European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston and Julian Lewis

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

No, I will not.

The way forward would have been for the EU to say straightaway, “Yes, you’re making this offer. We accept it. No problem.”

However, the second point, on the second amendment, is the more important one. We have heard it said repeatedly from the Opposition Front Bench and from elsewhere in the Chamber that no deal is the worst possible outcome for Britain. Put another way, that is like saying that any deal at all is better than no deal, and I would like to draw a parallel with those arms negotiations in the 1980s. The most successful negotiations were those that led to the treaty in 1987, when we got rid of all the cruise missiles and Pershing missiles on our side, and the Russians got rid of all the SS-20s. It happened like this: we carried out our threat in the negotiations, and the other side walked away from the negotiating table, but when they saw we meant it, they came back, and they gave us a better deal. What we have to remember is this: no deal may lead to a better deal a year or two down the road. If you are determined to take any deal rather than no deal, you will end up with a much worse deal than you might otherwise have had.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

I shall vote against both the amendments on the simple basis that this Bill has one purpose and one purpose only: to give legal effect to the decision of the people on 23 June. Any amendments that go beyond that are inappropriate to the Bill.

However, I look to the Secretary of State to give firm assurances that his top and first priority will be the rights of EU citizens; that he acknowledges that that will require a bespoke EU citizenship right to remain, to accommodate such problems as health insurance; and that we will act on that as our opening gesture in the negotiations, to set the right tone.

Trident Renewal

Debate between Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

I was generous in giving way to the hon. Gentleman so soon after he has made his own contribution. All I would say is that I know there was a vote on that day—that is what I just said—and if he tells me that a majority of Scottish MPs may have voted the other way, I accept that; but Scotland is, by choice, part of the United Kingdom and decisions on issues such as this are decisions for the United Kingdom as a whole. I do not believe even the SNP thinks that devo-max ought to include defence policy. If it does, we are in an even worse situation than I anticipated.

We heard from the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), who is a friend of mine, about moving away from the cold war. What one moves away from, one can move back to, and more quickly than one anticipates—particularly if, as the Chairman of the Defence Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), said in his excellent speech, one’s enemies or potential enemies have good reason to doubt one’s will and determination to stand up for the agreements one has made and to use the deterrent power one has to prevent war from breaking out in the first place. I was very surprised that the hon. Member for North Devon did not think that the events in Ukraine had any bearing on our discussions today. I think the events in Ukraine are highly relevant, particularly as NATO has a rather strange open-door policy to membership, which it should not have. It should not grant membership to any country that we are not prepared to go to war for if it is invaded.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman also accept that the importance of Ukraine and Kiev is that this is the first time that we have had a unilateral breach of international borders since world war two? It is the kind of thing that we thought would not happen again, and it has, so the context remains the same.

[Dr Lewis]

It does indeed, and what really worries me is that because the intensity of the fighting has been so great, it is easy to imagine that it could spill over into a nearby country that is a member of NATO. If that happens, we would be at war with Russia. It is frightening to think what our summer would have been like if we had previously gone down the route of admitting Ukraine to NATO membership, sympathetic though we are. I remember that we stood by during the uprisings in central and eastern Europe that occurred when half the continent was under Russian control. We were very sympathetic to the Hungarians, and I remember with total clarity that we were terribly sympathetic to the Czechoslovakians, but nobody seriously suggested that we could go to war for those countries because of the geopolitical realities at that time.