European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Alberto Costa Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I would say to the hon. Gentleman, who has great experience in these matters, that we know the Commission, in respect of trade negotiations, made arrangements with the European Parliament for certain documents to be made available, including in rooms where people could go and read them but could not take them away. The new clause is asking the Government to find a way of making this work in a way that is consistent, as of course it has to be, with any legal obligations, but confidentiality does not seem to me to be a very strong argument.

The argument that the new clause would make it all justiciable does not seem very strong either. Frankly, on that basis we might as well all go home tonight and never come back because Parliament legislates, and when Parliament legislates people can go to the courts and seek to suggest that the way in which the legislation is being implemented is not correct. That is not an argument against new clause 3, but against Parliament doing its job.

Having listened to speeches made by Conservative Members, I would gently say to the Minister of State, who is a reasonable man, that I hope he will not get up and repeat the arguments we have heard on new clause 3. Frankly, it is really simple and sensible stuff to help Parliament to do its job. On the frequency of reporting, as the Minister will know, when my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) suggested every two months, the Secretary of State got up and said that that might be a rather modest objective. If it is a modest objective, I really do not see how the Government can oppose it.

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

I do not propose to speak for more than a few minutes. I have been wrestling with this matter for months, and in particular I have wrestled with it over the course of the weekend. This matter affects my constituents in South Leicestershire—and not just them—many of whom have come to see me to explain the problems, for example about children at school, which has been mentioned by other hon. Members.

I was the son of Italian immigrants in Glasgow in the 1970s, and I remember how it felt to be the only son of an immigrant in a classroom full of Scottish people. I do not want any EU national child across the United Kingdom to feel the way that I felt at times in school in the 1970s. However, there is more than simply anecdotal evidence that the situation now caused by Brexit is affecting the wellbeing of families. Such concerns have been raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), a fellow east midlands Member for whom I have nothing but the utmost respect. As I have argued with colleagues in the Chamber—we should be saying it far more loudly—EU nationals have contributed an enormous amount to the success and wellbeing of our United Kingdom, as did my parents over 50 years. I want to hear Members say that daily.

It was often said during the EU referendum that there was perhaps a cost consequence to having the 3 million-plus people from every one of the member states who have integrated here. I always believed that that was utter rubbish. We have benefited as a country by having immigrants come into the United Kingdom. The fact is that we will continue to benefit, because when all of this is over, we will still continue to have EU migrants coming into this country. The difference will be that this Parliament and Government—Conservative, Labour or otherwise—will determine the immigration rules. I cannot possibly foresee a situation where a competent British Government would attempt to reduce immigration to levels that would damage our economy. That leads me to a point made in a newspaper recently by an hon. Friend of mine about a promise made in the Conservative manifesto that we have not kept and cannot keep. We cannot get immigration down to the tens of thousands without damaging our economy.

However, I have decided to vote against the amendment on this matter. As I said at the outset, I have wrestled with this decision, because it affects my family personally. I will explain why I have decided to do this. Ultimately, it is because the deal that will be reached with the EU will be not just legal, but also political. It will be about personalities: about how the Prime Minister and her team get on with the other side.

Had I been Prime Minister last July, I might well have taken a different decision. However, I made a comment to the Prime Minister today in which I made it very clear that I am putting my entire trust in her and her Ministers to honour the promise that they are giving to the country about getting an early deal. I said to the leader of my party that it would be “a decisive mark of her negotiating skills and leadership qualities as our Prime Minister.” I believe that she will get a reciprocal deal that benefits citizens from Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales who live in other EU member states, and that protects my own family and friends, my own constituents and other EU nationals across the United Kingdom.

That is why I will vote against the amendment. Ultimately, it is a political matter, and it is for the Prime Minister to demonstrate her leadership and negotiating skills in getting this right, and coming back to the Dispatch Box within months—I repeat, within months—of triggering article 50 with an early deal on which we can all agree and for which we can thank her, that will be to the benefit of all our constituents living abroad and the benefit of EU nationals living in our constituencies.

[Heidi Allen]

I am just curious. I support the Prime Minister’s intentions and most definitely her sincerity in aiming to achieve such a deal, but does my hon. Friend agree that if that moment does not come as soon as she would like, she should review the idea of unilaterally offering EU citizens their rights and just put everybody out of their misery, because that is the right thing to do?

[Alberto Costa]

Again, I repeat the comment I made to the Prime Minister that it would be “a decisive mark of her negotiating skills and leadership qualities as our Prime Minister.” She must come back to the Dispatch Box early on with such a deal.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the conclusion that he has reached. The other thing the Prime Minister demonstrated when she was Home Secretary is her attention to detail. As I tried to set out for the Committee, this is actually a more complex matter than it at first appears. It is not just that the Prime Minister needs to get the principle right; she and her Ministers and officials need to get the detail right to ensure not only that my hon. Friend’s family and others like them have security now, but that there are no unforeseen consequences for them in the future. I think that he has made the right decision.

[Alberto Costa]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend, but a promise has been made about an early agreement, notwithstanding the complexities of the matter. As a lawyer—I am a former corporate lawyer—I know that when my clients came to me asking for me to negotiate, I had to offer solutions to problems. If I did not get the deals that my clients wanted, I would not have been used frequently by those very clients. It will be a mark of our leader, our Prime Minister, if she gets the early deal that she is promising our country, and that is why I am supporting her this evening.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman has obviously made a personal decision on this matter. He uses the analogy of being a lawyer and going to negotiate a deal, but does he not accept that the Prime Minister could just settle and give every EU national in our country right now the right to be here, without any further delay? There is an alternative attitude that would also deliver for his client, is there not?

[Alberto Costa]

As I mentioned, had I been Prime Minister in July, I might have started the whole process very differently.

I entirely agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) about the consequences of not getting an early deal on this matter. The consequence would be a tsunami of litigation against the Government. Politically, therefore, an early deal must be brought to this House. That is why I trust the Prime Minister to get that early deal.

The role of Parliament is also a political matter to which Ministers should give serious consideration. The European Parliament has a substantive role in the negotiations that we do not have. Some would say that the primary reason for that is that it represents 27 other nations, whereas we represent one sovereign country as the British Parliament. However, if we hear comments from the media, reporting on what European parliamentarians are being told about what our ministerial negotiating team are saying in Europe, it would become farcical if our Government did not report back to us.

[Hilary Benn]

Exactly.

[Alberto Costa]

I do not see a need to force the Government to do that. It would be politically impossible for the Government to function responsibly and appropriately without giving us at least the same information that we will be receiving from the media and the European Parliament. Again, it is a matter of politics and we should not bind the hands of the Government in a statutory manner that could be justiciable. That is why I trust my Government to come back to the House with sensible updates, no different from the updates that the European Parliament receives, so that we can continue to debate and discuss the matter.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

My hon. Friend is on the right side of all these arguments, but he is a very trusting man. Does he not realise that the background to all this is that when the European Commission started negotiating the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, it took exactly the same line that the Government are now taking—that it could not possibly disclose any of these things as it would compromise the negotiations? The fact is that the European Parliament now gets the information because it was less trusting and is made of sterner stuff than this Parliament has so far proved to be. I do not think that that is in accordance with our parliamentary traditions.

[Alberto Costa]

I respect the judgments and comments of my right hon. and learned Friend. However, I read his recent article about his own thoughts on his first term in Parliament and how he would have dealt with a similar matter. I will leave it at that.

I have listened carefully to the valuable and honourable comments that have been made on this matter, particularly by Opposition Members, but I will support my Government and I will hold my Government to account in a way that I never see Opposition MPs from Scotland holding their Government to account.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It was touching to hear the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) talk about his hope and aspiration that EU nationals will be allowed to remain indefinitely, and of course he is right on that, yet he betrayed a little bit of fear of offending his Front Benchers were he to go so far as wanting to enshrine those rights in the Bill.

I commend my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for new clause 57. It is important and would provide the assurances that many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people residing in this country require. I tabled a similar new clause—new clause 14—which I hope the Committee will support.

The context of this debate, for which more than 50 substantive amendments on distinct and specific issues of great importance have been tabled, is the contrast between the desire of Members to raise these issues and the nonsensical four hours in which they have to be considered. There is something like four minutes for each topic. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly to Members in the House of Lords how important it is that they do the due diligence on this Bill that the House of Commons will clearly not be able to do.