European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. We have just heard two heavyweight and extremely important speeches from the two Front Benches. I congratulate the new—he is not really new anymore—Brexit Secretary on his grip on the extraordinary complexity of detail that he so evidently demonstrated at the Dispatch Box. I have only rarely troubled the House with my views on Brexit— I think this is only the second time I have done so— and I have approached the whole process on the basis that as Government Back Benchers, it is our job to try to assist the Government in reaching a satisfactory deal. Our job is to support and assist.

We have some special issues in the west midlands. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) has made it clear that the issue of just-in-time supply is important to us there, but this is not just about cars. It is also about food. Much of the food in this country is not stored in a warehouse, but is on a motorway, so just-in-time supply is a very important matter for us.

I also think the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and the Father of the House, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), and indeed the response from the shadow Brexit Secretary, are a very important start to this resumed debate and need to inform our discussions.

It has always been quite clear that it is the Government’s job to propose and Parliament’s job to dispose. Let me be clear: I have great sympathy for the Prime Minister. I served with her in Cabinet and shadow Cabinet for seven and a half years, and I believe that she has a steadfast determination and integrity. No Prime Minister could have given so much time to the House at the Dispatch Box on this issue. However, I have to say that I have been astonished that she would bring back to the House of Commons a deal that she knows she has absolutely no chance whatsoever of getting through, and apparently with no plan B. I think this is a matter of very great concern.

The Government are accountable to Parliament. We have had the beginnings of a new constitutional strategy: that it should be the other way around, and somehow the House of Commons should be accountable to the Government. That is not the way we do things. While I was unable to support the amendment last night, because I thought it fettered the Government’s ability for Executive action too much, I did support the amendment to the Business of the House motion this afternoon, because I think the House of Commons now has to be very clear that if the deal does not go through next week, this House of Commons has got to reach some conclusions and, if I may coin a phrase, take back control. It seems to be that it should do so on the basis of what my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset and my right hon. and learned Friend the Father of the House were saying.

As of today, I cannot understand what the Government’s strategy is or has been. It has all the appearances of drawing on the strategy pursued by Lord Cardigan at the charge of the Light Brigade in Crimea. Indeed, it does not seem to be a strategy at all. As Sun Tzu, the famous Chinese general, said:

“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

The danger with the tactics being pursued was set out very eloquently by the first Brexit Secretary, and they of course relate to the issue of the backstop and of sequencing.

In summary, with the greatest of regret, I am unable to support the Prime Minister in the Lobby next week. Briefly, that is for three reasons. The first is to do with the backstop. The backstop issues have been very well rehearsed. In the royal town of Sutton Coldfield, we had the pleasure of welcoming Arlene Foster to speak, and it was very clear to me that her reservations about the treatment of Northern Ireland on the backstop were extremely difficult.

I would make this point in addition to what has been said already about the position of Northern Ireland. Having now been in this House for nearly 30 years, on and off, I have sat through heartbreaking statements about the situation there, with the violence that so dreadfully afflicted Northern Ireland for so very long and, indeed, that went wider than Northern Ireland. The fact is that there was a hard-won, hard-fought treaty—lodged at the United Nations—which says there shall be no border in Northern Ireland. For me, that is the beginning and the end of the matter.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

I do not want to question the sincerity of the comments that the right hon. Gentleman has just made. There are very few references to the border at all in the Belfast agreement, but where there are references, they do not in any way suggest that this decision cannot take place. There is no commitment to open the hard border. There is a commitment to co-operation among our nations—between Northern Ireland and the Republic. There is a commitment to relationships on a north-south basis.

One of the things that is in the Belfast agreement, which is completely absent from this discussion, is that it says in paragraph 12 of strand 2 that any future relationship—or impediment—or regulation or rule can be implemented only when it is agreed by the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Oireachtas in the south. That is completely absent from the considerations on or indeed the text of the withdrawal agreement.

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but the point I am making is that the absolute importance of an open border in Northern Ireland—indeed, it is enshrined in an internationally lodged treaty—seems to me to be completely unexceptional.

The second reason I cannot support the deal is that, far from settling matters, it enshrines or embeds the conflicts and divisions that have so convulsed our country. It perpetuates, not heals, the deep divisions that have engulfed our country. It leaves us as a rule taker, which will antagonise and inflame both sides. Those who voted remain will campaign to become rule makers once again, and those who voted to leave will feel that we have not done so and that the result of the referendum has not been fully respected.

The Government present the deal as the compromise that should bind us together; it is, in my view, the worst possible common denominator. It perpetuates the toxic, radioactive afterlife of the referendum. We need look no further than what is said about the deal by the leading proponents and opponents of Brexit on the Government Benches. Consider the eloquent arguments put by my hon. Friends the Members for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) and for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), and the equally eloquent and passionate arguments put by my right hon. Friends the Members for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). Listening to their eloquent, well-argued points against the deal before us, one can see that it will perpetuate the deep divisions.

Thirdly, all of those points are before we start on the political declaration, about which we have heard some astute comments today. We will be out, we will have paid the £39 billion and we will be saddled with the backstop. We can already see how difficult it will be to negotiate and agree the trade and commercial deals with our 27 European neighbours in the European Union. We have heard what the French have said about fisheries. We have heard what the Spanish have said about Gibraltar. We have heard what Greece and Cyprus have said about any precedents set in respect of Turkey. Alas, I cannot support the deal.

So what is to be done? It seems to me that we almost certainly need more time, although the amendment that we passed today makes it clear that the House of Commons expects the Government to address these matters with great urgency. The former Brexit Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden, makes the good point that deals in the European Union are normally done up against the clock. I recognise the validity of that point. The much bigger role for Parliament to take, which was set out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset, is clearly extremely important.

The Government, as the servant of Parliament—not the other way round—need to go back to Brussels, Paris and Berlin and spell out clearly to our friends in the European Union why the deal is unacceptable, in particular the backstop. They should explain that if the Commission persists in this vein, it will sour relations between the European Union and the UK for generations, to our huge mutual disadvantage.

The Government have rightly stepped up planning for no deal, but given the will of the House on this matter, even talk of cliff edges and no deals seems unduly alarmist. It will clearly be in everyone’s interests for a series of deals and preparations to be put in place, however temporary. We must use any extra time to look again at the available options. The shadow Brexit Secretary talked about this. What are the pluses of Norway and Canada—both deals that the EU offered us earlier? Clearly, no money that is not legally, contractually due should be handed over at this point.

If the Prime Minister’s deal is rejected, it will be for Parliament to reach a conclusion on how to proceed. I profoundly hope that we can, because if we are unable to do so and this House cannot reach a resolution on these matters, the possibility of a further referendum will undoubtedly arise—something I believe profoundly to be most undesirable. A large cohort of our constituents will feel that a second referendum tramples on their democratic rights and is an attempt by a complacent establishment to make off with the referendum result. As a matter of fact, I do not think the result would be likely to change in the event of a second referendum.

Parliament must now seek to reach an agreement on how best to proceed. Only if we find ourselves incapable of reaching any agreement should we consider the option of going back to our constituents to seek their further guidance.

Future Relationship Between the UK and the EU

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I want to extend the warmest possible congratulations to the new Secretary of State on joining the Cabinet—I know he has had to pop out for a short while—and to salute the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker). Whether one agrees or disagrees with him, he is clearly a man of integrity and principle. He worked incredibly hard in his Department.

This is the first contribution that I have made to any of the Brexit debates. It was 25 years ago that I was a Government Whip engaged in securing support for the Maastricht treaty, with Britain’s two opt-outs, so brilliantly negotiated by John Major. I learned from that experience the deep and fierce passions on Europe that are held by so many of my friends and colleagues across the House, and in particular on the Conservative Benches.

I have to say, in all honesty, that the position today is far worse in terms of internal conflict and disagreement than ever it was during the Maastricht era. Of course the divisions are not just within this side of the House; they run throughout our constituencies—mine was divided almost exactly 50:50—and between friends and family. They have led to a breakdown in collective responsibility in the Cabinet, with a consequent breakdown in normal party discipline far worse than anything we remotely saw during the parliamentary stages of Maastricht. This breakdown in relationships, these deep divisions in this place and outside, are going to be very difficult indeed to heal.

I come now to the White Paper. I was dismayed, although not surprised, that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) resigned; dismayed because, despite some of the ludicrous, and at times mischievous, briefings he was subjected to, he was so clearly the right negotiator for Britain, with his business and European experience making him uniquely qualified for the task.

I have always felt throughout this process, as a Back-Bench Member of Parliament, that the best interests of my constituents are served by supporting the Executive in these very difficult negotiations: that the legislature—that is us—should give the Executive some leeway and the benefit of the doubt. That is not an enormously dissimilar approach to the way the 27 other stakeholders in the EU are more or less rowing in behind Monsieur Barnier. But in the end, particularly in a Parliament where there is no majority, and where therefore power has so self-evidently passed from the Cabinet room to the Floor of the House of Commons, it is we, the legislature, who will decide, and the House of Commons that will reach its verdict on the deal that the Executive negotiates. It is for that reason that the arguments for a meaningful vote are so essential and have had to prevail, as they have done, in the House.

[Alex Chalk]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Does he agree with the maxim of the former President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson, that the first rule of politics is that its practitioners must be able to count? That is so important when we come to consider our debates over the coming weeks.

[Mr Mitchell]

That is a very true maxim, and one that is engraved on the walls of the Government Whips Office.

It seems to me that there are now really only two possible outcomes. The first is a deal based very largely on the Chequers settlement. Both my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) have honourably and eloquently voiced reservations and no one is going to be entirely satisfied with what has been produced, but the current Administration have basically bet the farm on the Chequers formula and will now have to repel all boarders, if I may mix my metaphors, whether from Brussels or from Somerset.

Many of us regret the Government’s decision to give in at the first whiff of grapeshot emanating from the west country earlier this week, precisely because giving in will make it more difficult to resist counter-pressure from other directions for change. It is extraordinarily unlikely that we will do better than the plan set out in the White Paper, but there ought to be enough in the broad Chequers outline for people of good will to work with and coalesce around.

[Robert Neill]

I entirely agree with what my right hon. Friend says. Does he recognise that that is also the sentiment of businesses in this country, from manufacturing through to the key financial services sector? Does he also agree that ultimately the Conservative party is a pragmatic party rather than a rigid one, and imperfect though any deal or proposal may be, it is worth going for?

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend makes a wise and sensible point.

I have just set out the first option. The alternative option, I believe, is no deal, and I fear it is as simple as that. If there is no deal, I am sure we will survive and all will be fine in 10 years’ time, but it will not be fine at the outset. No deal—at least at first—will threaten our levels of growth and risk the living standards and prospects of those we are sent here to represent. It risks endangering the opportunities we want to see for our constituents, not least the younger ones leaving education and entering the world of work. And it will be this Administration who will be blamed: whether people voted leave or remain, the Conservative party owns this process and will be held to account for no deal. In any event, the Government need now to increase massively their planning for this eventuality and, in my submission, to report to Parliament in detail on it when we return in the autumn.

I have one final point to make. There are those who, with great eloquence, advance the case for a second referendum, but I have come to the conclusion that while it is just possible that Parliament might wish to seek public endorsement of the deal itself, it is most unlikely. That is because if we held another referendum with a different result, why not have the best of three? We see ourselves as a serious country, we have settled the matter in a significant referendum, and for better or worse we are leaving.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

Could not my right hon. Friend cite as an example what happened over the Lisbon treaty and the Republic of Ireland, when its voters were invited to have a second referendum, but not until the EU had made it worth their while to vote in a different way? Does my right hon. Friend fear that that could happen here if we had a second referendum, and be very divisive?

[Mr Mitchell]

For the reasons I have set out, I think another referendum would be profoundly divisive, and actually it might not advance agreement in our country and bring people back together again.

The Government must now use the summer to advance the case that they all agreed at Chequers and move towards some specific agreement with the EU. It will then be for the Government to propose, but for this House to dispose.

Exiting the European Union

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The right hon. Lady was an eminent member of the Cabinet, and, indeed, an eminent Front-Bench Member and shadow Home Secretary. I therefore take her question extremely seriously, as she does this issue. The simple answer is that the whole justice and home affairs stream is being assessed even as we speak, and the aim is to preserve the relationship with the European Union on security matters as best we can. The right hon. Lady will recall that last year a decision was made which laid aside about 100 measures that we did not want to be part of, but kept some others, including the European arrest warrant and one or two others—controversially, as she will remember. So yes, of course we are across that, and of course we are aiming to maintain it. That is the answer.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend on his return to the Government Front Bench after an unfortunate hiatus of some 20 years. Is it not absolutely clear that he has both the skills and the experience that are required for the extremely difficult job that lies ahead? Surely the whole House will wish him every success as he charts those extremely difficult shoals.

[Hon. Members]

Answer!