Leaving the EU: Negotiations

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Peter Heaton-Jones

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman]

If I believed for one minute that another referendum would be a well-informed discussion among the people of this country about customs, trade, tariffs and the economy, I might take a different view. Unfortunately, that is not what I expect to happen. Labour is not calling for a second referendum because we believe that doing so at this stage would make it harder to get the right deal for Brexit.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

The hon. Lady is being generous with her time. Much as I am loth to take the focus away from the Liberal Democrats, there is still some confusion about the Labour position. Only five days ago, the shadow Brexit Secretary said:

“We’re not calling for it. We respect the result of the first referendum. But we’re not ruling out a second referendum.”

[Jenny Chapman]

I said that, too. I do not know the hon. Gentleman well, but I take him to be a man of high intellect and cleverness. I do not think it is too difficult a concept to grasp that we are not calling for something, but we do not feel that we can, from a position of opposition, rule things out and impose red lines in the way the Government have done. This whole process has been bedevilled by unnecessary red lines, which have later had to be rubbed out and faded to pale pink. We are not calling for a second referendum; I really cannot be any clearer about it.

Another reason for that is that we want to focus on the terms of the Brexit deal. Labour has engaged fully with the negotiations and the Brexit process. We have set out what a post-Brexit approach could be, and we have sought to shape it. Calling for a second referendum would make that much more difficult, and it would mean we had nothing to say about the negotiations or what our future outside the EU should look like. Again, who was it who warned in 2016 that backing a second referendum risked marginalising the UK in negotiations? None other than Vince from Twickenham, who said that he thought the Lib Dems should show

“more emphasis on what it is we want from these negotiations rather than arguing about the tactics”.

Again—spot on. There are also practical problems with how a second referendum would work. When would it be held, what would the question be and what would happen if there were another narrow result in either direction?

Finally, we also need to consider the impact a second referendum would have on an already divided country. The first referendum was incredibly divisive. It pitted family against family, and community against community. I know that many of my colleagues and many people in my constituency have no desire to repeat that. They fear that doing so would further inflame and divide our communities. That is not a trivial concern, and I urge Members to reflect carefully on it. For all those reasons, we will not be supporting the motion today.