European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Grieve]

There are a series of processes. I do not wish to get too diverted from my main point. We are intending, and will require, a further statute in order to achieve what the Government have set out. I hope very much that we do not leave with a no deal on anything, because we would not be able to fly off to Rome on the day after, we would have no security co-operation and we would, indeed, be mired in complete and utter chaos.

The reality is that clause 9 is incompatible with the programme that the Government have set out. At the time that clause 9 was inserted, I think that the Government had not yet fully worked out the implications of how withdrawal had to take place.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Mr Grieve]

In a moment. I do not wish to take up too much of the Committee’s time.

My point brings me to the specifics of clause 9, which is an extraordinary and wide power to remove us from the EU by statutory instrument, and moreover—this is the most telling point—to ask the House to give the Government effectively a blank cheque to draft statutory instruments to achieve something when at the moment we do not know what that is.

[Mr Grieve]

If I may say so, I think my hon. Friend has misunderstood what I said. The fact is that clause 9 provides a power, exercisable once this Bill comes into force before exit day, to implement something when we do not at present know what that is. Therefore, it is a very strange thing to ask Parliament to sign off.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Is not the supreme irony the fact that clause 9 is actually the child of article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which the Government are now supporting? This provision is the Lisbon treaty timetable. It is not in any way trying to give power or control back to this House to amend that in any way or to ensure that the UK leaves the European Union at the time that is fortuitous. The UK is just accepting what is in the Lisbon treaty and the Government have welded themselves to that very idea.

[Mr Grieve]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point.

Ultimately, the centre of this point is that we are being asked to give the Government a power that can be exercised on something, but we do not know what that something is. Logically, the moment to make the statutory instruments to enact our withdrawal would come when we have this further statute—whatever it happens to be called—and have debated it in this House. We will then have structured the powers conferred by statutory instrument to achieve what Parliament wants and thinks is necessary to carry out withdrawal. That is the point, and pre-empting matters in this fashion is odd. Indeed, it is so odd that I heard one Minister—I will not reveal who—informally saying that they questioned whether the clause 9 power was in fact still needed, in view of how the Government were progressing this matter.

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[Sir Oliver Letwin]

My hon. Friend makes my point for me. The very point I am making is that no UK Government and no UK Parliament can guarantee that the other side would agree to any such thing.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I will not give way.

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[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I will give way two last times and then I really must sit down, because I have said everything I wanted to say and I am now just responding.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I understand what my hon. Friend is saying, but I do not agree with her. There is a well established process for Bills in this House that includes a Report stage. If one wishes to table an amendment in the House of Commons that the Government will not accept, it is perfectly possible to do so on Report. There is no reason to force the issue in Committee. As a matter of fact, the Bill will proceed through the other place, where there will be many, many proceedings. I do not have the slightest doubt—I am sure all my hon. Friends would agree—that it will send messages back to this place, so that will give us another opportunity. I do not stress that, though; it is enough that we have the Report stage. I quite agree that there is a mischief here, but I think it is a restricted mischief and I do not think the amendment is needed to deal with it. There are other means of dealing with it. It could be done on Report, and I therefore do not think that “enough is enough” applies now.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The right hon. Gentleman has been digging a hole for himself on clause 9 quite successfully. The way he has been speaking, he seems not to understand that the amendment would only giving the House the possibility of a vote. Given the way the Brexiteers have been winning every vote, if a vote was held on a deal the only reason it would be lost is if it was a terrible deal for the UK. His argument is the equivalent of somebody setting sail on the Titanic and refusing to take any lifeboats.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

It is very odd—it is as if the hon. Gentleman has not been here, but I have seen his body here all the time. The fact of the matter is that the House has had a series of votes, it is going to have a further series of votes, and then it is going to have a whole pile of votes on, inter alia, the new implementation and withdrawal Bill. In fact, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield is totally in agreement with that. There is no question of whether we give the House a vote. It is going to have a vote. The question is: what is the articulation of that with clause 9? That is what those of us who are being serious about this have been trying to discuss.

I really feel that I have come to the end of my remarks. I apologise, Sir David, that I am long past time. I hope you will accept that it is because I was answering points from other Members.

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[Mr Jenkin]

This is not the moment to try to defeat the Government, when there is another opportunity to amend the Bill at a later date.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

On a point of order, Mrs Laing. Are summits now to be sovereign over Parliament?

[The First Deputy Chairman]

That is not a point of order.

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[The Temporary Chair (Sir David Crausby)]

Order. I remind Members that if they keep their contributions short, more hon. Members will be called.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Brexit has had many titles, but in my view it is fast becoming the Laurel and Hardy Brexit, because it is one never-ending fine mess—a multifaceted fine mess, indeed. My hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) keeps a running total on how time is passing. It is 530 days since the Brexit vote, when apparently all the voters knew what they were voting for, yet we are still working out what it meant—there are Committees in this place trying to work out what it meant. He also tells me that there are 470 days to go before the cliff edge. The fine mess and the vanity are coinciding with the Government’s avoidance of a meaningful vote. They are tied to the timescale of article 50 as laid out in the Lisbon treaty—a strange place for a Brexiteer Government to be.

To me, it is pretty obvious. If the vote is between a deal and a crash-out, a deal wins. If the vote is between a deal and the status quo, with access to the single market, the status quo wins. Surely nobody is going to put the country—our constituents, themselves and their families—into a worse situation than we have now or raise the possibility of higher trade tariffs with up to 94 countries, as well the base load of the 27 EU countries. Another question: is this going to be a transition deal or a maintenance deal? Last Monday, the Prime Minister said she did not want two cliff edges, so it looks as if there is going to be a maintenance deal.

Opponents of amendment 7 are treating it as if it somehow aims to block Brexit or remove powers from their hands. It does not block Brexit. This is a Brexiteer Parliament, unfortunately. It is rolling over to article 50. Both Front-Bench teams want out of the single market and out of the customs union. The amendment, tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), would put power in the hands of parliamentarians. To reject the amendment would be like setting sail on a cruise liner, striking an iceberg and finding out you had refused to bring any lifeboats. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) fears that the other side will not be incentivised to make a deal. If that situation arises, deal with it then—do not tie our hands now for the sake of actions we might want to take in the future. The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) finds himself deferring, I think, to the European Parliament, which is a very interesting thing.

My final plea tonight is to wider society. As Chair of the International Trade Committee, I have companies coming to me moaning and telling me about Brexit. They have to step up to the plate and take part in this debate. We should have had impact assessments tonight, but we did not get any—they are more elusive than Donald Trump’s tax returns. Companies in the City have to start informing this debate. They should have been doing it before now, because it would have helped tonight. My plea is aimed at boardrooms across the UK: they must get their voices heard, because if they do not, they will go down with this lot here.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Parliament should have a meaningful vote on the EU withdrawal agreement before it is implemented. Clause 9, which is the subject of amendment 7, allows Ministers to implement the EU withdrawal agreement by secondary legislation. That was always a mistake. The courts were never going to accept a situation whereby the EU withdrawal agreement was brought into our law by secondary legislation—major constitutional legislation brought in by statutory instrument.

The Government, to be fair, acknowledged that. After presenting the Bill to Parliament, there came a point where they said, “No, we will need a Bill to implement the EU withdrawal agreement.” That is right, but what a mess. In my view, Parliament is entitled to have a meaningful vote on the agreement before the powers in clause 9 are used, so there needs to be a trigger in clause 9; otherwise, once the Government have reached agreement with the EU, they would be able just to start laying legislation.

Of course, we have had some welcome commitments tonight and during the day, but on something as important as this, where there are very significant powers involved, I feel that as parliamentarians and lawmakers we should have a say and the Bill should reflect what the Government are saying. If they are saying, as I believe they are, that what I have described will not happen until Parliament has approved the agreement, it should say that in the Bill. Indeed, it was noticeable that those who do not agree with the amendment, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), all agree that the provisions are flawed. It has been some time now that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) has been saying, “Come forward with your own amendment, O Government, so that this is in the right order and it has the protections that lawmakers would expect in the Bill.”

I am sad to vote, as I am going to, for article 7—[Interruption.] I said “article”, just like my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. I am sad to vote for amendment 7, but I feel I should and that it is an important principle that, when we make the law, we get it right in the Bill.