EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), who was a brilliant Trade Minister and resigned on a matter of principle. We here should all remember our principles.

There is an air of almost self-satisfaction and self-congratulation in the House today, as if somehow this is wonderful. I think the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) called it a wonderful freedom. I actually feel very sad about today. We should not be in this position. I could spend the next five minutes talking about who to blame, but there is not much point. We are where we are.

The one group of people we cannot blame, however, are the people of this country who in the referendum voted to leave, thought they would be listened to and were told by everyone, including the former Prime Minister, that their vote mattered and would be implemented, whatever that decision. Since that day, many people in this House who never wanted us to leave have done all they can in very clever ways—an hon. Member said she had been helped by a senior lawyer to put her motion—to prevent us from leaving.

The public looking in today would say, “What a nonsense. It’s just a lot of waffle. You’re just putting through loads of different things.” In the end, only the Government can make this happen. The Prime Minister could still get her withdrawal agreement through, if she was to recognise that she as a Conservative and Unionist Prime Minister should never have come up with something like the backstop and that the backstop has to be changed. I understand that fundamentally.

The one thing that must not happen today is the people of this United Kingdom being told, “You were too stupid, racist or ignorant to vote the right way, and now we want you to vote again in a separate referendum, because we think you might have changed your mind.” I am incredibly disappointed that my party—a Labour party that saw the majority of its constituencies vote to leave—is whipping Labour Members to vote for a second referendum.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Hoey]

I am not giving way to the hon. Member.

It is outrageous. Labour supporters and voters who came back to Labour and voted Labour, having dallied with UKIP for a while and believing that Labour meant what it said, would see it as a huge betrayal.

[Graham Stringer]

I agree with the thrust of my hon. Friend’s argument. Does she agree that the argument being put in the Chamber today that we should give people a second vote because they have changed their mind would lead to a “neverendum”—people could change their mind every year, though all the polling evidence, as presented by John Curtice, is that they have not changed their mind—and that about 98% of the people promoting a second referendum are remainers?

[Kate Hoey]

My hon. Friend is quite right. On that basis, we would have to have general elections practically every month. Some people might change their minds the day after they voted. We cannot go down the road.

I have a big remain constituency, but I have made very clear from day one—and I shall have been in this place for 30 years in June—that I want us to get out of the EU. Everyone has known my views, so I have no apology to make for campaigning to leave. A constituent wrote to me saying that he had thought that the manifestos of the Labour party and Conservative party—the two main parties—had said, “We will implement the result of the referendum.” There is nothing difficult about the word “leave”. It is very simple. Members have deliberately made it difficult here.

My constituent wrote:

“Can we the electorate now expect that anything promised in a manifesto is to be honoured, that it should be written into law, that, if you promise a course of action, you must follow through and make it happen.”

Why, he asked, do party leaders order three-line whips so that what they promised in the manifesto can be reneged on?

I think that we are in a very dangerous situation in the House. We are trying to thwart the will of the people, but democracy cannot be compromised. Outside, there is huge anger. We may not see it here in London, particularly in areas where there was a large remain vote, but there is huge anger elsewhere, and it is growing. We have backed ourselves into a hole, and now the only way out is for us either to leave with a World Trade Organisation agreement, or to find a way in which the withdrawal agreement can be changed so that we can accept it—and that means that there must be a change in the backstop.

Nearly all the motions involve compromise. I make no apology for saying that I do not think we should be compromising with the electorate. I mean no criticism of you, Mr Speaker, but it is very unfortunate that motion (E) was not selected, because it is the one motion that we could all have gone along with, if we believed in the referendum result. Anyone who votes to revoke tonight is actually saying, “We do not accept that result— we never did, and we never will.” I hope that that motion will be turned down.

[Mr Speaker]

I have now to announce the results of the deferred Divisions held earlier today. I shall do so with the greatest possible dispatch.

The Question relating to relationships and sex education requires a majority of Members of the House and a majority of Members representing constituencies in England if it is to be agreed to. The totals for Members of the House were as follows: the Ayes were 538 and the Noes were 21. The totals for Members representing constituencies in England were as follows: the Ayes were 482 and the Noes were 14, so the Ayes have it.

In respect of the Question relating to animal welfare, the Ayes were 322 and the Noes were 15, so the Ayes have it. In respect of the Question relating to rural development, the Ayes were 316 and the Noes were 239, so the Ayes have it. In respect of the Question relating to rural development, with, in brackets—I merely remind the House of what it knows itself—the words “Rules and Decisions”, the Ayes were 316 and the Noes were 240, so the Ayes have it.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). She made some important points about the manifesto promises and about living up to them. There are some other promises that we need to live up to. Time and again, I have heard colleagues criticise the Prime Minister, in the House or on the media, for setting out her red lines and not budging from them. For me, those red lines simply represent the promises that were made before the referendum. It was certainly not just a binary question about the options of staying and leaving. The question about what leaving meant is critical to this debate, because the promises that Vote Leave set out—I believe the hon. Member for Vauxhall was a member of the Vote Leave campaign—

[Kate Hoey]

indicated dissent.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady shakes her head. I apologise.

Vote Leave, which was the primary advocate for leaving, clearly set out promises to control our borders, control our laws and control our money, while having a free trade agreement. I have read the Vote Leave manifesto several times, and the words were, “There is a free trade area that stretches from Iceland to the borders of Russia, and we will be part of it.” Those were the promises that were made.

I believe the Prime Minister has come back to this House with a deal that meets the promises made; that is what her deal does. There is not a single motion on this Order Paper that lives up to those promises, however; all of them incorporate compromises that move outside those red lines. She has come back with a Goldilocks deal—not too hard, not too soft—but still people will not accept this deal.

If we do not approve the Prime Minister’s deal in the days and weeks to come—hopefully days—I think certain Members in this House might well look back and think, “That was our opportunity and it has now gone.” We should support the Prime Minister’s deal, because I do not think, having a small business background, that it is right that we should think of taking an uncalculated risk with the lives and livelihoods of small businesspeople, who we know could be affected by a no-deal exit. So we definitely need to leave with a deal.

How do we leave with a deal if we do not support the Prime Minister’s deal? It means we have to remove at least one of the red lines. From my perspective, despite the fact that it would breach the manifesto promises, I would remove the red line on the single market. There will be challenges, certainly particularly between Northern Ireland and Ireland, but most of them are solved by membership of the single market. Some 80% of the border challenges are about the single market. Barnier said it himself: customs checks need not happen at the border.

We can do without the customs union, but we need the single market for regulatory standards, particularly on foods. A humble cottage pie sat on a supermarket shelf in Northern Ireland has passed over that border typically seven times. If there were regulatory checks, they would have to happen every single time according to EU rules; and it makes the rules, and we have been part of that system for 46 years, so we cannot simply say now “We don’t agree with your rules despite the fact that we’ve been happy”—or relatively happy—“to sit within them for 46 years.”

I will support two motions this evening. One is motion (D) brought forward by a number of colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock). Many colleagues have been big advocates of common market 2.0; it is a free trade agreement. I have concerns about it: I have concerns about the customs union, and the longevity of the customs union and our ability to exit it. Paragraph (1)(c) says we will need to agree with the EU our exit from the customs union, and I cannot see what incentive it would have to let us leave.

If we approved this motion, we would also have to agree lots of things with the Opposition. I do not have an issue about working cross-party on this at all, but I do fear that if we approve this, as we take the legislation forward over the next months and years, Labour Front Benchers will ask an ever higher price, because there is a political divide between the Opposition Front Bench and the Government Front Bench.

The other proposal I will happily accept is motion (H). It represents an excellent way forward; it is bold and decisive, and I will support it this evening.