Exiting the European Union: Meaningful Vote

Debate between Chris Bryant and Dominic Grieve

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), but I shall try to confine my remarks to the issue on the Order Paper, rather than the more general debate on the merit of the Government’s deal.

I supported this debate because I happen to agree that what happened yesterday was essentially pretty unprecedented. We have a deal before this House, and this House was in the middle of considering it. The terms under which the EU withdrawal Act passed through the House were an absolute and clear undertaking by the Government that Parliament would be involved at every stage, and that as soon as the deal had been reached it would be brought expeditiously to us—indeed, so much so that some people wondered if it might not appear in the House almost too early, before we had the opportunity to consider it properly. We were in the middle of that consideration.

I fully appreciate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s difficulty. If by going away and speaking to our European partners she will be a position to achieve some change to the deal that she can properly bring before the House, I can understand why she may have wished to interrupt its consideration. But I really do worry about the implications, because although I listened carefully to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the Government appear to have given themselves very considerable latitude as to when this business might return to us. If it is clear by Monday of next week that the Prime Minister has not changed the terms of the treaty, I would expect that this House’s consideration of the business ought to resume at once, because it is not in the national interest that we should be prevented from expressing our view on the deal as soon as possible. That is my principal concern.

I was reassured by some of the things I heard this afternoon about the Government’s intentions, but it would simply not be acceptable for the debate to resume on 19 January. I just wanted to make that point, because it seems to be key.

[Chris Bryant]

I wonder whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman has heard the view expressed by some Government Whips that if the Prime Minister has not really got anything out of this week, there would be no point in Parliament sitting next week at all, and that the Government would therefore announce on Thursday that we were not going to sit next week. He will of course be aware that we would have to have a vote on that.

[Mr Grieve]

I am quite clear that the urgency of the situation that we face, and the divisions both in the country and within this House make it imperative that this House should be able to pronounce on the deal that the Government bring forward.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Dominic Grieve

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Grieve]

No, I wish to conclude.

In those circumstances, there is an issue that I cannot ignore. As the House will have noticed this afternoon, a statement was sent by the Secretary of State that will become a written ministerial statement tomorrow. The first part of it deals with the position of the Speaker and, if I may put it like this, the piquancy of this is that having on the one hand said that an unamendable motion to note is an unamendable motion to note in a statute, the fact is that it really has absolutely no force at all. The reality is that it is part of the Standing Orders of this House, and it is not open to any interpretation in any court and, ultimately, it will be entirely your responsibility, Mr Speaker, to decide what can or should not be treated as a neutral terms motion. Actually, the statement highlights the fact that, although this debate has been about trying to provide assurance—not just in this House, but to many members of the public outside who are worried about the end of this process and what might happen—the truth is that the assurance does not lie in the words of the statute, except in so far as the statute is the word of the Government. The assurance lies in the hands of this House and, in the first part of the statement, in the power of the Speaker.

I then insisted that a second piece be put into the statement, which I will read out. If I may say so, this ought to be blindingly obvious, but it says:

“The Government recognises that it is open for Ministers and members of the House of Commons to table motions on and debate matters of concern and that, as is the convention, parliamentary time will be provided for this.”

If this House chooses to debate matters, including matters on which it may wish to have multiple motions, the reality is that if we wish to exert our power to do that, we can. In the circumstances that might follow a “no deal”, which would undoubtedly be one of the biggest political crises in modern British history, if the House wishes to speak with one voice, or indeed with multiple voices, the House has the power to do so.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The bit I do not understand is that many motions have been carried by this House in the past few years—motions tabled by the Backbench Business Committee, by the Opposition and by ordinary Members—but the Government have just let them go through and then completely ignored them. The only thing that has legislative effect is legislation. That is why we must have a meaningful vote, not a pretend one.

[Mr Grieve]

Yes, the hon. Gentleman is right, but if the Government were to concede to the amendment, as drafted in the Lords, for an amendable motion, the House must understand that the Government could ignore it. I can assure the House that it would not be enforceable in any court of law—[Interruption.] No, that really must be understood. It could not be enforceable in any court of law, because that would entirely undermine the rights and privileges of this place. It would be for us to enforce it. Of course, the ultimate sanction that this House has is a motion of no confidence but, short of that, there are other means by which the House can in fact bring its clear view to bear on the Government.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Dominic Grieve

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Grieve]

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. Obviously, the House will have to make up its mind about how it wishes to proceed, but, as I have said, there must be a proper understanding of the disquiet that is felt on both sides of the House.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I know that the Solicitor General has spoken in good faith, but would it not be best for those discussions to take place in a forthright way, for us to vote with their lordships for their lordships’ amendment and for the Government to return to the matter in the House of Lords after the discussions?

[Mr Grieve]

I fear not. I think the reality is that if we accept the Lords amendment, that will be the end of the matter. That is the problem that we face in this House.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Dominic Grieve

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Grieve]

There is no doubt that some of the problems we have are not going to be helpful in our negotiation. Equally, it is right to say that the more we can have mature, considered and sensible debate in this House, the more we improve our ability to negotiate with our EU partners.

I have tabled a number of amendments. As with all amendments, some are multiple choice—we have to do this in this House, because it is how we go about looking at and examining legislation—and some are probing amendments. Some are, in my view, more important than others. I tabled the one that hon. Gentleman highlights because the Government did not really explain that they wanted multiple exit dates. I wanted to tease out why and to suggest that one exit date might be better because of the consequences for the use of Henry VIII powers thereafter, but there might actually be a justification for what the Government are doing. All that needs to be worked through in the legislation, and that is what I have sought to do.

I say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench that over past weeks we have had some really sensible, constructive discussions on some of the areas covered by the amendments that I have tabled. I hope very much indeed that we can achieve some degree of consensus, in which case some of the amendments, whether on triage or the way we treat retained EU law, might not be required. I do not wish to get diverted into all that; I shall come back to it in later debates. The trouble is—I repeat this—that it all gets marred by events such as those last Friday, when extraordinary amendments are suddenly magicked out of the blue that simply do not make any sense at all.

When I read the amendments and those consequential on them, which I must say I saw only this morning, I saw another problem: as has already been highlighted, one of the consequentials seemed to me to totally undermine the purpose of the main amendment, to the point where the conspiracy theorist in me made me think it was a sort of double deceit or double bluff—that it was intended in some way to give the impression to some of my right hon. and hon. Friends who really worry about this that they were being offered this tablet of stone on our departure, but it was in fact teasingly capable of being shifted. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General sent me a text earlier that said that I was mistaken and that that was not the intention—that it was the very reverse.

I am not a parliamentary draftsman, and I know that there are always different ways in which an amendment to a statute can be read. I remain of the view, though, that the wording is very peculiar indeed if the intention is to exclude the possibility of playing around with the exit date, which is being offered as a talisman. I must say to my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General that I did naughtily begin to wonder whether in fact the parliamentary draftsman was so appalled at the folly of what the Government were doing that he had sneakily altered amendment 383 to try to offer them a lifeline in case they came to regret what they had done. I am sure that that is being very unfair to the parliamentary draftsman, whom I know always does what is requested of him or her.

[Chris Bryant]

The tendency of any Government, especially when they have such a major project on their hands, is always to try to manage the project and to manage Parliament. Has the right hon. and learned Gentleman discovered over recent weeks that the sad truth of the matter is that there is a consensus in the House that embraces all those on the Opposition Benches and a significant number of Government Back Benchers? It actually embraces half the Government—I can see at least three, possibly four, Ministers sitting on the Front Bench who would sign up to his amendment. Would not it be far more rational for the Government simply to calm down about this process and try to establish a consensus that can carry the country forward?

[Mr Grieve]

I endorse what the hon. Gentleman says. That is precisely what I wanted to start suggesting to Ministers. There are a number of key areas in this debate this afternoon. The first is the recognition, belated but nevertheless I am grateful for it, that leaving the EU requires statutory authority from this House to make it part of the rule of the law of our land. It is a very important principle. Indeed, I detect that the Government also recognise that if, at some point in the future, we get beyond transition we will probably need another statute to alter the law of our land for any final agreement that we have with our EU partners. We will have to take it in a measured way, and the Government will have to accept that Parliament, being sovereign, must, at the end of the day, have the ability to support or reject this. There is no way around that.

Of course there are the hypothetical questions, such as “Well, there might be nothing to reject because we might be falling out of the European Union with no agreement.” Indeed, yes, but we will discover that when the time comes. In the meantime, the Government must get on with their negotiation, and we can carry on scrutinising them on that. At the end, we want a statute. That statute—I think that this has been acknowledged by the Secretary of State—has got to come before we leave.

That then brings us to a critical issue in this debate. The best point made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State yesterday was that, whereas moving into transition is a qualified majority decision, getting an extension to article 50 requires unanimity. Therefore, the Government may be living with legitimate anxiety that there could be circumstances in which, running up to the wire, there could be difficulty implementing the whole thing by statute. I personally think that that seems inherently improbable, because, on the face of it, if our partners agree a deal with us, why would they then decide to pull the rug from under our feet in such an extraordinary fashion—I know that they talk about “perfidious Albion”, and we probably think that they are all garlic eaters—to tell us that we cannot have an extension to article 50 for the necessary two or three months to take through our statutory processes while they have to take their processes through the EU Parliament?