Business of the House

Debate between Lord Benyon and Joanna Cherry

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Many promises were made by David Cameron, Ruth Davidson and others during the Scottish independence referendum that have not been kept.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

The business motion?

[Joanna Cherry]

I will return to the business motion, which in fairness I have addressed so far—[Interruption.] I know that people sometimes do not want to hear the SNP voices in this House, and that has not gone unnoticed in Scotland. Judging by my mailbox, it certainly has not gone unnoticed by many of my constituents who are not natural SNP voters but who still do not like the sight of SNP MPs being howled down. Conservative Members might like to bear that in mind. I am sure that Ruth Davidson will be on the phone to them, because she seems to think that she is going to beat me in my constituency at the next general election—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I wouldn’t get too excited, because the person they sent last time did not succeed, and that was before this fiasco unfolded.

I shall get back to my main point, which is the legitimate concern of Conservative Members that what is happening today might set an unfortunate precedent. I say to them that we are in extremis today because of the Government’s failure to govern properly. Nothing in this sorry, chaotic fiasco of Brexit should set a precedent for anything we do in the future. What we are doing today, we are doing only because we are in extremis.

EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)

Debate between Lord Benyon and Joanna Cherry

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

It is indeed, but the difference is that many people who signed that petition would like to see us just revoke article 50 now—straightaway—and that would be an end of the matter. I would quite like to see that myself, but that is not what this motion seeks to do. The motion is about using revocation as an insurance policy. In respectful recognition of the fact that the issue of Brexit will not go away if we simply revoke to avoid no deal, the motion seeks to mandate the Government to set up a public inquiry, under the Inquiries Act 2005, within three months of revocation to establish whether a model of a future relationship with the European Union could be found that would command majority support in the United Kingdom. It also says that, if that could be done, another referendum would be held on the question of whether to retrigger article 50 and renegotiate that model.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

rose—

[Joanna Cherry]

I will give way in a moment, but I just want to knock on the head at this stage a myth that has been peddled by some people that, if this motion were passed, the EU would object to our revoking article 50. That is not the case. It is a misunderstanding of the judgment of the Court of Justice in Luxembourg in the Scottish case, which did not say that, once we revoke article 50, we can never issue an article 50 notice ever again. It categorically did not say that. If Members cannot take that from me, then please read the judgment of the court, which I put on my Twitter feed this afternoon.

[Richard Benyon]

rose—

[Mrs Main]

rose—

[Joanna Cherry]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Richard Benyon]

I am very grateful to the hon. and learned Lady. Does she agree that one of the failures of this debate, in this House and beyond, is that we do not talk about exactly what no deal is all about—what it actually means for our constituents? We talk about it in too much of a conceptual way, and we let those who are in favour of leaving with no deal get away with not going into the real details—whether on agriculture, or the 83 trade deals of which we would no longer be part.

[Joanna Cherry]

I absolutely agree. That has been one of the many failures of this process—that this House has not been afforded sufficient time to knock on the head the sort of misinformation peddled about the consequences of no deal. Fortunately, we have much independent research on the consequences of no deal and Members will find that that independent research wholly tells us that no deal would be bad for the economies of these islands, for jobs and for the living standards of people who live here. It would be to shoot ourselves in the foot and to cut off our nose to spite our face.

UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Debate between Lord Benyon and Joanna Cherry

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

That was one of the most courageous speeches I have heard during my time in the House.

I am very sad that the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) is not here. When we last debated the matter in 2007, he was in his place and I was sitting on the Opposition Benches. He swept his arm to his right and said that we in the home counties could not understand what it was like to have such a powerful weapon on our doorsteps. I pointed out to him that if he came into my bedroom and looked across the Kennet valley, he would see the rooftops of the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston; if he looked slightly to his left, he would see the rooftops of the Royal Ordnance Factory at Burghfield; and if he climbed on to my roof, he could probably see the missile silos at Greenham common. In my part of Berkshire, we need no lessons from anyone about the impact or the effect of living close to the nuclear deterrent. He replied as consummately as clever politicians do, that that was the first and last time he would ever be asked into a Tory MP’s bedroom.

The point is that the nuclear deterrent is my constituency’s largest employer, and it brings many advantages, not least to the supply chain of 275 local companies and 1,500 supply chain organisations nationally. Add to that its role in advising the Government on counter-terrorism; the effect it has on nuclear threat reduction, on forensics—not least in the recent Litvinenko inquiry—and on non-proliferation; its second-to-none apprenticeship scheme; and its academic collaboration with the Orion laser. None of that would matter one jot if the decision we were taking today was wrong. The decision we are taking today is right.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I have listened with great interest to what the hon. Gentleman has said about the situating of nuclear materials and weapons in his constituency. Does he agree that there is one big difference between his constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara)? The hon. Gentleman’s constituents—witness his election—want nuclear weapons. The constituents of my hon. Friend, and those of all my hon. Friends, do not want nuclear weapons.