European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts]

We have heard so much aspiration from Conservative Members, who preach to us that a no deal would be beneficial, and now we are coming down to the pragmatics, which all involve article 50, whoever actually brings it about—we will argue for our own approach. If the people of Wales ever needed proof that Westminster fails us, is deaf to our needs and is broken, it is this: while businesses and workers are anxious about their future, there are people here who talk blithely about unleashing the chaos of a no deal on their constituents.

As my Plaid Cymru colleagues and I have said time and again, this withdrawal agreement will be damaging. Plaid Cymru will never support a withdrawal agreement that takes Wales out of the single market and customs union, harming Welsh businesses and workers, as it would do. We will not support any attempt to remove the right of Welsh people to live, work and study in other European countries, as my daughter has done in Paris. In our heart of hearts we know this. Conservative Members and Labour Members all know that we are denying people and we are tying ourselves in knots as to how we justify that. As harmful as the Prime Minister’s deal would be for Wales, leaving without a deal is a worst-case scenario. We cannot countenance it as an option. Indeed, let us remind ourselves that it has already been overwhelmingly rejected by this House, as well as by the National Assembly for Wales.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I do not doubt for a moment the hon. Lady’s sincerity in wanting to avoid no deal, but does she not, like me, see the irony in the fact that she will be joined in the Lobby by people who want to achieve precisely that? If she genuinely wants to avoid that, is not the safe, moderate and proportionate step to vote for this deal?

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but I ask him: does he not see the deceit of presenting the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement as a better result than no deal, given that it will come with the uncertainty of being out of the single market and customs union, damaging the Welsh economy? The no-deal scenario is worse. Many of us can now talk about Brexit almost on auto-pilot, but it is deceitful to tell people who no longer want to discuss this that the Prime Minister’s deal will take Brexit off the table. It is deceitful, it is harmful and it is not the best for Wales’s economy or for many of our economies.

The substance of this debate has never made sense to me. It has centred on a fabricated theoretical concern about a hypothetical backstop never intended to be used. For the extreme right-wing of the Conservative party to be peddling myths about fantastical problems the backstop might, in some blue moon, cause is one thing, but for the official Opposition to be embroiled in the minutiae of that same debate and to be using the same arguments as the Democratic Unionist party is another; it is an unnecessary distraction and a confusion.

What farmers, factory workers and families in Wales need is clarity. For all the withdrawal agreement’s misgivings, what the backstop does offer is, for once, some degree of clarity—it is an insurance policy, after all. But everything else about the withdrawal agreement is a mirage of clarity. Adopt it and the clarity of the political declaration disappears over the horizon as a mirage. The best way to achieve clarity is, of course, to extend article 50, but an extension of three, six or even nine months will do nothing to dissipate the fog of uncertainty. Article 50 must be extended until the end of the transition period, negating the need for this deceitful withdrawal agreement and for any British backstop. A 21-month extension would keep the UK in the EU until the end of the EU’s multi-annual financial framework, give this Government time properly to agree the final relationship with the EU and, crucially, allow time to put this to the people through a referendum.

I have been struck by the irony of people talking about concerns for democracy and about it being an affront to democracy that we would ask for another referendum. The Government took the country to a general election only 25 months after the 2015 general election. It is now 32 months and more since the referendum. Democracy is a resort it suited the Government to use in that short period, so I ask: why is it not suitable to use it now? The people’s vote must of course include an option to remain an EU member state, a position that polls show is supported by more than half the people of Wales—if only it were honest-heartedly supported by the Labour party, too. If we take the scales from our eyes, we will see that the concentration of wealth in London and south-east England got us into this Brexit mess and the concentration of power is trapping us in it. As far as I can see, giving people a final say on our future is the only remaining answer. Democracy is not a one-off event. Nor is it the privilege of only one generation. Democracy, through a people’s vote referendum, will be our salvation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Boris Johnson]

If the hon. Lady will allow me, I will make some progress.

I want to stress this point. I really cannot accept the repeated assertion by the Attorney General in his very powerful speech this afternoon that there is a minimal legal risk of us being trapped in the prison of the backstop, because it is now more than a year since I stood in Downing Street—in No. 10—and was told that there was a minimal legal risk that we would even have to enter the backstop. That is not a view that I believe could now be plausibly defended by the Government.

[Alex Chalk]

Of course there is a risk with the backstop —it would be infantile to suggest that there is not—but does my right hon. Friend not agree that there is also a very great, if not much larger, risk in respect of a no-deal outcome? Would he at least recognise that point?

[Boris Johnson]

I will come to that, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for conceding that it was always infantile to pretend that there was no risk of getting into the backstop, because that was, for a long time, the contention of those who proposed that the backstop should be instituted.

I am afraid that this deal has now reached the end of the road. If it is rejected tonight, I hope that it will be put to bed and we can all face up to the reality of the position and the opportunity that we have. What we need to do then—now—is to behave not timorously but as a great country does. We have broadly two options. We can either decide, if the EU is unwilling to accept the minor changes that we propose, that we will leave without a deal—yes, I accept that that is, in the short term, the more difficult road, but in the end it is the only safe route out of this and the only safe path to self-respect—or we can decide to take a route that will end in humiliation by accepting arrangements with the EU that seem to limit disruption in the short term but will leave us as an EU protectorate with many important rules set elsewhere.

Members have asked, “What’s the worst that could happen?” I will give two examples, but there is any number of rules and regulations. The financial services industry would be subject to laws set by its leading competitors, which is emphatically not what the City wants. The Commission has already made it clear that it wants to use the passerelle clause of the existing treaty to bring in qualified majority voting on taxation. We would be subject to that, under a qualified majority vote in which this country would not participate. I urge Members to think hard and to see that that predicament would be democratically intolerable. We would have to tell our constituents that they had no power or influence in setting some of the rules that govern our country.