Early Parliamentary General Election Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I will not be supporting a general election because I do not think that a general election will resolve Brexit. The clue is partly in the name: a “general” election is about general issues. It is impossible to extrapolate from the result what people think about a very specific issue—in this case, Brexit. If we want a specific answer on Brexit, we have to ask a specific question, and the best way of doing that is through a people’s vote. That is even more the case with an electoral system that is as undemocratic and antiquated as ours, because first past the post regularly delivers majority Governments on a minority of votes.

A million people did not march through the streets of London a few weeks ago demanding a general election; they wanted a people’s vote because they know that that is the best way—indeed, the only way—to get to the bottom of this crisis and resolve it. All that a general election will do, frankly, is put Nigel Farage and the Prime Minister back in their comfort zones, giving them a stage—political insiders dressed up as rebels, whose agenda, frankly, is chaos—so that division will thrive.

I want to take on the idea that this Parliament has run its course. The Prime Minister has won votes on both his Queen’s Speech and the Second Reading of the withdrawal agreement Bill. The only person who is blocking progress in this Parliament is the Prime Minister. The reason for that is very clear: he has an agenda that is all about a general election—about installing an even harder Vote Leave contingent of MPs in Parliament—but let us not allow him to get away with telling us as Parliament that somehow we have not been doing a good job of holding him to account. This is not a zombie Parliament; it is a Parliament that has got its head around parliamentary procedures in a way that any new Parliament will take months to do. It is precisely because we have been able to keep the Prime Minister in his box that he is not very happy with the fact that we are trying to continue on our way forward.

One of the reasons I do not want a general election right now is that the thing that should be front and centre of it—the climate emergency, which is what we should be debating in a general election—will be overshadowed by yet more fights about Brexit, which it will not resolve. We know that the next 18 months will be crucial in terms of whether we have a chance of getting off the collision course we are on with the climate catastrophe. The Committee on Climate Change said in its report to Parliament a few months ago that the next Parliament will be absolutely vital, so it is crucial that the next general election is about the climate crisis. This existential crisis is facing all of us and if we fritter the time away with more debates about Brexit, which they are not even going to resolve, we will be responsible for the greatest irresponsibility—that does not quite make sense, but you know what I mean. We will be responsible for the greatest betrayal of young people and their futures, because this is a massive wasted opportunity, and I cannot bear the fact that we are going to spend it talking about Brexit in a way that is not going to resolve it.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee for his remarks. I intend to bring the whole House into the process of decision making and into our confidence and to draw on the expertise of the House.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

rose—

[The Prime Minister]

That will be the case not least in environmental matters, on which I know the hon. Lady speaks with great authority.

[Caroline Lucas]

The Prime Minister has been giving so many reassurances to Labour Members that I wonder whether he could give one to me about the trapdoor at the heart of this Brexit deal. We know that if no arrangement is agreed by the end of December next year, we risk crashing out with no deal. Can he reassure me that he will extend that transition and guarantee now at the Dispatch Box that we will not crash out at the end of December next year?

[The Prime Minister]

I can indeed assure the hon. Lady that there will be no crashing out, because we will negotiate a great new friendship and partnership within the timescale. I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House have every confidence in the Government to do that. They said we could not change the withdrawal agreement in the 90 days we had, that we would never get rid of the backstop and that we would not get a new deal, but we did get a new deal—we got a great deal—for this House and this country, and we will get a great new free trade agreement and a new partnership for our country.

Before us lies the great project of building a new friendship with our closest neighbours across the channel. That is the common endeavour of our whole nation, and that will begin with clause 31, which will give Parliament a clear role, including the hon. Lady.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I believe in the powers of persuasion and tonight I would like to persuade my hon. Friend: come with us, vote against this Bill and vote against the programme motion, because I believe, and I think he may agree with me, that that is in the interests of his constituents.

[Caroline Lucas]

Does the Leader of the Opposition share my concern that this Brexit deal could lead to a loss of freedom of movement within the island of Ireland for international family members of Irish or UK citizens? In other words, it imposes the equivalent of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, denying families their reunification rights. Will he acknowledge that this is a barely mentioned but worrying aspect of yet another way in which this deal breaches the Good Friday agreement?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Yes, I understand and accept the hon. Lady’s concerns on that. She is eloquently making the case for far more scrutiny of this Bill, so I am sure she will be joining me in opposing the programme motion this evening, because it will prevent just that kind of scrutiny. I note that the programme motion allows just one hour for consideration of all Lords amendments, however many there may or may not be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am very happy to follow the powerful speech by the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening). The decision facing this House could not be more serious, nor could the stakes be higher. This is a debate about the kind of country that we want to become and the kind of values that we want to enshrine. I want to speak out for all those who do not share this Government’s vision of a mean-minded little Britain with our borders closed and our horizons narrowed; and for those who do not accept a future that betrays the hopes and dreams of our young people, who, let us remember, overwhelmingly voted to remain—we should think about their futures when we vote night. I want to speak out for those who are concerned about the threat that this deal poses to the fragile peace in Northern Ireland; for those who, like me, are proud to stand up for the precious right to be able to freely work and study, and live and love, in 27 other countries; for those who celebrate the role of and contribution made by the 3 million EU citizens in our country; for those who recognise that, imperfect though it undoubtedly is, the EU remains the greatest international venture for peace, prosperity and freedom in history; and for those who do not believe that democracy stopped in its tracks three and a half years ago.

As many others have said today, democracy is a process, not a single event. Since that referendum, we have had one general election, two Prime Ministers and a wealth of further information about the costs and complexities of Brexit, and the lies and lawbreaking that stained that poll on 23 June 2016. The Prime Minister has changed his mind on more occasions than it is possible to count, most recently over the prospect of a border in the Irish sea. It is wrong that the British people are apparently the only people who will not be allowed to change their minds.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Ind)]

I am listening to what the hon. Lady says, as always. If another referendum were to come forward—that is not out of the question, although I think it is unlikely—and it were, say, to confirm a leave vote by 52% to 48%, would the hon. Lady accept that, or would she continue her campaign?

[Caroline Lucas]

I would both accept that and recommend that, if the Kyle-Wilson amendment was the kind of amendment that was put, it meant that it would not even have to come back to this Parliament—it would go straight into law. That is what should happen.

This Brexit is the hardest of hard Brexits. It is led by the hard right and, frankly, the rich and the reckless. It is yanking Britain completely out of the customs union and single market—the most advanced examples of international economic co-operation in history, which crucially, protect us with the strongest regulatory framework on earth, with high standards for food safety, workers’ rights and environmental protection.

The so-called guarantees on workers’ rights that are given in, for example, proposed new schedule 5A to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 are utterly worthless. They simply require a Minister of the Crown to make some statement about whether or not workers’ rights are going to be rolled back, and if they cannot get around to making that statement, that is fine, too, because they do not have to unless it is “practicable”. When it comes to workers’ rights, we know what the Government’s agenda is. This is not some kind of conspiracy theory.

[Mr Seely]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Caroline Lucas]

No, I will not. The Government have told us what their plans are. This Prime Minister has openly said that Brexit offers us an opportunity to “regulate differently” and when he says that, I do not think that he means increasing those standards—call me cynical.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that this is a recipe for regulatory chaos, not just between us and the EU, but within the four nations of the United Kingdom, where different environmental standards will apply?

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree. That brings me on to the environment. Again, when we look at the so-called reassurances, we are supposed to believe that the Environment Bill can answer the question of how we properly regulate in the absence of the Commission and the European Court of Justice, yet the Environment Bill, when given any scrutiny, as on the Environmental Audit Committee, shows, for example, that the office for environmental protection is insufficiently independent, is answerable to Government, not Parliament, and cannot levy fines, which has been the one thing in the past that has finally made the Government come into line on issues such as air pollution. The environmental principles are also very weak. They simply sit there in a policy statement, which we have not even been allowed to see, rather than in the Bill. On the sector targets, there are only four out of the 10 headline goals of the 25-year environment plan and they do not even have to be met until 2037. That is inadequate, especially when the interim targets are themselves not legally binding. So let us be clear: this is all about a race to the bottom on social and environmental standards.

When I say that I support a confirmatory ballot and that I would vote to remain, I do not for a moment mean that we should go back to how things were before the referendum in 2016. The referendum outcome was a resounding radical rejection of the status quo and of an economy that brutally fails so many, forces parents to use food banks to feed their kids, demonises immigrants and condemns us to climate breakdown. It was also a powerful and furious comment on our broken democracy. Brexit laid bare the extent to which our government structures are derelict. When citizens were deprived of a credible representative power that clearly belongs or is accountable to them, it led to anger with the most remote authority of all. The EU was blamed for the UK’s structural elitism and held responsible as the source of all the powerlessness, yet Brexit shows no sign of giving us back control or changing the way we rule. Instead, the apparatus of government has been hijacked by the Vote Leave campaign.

I recoil from the economic vandalism of this hardest of Brexits and I worry deeply about the race to the bottom. But I understand that a way forward must be found, so I will compromise if the Government do. I will not oppose the passage of the Bill through the Commons if they attach a confirmatory ballot to it and allow the British people to have their say. Three and a half years after the 2016 referendum, so much has changed, including, I believe, the will of the British people. That is what the vast majority of polls indicate. If the Government are so certain that this Brexit is exactly what the British people want, why are they so afraid to put it back to them?

Prime Minister’s Statement

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Saturday 19th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) thinks that nodding at me vigorously to the extent that it virtually constitutes a bow is the most efficacious means of being called. He may well have his opportunity in due course, but first I want to hear from Caroline Lucas.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

How can this House have any confidence in the Prime Minister’s claims that he does not want to lower standards, when his own deal precisely moves the so-called level playing field from the binding withdrawal agreement to the non-binding political declaration? Is not the truth that this deal takes a wrecking ball to our social and environmental standards, and the reason that he will not put it back to the British people is that he knows full well that they can see through his bluster and see that this is a profoundly bad deal?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid the hon. Lady has totally misread or misunderstood the provisions in the agreement. It is stated plainly in the political declaration that we will maintain the highest possible standards, and it is up to this House to do so. I think it is the will of this House, and this Government, to have even higher standards. This is the party and Government who have banned microbeads and are cracking down on plastics. We are leading the world in going for zero carbon by 2050. We are world leaders in environmental and animal welfare protection, and we will continue to be so outside the EU.

Debate on the Address

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. We have almost a lost generation. Children are going to understaffed schools with very few teaching assistants, where headteachers are going to parents with a begging bowl to try to match school budgets, and too many young people are growing up in bad housing, with incredible levels of stress and worry about the future. That contributes to the mental health crisis that this country as a whole must address.

Will the Prime Minister match Labour’s commitments to scrap the benefit freeze, end the benefit cap, ditch the bedroom tax, scrap the two-child limit and the disgusting rape clause, and end punitive sanctions in the benefit system? While we welcome the legislation to ensure that employers pass on tips to their workers—something that the Labour and trade union movement has long campaigned for—the Government must go further, and I urge them to listen to the package of measures set out by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) in her brilliant speech at the TUC last month. This Queen’s Speech was supposed to herald an end to austerity and a new vision. Instead, it barely begins to unpick the devastating cuts to public services.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the climate and nature emergencies demand so much more than the six words they were accorded in the Queen’s Speech and an Environment Bill that will widely weaken the protections we currently enjoy as members of the EU? Will he join me in calling for a comprehensive green new deal to decarbonise the economy by 2030, so that we can show we are genuinely serious about the climate crisis?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I am coming on to that in a moment, but I absolutely agree: what we need is a green new deal. We need a green industrial revolution, and we have to face up to the reality of the climate emergency. If we do not, the damage to the next generation and the one after it will be even worse.

Our national health service has suffered the longest funding squeeze in its history, while life expectancy is falling and infant mortality rising. Schools have had their budgets cut, class sizes have risen, and headteachers are sending begging letters to parents. Any Government Member who is concerned about that should simply take a walk down the road and speak to any primary school headteacher about the stress that they and their pupils are going through. The police have lost more than 20,000 officers, while violent crime soars.

Preparations for Leaving the EU

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. All these references to named individuals are quite improper. The right hon. Gentleman no doubt luxuriated in the lather of the Oxford Union, in which he excelled, and he excels in this House other than in that respect. He should wash his mouth out, and should refer to Ministers not by name but by title, which he is well able to do.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Minister is not being straight with us. He has the gall to claim that UK environmental standards post Brexit will be a beacon to the world, but in reality he is planning to cut those standards. The document claims that the carbon price will apply “at a similar level” to that under the EU emissions trading system, but page 64 makes it clear that the new carbon emissions price will be about half the EU price. If the Government are going to cut incentives to tackle the climate crisis, will they at least be honest about it?

[Michael Gove]

This Government were one of the first to commit themselves to net zero by 2050, and we are taking all the appropriate steps to ensure that we shift towards renewables and reduce emissions.

Prime Minister's Update

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I really thank my right hon. Friend, because he has played a huge role in developing the whole concept of alternative arrangements, and yes, that played a large part in our conversation on Monday with the Taoiseach. I think it would be over-optimistic to say that that alone can solve the problem. There remain difficult issues about customs, as I am sure he understands, and we really must make progress on that issue.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The tone of the Prime Minister’s speech was truly shocking, and if he recognises that tensions are inflamed, it is up to him not to stoke them further by whipping up hatred, treating Parliament with contempt and dividing our country still further. This populist rhetoric is not only unfitting for a Prime Minister; it is genuinely and seriously dangerous, as our Friends across the Aisle have just said. So I ask him again a simple question: if he trusts the people as much as he says he does, why will he not allow them to have a final say on his deal? He says he wants this to be over quickly; that is the quickest way to get a resolution to this crisis.

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, I would like Parliament to have a say on the deal that we do, but I think the best way to get the people to have a say is to have a general election, and I hope that the hon. Lady will support that.

Points of Order

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think that the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) has done huge and invaluable work on this front. She knows the issues and she feels them. She is, of course, as the hon. Lady knows, a stellar progressive change maker, and she has charted that course since she entered the House on 28 October 1982—she came into the House as a very young woman indeed, and she will mark 37 years in the House next month. If I know the right hon. and learned Lady, she will keep pursuing these issues, in whatever capacity, because they reflect her humanity and her attachment to principle, the rights of the underdog and the cause of equality. She, like the hon. Lady, came into politics for all the right reasons.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

rose—

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I know that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) will be very proud of what I have just said about his wife, and he is looking even happier than he otherwise would. I will come to him, but it would be a pity to squander him at too early a stage of our proceedings when we have only been going for an hour and a quarter or so, so I will come to him momentarily.

[Caroline Lucas]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you for breaking one of your own rules—perhaps not a written one—as I have only just come into the Chamber, as you noticed. I want to apologise and explain that I was off the parliamentary estate. I had not known that you were about to make a statement, but as soon as I heard, I came back as fast as I could.

I want to thank you very seriously for your incredibly strong sense of fairness. As an MP from a party of just one in this place, it is very easy to feel somewhat marginalised from time to time, and I have so much gratitude for you that you have always included the Green party, recognising that I may be only one in here, but I represent a party out there. I thank you for your incredibly strong sense of fairness and justice and thank you for your reforming zeal in this place. We still have a long way to go, but thanks to you, we are a long way down that path.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady may recall that she once asked me if it would be all right if she included on the dust jacket of a book she was about to publish a tribute that I had paid her. I said to her that I was more than delighted for her to use that tribute on the dust jacket. My rationale was very simple: I had said what I said in public. I said it because I meant it, and I meant it so I said it, and, having meant it and said it, I was more than happy for it to be reproduced. I rather trust that that will continue to be at the hon. Lady’s pleasure. She is a superb parliamentarian and I think that that is recognised across the House. Without a vast infrastructure to support her, she is indefatigable, irrepressible and astonishing in her productivity and in the sheer range of her political interests. She is a fine parliamentarian. Also, because she is the only member of her party at the moment in this House, she is in the happy position of being leader and Chief Whip of her own party and, I think, of invariably agreeing with herself.

I thank colleagues. I know that we have taken a long time, but finally, we have time—frankly, we would have more time if we were not disappearing for a rather excessive period—for Jack Dromey.

Early Parliamentary General Election (No. 2)

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We now face 34 days during which all the checks, balances and gears of parliamentary democracy have been deliberately stalled while the Government teeter between avoiding and evading the law. This is neither normal nor honourable.

We desperately need a new politics of citizens’ conventions in every nation and of truth and conciliation in an informed referendum, with article 50 revoked, if necessary, to allow that to happen. In all honesty I know I cannot ask you to resolve this, but I think the time is fast approaching when you will have to do exactly that.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The events of tonight have clearly shown that our political system is broken. It is wrong that a Prime Minister can suspend Parliament as a mere inconvenience simply to avoid scrutiny. It is wrong that he can cynically try to use the proposal of a general election as a way of getting us to crash out of the EU while we are in the middle of a general election campaign.

We cannot continue with this uncodified constitution that depends on people playing by the rules, when we have a feral Government who are not only not playing by the rules but are not even going to abide by the law. We urgently need a written constitution and a citizens’ convention to inform it. No one voted for less democracy. We should design our constitutional settlement so that such a cynical power grab can never be allowed to happen again.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance, because I think many of our constituents will be confused tonight. They will be confused because a Labour party that has asked for a general election for two years has turned one down, because the Liberal Democrats are acting anything but democratically and because the SNP is so arrogant that it says it speaks for all of Scotland, when no one party speaks for all of Scotland.

Tonight a lot of people in this House have put our faith—[Interruption.] You talk about shouting people down, but you are happy to shout me down. I think not. You will not shout me or my constituents down.

A lot of people have put faith in my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to come back with a new deal, and there are concerns about time. In the time that you have left, Mr Speaker, can you assure the House that additional time will be made available for debate when we come back? If that means late-night sittings or weekend sittings, we shall have it. We need to debate a new rule, and hopefully you will help facilitate that.

Prorogation (Disclosure of Communications)

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on stressing the fact that this is not just a technical debate. The livelihoods and lives of our constituents are literally at stake.

On that subject, does the right hon. and learned Gentleman share my concern that my freedom of information request to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the impact on food supplies and the other risks of a no-deal Brexit was turned down? DEFRA confirmed it had that information on what the impact on food supplies will be, but apparently it would not be in the public interest to reveal it. Does he share my concern about that?

[Keir Starmer]

I am concerned about that, and I recall that that is where we started the journey last time, when we asked for impact assessments because freedom of information requests were not fulfilled.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry]

It does rather have the whiff of that.

At Prime Minister’s questions last week, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield asked the Prime Minister why it had proved impossible during the Scottish legal proceedings to find any Government official or Minister who was prepared to state on oath in a sworn statement the reasons for Prorogation. The Prime Minister did not answer the question. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman explained earlier, it has been suggested to a number of Members, myself included, by reliable sources, that Government officials were approached by the Government Legal Service about swearing such statements but refused to do so. I cannot know the reasons why they refused to sign a sworn statement; I can only speculate. I speculate that perhaps they refused for fear of perjuring themselves, or for fear that to tell the truth would be damaging to the Government. The idea that any Government official should be put in a position in which they fear having to perjure themselves before the courts of the jurisdictions of Scotland or England, or indeed any jurisdiction in the United Kingdom, is very concerning.

The same sources that suggested that officials have refused to sign sworn statements have also suggested to me, and to other Members of the House, that key figures in No. 10 and the Government have been communicating about the real reasons for Prorogation not through the official channels of Government emails and memos, but by personal email, WhatsApp and “burner” phones—normally used by people involved in a criminal enterprise to avoid being traced. If that is true, they will have adopted a subterfuge, and there can only really be one reason for that: to conceal the real reasons for Prorogation from the scrutiny of this House and, very seriously, the scrutiny of the courts.

The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield explained at some length what careful thought he has given to the way in which this has been presented. I will not repeat any of that, other than to say that he has clearly applied his mind very carefully to it, and the allegations that underlie the motion are very serious. If there is no truth in them, so be it. But let us pass the motion and let there be transparency and accountability, because those are the two things, I suggest, that this Prime Minister and his shabby Administration fear the most.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. and learned Lady is making a powerful case. Does she agree that this Government’s cavalier treatment of parliamentary procedure and democratic principle underlines the need not for uncodified practices but for a written constitution and, in particular, a citizens’ assembly that could once again put the people at the heart of our democracy?

Early Parliamentary General Election

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

This attempt to dissolve Parliament is a desperate and utterly cynical move, and I am delighted that it has been made clear tonight by all the Opposition parties that we are not falling for it. The Prime Minister can own his own horrendous mess. He is trying to smuggle out this no-deal Brexit during an election campaign, and that is what makes it so vital that no election happens before there is an extension of article 50—before it is agreed and, crucially, before it is implemented as well.

I notice that the Prime Minister has scuttled off. He cannot even be bothered to listen to the debate on his own motion on something as important as a general election. There are numerous reasons why many of us want to get rid of this cruel and callous Government. Believe me, I am one of those who absolutely wants to do that, not least because this is a Government who are not only doing nowhere near enough to tackle the climate crisis but actively exacerbating it with fracking, fossil fuel subsidies and so on. This is also a Government who have the arrogance to claim that a no-deal Brexit will just be “bumps in the road”. How dare they? They might just be bumps in the road to those on the Front Bench who have the luxury to be insulated from the impacts of a disastrous no-deal Brexit, but for most of our constituents a no-deal Brexit spells real disaster, not bumps in the road. The mere fact that the Government could use that phrase suggests just out how out of touch they are with their own constituents.

A general election on the Prime Minister’s terms right now is a trap. It will not resolve the Brexit crisis. Elections are rarely fought on one issue alone, and first past the post is notoriously bad at reflecting the true views of the public in the seats that are won. If we are to break the Brexit deadlock in Parliament, the people must lead the way. The Prime Minister regularly asserts his commitment to the will of the people, so why is he not prepared to listen to what people want now, specifically on Brexit, and go back to them in a second referendum—a people’s vote? That is how we resolve Brexit, not by proroguing, dissolving, dodging and obfuscating.

I have one more important point about how the people of our country have been let down by successive Governments. The status quo is intolerable for a huge number of people. Brexit laid bare the extent to which our governance structures are derelict. The social contract is broken. The power game is rigged. The 17.4 million people who gave the establishment such a well-deserved kicking in 2016 were right and reasonable to be furious—we need a powerful commitment now not even to try to go back to the way things were before 2016—but that means tackling democratic failure as well as economic failure. It means redistributing power as well as wealth.

If the Government were genuine about being on the side of the people, they would be honest enough to own the complete chaos that they have managed to create. They would put country before party, back a citizens’ convention to revitalise our democracy and explore proposals such as a codified written constitution and a fairer voting system, so that people’s views are properly heard. Let us at last have a democracy that puts people at the heart of it. The Government would also finally provide a categorical assurance that they will respect this House and the democracy that we do have, and not seek to avoid it in any way or try to avoid implementing the Bill that we have just voted on tonight.