EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I welcome this debate. It is a historic day for this Parliament and for the power of MPs. In that spirit, I will keep my remarks very short, because this is a day for Back Benchers and for those putting forward their case for particular propositions. I believe there are some 47 Members who want to speak.

Labour’s approach today is that we will support amendments that are consistent with the two credible options we have set out on a number of occasions: a close economic partnership based on a customs union and close single market alignment; and a public vote to prevent no deal or a damaging Brexit. We will oppose those amendments that either offer no route forward or set out an approach that is inconsistent with our policy. In that spirit, I can confirm that we will be whipping tonight to support: amendment (K), in my name and in the name of the Leader of the Opposition; amendment (J), the customs union amendment tabled by the Father of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke); and amendment (M), in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), which was tabled, of course, after much consultation and support from my hon. Friends the Members for Hove (Peter Kyle) and for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson). I will come on to amendment (D) in just one moment.

Let me start with motion (K), which mirrors the five pillars of the plan that we have set out on many occasions, both in this House and in the letter from the Leader of the Opposition to the Prime Minister in February.

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

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Keir Starmer]

I will make some progress, because I have spent a lot of time at this Dispatch Box and I have been able to make my case. Others want to make their case today and I want to give them the opportunity to do so.

Motion (K) mirrors the plan that we have set out. It was in the letter from the Leader of the Opposition to the Prime Minister in February. I remind the House that the pillars are a comprehensive and permanent customs union with the EU, close alignment with the single market, dynamic alignment on rights and protections, accompanied by much stronger commitments on agencies and security. We have never pretended that this will be easy or painless to negotiate. It involves compromise and negotiation, but we believe that it could be negotiated, and it would form the basis of a deal that protects jobs, rights and the economy.

Turning to motion (J) on the customs union, Labour’s support for a customs union is well known. I want to be clear that a customs union on its own is not enough. A customs union protects manufacturing supply chains and is relevant to the protection of the border in Northern Ireland, but it has to be part of a wider package, hence our motion (K), which sets out the package that we believe is needed. However, motion (J) is worded to specify that a customs union is a minimum part of any deal and we will support it on that basis.

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[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I join those who have congratulated my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on giving us this opportunity. At last we are seeing, as we go along, that the House is moving into a mood where it is going to be possible to end the catastrophic shambles of the last six months. We are beginning to talk about actually being able to take decisions founded on some sort of cross-party consensus and some search for a majority that can be sustained through the difficult and long negotiations that will be required to reach agreement on our final relations with the European Union. It seems to me that it is up to the House to respond to that properly and deal with this procedure, with a willingness to compromise with one another and move towards some eventual binding recommendation to the Government about the way in which things should be conducted in future. I shall certainly approach this in that way.

My right hon. Friend has also helped the Government, although they are bitterly resistant to what he has done, raising absurd constitutional arguments, which are complete fiction and which they could have remedied easily if they had put down their own proposals for having indicative votes, as they told us that they were going to two days ago. This hair-splitting thing about it being the Government who should table business motions, and not Back Benchers, is a completely piffling irrelevance. He has actually helped them considerably: I have never seen the right-wing members of the European Research Group more apparently panicked by the way the House as a whole is moving. They are demonstrably in a minority, their dreams of a no-deal departure are fading, and despite their frequent meetings with the Prime Minister and their gliding into Chequers at the weekend, they are beginning to peel off one by one, having first rebuffed it.

I congratulate those who put this process together and those Ministers who resigned to get this pressure going and bring us nearer to reality, and I will turn now to the substance of how I am going to vote. As I have said, I will vote not for my first preference—I will when it occurs—but for that which I can live with. Unfortunately, I think we are doomed to leave the European Union within the next two or three years. My duty now is to exercise my own judgment as to what is in the national interest, will minimise the damaging consequences and will perhaps save some of the better features for future generations.

As I have said before, the obvious compromise is, unfortunately, to give up the political European Union and leave the political institution and remain in the common market, as the public still call it—the customs union and the single market—thereby avoiding problems at the borders and for business, ensuring the smooth running of trade, and so on.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I am sorry, but I cannot give way. I would like to—I have been collaborating with the hon. Gentleman—but I must take notice of time.

Under such a compromise, we would continue to enjoy the economic advantages of being in the biggest and most prosperous international free trade area in the world and begin to reconcile the 52% with the 48%. Most sensible members of the public, however passionate their views, be they remain or leave, could see the sense in coming together around such a compromise. It was the main Eurosceptic demand 20 years ago: leave the EU but not the common market. If we solved that, we could begin to repair the dreadful political mood in the country.

I will vote for revoke whenever it appears, because that is my personal preference, but that is self-indulgence, and I will support—[Laughter.] If we get a majority, I will be delighted.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I will not give way to my fellow collaborator on revoking.

I will support common market 2.0 and anything that resembles it, though I will not dwell on it further, as I have already dealt with it. I come then to my motion (J). As I have already indicated, it is not my first preference—the two I have already named are my preferences—but it is tabled to maximise support in the House so that we can move on Monday towards our really taking control and actually putting the Government, though they do not accept it, in a much stronger position than they are today when it comes to the future negotiations.

Motion (J) advocates a customs union only—a permanent customs union, I point out to the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who intervened earlier on this point—and would keep the minimum needed for frictionless trade and an open border in Ireland. We would also need some understanding or moves on regulatory convergence, but that does not need to be dealt with at this stage. If we started with the premise that we will be permanently in a customs union, it would bring greater clarity to the next stage—the really important stage—of the negotiations. I think that every other EU member state would be ready to accede to that, and it would improve the climate of the negotiations.

The motion is designed to appeal in particular to Labour Members who are demanding it and to my more cautious right hon. and hon. Friends in the Conservative party. Those who have hang-ups about rule making and use medieval language about vassal states and all the rest of it are talking about the single market. Motion (J) does not include the single market. The customs union guarantees a reasonably frictionless relationship and the possibility of completely open trade in the future, and leaves all the other things to be decided in the negotiations.

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[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I rise with the endorsement of the Father of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), for my motion (L)—for which I am grateful to him—and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), who has prosecuted the issue of revocation with such vigour in the House over the past few months. I am glad to say that my motion is supported by all parties in the House. It has the official backing of the Scottish National party, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Independent Group. Many Labour Members have told me that they intend to support the motion, and I hope very much that the Labour party will reconsider its decision not to whip on it.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Surely anyone who has said in the House “No to no deal” must support motion (L), because it gives a mechanism to that—namely, revocation.

[Joanna Cherry]

Absolutely. If there is one thing that we can achieve this afternoon by supporting this motion, it is categorically ruling out no deal. The motion is a revocation backstop. It stipulates that if within two days of exit day we have no agreed deal and Parliament does not positively approve no deal, the Government must revoke the article 50 notice, and we will stay in the EU. But it is important to understand that revocation does not mean that we could never notify the EU of our intention to leave again. That is incorrect, as Members will see if they read the decision of the Grand Chamber in the Court of Justice of the European Union on the case that I and others brought.

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[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), who was a brilliant Trade Minister and resigned on a matter of principle. We here should all remember our principles.

There is an air of almost self-satisfaction and self-congratulation in the House today, as if somehow this is wonderful. I think the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) called it a wonderful freedom. I actually feel very sad about today. We should not be in this position. I could spend the next five minutes talking about who to blame, but there is not much point. We are where we are.

The one group of people we cannot blame, however, are the people of this country who in the referendum voted to leave, thought they would be listened to and were told by everyone, including the former Prime Minister, that their vote mattered and would be implemented, whatever that decision. Since that day, many people in this House who never wanted us to leave have done all they can in very clever ways—an hon. Member said she had been helped by a senior lawyer to put her motion—to prevent us from leaving.

The public looking in today would say, “What a nonsense. It’s just a lot of waffle. You’re just putting through loads of different things.” In the end, only the Government can make this happen. The Prime Minister could still get her withdrawal agreement through, if she was to recognise that she as a Conservative and Unionist Prime Minister should never have come up with something like the backstop and that the backstop has to be changed. I understand that fundamentally.

The one thing that must not happen today is the people of this United Kingdom being told, “You were too stupid, racist or ignorant to vote the right way, and now we want you to vote again in a separate referendum, because we think you might have changed your mind.” I am incredibly disappointed that my party—a Labour party that saw the majority of its constituencies vote to leave—is whipping Labour Members to vote for a second referendum.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Hoey]

I am not giving way to the hon. Member.

It is outrageous. Labour supporters and voters who came back to Labour and voted Labour, having dallied with UKIP for a while and believing that Labour meant what it said, would see it as a huge betrayal.