let me briefly take each programme in turn. Clearly there would be a diminished British role in Horizon Europe even if we had a transition period and negotiated an association agreement. I remind noble Lords that, as the report states, the UK has been “disproportionately successful” in winning grants under the Horizon scheme, with more than 15% of the total. There will be financial rebalancing arrangements in the future programme that will ensure that the UK can no longer be a net beneficiary. Basically, we will take out more or less what we put in, so there will be a shortfall even in the event of an association agreement, because Britain will no longer be a net beneficiary of the very large sums of money available under Horizon.
From what I hear from the universities I have contact with, no deal presents a real systemic risk to the international networks that they have built up. In part that is because, if we cease to be a member of the European Union, it will pose problems for many projects where the quota for the required number of members from the European Union may well make it impossible for us to continue. Moreover, the international nature of our university sector comes out in everything one reads from university leaders. I shall quote from the recent address made by the president of Imperial College, Professor Alice Gast:
“We are international. Our international community, our collaborations, our partnerships, and our own experiences in other cultures and places have an immeasurable and profound effect on the world”.
Professor Gast is right, and Horizon has been a vital part of that. Perhaps this question has already been put to the Minister in other ways, but I would be interested to know whether there are plans to make good the funding gap that would arise even in the case of a withdrawal agreement, given that in those circumstances we shall be getting less back from Horizon than we put in.
I understand that the Commission’s guidance is that in the case of no deal there will be no new financial commitments for UK applicants. As the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said, it will continue funding provided we continue to pay into the budget for 2019—but nothing beyond. The evidence in our report is that uncertainty is already casting a shadow over the willingness of researchers around the EU to collaborate with British partners in these circumstances. Can the Minister tell us what contingency work is going on to make sure that vital projects can continue after the end of 2019, even in the event of a no-deal Brexit?
It is in Erasmus where the human cost of the current uncertainty is most clear. As the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, said, 17,000 young people are preparing for the exciting opportunity to go abroad under Erasmus in September this year. The Commission said in its guidance that,
“students and trainees abroad participating in Erasmus+ at the time of the UK’s withdrawal can complete their studies and continue to receive … grants”—
but that is as far as clarity goes. Many noble Lords will have seen articles in the media about the problems that is already causing for young people trying to make plans for September this year, including one young lady who told the Guardian that she had been advised to take £1,200 in cash when she went in September, just in case there were problems with the grant and funding. That will certainly exclude disadvantaged people from even thinking about taking up an Erasmus opportunity in those circumstances.
There is also the impact on UK universities of reluctance on the part of EU students to commit to coming here in September. I see that both Spain and Norway are now advising their students to look at countries other than the UK. I wonder whether there is yet any data on the fallout for British universities of declining Erasmus applications for this coming year, because it could be important. I have a particular link with the University of Kent—the UK’s European university, with a wonderful network of four campuses in Europe. It sends a large number of students across Europe and receives a lot as well. I am sure that many others are in the same position. These universities really change the lives of young people using the Erasmus programme. To put any substitute in place—bilateral links—will take a lot of time, consume a lot of resources and in the end mean that a lot of young people cannot travel and take those opportunities. In my view, we must not jeopardise what has been achieved under these schemes.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts. Sadly, I cannot, as he did, declare an interest as a member of the committee, because when I had the temerity to vote for some amendments to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill last year, I was dismissed from the committee for failing to support the Government. Had the Government listened a little more carefully to some of the amendments we passed in your Lordships’ House, we might not be in the predicament we are in at the moment. But, sufficient for that, this is a very good report, and I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and his colleagues for producing it. It is a forensic analysis of a very difficult situation and a potentially disastrous one.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, talked about the problems if there is no deal. I would like every Member of your Lordships’ House, although there are not many, and every one of the ERG and others in the other place who have said they do not mind no deal—some have even said they would relish no deal—to be locked in a room, instructed to read this report, and then to go out of the room and meet 20 or 30 students, their constituents in the case of the other place. This deals a potentially devastating blow to many young people. I speak as the grandfather of two university students, one a postgraduate and the other an undergraduate, both of whom are attracted by the possibility of continuing work and research in other countries. I fervently hope that when we come out we will be able to continue to take advantage, but I take no comfort from the words “until 2020”. That is not good enough. We have got to come to an arrangement with our friends and neighbours so that we can participate as closely as possible for a non-member state from 2021 to 2027 and beyond.
The great Erasmus himself personified one of the fundamentals of civilised truth: learning knows no boundaries. If you prevent or do not assist young people to know other countries as well as their own, you are depriving them. The Erasmus programme has at least one unique feature, in that it gives enhanced grants to the disadvantaged and the disabled. It has every reason to be proud of that. That is very much in the tradition of Erasmus and his time, when all the great institutions of this country and most of those in continental Europe particularly gave of their learning to young men—they were all men in those days, I am afraid—who did not have the advantage of a wealthy background. Much of that learning was given in church institutions, but our own colleges in Oxford and Cambridge and in the Scottish universities very much kept to that tradition. It is something we should not contemplate separating ourselves from.
Horizon 2020 is enormously exciting and invigorating, and the continuation from 2021 to 2027 will be as well. I address these remarks particularly to my noble friend—and he is my friend—on the Front Bench, for whom I have very real affection and regard: please talk to your colleagues in government, because we really have a duty to our young people, and to those pioneers in research and learning of whatever age in our country, to continue to collaborate in the best possible way with our European friends and neighbours, and 2020 is not a satisfactory answer.
With regret, I accept that we are leaving the European Union. I would have voted for the Prime Minister’s deal last week, and I have made that plain in this House on a number of occasions. It would have brought with it some safeguards. Whatever replaces it has got to bring safeguards, and we would be delivering a real blow to the future prospects, hopes and aspirations of our young people if we turned our back on programmes of this nature. We must participate, in association or even as a third country. I was particularly struck by two paragraphs. Paragraph 13, on page 56, says:
“As a non-associated third country, the UK would not even have a seat at the table in Erasmus programme committees”.
Paragraph 19, on the same page, says:
“As an associated third country, the UK would have observer status in Horizon Europe programme committees but no vote”.
That is not good enough; we have got to get it better.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to speak in this debate and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. Over the past months and years, he has stood up for what he believes in on European questions, even, as he made clear, to the detriment of his own position on a committee in your Lordships’ House.
Unlike many speakers in this debate, my interest is not that I am a member of your Lordships’ European Union Committee. However, I do have an interest to declare. As an academic at Cambridge University, and reader in European politics, I am actively involved in a whole range of European-funded projects: Horizon 2020 projects, Erasmus+ projects and, slightly more tangentially, a network on the Marie Curie programme. I am not unusual in this. As we have heard, academics in the United Kingdom have benefited more than most from European funding schemes. The United Kingdom has been a significant net beneficiary of EU research and higher education funding.
The UK has always had a rather utilitarian approach to understanding the nature of the European Union. Margaret Thatcher never fully understood that participating in the European Community, as it then was, was not simply about putting money in and getting the same amount of money out; it was about participating in networks and a whole range of policies.
In the area of research, however, the United Kingdom had a very good story to tell. UK research and development is of the highest standard; our universities are some of the best in the world. Our partners across the European Union have been very keen to collaborate with the United Kingdom, and various institutions across the UK have been significant net beneficiaries.
It might seem as though this will be a speech that simply says, “Oh woe is me”, from an academic who has benefited from EU funding and who might be going to lose it. Certainly, during the referendum, there was a lot of suspicion among those advocating Brexit that anyone advocating ongoing membership of the European Union had naked self-interest in doing so. Any beneficiary of EU grant funding was viewed as having a purely personal interest, and therefore not one that should contribute more generally to the debate. However, in the past few days, inevitably there have been letters from Universities UK and the Royal Society stressing the importance of European research collaboration, not just for the individual but for the wider research community and for society as a whole.
While my research might be about social sciences, and perhaps not the blue-sky thinking that research in medicine or other hard sciences might be, for many of those who benefit from funding from the European Research Council and other parts of Horizon 2020 funding, it is about global leadership. As the president of the Royal Society, Venki Ramakrishnan, has stated:
“The UK is a global leader in science because top home-grown and international scientists want to work here. We must do everything we can to ensure that the UK maintains its role at the heart of European science, because that is in everyone’s best interests. If science loses, everyone loses”.
It is not just about the individuals concerned; it is about British scientific research. It is not just about funding; it is about collaborative networks, as other noble Lords have made clear.
If you are a theoretician, your research might be done sitting at your computer, on your own, in isolation. But for most research scientists, research is done in collaborative groups, where the tools of that research are costly. Working together on a transnational basis is far more effective than working in isolation. By leaving the European Union, the danger is that the United Kingdom will cut itself off from some of those key networks. Already, leading European scientists have begun to leave the United Kingdom. They have decided that they would rather hold grants in other European countries. The uncertainty of Brexit means they are no longer sure that they will be welcome in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has already lost, before we even leave the European Union.
If we leave the European Union with no deal, this raises huge questions about our ongoing relationship with research funding bodies and collaborative networks across the European Union. We have already heard that, if we have third-country status, we will not have a seat at the table or any opportunity to influence research funding priorities. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made clear, that is not desirable. The committee’s report is very clear: if we are to be outside the European Union, it would be better to have associated status, which would at least give us a seat at the table. But we still would not have a vote. It is clearly a suboptimal position to be in. The report also suggests that, if the UK is to leave the European Union with no deal, we should have a UK mobility fund. That is so far second best that I hope we never have to work on that recommendation. It is essential that the Government find a deal that leaves the United Kingdom as an associated third country, able to participate as fully as any third country.
Earlier, I looked round the Chamber in the hope of seeing a Brexiteer who might be listening to the debate. During the referendum, we were reminded on countless occasions—usually by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who is not in his place—that it is not necessary to be part of the European Union to be part of Erasmus. It is not necessary to be part of the European Union, but if we are a non-associated third country, our ability to participate in such schemes is much weakened. We need to find ways to be associated. Can the Minister tell us that the Government are trying to achieve that?
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I welcome this report from the European Union Committee. My contribution will highlight the importance of the Erasmus+ programme in particular to the teaching, learning and use of foreign languages in the UK. The committee touched on the benefits for languages, and I will enlarge on this a little because, like other noble Lords, I hope that tonight we will finally hear some clear and specific news from the Minister which takes us further than what we have heard in answer to questions that I and many others have raised repeatedly over the past couple of years on what happens after the end of 2020.
Several reports have been published recently from a wide range of bodies, including the British Academy, the British Council and the All-Party Group on Modern Languages, of which I am co-chair. All of them show that the UK is facing a crisis of language skills which can no longer be ignored. I will resist the temptation to go into too much detail, but will summarise the problem by saying that the lack of language skills costs our economy an estimated 3.5% of GDP every year; employers are not happy with the foreign language skills either of school leavers or graduates, and rely increasingly on overseas recruitment to meet their needs; 100,000 fewer GCSE language exams were taken in 2015 compared to a decade earlier; and, since 2000, over 50 of our universities have scrapped some or all of their modern language degree courses. This is against a background of the prospect of a post-Brexit world in which the UK seeks to redefine its place, establish leadership in international relations, security and soft power, and negotiate new free trade agreements—all in a world where, contrary to popular myth, 75% of the world’s population do not speak English and where young people will need languages for the culturally agile, mobile and interconnected jobs of the future.
Employers have consistently said how much they value graduates who have had some international and cross-cultural experience, usually by taking a year abroad as part of their degree course, which of course is an option not only for MFL students but for all students. This underlines how important it is that the UK remain a full participating member of the Erasmus+ after Brexit because this will undoubtedly have an impact on the future employability of our young people.
Uncertainty over the UK’s continued participation in Erasmus is one of the reasons for the further drop we have seen in the past year applications for languages degrees. I cannot emphasise strongly enough how important Erasmus is for giving students—of all disciplines, I emphasise, not only the linguists—the opportunity to improve language skills and develop an international and cross-cultural mindset. These are all qualities which employers value.
A study in the US reported that employers rated these skills even more highly than expertise in STEM subjects, although I hesitate to mention that study given that my noble friend Lord Krebs is sitting in front of me. Perhaps he will be happier to know about another study which showed that graduates of all disciplines who spend a year abroad are 23% less likely to be unemployed than those who do not.
Will the noble Viscount give an assurance that after Brexit the UK will continue to be part of the Erasmus+ programme and that either this will continue beyond 2020 or there will be a like-for-like programme to replace it, with no diminution of funding? If it is to be the latter, will he spell out what plans are in hand? What funding is available for after 2020? What would a replacement scheme look like?
The committee report highlights the many challenges there would be to setting up an alternative scheme, including the point made in evidence to the committee by the University of East Anglia that there is no guarantee that important universities across Europe would all recognise a UK alternative mobility scheme. This strengthens the argument for simply staying inside the Erasmus and Horizon programmes.
This is even more important after the recent announcement by the European Commission that it wants to double the number of Erasmus+ participants by 2025 by ensuring that school pupils as well as under graduates can benefit from exchanges and placements.
Erasmus+ is also a vital part of the supply chain for MFL teachers. There are now fewer MFL graduates each year than there are MFL teacher training places. Without Erasmus, which supports the third year abroad—the jewel in the crown of most language degrees—a key driver for MFL teacher recruitment would disappear. In addition, MFL teachers identify Erasmus+ as the most frequent source of funded training, and schools use the scheme to provide vital in-service training for existing MFL teachers. The top three destinations for UK participants in Erasmus+ are France, Spain and Germany, precisely the top three modern languages offered in our schools.
The Erasmus+ programme is an integral part of the national recovery programme for languages which the all-party group has recently proposed. We cannot afford to let the national deficit in language skills get any worse. Will the Minister take the opportunity this evening to commit the UK to be a continuing full participant after 2020 in the Erasmus and Horizon successor programmes, rather than short-change our young people and their opportunities and choices for the foreseeable future?
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I had the pleasure of being a member of the committee which produced this report, under the elegant and efficient chairing of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and backed up by superb support from our secretariat.
The noble Lord, Lord Jay, has well described both the Erasmus and Horizon programmes and their funding complexities, and I wish to say something particular about the Erasmus programme. Its logo is the profile of Erasmus, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, a great scholar and humanist from the 15th century, whose name is spelled out in the full title of the programme: the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students—noble colleagues will have to work out that acronym—and it says it all in the word “mobility”. It is a student exchange programme established in 1987 and it is highly successful, with the UK being an important player.
It would be sad if the UK’s standing and collaboration were impaired by Brexit. It was reassuring to hear from those closely involved in the organisation of Erasmus on the UK side that plans were being made to provide continuity for the programme. However, we heard from our witnesses and correspondents described in chapter 3 that, although some short-term certainty for continued and full participation under the withdrawal agreement exists, there is no full-blown optimism. Written evidence from Newcastle University stated:
“Due to uncertainties in the immediate future we remain extremely cautious”.
The Russell Group called attention to concerns that UK students and researchers may not be aware that there were no restrictions on UK participants during any transition period and recommended that the UK Government and the EU Commission communicate this message clearly and widely. In our current state of disarray, we can only hope that accurate information about both the Erasmus and Horizon programmes is being distributed.
The Government’s technical note on Erasmus+ if there is no Brexit deal confirms that they will seek agreement with the EU to allow for continued participation in Erasmus+ projects and bids for new funding until 2020. If discussions with the EU are unsuccessful, the Government will engage in discussions to try to ensure that UK participants can continue as planned.
The Erasmus programme guide to British applicants from the European Commission is somewhat more scary, and states:
“If the UK withdraws from the EU during the grant period without concluding an agreement with the EU, ensuring in particular that British applicants continue to be eligible, you (the applicant) will cease to receive EU funding (while continuing, where possible, to participate), or be required to leave the project on the basis of the relevant provisions of the grant agreement on termination”.
Several witnesses interviewed by our committee thought that the EU would welcome the continued participation of the UK. We heard descriptions, set out in chapter 2, of how universities had in some cases designed courses to fit in with the profiles of students who sought a year or a semester at a European business school, for example, under the Erasmus scheme. There was universal acknowledgement from students and academics that the scheme was of enormous benefit, enabling participants to grow and develop socially as well as academically, and to broaden their horizons and ambitions.
One witness spoke of the positive experiences that students report and of potential gained when approaching employers. She concluded:
“You look at that and feel it is why we are all fighting to stay in Erasmus, because we want to continue to offer those opportunities to students”.
Universities UK points out that the next Erasmus programme would contribute to priorities to encourage disadvantaged or underrepresented students to gain from study abroad. It estimated that black graduates who had a period of study abroad were 70% less likely to be unemployed than their non-mobile peers and graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds, and earned 6.1% more.
The European Commission’s proposal for the next Erasmus programme suggests a doubling of the budget. Universities UK therefore recommends that the UK should seek full associated country status for the next Erasmus programme, starting in 2021. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, expressed this eloquently. The committee, in its conclusions, states that the UK is, rightly, a popular destination for students, with our high reputation, particularly in science and research. We receive substantial funding from the EU, and it is in our mutual interest to maintain close co-operation and collaboration. Social mobility is, in my view, one of the most important advantages. Will the Minister confirm that the UK should seek full associated country status for the next Erasmus programme? Will he confirm that the positive indications at paragraph 173 of the political declaration on the future UK-EU relationship will be vigorously pursued, for the benefit of young people not only in the UK but in the other countries of Europe?
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Jay of Ewelme and his Select Committee for an excellent report on such a key topic. I will focus on funding for scientific research through the EU programmes, in particular the European Research Council.
I speak as a career research scientist who has worked in universities and institutes in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the USA and Canada. I know from personal experience how crucial international collaboration in science is. Research is possibly one of the most effective ways of building international shared values and co-operation. This is more important than ever in times when international co-operation is under threat through nationalism, isolationism and barriers. It would therefore be a matter of great regret if we were to withdraw from what is arguably the most mature and effective international scientific programme in the world.
It is very hard to set up an international programme of research co-operation in which national interests are set aside in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. The European Research Council is a rare, and perhaps unique, instance in which this has happened. Thanks in substantial part to the efforts of the United Kingdom, the ERC was established in 2007 to put national interests aside and focus entirely on scientific excellence. The ERC funds blue-skies research in a way that is increasingly difficult in the United Kingdom research council system because it is becoming more top-down and relevance-focused.
As we have heard, the UK is the leading beneficiary in Europe of ERC grants. My noble friend Lord Jay mentioned last week’s announcement of the latest round of awards under its advanced grants scheme, in which the UK will host 47 grants, compared with 32 in Germany, 31 in France and 23 in the Netherlands. My university, Oxford, will host nine of these advanced grants, including support for cutting-edge research on synthetic tissues for medical application and the safety and robustness of artificial intelligence systems. As the university’s pro-vice-chancellor for research told me last week, the fact that these could be amongst the last awards we are eligible to receive through EU sources is a sobering moment and one which underlines the importance for the UK Government of securing ongoing access to these programmes. Oxford University is the top university in Europe in terms of funding from Horizon 2020, with more than €400 million-worth of grants. Oxford is typical of leading universities in the UK. Five of the top 10 universities in Europe for Horizon funding are in the United Kingdom. We have heard from other noble Lords about the potential loss of funding in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The Royal Society has estimated that the UK could lose out on £1 billion of funding in the first year as a result of a no-deal Brexit and £0.5 billion even taking account of the Government’s offer to supply substitution funding.
Furthermore, as the Royal Society highlights and as other noble Lords have mentioned, loss of funding is not the only risk we face. We will lose access to the best scientists and to networks and regulatory alignment, which are essential if the UK science base is not to suffer severe damage. As my noble friend Lord Jay of Ewelme mentioned, we will lose the prestige of winning grants in competition with 27 other countries. These are really prestigious awards. International networks are important for science, and we are already suffering the consequences of Brexit. As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, said, we are already losing the ability to attract students and researchers from other countries. The Wellcome Trust, the world’s second-largest biomedical charity, which invests more than £1 billion a year in scientific and medical research, has already seen a 14% drop in applicants from the European Economic Area for its prestigious and well-funded research fellowships. The Wellcome Sanger Institute, outside Cambridge, where the human genome was first sequenced, has seen a 50% drop in applications for PhD places by EU nationals.
Let us be honest: there is simply no up side for UK science from Brexit. No serious scientist I know sees anything other than the loss of networks, funding and the movement of people and, ultimately, the erosion of the United Kingdom’s place as the leading scientific nation in Europe. However, it is just possible that I have missed something; if I have I hope the Minister will enlighten me.
So what is the Government’s position? It has to be said that science does not appear to be top of the Government’s worry list about the consequences of Brexit. As Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize winner, former president of the Royal Society and current director of the Francis Crick Institute, put it recently:
“If Brexit happens, then science won’t have the influence and profile it will need to be protected, and we may fall off the end of the agenda”.
He also said:
“The statements that we hear”,
from the Government,
“are relatively reassuring. But the problem is that … it’s difficult to be fully confident and trust what’s being said”.
I very much hope that the Minister will remove some of this uncertainty. I shall end by asking three questions, some of which have already been asked, but there is no harm in repeating them. First, if the UK does not succeed in remaining part of the EU science funding mechanisms, can he assure us unequivocally that the equivalent amount of funding will be made available nationally? Secondly, can he assure us that whatever commitments the Government make will not be just for the short term—as other noble Lords have emphasised, 2020 is not far away—but will match those of the European Union schemes in scale and duration into the future? Thirdly, can he assure us that if the UK were to replace EU schemes with national funding, funding equivalent to the European Research Council Funding would be for blue-skies research and not for the top-down-driven strategic research that is increasingly prevalent in UK RI funding?
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that my husband is a research engineer on the science park in Cambridge and my last job before I came into your Lordships’ House was as the director of Association of the Universities in the East of England, where most of my work involved the exploitation of projects, which relates to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, made about how important it is to have strategic development but you cannot do that without blue-skies research coming first. The key point about the ERC and the MSCA is that that blue-skies funding is disappearing fast around the world and UK universities and research institutes have been relying very heavily on it.
The UK is a world leader in research and innovation. We produce 15.2% of the world’s most cited articles, with only 0.9% of the population, and the UK ranks first among competitors by field-weighted citation impact, which is a real indicator of research quality. That, frankly, is why we are major contributors to the current Horizon 2020 programme and why we have been net beneficiaries in the programme. While other noble Lords have been speaking, I have been crossing out parts of my speech. I think that I am ending up with the highly political part of the report, which is expressed in a beautifully delicate way, and I apologise in advance for being blunter and perhaps less delicate.
The underwrite guarantee offered by the Government sounds fine in principle but, as Vivienne Stern, the director of Universities UK International, tells us at paragraph 72 on page 30 of the report, it is,
“good up to a point”.
She also,
“highlighted the issue of the UK becoming ineligible, as a third country, to access the ERC and MSCA, which she said accounted for ‘about 60% of all the funding that the UK wins’ from Horizon 2020”.
The key point here is how easily and how fast things can go wrong. The report makes reference to some of the difficulties that Switzerland faced. I was very aware of that in the run-up to, and during, the referendum. Appearing in public debates reminded me of the Monty Python film in which it was asked, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” I repeatedly cited Horizon 2020. At that point we had put in about £3 billion and, as a nation, had received about £5 billion back. That figure was about to increase and there was a reason for that: the absolute excellence of our blue-skies research, whether in universities, in research institutes or even in a few more private organisations.
Switzerland, too, had a very proud history of research. It wanted to be a full participant but in 2014 it held a referendum on mass immigration. At the time, its own scientists were pretty relaxed about the possible consequences of that, but a narrow majority approved the introduction of quotas and permits even for migrants from within the EU, which ruptured a long-standing agreement with Brussels. Unfortunately, as the Guardian cited at the time, the knock-on effects were swift and drastic. A Belgian, Vandevyver, commented at the time:
“Certainly, few people here thought the outcome would have any major impact on their work. So what happened afterwards came as a big shock to many. The consequences have been quite dramatic. And depending on what happens now”—
this was in 2015—
“they could get worse”.
Switzerland’s status was rapidly revoked. It attempted to negotiate full associated country status but unfortunately it was completely knocked out. For the following two and a half years, the funding was subbed by money from the Government and particularly from the Swiss National Science Foundation. However, that was only ever intended to be temporary. Therefore, what was the solution? The Swiss Government changed the referendum arrangements in the Bill that would have restricted free movement.
I cite that because on page 50 of this excellent report is a summary of some of the key points in the immigration White Paper. It talks about having very time-limited visas for exchange students and making sure that any EU citizens get specific leave to remain if they stay here for a particular period. It also says that, even in the transition period, anyone following anything other than the tier 4 route might find it difficult to get grants.
When I first read that White Paper, the alarm bells for the university sector in particular and for Horizon 2020 and its successor programmes rang loud and clear. We need to understand what will happen if we continue with the hostile environment. Academics from the European Union are already finding difficulties when they apply early for leave to remain—they do not have to do it yet. One such colleague went back home for six months to help look after a relative who was unwell and subsequently died, and when they came back they were told by the Home Office that their service to date had been broken and they had to start the clock all over again. I suspect that Brussels will take a very dim view of arrangements like that.
In rapid conclusion, I have just one other question to add to all the others that have been put to the Minister. What guarantee, in addition to the full underwrite guarantee, will he be able to get from the Home Office about ensuring true free movement for the university and research sectors that will enable the UK to participate fully in Horizon 2020 and its successor programmes? Otherwise, we will be in the same position as Switzerland, going very rapidly into a black hole and having to spend years trying to dig ourselves out of it. The consequence would be that we would cease to be a leading research country in the world.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I speak as a member of the EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee, but I do not intend to add further commentary on the contents of this, our latest report. That task has been performed admirably by our excellent chair and by other noble Lords. Instead, I offer a couple of thoughts about the process behind the report.
I am relatively new to the sub-committee and this is its first report during my tenure. Two things have struck me forcefully. The first is what an extraordinary resource this committee represents—like, I have no doubt, your Lordships’ other EU committees, as demonstrated this afternoon in the debate on Brexit: The Customs Challenge. Our sub-committee contains people with extensive experience of European matters, from the very highest levels of the Diplomatic Service, and from membership of the European Parliament and of bodies working with the EU who understand its strengths and weaknesses. For those who do not like to be guided by experts, the committee has wise and experienced members from all the main political parties and from the independent Cross Benches.
Our report is the culmination of an exercise that has brought together the foremost participants in the field to give us high-quality evidence, along with our quizzing of Government Ministers and officials, and the input of our exceptional staff team. This is a thorough, highly civilised and effective mechanism for achieving a unanimous outcome across party divides and between those with considerable specialist knowledge and those with more general wisdom and experience.
My first observation, therefore, is that this country—amid all the chaos and confusion of Brexit—has an incredible resource in the House of Lords EU committees: a means of bringing clarity to complex issues, of achieving both understanding and consensus, and of bringing more light than heat to the debate.
However, my second observation is that this resource is largely ignored: this voice of reason is largely unheard even within Parliament, let alone in the world outside. The report on the Erasmus and Horizon programmes before us tonight is no exception. Despite its clear analysis and really important recommendations, members of the general public are unlikely to see or hear its contents.
How many people know how valuable the Erasmus programmes are for tens of thousands of young people in this country or how important to the UK’s research and innovation is our involvement with the Horizon programmes? How many people know that currently we gain financially from these programmes and are net beneficiaries, getting more out than we put in— £3 billion in, £5 billion out, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said? How many people know that Brexit, with or without a deal, means that, even if we pour in a lot more taxpayers’ money—and the figures are in billions, not millions—we will still lose our influential, key position in the decision-making for these funding programmes?
Despite a sprinkling of media coverage of our report and some modest pieces in academic magazines and journals, it is likely that the committee’s work will go more or less unnoticed. I think this a great shame. The report before us tonight exemplifies the clear, constructive, consensus-based role that this House can play through its EU Committee and sub-committees in guiding the nation on significant aspects of the UK’s relationship with the EU. But it also illustrates how, surrounded by noise and dissent, this rational, evidence-based approach can be ignored. This is a waste of what should be a brilliant gift to the policymakers and practitioners.
As any research council, policy think tank or research-based foundation will testify, producing a fine report is the start, not the end, of a process for achieving change. It requires persistence to get the message out with a clear communications strategy, ongoing participation in conferences, seminars and informal sessions with opinion-formers, targeting of the news media and use of online social networks. Reports do no good gathering dust on library shelves.
At this time of fake news and divisive discourse, I would like to think that the House’s budget for disseminating and publicising the outputs from our committees—such as the excellent report we are debating tonight—might be significantly increased. However, in the meantime, it is an urgent necessity that the Government recognise that the committee’s vital report on the Erasmus and Horizon programmes deserves their most positive consideration.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests as chancellor of the University of Birmingham, chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School and a Bynum Tudor fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford.
As has been mentioned, the Royal Society says basically that no deal is a bad deal for science. One in six academic staff at UK higher education institutions are from elsewhere in the EU. The UK could lose access to over £1 billion per year in EU research funding. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that there was no upside to leaving the EU for science. My friend, Professor Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, said:
“The UK is a global leader in science because top home-grown and international scientists want to work here. We must do everything we can to ensure that the UK maintains its role at the heart of European science, because that is in everyone’s best interests. If science loses, everyone loses”.
UK science punches well above its weight; that is a point I have made many times. We have 1% of the world’s population but produce 15% of the highest-rated scientific papers. Over half of the UK’s research output in 2015 was the result of international collaboration.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and his committee on a truly outstanding and comprehensive report. It shows very clearly the implications for the UK if we leave the EU with respect to the Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+ programmes. These are phenomenal programmes, in which we have played a major part. As noble Lords have heard, we are the second-largest recipient of Horizon 2020 funding and we have received 15.2% of grants distributed so far, totalling €5.7 billion. As well as funding UK research projects, Horizon 2020 supports scientific partnerships with countries throughout Europe. It is phenomenal.
The report explains very clearly how damaging a no-deal scenario would be for these programmes. It also highlights, as other noble Lords have mentioned, that if we are not an associate member, we will lose out on funding from the European Research Council and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, which are not open to third-country participation and not covered. The report says:
“The Government’s own statistics show that grants from these programmes account for about 44% of total UK receipts from Horizon 2020”.
Can the Minister reassure us that we will have access to these programmes in the future? The report is concerned not only with Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020, but asks about the future programmes, Erasmus and Horizon Europe, which are starting in 2021—the year after next—and will run until 2027; we do not want to lose out on them.
Another important point made by the report is its stark warning that mobility opportunities for people in vocational education training would stop in their tracks without Erasmus funding. That would disproportionately affect people from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with medical needs or disabilities. This is serious. It also talks about clear benefits over and above grant funding, such as cross-border research, research facilities and joint infrastructure. It makes the point that the Government keep talking about increasing R&D and innovation spending to 2.4% of GDP from the 1.7% we have at the moment. That will take time. Are we going to lose out in the future?
What of the people involved in these 4,700 projects—the 128,000 participants? The Prime Minister said in her Florence speech—we must not forget all these staged speeches—that people will continue to be able to come and live and work in the UK during the implementation period after the UK leaves the EU, and that there will be a registration system, with the Government considering options for the future. What are these options? The Migration Advisory Committee’s useless—quite frankly, hopeless—report put a threshold of £30,000 as a minimum salary. What about all the research assistants, the post-docs, and all the other people who would lose out? Will the Minister tell us what will happen? Will the Government listen to this report?
As the president of UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs, which represents 450,000 international students in the UK, I can report that 130,000 of them are from the EU, and 20% of our staff at many of universities are from the EU. The National Union of Students is supportive of the UK remaining a member of these programmes and not losing out in the future. International students bring £26 billion into the economy; they create jobs and pay taxes. It is phenomenal, and we do not want to lose out. At the moment, EU students are entitled to home student fees and loans, and to a permanent right to work after finishing their studies. Can the Minister tell us what will happen to the 130,000 students if those three things are not available to them?
We have lagged behind competitors such as the United States, Australia and Germany in the proportion of students who gain overseas experience. Thanks to initiatives such as the Erasmus programme, we have been catching up. Now we are in danger of falling behind again. The impact survey has found time after time that the employability of people who have been on the Erasmus programme nearly doubles. The soft power of Britain has been increased by our being on the Erasmus programme. With inward mobility, students who participate gain a better understanding of and affinity for the UK. These are all priceless benefits.
What about the future? The European Commission wants to double the funding to €30 billion. Will the Minister assure us that we will join the new programme and commit to the extra funding? It will be more inclusive and more open to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. It will extend mobility. Do we want to lose out on this? I do not think we do, and I would like the Minister to assure us that we will continue to benefit from these further enhanced programmes.
The Royal Society continually says that we need to continue with this scheme. EU countries are among the UK’s top 10 strongest scientific collaborators. Some 17% of R&D undertaken by UK SMEs comes from the EU. The pillars of Horizon 2020 and the pillars of the new Horizon Europe are similar. Do we want to lose out on open science, global challenges, industrial competitiveness and open innovation? We will lose out big time if we are not careful. Universities UK backs these schemes.
As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned, what about the uncertainty for the 17,000 British students who plan to study in Europe under Erasmus+ from September? A note published by the Government failed to guarantee their participation. Will the Minister assure us that those students will be able to take part? In recent weeks, Spain and Norway advised their students planning to study in the UK to go elsewhere.
No one has brought up the programme for entrepreneurs. There is a European Union funded programme, Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs. Can the Government assure us that this scheme will continue?
I will conclude with a point that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, touched on—the youth. This is predominantly about the youth. Since the referendum, our birth rate has been 800,000 a year and we have 2.4 million more youngsters who were not allowed to vote three years ago, including two of my children, who have been old enough to vote since October 2016 and 21 March this year. They missed out on voting three years ago. Their future is being taken away from them. They are the ones who would benefit from Erasmus and from Horizon. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke about Erasmus and how learning knows no boundaries. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Live as if you’re going to die tomorrow and learn as if you’re going to live for ever”.
I go back to Venki Ramakrishnan—Nobel prize winner, president of the Royal Society and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge—who said:
“Given the … gridlock, I personally feel it would be best to revoke article 50 and I signed the ongoing petition accordingly (in a personal capacity). Politicians need to rise above partisan politics and self-interest and act soon in the best interests of the country. Whatever they decide, it is time the threat of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit is buried permanently”.
Finally, I will touch on what is going on in the other place. It has now gone beyond the will of the people; it is supposedly now respecting the will the manifestos. What about the Prime Minister respecting the will of her manifesto? She backtracked on the dementia tax four days after it was published. Then she ditched so many other manifesto pledges: a free vote on fox hunting, ending free school lunches for children aged five to seven, dropping the triple lock on pensions and ending the ban on new grammar schools. She can continually U-turn and forget about her manifesto, which did not get a majority—the Conservatives did not get a majority last time—yet we cannot ask the people to change their mind even once, when the Prime Minister has gone back three times to get MPs to change their mind and wants to go back a fourth time.
There is only one solution. The world has changed in three years. We have to say what we have been talking about in this debate. We have to preserve the benefits of Erasmus and Horizon. The only way to do that is to put it back to the people for a people’s vote. I am sure we will end up remaining in the European Union, which is the best deal we have by far.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for introducing this debate so comprehensively and for his chairmanship of the committee that produced this authoritative and important report, although sadly without the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.
As the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, said, this has been a debate with a single message. Perhaps it is not surprising that there has been rare agreement among the speakers today in support of two European programmes that have been so important to our students, universities, citizens and country. We have long been pressing the Minister for assurances that we shall continue to be part of Erasmus and Horizon. His assurances have been modest and time-limited and I rather expect that he will not be able to give us the longer-term assurances that we all wish to see. We can only hope that he can give some plans beyond 2020 and, indeed, answer the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick.
As Universities UK and the Royal Society have reminded us, the UK is a world leader in research and innovation, and continuing to build our research capacity is vital for future economic growth and closing the UK’s productivity gap, as my noble friends Lady Smith and Lady Brinton can attest from first-hand experience. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Brinton’s tales of Switzerland were salutary.
The UK’s research success is down to homegrown talent, high levels of international co-operation and world-class facilities. In science and research, the UK produces 15.2% of the world’s most cited articles with only 0.9% of the world’s population, and ranks first among competitors by field-weighted citation impact, which is an indicator of research quality. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, spoke about the importance of this scientific research and the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, added his voice.
Much of this is due to funding and collaboration through the Horizon programme. What steps are the Government taking to secure “associated status” with Horizon Europe? We have heard that the UK will not be able to start negotiations to gain associated status until the UK has left the EU, but surely it is important that the UK influences the shape of this programme as a current member of the EU.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, bemoans the lack of attention to this report and of realisation more widely of the huge benefits we have had from these two great programmes. The range of universities that contributed to the report bears witness of the importance throughout higher education of these programmes. It is surely in all our interests for collaboration to continue.
When we think of Erasmus, there is copious evidence of the transformational experiences of young people who spend time in other countries, developing linguistic skills but also gaining an understanding of cultural, political, economic and social differences, and learning to respect international differences. Like my noble friend Lady Janke, I am a former modern language teacher. I know the enormous benefits of time spent in countries for language students, and for other students as well. Of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, is a tireless supporter of modern languages and time spent abroad.
I have to say that this is all a far cry from my days reading languages at Oxford, where women were discouraged from spending time abroad because it would take away from their academic studies. At the time, I was still fluent in French, having spent a childhood in France. This was totally irrelevant to my degree: what really mattered were the medieval texts. But there we are; we have moved on.
The people on Erasmus developed soft skills as well as skills and knowledge to enhance international relations—and, goodness, do we need those skills now. The country will certainly feel the loss if our younger generation loses out on opportunities to study, work and live in other countries.
We hear from the report that, under Erasmus+, €1 billion is expected to be allocated to the UK between 2014 and 2020 to support university student exchanges, work and vocational training placements, youth projects—we have heard mention of their importance—and opportunities for staff working at all levels of education to teach or train abroad. Extra funding is available for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and those with disabilities or additional needs, to ensure that these mobility opportunities are inclusive and accessible. That has come out from all sides of the Chamber. This is all invaluable, but will it still be available? The next Erasmus programme will align well with UK priorities, including measures that will make it easier for disadvantaged students to take part and be more flexible, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, reminded us. The European Commission’s proposal for the next programme suggests a doubling of the overall budget. The UK should therefore seek as close a status as possible for the next Erasmus programme, which starts in 2021.
Erasmus has done wonders for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and has enhanced vocational as well as academic learning. Does the Minister have any plans for what programmes the Government might introduce if we lose Erasmus? As the report says:
“The UK is a respected and important partner in both the Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 programmes. It is a popular destination for mobility placements and a world leader in research, with an exceptionally strong science base … In return, the UK receives substantial amounts of funding, access to professional networks and opportunities to connect and collaborate with European partners built over decades of cooperation under the shared framework of the Erasmus and Horizon programmes”.
We have heard this mentioned in the debate as well. Funding is a crucial part, of course, but the co-operation is also critical to the research excellence of our universities.
The UK has so far received €5.7 billion of funding from Horizon 2020. What plans have the Government made to replicate this in the event that we leave without a replacement arrangement? The funding is for fellowships, joint research projects and collaboration between universities, colleges and schools, and has a significant impact on youth projects and policy in Europe and beyond. These are worldwide collaborations which surely, in these fractious times, we should be supporting as much as possible. The Government have committed to underwrite funding from EU programmes until the end of 2020, but what then?
There is a lack of clarity over how this will operate, particularly given that the European Research Council and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions are not open to third-country participation. The UK could hope to participate as a third country in the successor programmes to Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020, Erasmus and Horizon Europe, which will run from 2021 to 2027. What plans do the Government have to ensure that we are in the best position for this? Let us not forget the vocational support for Erasmus, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. We should certainly be concerned that, as the report sets out,
“mobility opportunities for people in vocational education and training would ‘stop in their tracks’ without Erasmus funding”.
This is particularly damaging for those from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with disabilities. Can the Minister give us any reassurances about the vocational education programmes?
The great Erasmus programme has been around since 1987. It has expanded from universities to lifelong learning, adult education, youth and sport programmes, youth workers, education staff and teachers, who have all had employment opportunities enhanced. Hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, have had their lives transformed. Yet, there is total uncertainly about the way forward. We understand that the Minister’s hands will be tied, but we would welcome any assurances he can give that the Government appreciate just how valuable these programmes are, and what a huge loss it will be to the country if we can no longer play a full part in them. I look forward to his reply.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak in this debate, on a subject which may well come to define the future hopes and aspirations of our next generation of students, researchers, entrepreneurs and business leaders. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, is to be congratulated on the report that has been produced and on the excellence and quality of this evening’s debate, which it has so ably supported.
These two programmes, Erasmus and Horizon 2020, have their origins in the mid-1980s, at a time when the European Parliament and the Commission were looking expansively at ways in which Europe’s emerging “knowledge economy” recognised the need to be more ambitious. The UK’s part in these programmes has long been regarded as critical to their success, largely because we punch way above our weight. As the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said earlier, we have just 1% of the world’s population but gather 15.2% of the world’s most highly cited articles. We are ranked first among competitors by field-weighted citation impact.
UK universities tell us that Horizon 2020 is the largest multilateral international funding pot in the world, with a budget of €75 billion over a seven-year period. Since the programme’s inception, the UK has been the second most successful country in terms of funding received. The programme provides a tailor-made platform for collaboration with key partners in Europe; over 50% of UK collaborations are with members of the EU. The Horizon 2020 budget is set to grow to €100 billion in the period 2021-27. At our current level of success in securing funding, UK universities could expect to benefit to the tune of between €14 billion and €18 billion over that period.
Whatever the outcome of Commons votes tonight and later in the week, and the shape of any withdrawal deal, it is essential, as the EU Committee’s report says, that the UK Government secure continued access to the EU research framework programmes through association with Horizon Europe. Our universities need this guarantee to ensure their pre-eminence as research institutions leading and participating in collaborative programmes. A failure to secure this beyond the current spending period will, as many speakers have said tonight, damage permanently our university sector and the businesses that depend upon it.
The Government’s commitment to increase research funding to 2.4% of GDP by 2027 is of course welcome, but it merely underlines the centrality of research to the UK’s future prosperity. Does it go far enough? This I doubt. The weakness in the strategy is that access to Horizon Europe is dependent on a guarantee that post-2020 funding will be commensurate with the UK’s ambition. Again, a failure to be ambitious will mean that we cease to be a net beneficiary from future Horizon Europe budgets. My fear is that, because being an associate member will not give the UK more than observer status at programme committees, the temptation for this Government and perhaps future Administrations will be to restrain funding and minimise costs. If the UK participates as a non-associated member, it will lose access to major funding opportunities and have no influence over the direction of research programmes and priorities.
We echo the calls for the Government to secure at least associated status in the event of the UK leaving the EU, so that negotiations can begin about our participation and on shaping some of the future research agenda. The underwrite guarantee helps to ensure cross-university collaborative work in the short term, but what happens beyond Horizon 2020? Perhaps the Minister can help us with some assurances. Can he also provide a cast-iron assurance that funding commensurate with the expected returns from the ERC and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, estimated to be worth €1.3 billion over the final 20 months of the Horizon programme, will be available?
My noble friend Lady Warwick and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, expressed concern about the uncertainty that researchers might suffer from and that they might be encouraged to move as a consequence to other EU institutions. It is equally possible that, if we have no deal, negotiations might stall. It might be helpful if the Government therefore gave assurances to those researchers that UK Research and Innovation will sign grant agreements in such a situation. If as a product of Brexit we in the UK lose access to funding opportunities, it is clear that we will need replacement programmes. The Government must work with the research communities to ensure that, in the event of crashing out or failing to negotiate a workable deal with the EU, we have a well-funded alternative. It needs to be understood by government that it will take many years to replicate the scope of current programmes and undo the damage done to our reputation and field-leading position internationally.
Turning to the Erasmus+ programmes, many similar challenges exist here. Currently, the budget of €16.4 billion for the programme period reaches over 4 million people through study, training, work experience, sports and volunteering abroad. Over the past 30 years, some 300,000 UK students have benefited from the Erasmus programmes. Of course, UK university students have always studied abroad. Like other noble Lords, I recall a few friends having years abroad during my time at Sussex in the early 1970s, but the programmes had to be individually negotiated and were reliant on the good will of the two institutions involved and an element of good fortune. Today’s programmes are sophisticated, and a far cry from those back then, which predated our membership of the EU.
In the academic year 2015-16, 15,000-plus students from UK universities took part. Incoming students add to the broader cultural experience of students attending our university courses. The NUS estimates that on and off-campus spending by international students, the vast majority from the EU, totalled some £25 billion in 2014-15 alone and contributed £13.8 billion to the UK’s GDP. This supports the equivalent of over 200,000 jobs and equates to £10.8 billion of export earnings. To put it in tax revenue terms, it supplies £l billion a year to the Treasury and supports the salaries that pay for 31,000 nurses or 25,000 police officers.
But the major benefit is probably to less measurable things. Students bring overseas thinking and ideas home with them. They add to the UK’s influence through forms of soft power. Students and researchers bring fresh approaches to our academic institutions and towns and cities. Some research suggests that students who study abroad access better employment opportunities, achieve higher incomes and make a bigger contribution to the national economy.
Unsurprisingly, overseas study benefits social mobility and, as many noble Lords have said, students from disadvantaged backgrounds. One study suggests that black and minority ethnic students who participate in Erasmus are 41% less likely to be unemployed than non-exchange students, and that mobile students from poorer backgrounds earn 6% more across their lifetimes. Shutting off the opportunity for international exchange for those students will undermine work to widen participation in higher education and improve upward mobility.
Given all the benefits to our university sector and to the wider economy from Erasmus, it is essential that, in any post-Brexit deal with the EU, the UK Government negotiate full association with the 2021-27 programme. Costs will be higher and we will not have the purchase on the content of the programme we currently do, as voting members of programme committees, but as a non-associated country we would give up a seat at the table completely. If it is not possible to negotiate a sensible post-Brexit arrangement, it is essential that the UK Government establish a new international mobility scheme, with all the same features of our current arrangements. I agree with the report that this must not be at the expense of exchanges on our doorstep, not least because they are attractive to vocational students, those with special needs and those with strong family ties.
I echo much of what the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said in his opening speech, because we have only seen government commitments for funding of the existing programmes. Can the Minister assure the House that the Government have a plan for the long term in mind and the replication of the UK’s participation in Erasmus on current terms?
Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the position of students seeking to study in the UK. Can we be assured that there is no threat to the status of students currently studying here? Can we be further assured that internal discussions are taking place within government and especially the Home Office to guarantee the extension of the temporary leave to remain scheme? Without that, the future of mobility learning will be jeopardised, and our place as a centre of excellence for the student experience placed at risk.
No deal is a form of intellectual and academic self-harm. I share the fear of many Peers tonight: I cannot believe a Government serious in looking to the future of our country will allow this to take place, and I hope I am right. The Government have offered little by way of reassurance so far, though there are some encouraging signs in the political statement that sits with the withdrawal agreement. Tonight, as we await the outcome of Commons votes, and at a point when we all need more answers to hard questions, I hope that the Government will offer us more than the empty promises we have sadly become used to over the last couple of years, which are a feature of Mrs May’s administration. These questions need answers.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, for securing this debate and I thank the Home Affairs Sub-Committee, of which he is chair, for taking the time to consider the future of the Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 programmes after Brexit. This has been valuable work which I know is informing the Government’s thinking on these topics. I want to make a few opening remarks because there have been, in my view, some excellent speeches this afternoon from many distinguished Peers with backgrounds ranging from education and higher education to the Diplomatic Service. My message, as I start out, is that these two programmes are very important: I agree with so many of the comments made on this point and shall say more about it later. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, among others, that the sub-committee’s report will not go unnoticed.
Next, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, to the Front Bench. I note that he has morphed from shadow Chief Whip to this position and I have no idea whether it is permanent or temporary. I hope it is permanent and he is very welcome. This debate, as is probably the case for all debates here in the Lords, has seen an enormous number of questions raised on these important subjects. Many of the questions directed to me include a focus on the dates and the guarantees we have given, and perhaps suggestions that we should extend these guarantees. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, anticipated that I might say this, but I hope that the House will not expect me to give any guarantees this afternoon. However, one thing is certain: I will take all views back to the department. I hope, at least, that I can give some assurances that will help the House.
The Government will publish a formal response to the Committee’s report shortly. However, to follow a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, I will set out the work the Government are doing to ensure that opportunities for our researchers, businesses and students are protected and enriched in all scenarios. I start by saying—with a touch of understatement, perhaps—that we do not know what the coming days will bring, but the UK remains open for business and, importantly, open to ideas and exchanges with the EU and globally, and to the people who provide them. In the context of the UK’s impending departure from the EU, it is imperative that we consider how the UK can maintain close ties with our European partners, particularly in education, science and research.
As the report noted, the Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 programmes have provided so many people in the UK with the opportunity to move across the EU: to learn, work and carry out research and innovation. UK businesses and researchers have driven forward a wide range of inspiring Horizon 2020 projects. As of the end of September 2018, the UK had more than 10,000 participations in the programme. In response to a question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who raised an interesting point about EU scientists leaving the UK and the fact that science is losing out, I have absolutely taken note of what both Peers said. We currently expect that, at the point of exiting the EU, the UK will have more than 10,000 live participations in Horizon 2020. I have to inject a little caution because the latest data, released in September 2018, does not suggest that the UK is routinely locked out of consortia, but I recognise that both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord are making points about what they say is happening on the ground. These projects range from increasing our understanding of how green roofs are used to tackle climate change to helping authorities better protect trafficked persons.
The Government recognise the important role that both schemes have played in the UK and remain committed to supporting collaboration with our neighbours in the EU and beyond. I will focus on Erasmus+ first. The noble Lords, Lord Jay and Lord Bassam, would put this more eloquently than me, but the Erasmus+ programme offers young people the opportunity not only to gain international experience but to boost their employability, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said. It provides opportunities for teaching and training, and supports innovation and the sharing of best practice.
The noble Baroness, Lady Janke, asked me to clarify the terms of payment for the underwrite guarantee. UKRI will use existing payment systems to ensure continuity for UK beneficiaries. In a no-deal scenario, UKRI will contact UK beneficiaries who have registered on the portal with further information on how the guarantee will operate in practice. While the UK benefits from sending our own young people on outgoing mobilities, the UK hosts around twice as many incoming Erasmus+ mobilities as it sends out. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others have said, it is interesting to note that the UK’s notional contribution to the Erasmus+ budget currently exceeds its share of receipts.
The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and, particularly, the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, raised the question of modern foreign languages—the importance of Erasmus+ for languages and the supply chain for teachers. I agree with them that the benefits for those who endeavour to learn new languages and study abroad can be huge. Languages provide an insight into other cultures and can open the door to travel and employment opportunities. They can also broaden pupils’ horizons, helping them flourish in new environments.
I assure the House that Erasmus+ is not the only way students can travel abroad. Our world-leading higher education providers have a strong track record of partnering with overseas institutions, and UUK evidence suggests that around half of mobilities already take place outside Erasmus+. The Government know that employers value languages too, as they are increasingly important to make sure we can compete in the global marketplace. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, might agree that it is clear that other EU countries strongly value and are benefiting from the UK’s participation in Erasmus+.
I will now move on to Horizon 2020. As others have said, this is the biggest EU research and innovation programme ever, with nearly €80 billion of funding available over seven years—that is, between 2014 and 2020. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world firsts by supporting great ideas at all stages from the lab to the market. The UK is one of the most attractive collaborators for research and innovation, and a key player in Horizon 2020. I have already mentioned our high number of participations, which is second only to Germany. We are also a partner of choice across Europe; every member state places the UK as one of the top five countries they collaborate with under the programme.
I will now touch on the impact of Brexit on these two important programmes an issue which so many Peers have raised this afternoon. As the committee’s report notes, and as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, has said, passing the withdrawal agreement would ensure that UK participation in Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 would remain largely unchanged until the end of 2020. Despite the challenges that we continue to face, it remains the Government’s priority to secure a negotiated deal. The noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, asked what Her Majesty’s Government would do to allay the funding gap for the Horizon programme even within the terms of the withdrawal agreement. The EU programme for research and innovation is a competitive bid programme —only the most excellent bids are funded. Under the terms of the withdrawal agreement, UK bids would continue to be measured against the same criteria as bids from other EU member states, which should avoid any fall in funding.
However, the Government are preparing for every eventuality, and in the event of no deal the Government will underwrite funding for successful bids submitted to Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 before the end of 2020. For the avoidance of doubt, this guarantee would apply for the lifetime of projects. This sizeable funding pledge will be not part of, but additional to, funding already committed in existing departmental budgets. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, asked whether the Government can confirm that they will spend the money required in the EU’s regulation for a no-deal guarantee. I reassure him that the Government have been clear that, if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, the UK has obligations to the EU—and the EU obligations to the UK—that will survive Brexit. These would need to be negotiated.
As your Lordships will know, UK Research and Innovation is the Government’s delivery partner for Horizon 2020. Since last year, BEIS and UKRI have worked tirelessly to put the necessary systems in place to deliver this guarantee if required. In this scenario, all beneficiaries registered on the UKRI portal will receive detailed information about the next steps they need to take.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, asked a number of questions—I think there were four, if not more—and I will try to answer them all. She asked about the terms of the underwrite guarantee funding. It will be paid to UK beneficiaries in pounds sterling. UKRI has confirmed that existing systems will be used to give continuity for UK grant holders.
The report also makes clear the importance of confirming no-deal domestic funding streams for key sources of UK Horizon 2020 funding, including the European Research Council. The Government have worked closely with UKRI and a wide range of stakeholders on no-deal planning for the Horizon 2020 programme. However, it is appropriate that noble Lords are asking about this, and I can assure them that further updates will be provided to the research community in due course. In January, the Government published a technical notice on Erasmus+ which provided guidance to organisations and participants on the UK’s anticipated participation in the current Erasmus+ programme in the event of no deal.
The report has pointed towards the benefits of continuing to contribute towards Erasmus+, and it is right to look ahead. Indeed, the UK is very interested in exploring future participation in the Erasmus+ successor scheme for the period 2021 to 2027. I understand that the successor scheme will include increased school exchange opportunities and a greater emphasis on widening participation. The Government have welcomed proposals on this and will continue to participate in discussions while we remain in the EU.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Smith of Newnham and Lady Garden, asked whether the Government would commit to seeking alternatives to Erasmus+ and associate third-country status for Erasmus+. Perhaps in line with what I have just said, the Government are certainly very interested in the emerging proposals for the successor Erasmus+ programme for that 2020 to 2027 period. The details of that are still being discussed by the EU, and the UK will continue to participate in discussions while we remain in the EU. However, we note that the proposals so far contain a number of provisions that the UK can welcome. We will continue to consider the emerging proposals carefully, and whether the UK will participate in the future programme, and on what basis, will be subject to wider negotiations on the UK’s future relationship with the EU.
The report also highlighted the importance of an alternative scheme if participation in Erasmus+ cannot be negotiated. I can assure the House that the Government understand the value that international mobility can bring and are currently driving forward work on domestic alternative options to support it. Again, to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, the potential benefit of the UK establishing its own international mobility scheme is the ability to tailor the scheme to UK needs and target the funding where it is most needed. Of course, whatever international mobility scheme we are part of in the future, the Government will want to ensure value for money for the taxpayer.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, previously asked me a question—it may have been in an Oral Question the other day—on the funding of domestic alternatives for Erasmus+. I reassure the House that the Government are preparing for every foreseeable scenario. In a no-deal scenario, the Government’s underwrite guarantee will cover the payment of awards to UK beneficiaries for all Erasmus+ bids; that is additional funding, which I may have alluded to earlier.
As regards domestic alternatives, the Government are developing a range of options. But of course they need to balance carefully the support for international mobility and ensuring value for money, as I said earlier.
As the House will know, Horizon Europe is the successor to Horizon 2020, and I will touch upon some of the thoughts set out in the report. Recognising the value brought through international collaboration, the Prime Minister made it clear in her speech at Jodrell Bank last year that the UK would like the option to fully associate to the excellence-based EU science, research and innovation programmes post 2020, including Horizon Europe.
UK officials and Ministers continue to play an active role in the development of the Horizon Europe programme to ensure that it remains in line with the UK’s priorities of excellence, openness to the world and added value. As a potential future associate to the programme, we believe that Horizon Europe should continue to treat associated countries as partners rather than competitors. The benefits that associated countries bring to the programme must be recognised and welcomed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Janke, asked what progress had been made in setting the terms of third-country participation. She may not be surprised when I tell her that negotiations on the Horizon Europe programme, including provisions on third-country participation, are ongoing within the EU institutions. At the moment, it is too early to make an informed decision about our future participation, but we are committed to continuing the strong, positive relationship that we currently have with the EU in science, research and innovation.
My noble friend Lord Cormack asked how the UK will influence research and innovation without a seat at the table, which is a fair question. I reassure him that the UK is a great place to do science. We account for 4.1% of the world’s researchers, 10.7% of all citations, 15.2% of the world’s most cited articles and three of the world’s top 10 universities. We know that collaboration between researchers is key to achieving great science. That is why our plan to ensure that the UK remains a world leader in science and innovation after Brexit focuses on encouraging close relationships with the EU and beyond.
Let me be clear: science, research and innovation really matter. That is why we have committed to considering all options to support UK research and further the Government’s strategic objectives, regardless of whether we choose to associate to Horizon Europe. This is in line with the committee’s recommendation that every effort be made in this respect. That is why the Government have announced the appointment of Professor Sir Adrian Smith, director and chief executive of the Alan Turing Institute, as an independent adviser to the Government on the development of future funding programmes for international collaboration. The terms of reference have been agreed and Sir Adrian has hit the ground running. We look forward to his thoughts and recommendations.
To answer a question from the noble Lord, Lord Jay, about the implications of the Smith review for association to Horizon Europe, Professor Smith’s advice will help set the direction for the implementation of the Government’s ambition to ensure that the UK continues to be a global leader. In the event that the UK does not associate to Horizon Europe, the Government will support measures to enable world-class collaborative research that aligns to UK priorities.
I can also confirm that BEIS is working closely with the national academies and UKRI to develop ambitious and credible alternatives to association to Horizon Europe which could also enable world-class collaborative research. Your Lordships will appreciate that this thinking is still at an early stage and is currently being tested with both devolved Administrations and key stakeholders from the wider research and innovation communities represented by Minister Skidmore’s high-level stakeholder group on EU exit. Your Lordships should be aware that all decisions on future funding for international science collaboration remain subject to the spending review—so are caveated to some extent.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, asked me to confirm the fee status for EU students beginning courses in 2020. This point has been raised in the House on several occasions. I know that students, staff and providers are concerned about what EU exit means for study and collaboration opportunities. To help give certainty, in July 2018, we announced guarantees on student finance for EU nationals. Those guarantees are not altered if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.
For courses starting in 2020, we understand how important it is that students and institutions have information available for student support before applications for courses are open. Applications for courses starting in the academic year 2020-21 do not open until September 2019. I am sure that the noble Baroness will say that that deadline is coming up quite shortly. The Government are aware of that and will ensure that students and institutions have the information they need well in advance of that date.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, asked about teaching and stated that fewer students in the UK were starting teacher training, which is an interesting point. In September 2018, we announced a renewed package of generous financial incentives for international teacher training, including tax-free scholarships worth £28,000 and tax-free bursaries worth £26,000 for trainees in modern foreign languages.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asks what guarantee I can give from the Home Office that there will be free movement for students. The immigration White Paper published in December, which she will know about, sets out the Government’s position on this issue and on a future single immigration system for the UK. The White Paper proposals on post study went further than the MAC recommendations for students, extending post-study work to six months for undergraduate students attending institutions with degree-awarding powers, six months for all master’s students and 12 months for PhD students. There is no limit on the number of students who can come to study in the UK, nor is there any intention to impose one.
Baroness Brinton
I apologise if I did not make myself clear, but my question was about people taking part in research projects rather than students and concerns about the immigration White Paper.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
Given the time, I shall write in answer to that question.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe
Perhaps I, too, might press a point which I raised. I appreciate entirely the helpful comments that the Minister has made about the actions that we will take in the event of a deal, which I shall read carefully. I raised a question about the amounts that would be saved in the event of no deal because we would not be spending them on these two programmes and the reassurance it would give if that money was guaranteed to be reapplied to whatever schemes the Government chose to invest in subsequently.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
The noble Baroness would not expect me to be able to give any particular reassurances, but my understanding is that the money would return to the Treasury. Then the question is what the Treasury would do. If I am wrong on that, I shall write, but I think that I should write in any case to provide clarification. That is the normal process.
Lord Krebs
I thank the Minister and am sorry to interrupt at this late hour. One of the questions that I ended with was about European Research Council grants being for blue-skies research. Can the Minister comment on the thinking, perhaps in Professor Sir Adrian Smith’s report, about what we would do nationally if we were not part of the ERC and whether it would be clear that any new scheme would be for blue-skies research rather than strategic or applied research?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I am sure that question will somehow get back to Sir Adrian. Again, I will take it away and if there is an answer that I can give to the noble Lord in writing, I most certainly will.
Lord Bilimoria
I am extremely sorry and thank the Minister for giving way. I asked quite a few pointed questions and he has not answered any of them. I would be grateful if he could write to me, copy in all Members who have participated and put a copy in the Library of the House.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I said at the beginning that I was not sure that I could answer every single question. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has taken part in many debates that I have responded to. I apologise to him; my intention is always to answer every question. I know that he feels passionately about the position that he takes, but, given the time, I will certainly write to him.
I hope that I have demonstrated to your Lordships today the work that the Government are doing to ensure that the UK maintains its position as a world leader in education, research and innovation and as a nation that remains open to international mobility. As noble Lords will have noted, on Thursday the Commission announced results of the 2018 ERC advanced grant call. This is great news, as senior researchers based in the UK secured 47 of the 222 grants awarded, reaffirming that the UK research and innovation community maintains its world-leading status despite all the uncertainties. I am pleased to confirm that these grants will be funded through the underwrite guarantees should we leave the EU without a deal. That will ensure that this ground-breaking research can go ahead.
I thank again the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and all noble Lords for taking part in this debate and for some incisive and thoughtful comments.
Lord Jay of Ewelme
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have taken part in the debate and I am also grateful for the Minister’s thoughtful reply. The debate has shown that there continues to be real concern both inside and outside the House about the potential cost of Brexit to many of our young people and to our universities. There is a real need for the Government to do all they can to mitigate the adverse effects of that. As my noble friend Lord Krebs said, there really is no upside to this. However, I am sure that the Minister will take that message back to his colleagues, and I much look forward to the government response to our report.