European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and that is precisely why we have been pushing for proper economic assessments.

I acknowledge that that negotiation target is ambitious, but it is the one the Secretary of State has set, and against which his performance will be measured. It is all very well to speculate on trade deals that might or might not come to pass. The White Paper may tell us that the United States is

“interested in an early trade agreement with the UK”,

but there is no indication of how “America first” protectionism will give better market access for UK-manufactured goods. Given the uncertainty, the Government need to do all they can to secure the jobs that depend on trade with our biggest and closet partner: the European Union.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. Why does he think that the European Union would not seek a free trade arrangement with the United Kingdom, given our balance of trade with the EU?

[Paul Blomfield]

I am sure that the European Union will be interested in securing the trade agreement that we seek, but the question is whether the Government can secure it on the ambitious terms that the Secretary of State has himself set.

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[John Redwood]

I am sure that that would be a very appropriate part of the discussions our country holds with New Zealand and Australia. I broadly take the view—I thought Labour was now of this view—that getting rid of tariffs was a good idea. Labour has spent all of the past six months saying how we must not have tariffs on our trade with Europe, but now I discover it wants tariffs on trade with everywhere else in the world. It is arguing a large contradiction.

[Dr Murrison]

My right hon. Friend is making a very powerful case. Does he not agree that it is truly remarkable that Germany makes three times as much money on coffee as developing countries because of tariffs and that we are noticing a problem with out-of-season fruit and vegetables in our supermarkets, in part because of the pressures applied to producers in north Africa? It is no good colleagues on the Opposition Benches having a go at those who are concerned about international development assistance if they are prepared to tolerate such tariff barriers, which act against the interests of developing countries.

[John Redwood]

I think that we have teased out something very important in this debate. The Opposition want no barriers against ferocious competition from agriculture on the continent, which has undoubtedly damaged an awful lot of Welsh, Scottish and English farms, but they want maximum tariff barriers to trade with the rest of the world so that we still have to buy dear food. That does not seem to be an appealing package.

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[Kit Malthouse]

I think that my right hon. Friend is being quite generous. As far as I can see, the huge number of new clauses and amendments is designed purely to waste time and to delay, and to send political signals rather than trying to achieve anything. The hon. Member for Ilford South complained about the programme motion. If the opponents of the Bill, or those who wish to amend it, had collaborated and focused on three or four critical changes that they wanted to see, rather than throwing a lot of flak in the air and causing all these problems, they might have made some progress.

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend is making a number of extremely good points, but is not vagueness the virtue as far as the drafters of the new clauses and amendments are concerned? If passed, they would turn a simple one-page Bill into an absolute monster that would be subject to a lawyers’ beanfeast and would be judiciable at every turn, thus kicking the Bill into the long grass.

[Kit Malthouse]

I agree, although the word I would use is “simplicity”. With simplicity comes clarity, and we need clarity from the Prime Minister, as she enters the negotiations, about the motivations of the House and its support for her.

My other reason for objecting to new clause 2 is that it abrogates to the Prime Minister decisions that will rightly become the decisions of the House in the future. Paragraph (e) states that the Prime Minister should have regard to

“maintaining all existing social, economic, consumer and workers’ rights.”

Apart from anything else, I am not sure what my social or economic rights are. They are undefined in the Bill. But, in future, those decisions will presumably become decisions of the House. If there are to be any changes in those rights, undefined as they are, they will have to be the subject of primary legislation.

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[Caroline Flint]

I am going to make progress.

I also want us to be open to EU students. I understand the concern in parts of our country—maybe not so much in London, but certainly in Scotland and the north of England—about the continuing brain drain from our communities that is hindering our ability to grow our economy. My constituents do not have much of a problem with that, just like they do not have much of a problem with having the ability to travel for their two weeks in the sun maybe once a year, which will be important for Doncaster Sheffield airport in my constituency. However, they do know that we have to think about some rules to manage migration, because the net benefits of migration, of which there are many, have not been shared equally across the country. In some communities in some towns, the rate of change with people coming in, particularly from eastern Europe, has had economic and social effects—with no blame accorded to those individuals. When a factory finds, perhaps over a matter of weeks or even overnight, that the number of people from eastern Europe outweighs the number of people from the local community, it cannot be denied that that creates worries, problems and pressure on services.

The debate over the next few years cannot be just about migration from the EU. Over the past seven years, the Tory Government’s policies on migration and immigration have failed. The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union is not here, but I remember when he caused a by-election on the basis of getting rid of ID cards. I supported ID cards then and I support them today. In the world in which we live, and given identity fraud, crime and needing to know who should have access to what, they could have been part of the solution to some of the problems we have seen since he caused that by-election.

[Dr Murrison]

I have been following the right hon. Lady’s remarks with great interest. She has reiterated the shadow Minister’s abandonment of her party’s long-standing principled commitment to free movement. Given that she wants the House to control migration in the future, how would that be possible without leaving the EU?

[Caroline Flint]

We have failed to raise that issue under successive Governments and influence how the change should happen, and I believe that discussions are happening across the other 27 member states about what freedom of movement has meant for them. Unfortunately, we have not attended to that issue for too long. As a result of not doing so, when David Cameron tried to negotiate a deal, he did not leave enough time to broaden the scope for some real reform, so we hurtled into a referendum of his choosing on the date that he set and the consequences are there for all to see.