The Government's Plan for Brexit

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

In a debate with much intense feeling, I would like to highlight the fact that there are some areas of common ground. First, there is acceptance across the House that there needs to be, and will be, parliamentary scrutiny. Secondly, and importantly, it has been accepted on both sides of the House that parliamentary scrutiny should not trump achieving the best deal for our country. In this debate and in the many that will follow, we must never forget that second point. Our overriding concern must be to get the right long-term arrangement for our country’s future.

I will outline the steps to which the Government have already agreed. This House has already resolved that there will be parliamentary scrutiny. In a motion agreed to by both sides of the House on 12 October, this House resolved that there would be

“a full and transparent debate on the Government’s plan”

and that the House should properly

“scrutinise that plan for leaving the EU before Article 50 is invoked”.

The Secretary of State confirmed in that debate a commitment that

“Parliament be kept at least as informed as, and better informed than, the European Parliament”—[Official Report, 12 October 2016; Vol. 615, c. 332.]

in circumstances where there is a mandatory obligation to inform the European Parliament. Through her amendment, the Prime Minister has now agreed to publish a plan, and the Secretary of State said today that it is inconceivable that there will not be a vote on the final deal. It therefore follows that there is already an agreed level of parliamentary scrutiny, but we must strike the right balance between parliamentary scrutiny and ensuring that we maintain the best negotiating stance.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I was a remainer, too, and I welcome the fact that a statement of the broad parameters of the British negotiating position will be made clear, but does my hon. and learned Friend agree that we should never allow any demands for excessive granularity to undermine the UK’s negotiating position or the national interest?

[Lucy Frazer]

I absolutely agree. It is vital that we get the best deal—not that we have the power to determine the deal at every stage.

The Opposition have accepted at many stages that we must not tie the Government’s hands. In the October motion, it was accepted across the House that the process must

“not undermine the negotiating position of the Government as negotiations are entered into”.

The shadow Secretary of State stated in the course of that debate that

“navigating our exit from the EU will not be an easy process, and it will require shrewd negotiating”

and that we

“must put the national interest first”.—[Official Report, 12 October 2016; Vol. 615, c. 323.]

He accepted that there had to be a degree of confidentiality and flexibility. He repeated those very words today. Those statements, which the Opposition have repeatedly made, must be honoured and remembered, because we made some strategic errors when we first negotiated in Europe.

To the Spaak Committee meetings of 1955 that eventuated in the treaty of Rome, we sent a sole British delegate, a minor trade official called Russell Bretherton. He was eventually summoned home on the grounds that Britain should have no part in what a more senior civil servant described as this

“mysticism which appeals to European… federalists”.

Interviewed in later life about the experience, Bretherton said:

“If we had been able to say that we agreed in principle, we could have got whatever kind of common market we wanted. I have no doubt of that at all.”

Now, we have an opportunity to renegotiate our role in Europe and the rest of the world. I do not want to say to my children that we did not get the best deal because of our fear, our scepticism, our adversarial parliamentary system, political point scoring and, possibly, ulterior political motives. I do not want to say that we restricted ourselves in negotiating the right arrangement for our long-term future.