European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Alberto Costa Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Murray]

rose—

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House what that White Paper told the people of Scotland? Did it tell them what currency they would be using if they voted for Scottish independence?

[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. Gentleman has made a good point. Does he know what the White Paper talked about? It talked about currency. Moreover, a Fiscal Commission Working Group was set up. So much more work was put into that.

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[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

It is with a heavy heart, and against my long-held belief that the interests of this country are better served by our being a member of the European Union, that I shall support the Bill. In 2015, I promised the good people of Broxtowe that, if I was elected to represent them for another term, and in accordance with my party’s manifesto, I would vote for an in/out referendum on our EU membership, agreeing, in the words of David Cameron, that the people would “settle the matter”. I promised to respect and honour the vote. On 9 June 2015, along with 544 Members of this place, I agreed to that referendum, and in so doing I agreed to be bound by the result.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) was not in favour of that referendum and did not vote for it, so he is, of course, free and able to vote against the Bill. I am sure it is no coincidence that he happens to enjoy a considerably large number of people in his constituency who voted remain, and that he has—quite wrongly, in my view—announced that he will not be standing again in 2020. I say to Opposition Members, though, that you cannot go back on your word because you do not agree with the result.

I believe that history will not be kind to this Parliament, nor, indeed, to the Government I was so proud to serve in. How on earth did we ever come to put to the people an alternative that we then said would make them worse off and less safe and would weaken our nation? I echo the wise words of some of the speech by my new friend, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), when I say that I greatly fear that generations that either did not vote or are yet to come will not thank us for our great folly. Neither will they forgive those who since 23 June have chosen not to be true to their long-held views—those who have remained mute as our country has turned its back on the benefits of the free movement of people, a single market and the customs union, without a debate, far less any vote in this place. Why is that? It needs to be said and recorded that our Government have decided that the so-called control of immigration, which actually means the reduction in immigration—that is what so many people in our constituencies believe—is worth more than the considerable benefits of the single market and the customs union.

What has been even more upsetting is the fact that Members on the Labour Front Bench have connived with the Government. The Government were never going to give us the opportunity to debate these important matters, for reasons that I genuinely understand and, indeed, respect, but for the Labour party to go against everything it has ever believed in is really quite shameful. It is a combination of incompetence on its Front Bench and a deep division among so many, with a few honourable exceptions—among whom I of course include the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). They have turned their backs on their long-standing belief in the free movement of people and failed to make the positive case for immigration.

The referendum vote exposed a deeply divided Britain, and that has been exposed in no place better than in the Labour party. Labour Members have been petrified—literally frozen to the spot—looking over one shoulder and seeing that their constituency Labour parties have been taken over by the extreme left, and beyond that, in many instances, that up to 70% of their own voters voted leave.

What has happened to our country? Businesses have fallen silent, scared to speak up and to speak out. I think they believe it is all going to be fine—that we are not really going to leave the EU, we will not really leave the single market and we will not really leave the customs union. They are going to get a sharp shock.

[Alberto Costa]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that when she, I and other Members of this House voted, rightly, to give the British people the ultimate say in this matter, we did not vote to take away the rights of EU citizens like my parents who live in this country? It is disgraceful that, as it stands today, we are not honouring their rights.

[Anna Soubry]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, whom I include among those many brave souls on the Government Benches who, in the face of abuse and even death threats, have stood up and been true to what they believe in.

Why has there been this outbreak of silence? I quote the wise words of Edmund Burke:

“Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.”

That is what has happened, but now it must stop. We must now make sure that everybody is free and able to stand up and say what they believe, and that people no longer cower in fear of four newspapers and this never-ending chorus, which I do not believe represents my constituents.

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[John Redwood]

That is not a sensible analogy. We know that the main claims were wrong because we were told that there would be a recession this winter—that the economy would plunge immediately off a cliff. Instead, we were the fastest-growing economy in the G7 throughout last year, and stronger at the end than we had been in the middle.

This is the once and future sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom. The thing that most motivated all those voters for leave was that they wanted the sovereignty of this Parliament to be restored. That is what the Bill allows us to do by our exiting the European Union, and then making our own decisions about our laws, our money and our borders. As one who has had to live for many years with an answer from the British people on the European Union that I did not like, I was increasingly faced with an invidious choice. Did I support the position of Government and Opposition Front Benches, which agreed that every European law and decision had to go through because it was our duty to put them through? Alternatively, should I be a serial rebel, complaining about the EU weather which we had no power to change?

I had reached the point where if the country had voted remain, I would have respected that judgment and not sought re-election at the next general election. I would have seen no point in this puppet Parliament—this Parliament that is full of views, airs and graces, but cannot change laws or taxes, or spend money in the way the British people want. That is the liberty that we regained. This Parliament is going to be made great by the people. It is going to be made great despite itself.

[Alberto Costa]

rose—

[John Redwood]

It is going to be made great because the people understand better than so many of their politicians that sovereignty must rest from the people in this Parliament.

[Alberto Costa]

rose—

[John Redwood]

And the great news is that we can decide to keep for ourselves all those many good things that, we are told, Europe has given us. All those good laws we will keep; all those employment protections we will agree to continue.

[Alberto Costa]

rose—

[John Redwood]

The day we leave the European Union will be a great day because everything will change and nothing will change. Everything will change through our power to make our own choices; nothing will change because we will guarantee continuity and allow people the benefits of the laws that we have already inherited. What is it about freedom that some Members do not like? What is it about having power back in our Parliament that they cannot stand? Vote to make the once and future sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom sovereign again. That is what the people challenge you to do!

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The speech made by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) was one of the best speeches I have ever heard from the Labour Front Bench in its tone, its honest acceptance of the difficult choices being made by all of us in this House and its fundamental acceptance that we, by a majority of six to one, passed a decision to the people that we have to respect. This debate is simply about facilitating that, which is why so many of us will ensure that there is a large majority tomorrow evening to vote in favour of triggering the process for which our people asked.

I will also follow—some may think, rather counterintuitively—the other remarks of the hon. and learned Gentleman who led for the Labour party. I sincerely believe that this process is not a triumph of nationalism, or of us being apart from them. It is quite the opposite: part of a new internationalism and recognition of our common citizenship of the whole world. We stand ready to break free of the protectionist barriers erected by the EU that have so damaged much of the third world, and rejoin the world at large. As a former Prime Minister of Australia said, “Britain is back.”

Of course, we crave the familiar—self, family, friends, village, county, country or even continent—but we know that the human race is one and that human dignity is indivisible. That dignity has not been respected in our continent in the past. By the spring of 1945, Europe had descended into such a spiral of hate, war and destruction that people understandably despaired. Noble spirits such as Schuman, Adenauer and De Gasperi understood that the familiar divisions of home, tribe and nation were so dangerous when exaggerated that they needed to be not abolished, but overcome, in a process that became the European Union. No longer would one nation be able to use iron and steel for its own chauvinistic, fratricidal and destructive ends. Then came the freedoms of travel and work. That is why they set the project in motion.

[Alberto Costa]

My hon. Friend and I are executive officers of the all-party parliamentary group for Italy, and we both went to Rome but a few months ago. Does he agree that, although we will respect the will of the British people, that does not include changing the rights of Italians and other EU nationals who have been lawfully resident in the United Kingdom for years? Will he confirm that that is his view?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Of course I will confirm that that is my view. It is also the view of everyone to whom we spoke in the Italian Parliament and in the British Parliament. Our Government have made that absolutely clear.

The point that I am trying to make is that, at the time I was describing, the British Parliament, under the leadership of Attlee and Churchill, understood that this was a supranational movement, which is why they did not join. All the discussions in the late 1940s and early 1950s, which we can read about, talked about an ever-closer union. It was not the Council of Europe, in which the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton) serves and in which I had the privilege of serving. The EU is not a body of sovereign nations. It is bound by a single court of justice. That is why our predecessors took the decision not to join in 1957, and they were right to do so.

Our predecessors were desperate to try to conclude a free trade agreement with our European friends and if they had been offered that free trade agreement in Messina, they would have signed up to it. That is precisely what we are trying to achieve. We are trying to be internationalist and to further free trade. This country is not, and never must be, protectionist or small-minded. Indeed, de Gaulle had an understanding of our point of view, when he talked about a “Europe of nations”. He asked how Great Britain, a maritime power with large and prosperous daughters all over the world, could fit into the Europe that was being created. An amusing cartoon from 1962 by the Dutch cartoonist Opland shows European Economic Community leaders faced with the prospective arrival of big mother Britannia with her diverse progeny of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The caption reads, “If I join, can my offspring too?” Of course, the answer was no. We were already part of a worldwide community of nations, which we called, and still call, the Commonwealth.

What we are now trying to achieve is similar but even more ambitious. We want to lead this worldwide drive towards free trade. In 200 years’ time, people will view Brexit not as the last gasp of an outdated nationalism, but as the advent of a new internationalism. We understand the sincerity with which our remain friends put their arguments, but we are disappointed that they do not seem to want to grasp the immense globalism of Brexit—of escaping the EU barriers and looking beyond the ocean to take the mantle of solidarity with the rest of the world. Yes, we want our European friends to succeed. We are definitely not engaged in 19th-century rivalries and scrambles, nor board games of Risk and Diplomacy. In all sincerity and with sympathy for their views, we believe that this is an opportunity for us and them.