Leaving the European Union

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Steve Double

Monday 11th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double]

Is the hon. Lady’s experience the same as mine? When I have asked businesses in my constituency if they would prefer a no-deal Brexit or a Labour Government led by the current leader of the Labour party, every single business I have spoken to said, “I will take a no-deal Brexit every time.”

[Jenny Chapman]

The hon. Gentleman is cheap. We are 18 days away from leaving the European Union. His party does not have a negotiated deal that could get through this Parliament. That is where he is; it is his party that has done that, not my party. Businesses ask me what a Labour Brexit would look like, and I can tell them. They say to me, “Yes, that is a future I can work in. That is an economic framework that I can keep my business thriving in.” They look at what is happening now, with the hon. Gentleman’s party in power, and they are horrified. I am horrified, and he should be horrified. It is nothing to be proud of. He can make cheap comments about my party leader if he likes—everyone knows my views about this—but it is his party leader who has misled and mismanaged this process, not mine.

We now have two options. My party leader, who the hon. Gentleman so derides, has written to the Prime Minister outlining a sensible deal that is negotiable. It has been well received by colleagues in the European Union, and is actually quite well received by Members on the hon. Gentleman’s Benches. The options set out in that letter ought to be put to the test of a vote in Parliament. Why is the Prime Minister too afraid to do that? It is because when we put a customs union to the vote in June, and the Prime Minister whipped against it as hard as she could, we lost by a grand total of six votes. I suggest that that is something that could find support in Parliament, and I would like to get it before the House of Commons so we can test it.

Such a deal would be supported by businesses, trade unions and the CBI, as well as in Northern Ireland—the Ulster farmers have been crying out for it. Everybody who has any real interest in this issue and has looked at it carefully has come out and supported that proposal. It is a real shame that the Prime Minister is so cowed by her own party that she will not put it before the House of Commons.

The Labour party wrote to the Prime Minister. We asked for a

“comprehensive UK-wide customs union…Close alignment with the Single Market…Dynamic alignment on rights and protections…Clear commitments on participation in EU agencies…Unambiguous agreements on the detail of future security arrangements”.

The right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) is never going to agree with that; it is not his vision for Brexit. I am not going to attempt to persuade him that it should be, because we would be here a long time. I accept that. He is entitled to vote for a different vision of Brexit, if that is what he feels is right. Surely, Members are entitled to vote for what we think would be the right outcome, if, as we believe, it is negotiable even at this late stage. If the deal does not get through tomorrow, it behoves the Minister and his colleagues to work out how it would work and what the process would be to enable us to have a vote on a different type of deal, which we could negotiate with Brussels.

Whatever happens, we cannot have a border in Northern Ireland; everybody accepts that. However, nobody has provided a credible means of achieving that. We have had suggestions about “alternative arrangements”—whatever they are—and there has been talk about technology. Our team visited the border between Norway and Sweden, which is the most technologically advanced in the world. There is infrastructure there to make checks, take payments and provide security, because it is a border between two different customs territories. There is nowhere on the planet where there is a border between two different customs territories and no infrastructure. Try as we might to find a different solution—and we did try—we have been unable to do so. It seems as if no one else has been able to find one either. It is impossible not to have border infrastructure if there is no customs union. It cannot be done. For that reason, as well as all the benefits to manufacturing that are important to me in north-east England, we have concluded that we need to be part of a customs union after we leave the European Union.

[Stewart Hosie in the Chair]

The other thing I hear all the time from businesses is that they do not want us to leave at all without a deal. It seems odd that the Government are persisting in keeping that option open. I note that a couple of weeks ago—the last time she was confronting heavy defeats—the Prime Minister said that, should her deal not succeed tomorrow, Parliament would have the opportunity to vote against leaving without a deal. I know the Minister does not have a crystal ball, but it would be helpful to colleagues if he could clarify exactly what we will be voting on tomorrow. Who knows? Will this be a straightforward vote on the Prime Minister’s deal, whether it be the same deal we voted on previously or an amended deal? When will we find out what we will be voting on? If it is a different deal, will we be given an opportunity to examine that deal prior to the debate tomorrow? When will that motion be laid before the House? Will there be opportunity for colleagues to amend it? That is something we have discussed at length previously, and it is only fair that Members are given that opportunity.

That is tomorrow. What about Wednesday? Assuming that the deal does not go through tomorrow, we were promised by the Prime Minister that there would be an opportunity to vote on leaving without a deal. Will that still be the case on Wednesday and, if it is, what position will the Government take? Will Wednesday be the day when, finally, the Government of this country say to businesses, the public, communities such as mine and their own colleagues that they do not intend to take the UK out of the EU without a deal? We need to know. Do the Government still intend on Thursday, as the Prime Minister promised, to have a vote on whether we need more time? If that promise is kept, how much more time does the Minister intend we should have, and what does he intend to do with it? What form will the motion on Thursday take? I am not asking him to foretell anything very far ahead; just the next three days will do. We need to know what MPs will be asked to decide on this week, on behalf of our constituents. These are probably the most important decisions that we shall ever be asked to make. We were promised by the Prime Minister that they would be taken this week, but we have not had confirmation of that or information about what the votes will look like.

The chaos we have seen, the way the negotiations have been mishandled, and the situation we are in, just days away from 29 March, make me embarrassed for Parliament. Unfortunately, the blame can only be laid at the door of the Prime Minister, because of the way she has led the process. The Minister is a decent person, and it falls to him—

Leaving the EU: Negotiations

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Steve Double

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Even by recent standards, this is a moment of extraordinary political chaos. Within the last 36 hours, the Prime Minister has lost her Brexit Secretary, her Foreign Secretary—although she probably welcomed that as much as the rest of the country did—and she has lost the support of her party. The Chequers proposals are clearly dead in the water, even before the White Paper is published and the EU has had a chance to respond. However, amid the turmoil and turbulence, it is comforting to see that there are still some certainties in politics.

[Steve Double]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jenny Chapman]

Give me a minute—let me at least get started, and then I promise I will give way. Today, before the House we have a Lib Dem motion calling for a coalition with a discredited Tory Government and a referendum on the EU. This is from a party that propped up the Cameron Government for five years.

[Steve Double]

Will the shadow Minister remind the House how many shadow Front Benchers the Leader of the Opposition has lost since he has been in post?

[Jenny Chapman]

We have had our moments, I do not deny it, but we sit here as a shadow Brexit team that is still entirely intact from the date of formation. I look over to the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who now casts a lonely figure on the Government Front Bench, as the sole survivor on his own team.

The Lib Dems have been calling for a referendum on membership of the EU since 2009—I could find it as far back as that, but it may well go further back than that. The Lib Dems, with their usual political foresight, argued back then that only a real referendum could settle the question of our relationship with the EU once and for all. A decade later, they still think that another referendum is the answer. I am certain that, in 2028, Lib Dem MPs will still be debating whether they should call for another referendum. This motion is a kind of greatest hits of Lib Dem policies over the last decade. I can only assume that an earlier draft had a promise not to raise tuition fees, but that must have been ruled out of scope.

There is no parliamentary majority for the Prime Minister’s cumbersome and costly facilitated custom arrangement and it would be a nightmare for business. It would mean the UK acting as the EU’s customs official and it relies on technology that does not currently exist to make it work. For perhaps the first time in history, I agreed with the now former Foreign Secretary when he described it in his resignation letter as an

“impractical and undeliverable customs arrangement unlike any other in existence”,

and these are the lengths that the Government have gone to in order to reject a comprehensive customs union.