Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

Alistair Burt Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), who has grasped and conveyed the extent of the debate and discussion we are now in.

I am delighted to get the chance to speak. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), I have had fewer occasions to speak about Europe over the years than I might have wished, following a very enjoyable ministerial career. I particularly missed not being able to say something in the Commons before the referendum. I would like now to put on record what I told my electors: that, contrary to popular opinion, not all Conservative MPs are reluctant Europeans. I believe that this country prospered in the European Union. I believe that our sovereignty and independence were always intact. I believe that we were enhanced by our membership of the European Union, just as the European Union was enhanced by our membership of it. With a political lifetime of relationships with colleagues in different European parties and different European countries, and remembering what they went through over the past century to build the European Union and all that it meant, I listened with despair and sometimes shame to the mischaracterisation of the EU and, for too long, to the drip-drip of poison from the lips of those who should have known a damn sight better. I did not get a chance to say that in the House before the referendum, but I say it now.

I do not want to concentrate on the detail in this debate. We have heard a lot about the detail of the negotiations that are going to come, and the House and the country are now getting a sense of just how complex they will be. Rather, I want to concentrate on why the process that is set out in the Opposition motion, agreed to and enhanced by the rider offered by the Government, is so important.

The context of the referendum is different from the context of a general election. We were not looking at delivering a complete manifesto, which a political party is elected on and then must defend to the death. The people made a decision. Neither the Government nor the Opposition won, but we must collectively put into practice what the people told us to do. I, like others, accept the decision of 23 June. My role on behalf of my constituents is to make it work.

One thing was clearly revealed to us during the referendum campaign: a disdain among the public for the political process, in the main. People said how they felt excluded by the process. They did not like the campaign, because it exaggerated in all cases what could or could not be done; people thought that both sides told downright lies in order to enhance their case. It was not our finest hour, and that fitted with the people’s view of how they think this place, party politics and Westminster work.

The referendum gives us an opportunity to do things differently because we have an opportunity to engage the people in a different way. If we carry on in the same old way, we will not take the people with us, and we will not be able to build a consensus of the 52% and 48% as we look towards a new future. If it is the same old story, the public will still feel removed from us.

We have made a good start today. The natural inclination of any Government is to reject an Opposition motion outright, but they did not do so, to great credit. There is a listening exercise going on, but we need to go on from there, and I believe Select Committees have a great role to play. Let us bring people in front of our Select Committees to explain in detail what they think about the process to come, because they are affected. As I said to the Secretary of State the other day, what I most want is a process in which what we hear from people who are affected has some influence on the path taken by the Government. That is what engagement with this place needs.

What sort of things might be considered? I met Peter Kendall of the National Farmers Union, who was very concerned about not just agriculture but welfare and the environment—they are all wrapped up together. When people come before Select Committees or the House in a way that is not party political, and there is an authority that has been gained over recent years, that will matter to the public, because they will feel that it represents more of their voice and more of the truth.

There is a tone that the outside world and Parliament can bring to the negotiations. I, too, bitterly resent the way in which this has been characterised as adversarial, “us versus them” and “we have got to win”. To make a small point, does anybody not believe that those sitting around the negotiating table with the United Kingdom have their own interests as well, and will fight for them? The argument over whether we should stay in the EU was not just about economics; it was about politics, our sovereignty and taking back control. Do we not think that Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande also have political reasons for believing that the European Union needs to be protected in some way from the poor or adverse effect that Brexit might have, and that they will put those views forward as well? It is not all about us. Those from outside can bring that view to us.

If we can bring people together and give the public a sense that we are not doing business as usual, but are being more co-operative and more consensual here as we drive things forward, both we and the political process will have gained hugely by showing that it is not the same old story.

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[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I am glad. I have heard the mantra repeated again and again: despite having voted to remain, Members accept the will of the electorate. But when the mask slips, as it did during the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry)—

[Alistair Burt]

She is entitled to her view.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Of course she is entitled to her view, but when that mask slipped, it was cheered on the other side. Do those Members really accept the will of the voters, or is this actually a ruse to thwart Brexit?

Next Steps in Leaving the European Union

Alistair Burt Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

If I may say so, that is a slight collapsing of what I said in that article, which I remember very well. The simple truth is that on the day we leave the European Union we will be looking to set up a whole series of very beneficial trade deals. That is an enormous benefit of being outside the Union.

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I welcome the statement from my right hon. Friend, and I welcome what the Prime Minister said last week about triggering article 50. As someone who is alleged to have voted to remain in the European Union I take that as a matter of process on which I accept a mandate from the British people on 23 June. As for the detail of the negotiation, that is rather different. May I press my right hon. Friend on what he meant by engagement with Parliament, and whether that is the same as influence? It is one thing to come to Parliament and be engaged and tell Parliament what the Government are doing. It is quite another to come and be engaged and influenced by Parliament on things that we still need to clarify.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend—my right hon. Friend; I will not hold the allegation against him—makes a very good point. I point to my own history. For a considerable period—four or five years, I think—I negotiated another treaty with the European Union. [Interruption.] It was Amsterdam. The approach was very simple. We did not disclose the upcoming negotiation, but we talked about what was under way and what the priorities were, and that is how I expect this to pan out in future. There will be large numbers of debates in the House, with the first on Wednesday, and even if we did not want to do it— but we will—the Opposition could have as many debates as they liked on the subject. I do not accept the argument that we are simply not going to talk about this.

Second, there will be a Select Committee whose sole job for the few years for which it will exist will be to scrutinise the Department. As far as I can, I will be open with it, but I will not give away things if that is deleterious to the national interest. This is an important point to remember: it is the national interest that is engaged, whether we want to talk about the outcome, or whether we want to get the outcome.

Exiting the European Union

Alistair Burt Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I have already made this pretty plain. All the issues that the hon. Lady names, such as passporting and access to markets, are being looked at and evaluated in terms of where the real risks are. Let me take passporting as an example. I have consulted a number of people in the City on passporting, and I get very different views. The City is not a single business but a sort of ecosystem of businesses, and one gets different views from each of them. Some of them have different solutions too, such as “brass plate” arrangements and so on. We have to assess all that before we decide exactly how we organise the strategy. It is pretty straightforward. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) pointed out, it is straightforward, but it is complex to calculate and complex to work out, and we will do that.

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing his position. I appreciate what he said about taking time to get this right and building a national consensus, because it is right, regardless of how we all voted, that we must make a success of it. Is he sufficiently confident that there is clear delineation between the interests of his Department, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the Department for International Trade to make sure that there is no conflict of interest between them so that due credit can be given for the success of negotiations as they go on? In terms of parliamentary scrutiny, does he envisage himself coming before a Select Committee based on his own Department alone or some other arrangement, and if so, when?

[Mr Davis]

On that last point, when I was still on the Back Benches it would have been very dangerous for any Secretary of State to try to tell Back Benchers how to organise their Select Committees. I would certainly not have accepted it then and I will not fall into that trap now. On the question of relationships with the Foreign Office and the Department for International Trade, we have very clear purposes. Mine is effectively one of support for the Prime Minister, who is the leader of this exercise. The Department for International Trade has the task of exploiting the enormous opportunity this creates and the Foreign Office, as my right hon. Friend will well know from his own experience, has plenty on its plate too but will also act in a sympathetic and supportive way to establish all the relationships and build all the alliances that will deliver a positive outcome at the end of these two years.

EU Exit: Devolved Governments

Alistair Burt Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on securing the debate; it is a real pleasure to see the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) in his place. It is 33 years since I was secretary to the Back-Bench energy committee when his father was Energy Secretary—that was my first official position here—and it is a great pleasure for many of us that my hon. Friend is in his place.

I make no secret of the fact that I am a reluctant Brexiteer. I am not even sure whether I can acually be classed as that. I campaigned to remain in the EU and I am very disappointed with the result, but like all of us here, I am a democrat and—to use those wonderful words—we are where we are. As we have heard today, the referendum result is clouded, because it has raised so many more questions than have been settled. I am also here because I am British—mother from Dundee, father from Fife; I am classic British.

Although some of the questions that hon. Members have raised will be settled in relation to their own territories, how they are settled does concern Westminster. Over the years, I have been as much a plumber here, interested in the mechanics of how things work and how questions are settled, as I have been concerned with the results themselves. There are some questions that will not be for us to settle, but ensuring that in this process Westminster speaks clearly, effectively and fairly with the devolved Administrations will be really important. The bulk of my remarks relate as much as anything else to that process and how we get it right.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh South focused rightly on the key issue in relation to Scotland—its vote to remain in the EU and how that is to be taken into account—but the exchange between him and the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) makes it clear that the Minister will have to give us some idea over time of how the conundrum of the Scottish position, with the issues that have been raised in relation to independence, will be taken into account by Westminster in the negotiations.

There are clearly regional distinctions in how matters affect different parts of the UK. The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) spoke about the issues affecting Wales, including agriculture and the balance of exports. Scotland has its own sectoral interests, which are powerfully important. Will that in any way dictate the order in which the United Kingdom tries to deal with trade negotiations, for example? Some countries are more important to some parts of the UK than others. Will there be an order of preference for trade negotiations? We already know that we have a shortage of negotiators. As we start to get more, will all the countries that we are seeking trade deals with be dealt with at the same time and under the same conditions, or will some be seen as more important than others because of their importance to different parts of the UK? If so, precisely how will that be handled?

It would seem that there was no comprehensive planning for how to deal with that by either those who advocated a leave vote or the Government. Is that true? Was there more planning than we were made aware of? There has been no manifesto setting out quite what model we are after and what model will suit not just England but the different devolved Administrations. Will it be the Norwegian model, or will it be the more bilateral Swiss model? Will the World Trade Organisation model benefit certain parts of the UK? If so, how will we all handle that?

As the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber and I think also the hon. Member for Edinburgh South mentioned, immigration is seen differently in Scotland from in England because of the numbers and the ways in which people have moved. Again, if we are to negotiate in relation to trade deals, and trade deals vis-à-vis free movement, will that be handled differently in relation to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales than it will be in England? If so, what is the mechanism for doing that?

What about the repeal of some legislation on the back of our EU negotiations? It was said during the course of the debates on leaving that some social legislation, perhaps affecting health and safety, and workers regulations would come into the negotiations. Really? Surely Parliament has a say on that. Can negotiations on that be conducted before Parliament has had a voice or even a vote on those matters, or are they to be conducted and then brought to Parliament for some sort of endorsement? If so, what happens if Parliament, which at the last count was weighted rather against leaving, does not feel that that base of negotiation is actually in the best interests of all the British people? How is the process to be managed?

I will not dwell on that because time is short, but there are other sectoral issues to consider, such as manufacturing, which affects all of us. One of the phrases most commonly picked out during the debate was from Patrick Minford, who said, in effect, that the consequence of leaving would be that manufacturing would be all but eliminated,

“But this shouldn’t scare us”.

I suspect some people might well be scared of that. How is that to be taken into account in the negotiations?

The key for me is that all the options require detailed parliamentary scrutiny, certainly from a Select Committee, and possibly a measure of parliamentary action in terms of votes and legislation. Do we have any commonality among ourselves about how that will be taken forward and what the process will be? We need to start there.

I spent some years in the Minister’s position, so I will not say “Can the Minister answer this?” and “Can the Minister answer that?” because he cannot answer all the questions asked in the debate at present. However, the debate has been a very valuable first step, and I hope it is helpful to know that even though some of us are not physically located in the devolved Administration areas, we care very much about how the process is handled by Westminster as a whole. We are just as interested in the outcomes, and I want to ensure that the Westminster mechanism fairly and effectively covers all the ground that needs to be covered. I am sure the Minister has that in mind. If he cares to venture any answers to some of the questions I have raised, I will be pleased, but I suspect that some of the answers will come out over time.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (in the Chair)]

I would not normally allow a person who was not here at the beginning to participate in the debate, but as Mr Fitzpatrick did submit an application to speak and I know he was participating in a debate in the Chamber, I will give him a maximum of five minutes to contribute. I want to give as much time as I can to the Front-Bench spokespersons.

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[Patrick Grady]

Yes, and it will be here in Westminster Hall, so the point about the main Chamber still stands.

I will look briefly at how we got here in the first place, the responses of the devolved Administrations so far, the impact of Brexit and the way forward in negotiations and some of the possible outcomes, especially as they affect Scotland. It did not have to be this way. The Scottish National party moved an amendment to put in place a four-nation lock, so that all parts of the UK would have to vote to leave before the whole of the UK could do so. If that mechanism had been in place, we would not be in the Brexit situation we are in today, after the vote in Northern Ireland and in Scotland. In the 1978 referendum on the Scottish Assembly there was a 40% rule, which admittedly we disagreed with. Nevertheless, only 37% of the electorate voted to leave, and if that rule had been in place in this referendum, it would have meant that Brexit could not go forward.

One of the reasons for the divergent results was the divergent campaigns. The woeful campaign in England and Wales stands in contrast to the positive campaign that took place in Scotland, with unanimity among Scotland’s MPs and party leaders and overwhelming support for remaining among our MSPs and councillors. Like the hon. Member for Edinburgh South, my constituency voted 78% in favour of remaining. I take some of his points about a divergence in areas of greater deprivation. Nevertheless, even areas of deprivation in Scotland have benefited from the EU, and that is visible. I have made the point several times, but the road I cycled to school on when I was growing up in Inverness was built with European money—it would never have been built by Thatcher’s Government. I think that visibility of European infrastructure in Scotland added to the existing support.

We have heard from different Members about the responses from different areas of the UK. The Welsh leave result was a disappointment to many Members, including our friends from Plaid Cymru, who cannot be here today, and to the Labour First Minister. Much like the Mayor of London, he outlined a range of priorities to protect jobs and economic confidence and to ensure that the Welsh Government play a full part in discussions on the European withdrawal, retaining access to the single market and so on. Likewise, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) has put on record the Mayor of London’s demands. The hon. Gentleman is welcome to maintain his European citizenship—as a Glaswegian by birth, he will be entitled to Scottish citizenship once we become independent.

[Alistair Burt]

I get it through my nan.

[Patrick Grady]

There we go. There are plenty of people in the House today.