UK’s Withdrawal from the EU
Debate between Alison Thewliss and Stephen Gethins(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stephen Gethins
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are seeing business confidence falling and investment falling. These things are matters of fact.
I will come to some more figures in a moment, but first I wish to talk about the UK’s standing in the world. People talk about democracy and the UK’s standing. They talk of unelected bureaucrats, but the greatest number of parliamentarians are the unelected ones in the House of Lords. That is not democracy. The European Parliament is elected, the Commission is accountable to that Parliament, and the Council is made up of the 28 elected Governments as well. That is a damn sight more democratic than this place is.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making a good point about democratic accountability. I have been serving on the Committees for countless financial services statutory instruments that will take powers and give them to the Financial Conduct Authority, the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Treasury, and the Government will not give them to MPs in this House.
Stephen Gethins
It has been extraordinary. As usual, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point about how the Government have tried to take powers away. They have tried to take votes from us and they have tried to take away our ability to hold them to account in a way that they just could not get away with in the European institutions, whether they like it or not.
On the lack of planning and that vote leave on a blank piece of paper, I think Donald Tusk was being restrained when he said that there is a special place in hell for those who backed Brexit without a clue about how to get there. For all those snowflakes who feigned outrage about his remarks, this is a man who fought the communists—he was living under a Soviet vassal state at that point, unlike others—and who stood up for and was arrested for his beliefs, yet when he points out the blindingly obvious, he gets dragged over the coals for it. What outrage. It was faux outrage.