European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I will, not surprisingly, be wholeheartedly voting to trigger article 50 tomorrow evening. I have also used my judgment. I accept that Lambeth voted overwhelmingly for remain but, as I have made very, very clear, this was a United Kingdom referendum, not a constituency or borough-based referendum. I welcome the many letters that I have received from my constituents—a lot were very pleasant—regretting that I will vote to trigger article 50. I have also had many nasty, venomous letters, not necessarily from my constituents, but from across the country. I resent and deplore the language that has been thrown around over the past few months. It comes not just from one side. There is a tendency to think that it is only the remainers who have had some pretty awful things said about them. Pretty dreadful things have been said by some who voted to remain against people such as me who stood out against our own party. None of it is acceptable. Members all need to do their bit to ensure that we seek to improve the level of political discourse, especially over the years when we are involved in our negotiations.

Like the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), I remember the Maastricht treaty debate, when I was a relatively new Member of Parliament. Time after time, the Labour party made us come along to vote against all the amendments but then, when it came to the final vote, we were ordered to abstain.

I welcome the speech made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). I welcome his tone, the graveness of the way in which he put his argument, and his honesty about the difficulty that Labour faces on this issue. I am very pleased that my party has decided not to block the referendum decision; it would be a travesty if we did.

I wish to raise a couple of annoying things that people keep saying. One is that people did not know what they were voting for. It is said that those who voted to leave did not understand what that meant. That really is patronising, and it shows part of the reason why so many people voted to leave—they were fed up being treated as if they knew nothing and as if those in power knew more than them.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, which means that I have secured her a bit more time. Does she recall that during the course of the referendum—this was certainly my experience, and I hope that it was hers—there was much more engagement, much more questioning, much more interest and a bigger turnout than at any general election in which I have ever been involved? People were really trying to find out what this was all about.

[Kate Hoey]

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. At the many meetings I spoke at all over the country, there was a fervent interest in the issue. People wanted to know more. I remember hearing the former Prime Minister and the former Chancellor of the Exchequer very clearly warning—not just warning, but threatening—people that if they dared to vote to leave, the consequences would be our leaving the single market. Let us not call it the single market; it is an internal market. If we are leaving the EU, of course we have to leave the internal market. I am sure that, like any other country outside the EU, we will be able to get a deal that allows us to have access to that market.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Hoey]

No, I will not. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had 22 minutes in which to speak.

[Mr Speaker]

It was 17 in fact.

[Kate Hoey]

Mr Speaker, my maths are not as good as yours.

The other matter I want to raise is this idea that if someone voted to leave, they are, if not an outright racist, an indirect racist. It is ridiculous and appalling that the 17 million people who voted to leave are being treated in that way. We know that those people were against not immigrants, but the idea that people from 27 other countries—26 excluding the Republic of Ireland —could come into our country for no other reason than that they could do so. That did not apply to people outside the European Union. We betrayed the people from the Commonwealth so badly back in 1973, yet they had no right to come here. It is all about getting back control. I know that that sounds like a cliché, but it is what we are doing—taking back control of our own country.

Once we have left the European Union, we will probably have sharp disagreements in the House and not so many cross-party views on a lot of the issues. We want to build—I certainly want to build—a post-Brexit UK that looks at spending priorities that might be very different from those proposed by Members on the other side of the House. I want to look at how we can use new freedoms on state aid in our country, and in order to do that, we must trigger article 50 and get into the negotiations. Our businesses and the country generally want us to get on with it. We have left ourselves in a situation in which we are spending two days of debate on a very simple Bill. The amendments will be considered next week, one or two of which I hope the Government will accept, but the reality is that this is a process that needs to be triggered. We need to do it soon, and the public expect us to do that. I have hope that we can look forward to negotiations that will take this country not to the forbidding place that the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) mentioned—I have no foreboding about our future outside the European Union—but to a bright future. That will happen tomorrow night when we vote to trigger article 50.

Article 50

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

What it requires is leaving the European Union, and that is what we are going to do.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State accept my view that the public want us to get on with this and actually carry out what they voted for? Does he also accept that while they will not look lightly on amendments that are tabled, particularly by parties that actually want another referendum, to delay things unnecessarily, they do perhaps want amendments that clarify the situation and make us all more aware of the Government’s intentions?

[Mr Davis]

The hon. Lady, as ever, goes right to the heart of the matter. The public will not view well attempts to thwart, delay or confuse this process. They will view well attempts to elucidate what is going on, to promote the national interest, to help the negotiating position and so on, and that is entirely what the Government are going to do.

New Partnership with the EU

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The referendum last year set in motion a circumstance where the UK is going to leave the European Union, and the vote will not change that. We want to have a vote so that the House can be behind and support the policy that we are quite sure it will approve of when we get there.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s speech today in the sense that it gives certainty to the millions of Labour supporters who voted to leave and now know that, “Taking back control”, is not just a slogan but actually means something. Will the Secretary of State assure us that in this interim period before we leave the EU, we will continue to work to negotiate trade deals with other countries—some of which might be nearly finished—so that we are ready to go when we actually leave?

[Mr Davis]

Of course we will do that; the hon. Lady is entirely right. We are constrained by a thing called the duty of sincere co-operation, which requires us not to do things that jeopardise actions by the European Union, so if the European Union currently has a trade deal in negotiation, we have to be very careful about how we impact on that. Of course we cannot actually sign anything until the day we leave, but I have a very strong suspicion that there will be a lot of things ready to sign on the very next day.

Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

It is astonishing how linear, or black and white, some Members think this is. We have Norway, which is inside the single market and outside the customs union; we have Turkey, which is inside the customs union and outside the single market; and we have Switzerland, which is not in the single market but has equivalent access to all of its productive and manufacturing services. There is not a single entity, but a spectrum of outcomes, and we will be seeking to get the best of that spectrum of outcomes.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that, throughout the country, when this issue was being discussed, the British public knew that membership of the single market meant free movement of labour. That was one of the basic principles behind why people, in their millions, voted to leave. Is it not time that we straightforwardly said that we want the fullest possible access to the single market, but that we cannot, if we are going to stop free movement, which is what the people of this country wanted, be members of the single market?

[Mr Davis]

Broadly, the argument about full access and control of our borders is an argument that the Prime Minister has already made in the last few weeks, so I do not think I need to elaborate on it. However, let us understand something about this—sometimes, we seem to be arguing over which end of the egg we open first. The argument between us is where the dividing line is on what we tell Parliament about. The hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras recognised in terms, I think, that we could not give every detail to Parliament and that, despite his letter, we could not give a blow-by-blow account—that we could not have Parliament dictate how we dealt with the trade-offs, the terms and so on. [Interruption.] Despite the noise to his right, it is fairly plain that that is what the criterion is; that is where the problem is.

Let us be clear how this applies. If someone tells their opposite number in a negotiation exactly what their top priority is, that will make that top priority extremely expensive. Ordinary people, in their ordinary lives, probably do one big transaction themselves, and that is the purchase of a house. If someone went to buy a house, and they looked at only one house, told the owner that they were in love with that house and made a bid for it, I suspect the price would go up.

Exiting the European Union

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee is right, and this is fundamental to one of the points I was making in my earlier remarks. There are very strong security, foreign affairs, foreign policy and environmental relationships, and a whole series of other relationships, that will continue to apply long after we have left the EU, to the benefit of both the EU and the UK.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome the Secretary of State to his new position and I know that millions of Labour voters and supporters across the country who voted to leave will be pleased that there is someone in this position who genuinely wants to get out of the EU. Will he confirm that there is a real difference between wanting to be members of the single market and wanting to have access to the single market, and that some of the remainers should learn that?

[Mr Davis]

The hon. Lady is right, and of course access to the single market is not really up for grabs; it is there for everybody and, frankly, there are many countries outside the EU that do a better job of exporting to the single market than we do, even without a trade arrangement. So of course we want to have access to the single market and we do not need to be a member of it to do that. Indeed being a member of it is what has caused some of the problems of sovereignty that drove this referendum.