European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

Debate between Ian Murray and John Redwood

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

Time is of the essence. If the Bill had not been put through this House with four hours of debate, it would not have made it in time for the European Council on Wednesday. In actual fact, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford should be thanked by the Prime Minister for this Bill.

SNP Members are jumping up and down because I said that a democracy fails to be a democracy if the public are not allowed to change their mind. Actually, the public of Scotland have not changed their mind on independence. Indeed, they are more against it— [Interruption.] I have probably just set the cat among the nationalist pigeons.

I have a lot of respect for the hon. Member for Stone because he has always held his views about the European Union. We have to respect those views, listen to them and agree to disagree—we will definitely do that—but what is undemocratic is for Members to table amendments to trash a Bill that has gone democratically through this House and the other place to put democratically into law the prevention of no deal. That is what is undemocratic, which is why we should support the Lords amendments.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Many people outside this House are losing confidence and trust in us and our proceedings. Tonight is another plunge in how they see us, because we are behaving collectively so badly. My right hon. and hon. Friends who have complained about the lack of time for debating both the Bill and the amendments are quite right. This is a serious constitutional matter. We have not been given time to construct proper amendments and there is no time in this brief hour to do justice to the complex issues raised by the Lords amendments. We had but a short debate on the original consideration of the Bill, when I was able to set out some of the constitutional difficulties involved in groups of MPs seizing the agenda and taking over money resolution and Crown prerogative matters, and we are not allowed proper time tonight to consider exactly how all that fits with this Bill.

What we do know, however, is that the very slim majority who have got the Bill this far through this House intend to go against the clearly expressed wishes of the British people in the referendum. All those who voted to leave, two years and nine months ago, had every reason to suppose that all Labour and Conservative Members elected on their 2017 manifestos would see through our exit in a timely way. They should also have expected that from the promises made by both the leave and the remain campaigns in the referendum, the legislation put through in granting that referendum, and the clear statement of the Government at the time, who said that we would implement the wishes of the British people. The Opposition did not dissent from that particular view when the Government put out their leaflet. Indeed, during the remain campaign many Labour MPs endorsed the Government. That is why tonight is another sad night. This Parliament is breaking its word, breaking its promises and letting down 17.4 million voters, but it is also letting down quite a lot of remain voters.

A lot of remain voters are good democrats who fully accept the verdict of the British people. Quite a lot of people in our country were only just remain voters or only just leave voters and are prepared to live with the judgment of the majority, and they now, too, are scandalised that this Parliament is insisting on a second needless delay when we have had two years and nine months to prepare for exit and when our Government assure us that they are fully prepared for exiting without signing the withdrawal agreement.

I find it very odd that Members of this House think that the withdrawal agreement is, in itself, Brexit or in any way helps Brexit because, of course, the withdrawal agreement is a massively long delay to our exit, with the added problem, which the Opposition have rightly identified, that it entails signing up to a solemn and binding international treaty to undermine our bargaining position in the second part of the negotiations envisaged by the EU’s process.