European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Angela Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment.

That is why we should look carefully at what this Bill says. This Bill says, grudgingly, that Ministers will come and get permission from Parliament for the notification, but then they try to yank it right back to the Prime Minister, so that it is entirely, 100% back in the hands of Ministers alone to determine our fate outside the European Union. That is why I just cannot bring myself to vote in favour of this Bill: there are so many issues, so many ramifications and so many questions surrounding our withdrawal from the European Union that it is our duty—it is what the Supreme Court insisted we should do—to ensure due diligence and look at all the issues surrounding this question.

That is why I have decided to table a few, very judicious amendments to the Bill, to try to cover off a few corners of the questions that I think it needs to address. What will happen, for example, in our relationship with the single market? What are we doing for potentially tariff-free access or frictionless trade across the rest of Europe? Will we be able to have such advantages again? These are the questions that were not on the ballot paper, which simply asked whether we should remain in or leave the European Union. The ballot paper did not go into all those details, which are for Parliament to determine. It is for us as Members of Parliament to do our duty by performing scrutiny and ensuring that we give a steer to Ministers—that we give them their instructions on how we should be negotiating our withdrawal from the European Union.

I personally do not have faith in the Prime Minister’s vision for a hard Brexit—because it is a hard Brexit. We may currently be falling very gently through the air, like the skydiver who has jumped out of the aeroplane—“What seems to be the problem? We’re floating around”—but I worry about the impact. I worry about hitting the ground and the effect not just on our democracy, but on our constituents and their jobs and on the growth that we ought to be enjoying in the economy to keep pace with our competitors worldwide.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is giving an excellent speech. Will he confirm the view, which is held quite widely on the Opposition Benches, that absolutely critical to a successful Brexit will be membership of the single market?

[Chris Leslie]

Absolutely, and it beggars belief that we will not even be given the opportunity to debate that in this legislative process—a process, by the way, that the Government are so afraid to go into that they have given it a measly three days in Committee, an eighth of the time given to scrutinise the provisions of the Maastricht treaty. If they were not so frightened of debate, they would allow the House to go through all these questions. What happens to EU nationals? Will they have rights to stay? It should be for Parliament to determine these things. Are we going to have a transitional arrangement, so that we do not fall off that cliff edge when we get to 1 April 2019? What about visa-free travel? What happens to the financial services trade? It may not face tariffs; it may face a ban on trading altogether in various different areas.

For the Prime Minister to have already accepted the red lines of the other European Union 27 countries—for her to have thrown in the towel on single market membership without even trying to adapt free movement and find a consensus, which I think would be available—is a failure of her approach at the outset. For her to accept the red line that we are not allowed to have parallel discussions and negotiations—that we can only do the divorce proceedings in these two years and then maybe talk about the new relationship—is a failure of the negotiations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I have no idea whether the word “lie” is unparliamentary, but as someone who is not in the Government I cannot deliver such sums. What I can do, however, is consistently argue, as I have done, that when we take back control of the money that we currently give to the European Union we can invest that money in the NHS. In fact, it was the consistent claim of the leave campaign, as my right hon. Friend well knows, that we wished to give £100 million to the NHS—some of the money that we were going to take back control of—and also spend money on supporting science and ensuring that we could get rid of VAT on fuel, something which we cannot do while we are still a member of the European Union.

[Angela Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman may not be in the Government and therefore able to make the decision, but will he confirm whether he will be lobbying his Prime Minister hard for £350 million for the NHS?

[Michael Gove]

I have repeatedly argued that we should ensure that that money is spent on our NHS and on other vital public services when we leave the European Union. That goes to the heart of the fair challenge issued by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the Opposition spokesman: how do we ensure that the views of the 52%, which were clear, unambiguous and to which this legislation gives effect, and the views of the 48% who did not vote to leave are respected? The 48% are represented at the highest levels of Government. We have a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who voted to remain in the European Union, so it is not as though those views are ignored or marginal.

My challenge and my offer is that we ensure that the Brexit we embrace is liberal, open and democratic. For my part, that means more money to the NHS, but it also means embracing the principles outlined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough in a recent “ConservativeHome” article. It means, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) said, giving an absolute unilateral guarantee to EU citizens that they should stay here. It also means having a free trade policy liberated from the common external tariff, allowing us to lower trade barriers to developing nations and to help the third world to advance. It means exercising a leadership role on the world stage at a time when European Union politicians are increasingly naive or appeasing in their attitude towards Vladimir Putin. It means that we can stand tall, as the Prime Minister did, in making the case for collective western security and NATO. Those opportunities are all available to us as we leave the European Union. The challenge for the Opposition and the opportunity for us is to ensure that we make that positive case.