Prorogation of Parliament

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Paul Scully

Monday 9th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Gentleman uses the word “disgraceful”; I have been in this place for only four years, but for three of them, I have sat here scratching my head, thinking, “I have some of the most intelligent people around me acting in the most stupid way.” I blame people on both sides of the argument equally; I am an equal opportunity critic. We should be talking about how we leave, not whether we leave.

Brexit is a big issue that divides parties, communities and families. None the less, we were asked a relatively simple question: do we leave or remain? Leave won, and it is not beyond the wit of man to give businesses, communities, EU nationals here and British citizens abroad the sense of certainty that they need and deserve. In the coming weeks, I hope that we move on and reach a resolution, so that we can get back to the domestic agenda that will be set out in the Queen’s Speech on 14 October.

We saw a lot of confected outrage, as the Leader of the House described it, when the Prorogation of Parliament was first discussed. People conflated two different sets of statements. When several Conservative leadership candidates said that it would not be good to prorogue Parliament to bring about Brexit, come what may, they were talking about a Prorogation that straddled 31 October, so that we would fall out of the EU without discussion. That is clearly not what is happening. The hashtag #StopTheCoup started to appear on Twitter and social media, but frankly, that would be the worst coup ever.

Parliament is coming back on 14 October, and on the week following that, we will debate the Queen’s Speech, which will no doubt involve Brexit, because that will clearly be a major part of it. We then have weeks after that, because a Brexit deal will come back to Parliament only if we get a deal on 18 October at the end of the EU Council. Hopefully, at that point we will achieve a deal and bring it back to this place; we can then discuss it. We will have something that we can all circle around, and that will allow us to say, “Nobody gets everything they want, but this is enough to allow us to say that we have respected the referendum, and to enable us to start looking at the opportunities that Brexit offers, rather than at whether we are leaving.”

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is a national crisis; it is not business as usual. We elected parliamentarians should be in this House debating all the crucial issues related to Brexit, not least of which is what the Government will come up with in relation to the Northern Ireland backstop; at the moment, it looks like the emperor’s new clothes. The hon. Gentleman’s argument that we should use the façade of a Queen’s Speech to introduce a new parliamentary agenda, while we have the big cloud of Brexit over our heads, is weak.

[Paul Scully]

I agree with the hon. Lady that this is a political crisis. It is grinding the country to a halt—certainly, to boredom. There is one way to sort it out. We can sit here contemplating our navels, or we can go out and speak to the people. We can have a general election, in which we can discuss Brexit and engage 70 million people, not just 650. To me, that is democracy in action.

Some hon. Members might say, “Let’s have a second referendum.” There are clearly issues with that. It took nine months to get the first one through this place and to hold it, and we would also have to decide on the question, and the electorate. Those issues, which would be hotly debated in this place, would have to be decided before we could even get to the referendum. People may say that the current situation creates uncertainty, but that option would perpetuate uncertainty. To those people who say, “The EU referendum caused division,” I say: why have another one?