Customs and Borders

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Owen Smith

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

It is frankly arrant nonsense to suggest that staying within the EU or being in the customs union or the single market is in any way, shape or form an impediment to growing our trade outside the EU. The truth is that we have succeeded in doing that over the past 30 years from within the EU, and other countries are doing it even as we speak. It is utter nonsense, and we need to call it out as such and not accept the set of lies that continues to be propagated by those who are ideologically determined to drive Brexit through.

Finally, all I have just described as truth is completely contested. I fully accept our country is still very much divided, and it is not sufficient for the Government or for the Labour party in opposition to acquiesce, in respecting the will of the people, to allowing our country to become poorer, less secure and more isolated, but nor is it sufficient for us simply to overrule the will of people. The only way we can sort this out, the only way we can act in the national interest and secure the agreement of the British people, is to give them the opportunity, once we know the final terms of the deal—what is really on offer, not the lies that have been told but the truth that is then exposed—of a final ratifying referendum, a final say, a people’s vote, or whatever we want to call it. That would bring this country together. Frankly, it would save this country from a lesser future—a less secure, less prosperous and more isolated future. That is the right thing to do, and it is what we should—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.