European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Alex Sobel Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

There were over thirty contributions from the Back Benches, including some excellent contributions from the Benches behind me.

The withdrawal agreement and the Bill, even if passed, do not end matters. Rather, they open up a whole new series of disputes, and what do we hear today? The party that championed employment tribunal fees now asks us to trust them on workers’ rights. The Foreign Secretary at the weekend told us of smart regulations. Let me translate that: this Tory Party does not want to protect our rights; it wants to shred them. I quote:

“the weight of employment regulation is now back-breaking”,

and that includes

“the collective redundancies directive, the atypical workers’ directive, the working time directive and a thousand more”.

Who said that? The man sitting opposite me: the Prime Minister himself. He wants us to take his word on employment laws, but he mocks them when he gets the chance. He will never care about the working people of this country. The Prime Minister promised virtually everything in the debate earlier today, but if he was so concerned about protecting workers’ rights and about safeguarding our environment, he would have left those provisions in a legally binding withdrawal agreement and would not have shifted them to the non-binding political declaration. Why should we believe a word that he says now? That is why the TUC, Unison, Unite and the GMB all recognise that his eleventh-hour comments today are worthless.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. Does he agree that, as there is no mention of environmental rights in the Bill, there will be no surety in regard to the environment? Should that provision not be put back into legislation?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The damage that the Bill does to workers’ rights is just the tip of the iceberg. It will create a border in the Irish sea and impose burdens on Northern Ireland-Great Britain trade, something that the Prime Minister himself promised would never happen. Clause 21 makes that explicit, yet, extraordinarily, the Prime Minister continued to deny it when he opened the debate. What did he talk about? Light-touch measures to deal with illegal trade in endangered animal species and to ban firearms. That completely contradicts what the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union eventually told the House of Lords European Union Committee yesterday:

“The exit summary declarations will be required in terms of NI to GB”.

I do not know why the Prime Minister is shaking his head. That is what the Bill says. The Prime Minister should read the Bill.