European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Alan Duncan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry]

No, I have been asked not to take interventions at this stage of the evening.

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)]

By whom?

[Emily Thornberry]

We have had an opportunity over the last eight hours for everyone to have—[Interruption.] Mr Duncan, please calm down. I have been asked not to take interventions at this stage and I am not going to—

[Sir Alan Duncan]

By whom?

[Emily Thornberry]

When the right hon. Gentleman has had a chance to calm down, perhaps I can continue. What this debate and all the many contributions have laid bare is that on the first duty of every Government—the duty to protect the safety and security of their citizens—the Prime Minister’s deal fails. I hope that when the Foreign Secretary speaks in a moment, he will address those points that I have mentioned: access to vital security databases; our future international co-operation with the EU; our ability to tackle terrorism and organised crime; our place in the world; our shared fight against climate change; and even the future of our NHS.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will answer one other very specific question that goes to the heart of his responsibilities as Foreign Secretary. He was proud to announce yesterday the new embassy that his Department is opening in the Maldives, one of 12 new posts due to be opened by the Government over the next two years. However, even after those new openings, there will still be 16 other countries around the world where Britain has no direct consular representation but where other EU countries do. These countries have a combined population of 72 million people, spread across Asia, Latin America and Africa, including 10 past and present members of the UN Security Council. These are countries where up until this point, thanks to the common foreign and security policy, any British citizen visiting, working or living there who found themselves in difficulty and could not look to a British embassy for help had the right to go to other EU embassies based there and ask for consular support.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) asked the Government last week what provision was being made in the Prime Minister’s proposed deal to continue those arrangements after we leave the EU. The answer was none. In fact, it is worse than that—the answer was that British citizens who are arrested in those countries or who are affected by a hurricane or an earthquake could no longer ask the French or Spanish embassies to help, but they could “phone the Foreign Office switchboard.” If we needed any more evidence of how half-baked, hurried through and totally botched the Prime Minister’s deal is and how reliant it is on vague future aspirations of co-operation, it is the fact that the Government have not even bothered to think about what it means for British citizens being left without consular support in dangerous situations. It is the very definition of making the British people, whom it is our first duty to protect, less safe and less secure.

That is not the only loss of security that I hope the Foreign Secretary will address in his closing speech. If the first duty of the Government is to protect the physical security of their citizens, their second duty is surely to protect the economic security of the nation, which was a point well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham). What we have learned with this Foreign Secretary is that he is very willing, quite often, to say one thing about the economic impact of Brexit behind the closed doors of Downing Street and another when he is in the television studios or standing at the Dispatch Box. When he is trying to sell this deal to Parliament tonight, I hope that he will clear up some of the disparities between what he says publicly and what he says privately.

I have three questions for him to that end. In the television studios, he says that this is the best deal for Britain and we can look forward to a glorious era, where

“we become an independent sovereign power, negotiating our own trade deals”

around the world. Around the Cabinet table, presumably informed by the Attorney General’s advice, he says the opposite—that this deal will leave us in what he calls a “Turkey trap”, stuck in an exclusive trading agreement with the EU, but unable to influence any of its decisions and unable to negotiate our own deals. Will he tell us tonight what he really thinks? ?

Secondly, in the television studios, when asked to talk about the backstop, the Foreign Secretary says it simply will not happen. He says:

“Britain will be an independent nation…it is in black and white. That is the intention of the EU”.

But round the Cabinet table, he says the opposite. The backstop will become a “frontstop”, he says. “As soon as the deal is signed,” he says, “the EU will have what they want”. “They will block any progress,” he says, “on the final new trading agreement, and will turn the backstop into the only available outcome.” Will he tell us tonight what he really thinks?

Thirdly and finally, in the television studios, the Foreign Secretary says:

“We will not be significantly worse off”

as a result of the Prime Minister’s deal, but did he not used to say the exact opposite around the Cabinet table, especially about the impact on the NHS, when he warned of the need to avoid a hard Brexit?

I hate to say it, but I have to agree with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s remarks over lunch on Monday. She said that the Foreign Secretary was “so charming” but that there was “no consistency”, and she was absolutely right. Even more damning, however, was her explanation for the inconsistency. Excuse me, Mr Speaker, for using the Foreign Secretary’s name, but I am quoting his Cabinet colleague. “Hunt”, she says, “is all about the game-playing”. Doesn’t that sum it all up?

We have a Tory Cabinet obsessed with their own internal power games and fighting like ferrets in a sack to succeed their lame duck leader, with a Foreign Secretary who, according to his own Cabinet colleague and the evidence of this debate, has been more interested in playing leadership games than in making sure that this political agreement can maintain our future foreign policy co-operation with the EU and protect the security of British citizens, whether at home or abroad. That is the kind of Front Bench we see before us today. In the light of their complete failure of leadership and their total—[Interruption.]