European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Alan Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Of course those representing a port will want to talk up the benefits of that port. The issue will be what legal obligations apply, not just what commercially they would want to do. I think he was talking more in terms of what flows into the UK than necessarily what is flowing back into France. In my remarks in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), I referred to the fact that we have a political debate that tends to focus very heavily on goods, yet we have an economy that is predicated on services. On issues such as data and professional qualifications, there are many other issues that would not be addressed in a WTO scenario. That is the issue. Many Members are raising various different deals to which they feel most closely aligned, but the issue is that those deals would all require a withdrawal agreement and they would all need to address, as the EU has made clear, issues such as citizens, the financial settlement and a backstop, which is needed as a safeguard. It is not enough for the House to say what it is against; we have to say what is the deal, with a withdrawal agreement and a backstop, that we in this House can unite behind.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Clearly, the whole point of the backstop is to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, so will the Secretary of State outline the Government’s timeframe for the invention, trial and deployment of the new technology needed for an invisible border with absolutely no infrastructure?

[Stephen Barclay]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the political declaration reflected the Prime Minister’s negotiation success—this point has been raised by a number of my hon. Friends—in terms of using technology to mitigate the issue of a hard border. In the interim, the issue is whether we can do that to the timescale required to avoid a backstop. The political declaration allows us to explore that, but this is about having insurance to protect the very peace that so many on the Opposition Benches worked for and quite rightly should take pride in.

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[Stephen Gethins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. He represents a rural area with many similarities to my constituency. He will be aware that the Bank of England warned that crashing out would be worse than the 2008 crisis. We know how devastating years of austerity have been for our public services and household incomes. The University of St Andrews found that small businesses will be particularly hard hit, so he is right to make that point. Even the Chancellor recognises that remaining in the European Union is better. We are all paying the penalty for the Tories’ folly and, frankly, extremism in this regard. The EU single market is the world’s largest economic bloc, with half a billion consumers. It is eight times bigger than the United Kingdom, and 40% of Scottish exports go there. It has become very expensive indeed to leave the EU, and the question has to be asked: is it now unaffordable to remain in the United Kingdom?

Other industries will be badly hit as well. The UK, and Scotland in particular, does well out of education and research. Since 2014—we have had no answers about what will come next—Scottish universities and other research institutions have drawn down about £500 million of EU funding, and the UK has done particularly well competitively. I represent some universities; research conducted by those such as St Andrews, Dundee and Abertay through EU funding—I see this daily, as do colleagues elsewhere in the House—will benefit each and every one of us for years to come, and that is before we even start on the financial benefits of membership.

What have the UK Government said in response to the biggest employer in my constituency? Absolutely nothing. That is an abrogation of their responsibility to people who own small businesses, and who work in research, which makes our lives better and improves our healthcare. The same goes for other industries. The Secretary of State mentioned the food and drink sector and talked about having a no-deal Brexit if the agreement was rejected. Extraordinarily, some of his colleagues have actively said that they would like a no-deal Brexit, but the National Farmers Union of Scotland has said:

“It would be nothing short of catastrophic and could have a devastating impact”.

On access to markets and much-needed labour, it said:

“It is becoming clear to NFU Scotland that there is misleading and damaging rhetoric coming from the UK Government…on where the gaps in skills and labour are.”

I hope that the Secretary of State will not mind me saying—I am sure that others will not—that the NFU is not renowned for coming out with strong words. It does so sparingly, not often, so I certainly hope that he will heed those words.

On fishing, which the Secretary of State mentioned, we have consistently argued for being taken out of the common fisheries policy. For years, Conservatives have consistently voted against that proposal in this place: they voted against the Fisheries Jurisdiction Bill, and against our proposed amendments to previous treaties. Now that we are being taken out of the EU, however, with the impact that will have on the markets to which we need access, all of a sudden they are all in favour of a hard Brexit.

[Alan Brown]

If the backstop is enacted, tariffs will be applied to Scottish fishing exports, but Northern Ireland will be protected by tariff-free access to both the EU and the UK. The Scottish Secretary said that he would resign if special provisions were given to Northern Ireland. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Scottish Secretary is not only still in the job, but urging his colleagues to back a deal that disadvantages Scotland?

[Stephen Gethins]

My hon. Friend is right. It is truly remarkable that the Secretary of State for Scotland is still in a job. He is pursuing a policy that he knows will not only make us poorer, but put Scotland at a competitive disadvantage. I say to our friends from Northern Ireland that we want them to thrive. This has nothing to do with the state of Northern Ireland; it is simply about having a level playing field across these islands. Having a level playing field means that under the agreement, we have access to the markets that Northern Ireland has access to, and it means having EU vessels—

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[Stephen Kerr]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The respect that he describes is reciprocated—to him, and indeed to all his colleagues, whom I recognise as Unionists. I do understand the complexities, and a lot of the emotion as well, around the issue of Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, but I have thought long and hard about Northern Ireland, as well as Scotland, and I believe that the backstop does not have to, and must not, represent a threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom, and that those of us who want to honour the decision of the people on 26 June must work together to make Brexit happen. Otherwise, we will have a crisis of political confidence in this country. There are so many people—sadly, on both sides of this House—who do not want to honour the result the people gave us in June 2016. The alternatives on offer are this agreement, no Brexit, or a hard, no-deal Brexit. I will come back to those points, but I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Negotiations are about achieving the acceptable, but very rarely about achieving the perfect. The withdrawal agreement is a predictable compromise that is bearable for both sides—and, crucially, it delivers on the referendum result.

Since shortly after being elected to this House, I have served on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. Its latest report revisited evidence we had received 12 months earlier from businesses in strategically critical sectors of the UK economy—automotive, aerospace, pharmaceutical, and food and drink. We collected evidence on their response to the withdrawal agreement, and as we make clear in the report’s conclusion, while they would have preferred to have stuck with the status quo, they now need clarity and certainty, and for that reason, their consistent message to the Committee, and to the House through the report, is that we should support the withdrawal agreement. They were also very respectful of our democracy and accepted the result of the June 2016 referendum—something that so many in this House seem unprepared to do. These business leaders were prepared to accept that result, and they were actively seeking to apply a pragmatic approach to an undoubtedly complex set of problems. It is now for us parliamentarians to be pragmatic and deliver the certainty that businesses need, and we do that by supporting the withdrawal agreement.

I am a Unionist; it is core to who I am. I have an unshakeable belief in our country and its peoples, in Scotland and in the United Kingdom, the most successful political union in the history of the world. My warning to colleagues is simply this: nationalism is waiting in the wings. The withdrawal agreement is, in my judgment, no threat to the Union, but no deal is. The threat in Scotland is from the Scottish Nationalists; they want the disruption that no deal would bring, because their nationalism is more important to them than any other issue. They and their leader make no secret of the fact that their single unifying purpose is to break up the United Kingdom, and that transcends every other single issue, economic or social. They want chaos; they want the disruption, because they believe it will give them the platform to launch their bid, much talked about within their ranks, for a second independence referendum, so that they can break up the United Kingdom.

I say to those who advocate no deal, particularly Conservative Members, that to me, as a Scottish Unionist, they exhibit some of the same symptoms as the SNP. Like the SNP, they appear to be prepared to sacrifice jobs and prosperity to realise their version of our future.

[Alan Brown]

The hon. Gentleman talks about nationalism. Who gave EU citizens the vote in the 2014 referendum? Who gave EU citizens the voting franchise, and who did not?

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[Carol Monaghan]

That is exactly what many of the emails say—they voted no in 2014 because of their concern about European Union membership, and now their worst concerns are coming to pass.

I was in Romania last year as part of a parliamentary delegation. Everywhere we went, there was a celebration of Europe and its membership of the European Union. People showed great pride in the country having been a member since 2007. It was notable that one issue raised fairly regularly with the delegation was the brain drain that Romania was experiencing. It was seeing its most talented and very best young people moving to other parts of Europe. We gain benefit from that, and we should continue to.

Let us compare that with the UK. We joined a trade organisation very reluctantly in the early 1970s because we were being economically disadvantaged by not being a member of it. Almost immediately afterwards, there was a referendum to see whether that had been the right decision. Had we really done what we should have done? Throughout that time, we heard about European bureaucracy and about how things were being done to us. There was lots of comedy about it. I remember episodes of “Yes, Minister” in which people talked about sausages and bendy bananas. It is rather ironic that we are talking about the bureaucracy of the European Union and European Parliament when, just along the corridor, we have a whole pile of unelected bureaucrats sitting in this building.

The nature of the arguments in the referendum campaign also caused me deep concern. There were stories about millions going to the EU that could be spent on the NHS instead. There was scaremongering about swarms of migrants. A lot of this was stoked up by the right-wing media, and it was received by a public who were looking for leadership. EU nationals were blamed for the strain on schools, the health service and social housing, but let us be clear that the majority of EU nationals in the UK are of working age and are contributing. Three to 18 is the age of education, but the majority of EU nationals here are not in that age group. The biggest strain on our health service comes from those who are over 70, and that does not generally include EU nationals.

When I first came to London to sit in this place, I had a flat in a building where more than half the flats were empty, because they had been bought up and banked by foreign money launderers who used them as a place to keep their investments. Those flats were empty when homeless people were sleeping out on the streets. That was not the fault of EU nationals. If we want to deal with the housing crisis, we need to build houses for social use—for people who need houses. We need to stop building houses that are going to sit empty in the centre of London.

[Alan Brown]

On that theme, is my hon. Friend aware that the UK is currently the most unequal country in the EU? The people who financed Vote Leave are the very ones who are going to do their best to make the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That will be the Brexit dividend.

[Carol Monaghan]

We know that a no-deal Brexit is going to be economically disastrous. We also know that when an economy is wrecked in such a way, people with money, power and connections are in a position to exploit the situation for their own ends. No doubt we will see that happening if we are stupid enough to leave without a deal.

Following the vote to leave, where was the political leadership? Who was countering the right-wing media? Who was reaching out to the EU nationals here? The answer is that Scotland was. On the very first day after the vote, the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, stood up and said, “You are welcome. We want you. We value you. Please remain. You are our friends, our family and our colleagues.” That is powerful. I and many of my colleagues wrote to every EU national in our constituencies. The majority of them cannot even vote for us in this place, so there was no personal gain for us in doing that. We did it because it was the right thing to do. But what did we see from the Prime Minister? We saw her talking about “queue jumping” by EU nationals, implying that they were cheating their way into jobs, and we now see them being asked to pay a £65 fee to apply for settled status. How can they feel valued with that sort of action?

The biggest issue for me is the position of EU nationals and the loss of freedom of movement—[Interruption.] The deal does not protect freedom of movement—not for EU nationals here or for our people moving elsewhere. It does not support that. My husband is an EU national. He spent 17 years in the Royal Navy as a commissioned officer, with two and a half years of that time spent under the ocean, yet he has British nationalists telling him to go home if he does not like things here, and he is not unique in that. The worst thing is the patronising manner in which people have been dealt with. He has been told, “You should be okay.” What? Because he is white and speaks English? We are not interested in being part of a xenophobic society that pulls the drawbridge up behind us.

Our universities have expressed concerns about Brexit. They are concerned about the loss of EU funding, both in Horizon 2020 and in successor programmes. They are concerned about the threat posed to the rich collaborations that are supported and underpinned by freedom of movement. Universities UK has said that over half of all UK-based European Research Council funding is received by non-UK nationals living in the UK. That accentuates the risk that we could lose out on talented and highly mobile researchers.

With the immigration White Paper, the Government said, “Well, if you’re skilled, you’ll be okay.” I have asked a series of written questions about what is meant by high, medium and low-skilled jobs. I have been told that high-skilled is degree level, medium is A-level or HND level, and low-skilled is GCSE level. However, that is at odds with the salary thresholds that will apply. For early-stage researchers and post-docs or for early-career nurses, teachers and even medics, the definition of skills does not match the salary threshold.