UK’s Withdrawal from the EU

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Government and Parliament can at any time produce legislation to reform previous legislation because the circumstances have changed. The idea put forward by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that the Government are now bound by what they passed on article 50 and by the withdrawal Act, and cannot possibly contemplate amending that Act or asking us to vote again on article 50, is, with great respect to him, one of the most preposterous propositions that I have ever heard anybody put before this House. The Government have every possible power in their hands to decide to avoid the calamity of leaving on 29 March with no deal whatever—leaving not with any long-term prospect of pursuing the national interest, but simply because nobody here is able to agree in sufficient numbers on what on earth they want to do. All we are doing is vetoing each other’s propositions on what should go forward.

This all started when the Government’s policy went completely off the rails after they were defeated by a record-breaking majority on an agreement that they had taken two years negotiating in pursuit of what was a clear strategy. It is obvious that we need a preliminary agreement—a withdrawal agreement—on three issues before we leave politically, if we are going to, on 29 March. On leaving, we will spend years negotiating long-term arrangements, not only on trade and investment, but in the many, many areas of activity in which we have based all our arrangements with the outside world on EU membership for almost half a century. It will take a very long time to sort out sensible arrangements.

We all know that the Government’s agreement was rejected. I voted for it; I am in favour of the Government’s withdrawal agreement. Nobody in this House wishes more than I do to see us remain in the united European Union; that would be in this Government’s interests. However, in this House, the majority for leaving is overwhelming. Let us come face to face with reality: there is nothing wrong with the withdrawal agreement; it is perfectly harmless. It gets us into a transition period; then we can negotiate. I will not go on about my views; I have given them before. There is nothing wrong with the Irish backstop at all. To say otherwise is complete invention for the sake of finding things wrong with the deal.

That put us in a dilemma. The agreement was defeated by a variety of people with totally conflicting objectives. The biggest vote against it was from the Labour party, officially. As interventions have shown, it is rather puzzling to say quite what the Labour party had against the withdrawal agreement. I have just heard the Irish backstop accepted by its Front-Bench spokesman—quite rightly; it is necessary, unfortunately. The money has been settled, and nobody is arguing about EU citizens’ rights. Labour voted against the agreement because it was a divided party, and it decided that the only thing on which it could keep itself together was on all voting against the Government. That was all.

Both the big parties are shattered now; there were large rebellions on both sides. The biggest group of people who joined in the defeat were ardent remainers who, unlike me, are firm believers in the people’s vote. They are still facing difficulties, because they do not want us to leave on any terms, so they are going to keep—

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Mr Clarke]

I will give way to my right hon. Friend—my best friend among all these arch-remainers, who are otherwise my political allies in the House, day in, day out, though they all voted against the agreement. They are still threatening to do so, because they do not want to leave. They think there should be a people’s vote.

Then there was a faction of people who were not content to vote for the political agreement, because it will take years to negotiate and is rather general, and who wished to be reassured on the record, before we started negotiations, that we would establish basic and sensible points, such as our staying in a customs union and having some regulatory alignment. If that was established, all the arguments about the Irish border would go completely out of the window, because we would have an open border in Ireland and an open border in England. I would like to see that. I would vote for that—and I have, several times; I voted with the official Opposition once or twice on a customs union—but it is not necessary, because everything is up for grabs after we leave. There will be wide-ranging negotiation. I think the pressure from business interests, economies and people of common sense on both sides of the channel will drive us towards something like that in some years.

Meanwhile—this is where we are now—the Government have pursued one of the factions on the Conservative side of the House. We have a kind of breakaway party within a party—a bit like Momentum, really—with a leader and a chief whip. They are ardent right wingers. The Government have set off in pursuit of these bizarre—as some Government members say—negotiating tactics; some of them, though, seem positively to want to leave with no deal, because any agreement with foreigners from the continent is a threat to our sovereignty.

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[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I rise to support the amendment in my name and those of many hon. and right hon. Members from all parties across the House. In simple terms, it calls for the publishing of papers that I know have been placed before the Cabinet, that the Cabinet has looked at and debated, and that in stark terms identify the very real dangers to our economy, to trade and to business of a no-deal Brexit.

I had the great honour to serve in Cabinet and to attend Cabinet. You may call me old-fashioned, Mr Speaker, but I am firmly of the view that there are times when the advice given to Ministers by their officials should remain confidential and should not be shared beyond the confines of that particular discussion. There are very good reasons for that, in my view. As a Minister, I made decisions not to share things. I take the firm view that advice given by, for example, the Attorney General to the Government should be subject to legal privilege. In those circumstances, it must be right that civil servants should be able to give advice without any fear that it might be made public. They should have no fear about giving such advice robustly and honestly.

The difference in this instance is that these papers that the Cabinet has debated contain important information that I believe my constituents and those of all other Members should have. It is also the view of a number of Cabinet members that those papers should be published. The fact—which nobody has denied—that members of the Cabinet take the view that those papers should be made public is the reason that I have tabled my amendment today and seek to persuade hon. and right hon. Members to support it.

These are not papers in the normal sense; they are papers of national importance. I am told that they make it very clear what the effects of a no-deal Brexit would be. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary has said that a no-deal Brexit would be “ruinous”, and he has no doubt come to that conclusion not only because he speaks to business, as he undoubtedly does, but because he has had sight of those papers and formed that sound opinion based on their contents.

[Mrs Main]

My right hon. Friend is being very informative. Is she prepared to tell us whether she has seen the papers or who is giving her this information? She is talking with great authority, so are we supposed to take her at her word that she is in the know?

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. I hope that she will take me at my word. Although the things I say in this place are often not agreed with, I do not make things up. I have asked both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about the papers, and it has never been denied that they exist, that they have been debated in Cabinet or that some Cabinet members believe that they should be published.

I gently suggest to my hon. Friend that the papers might assist her. I believe that she asked a question of a Minister about the need for us to get on with Brexit—I do not demur from her point on that—and get on with the trade deals so that businesses in her constituency can get on and trade with other countries. Perhaps if she saw the papers, she might know that businesses the length and breadth of our country already trade across the world. Businesses do not need a trade deal to do business and to trade. A deal enables us to do that business and that trade all the better. Perhaps it really is a very good idea that this place sees these papers, so that those hon. Members who are actually saying, as members of the Conservative party—the party of business—that it would be the right and responsible thing for this country to leave the European Union without a deal might be better informed as to the consequences.

[Mark Pritchard]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Anna Soubry]

I will take one short intervention.

[Mark Pritchard]

My right hon. Friend is being generous with her time. I do not agree with her, although I do respect her opinion, but does she accept that she may be asking for another precedent to be set? She sat in Cabinet and will know that documents can be sensitive, official, secret or top secret. Might this amendment not open the Pandora’s box for every Cabinet paper marked from sensitive to top secret to be leaked or let out?

[Anna Soubry]

I would not disagree with my hon. Friend at all. I have indeed seen those very same papers myself. When I was a Health Minister, I saw the risk assessment documents that took the firm view that it would not be in the public interest at all for some documents to be disclosed, for the very reasons that I have outlined. These papers are different, however, because members of the Cabinet who have seen them have unsuccessfully made arguments in Cabinet that they should be made public. That is the profound distinction in this case.

It really would be to the eternal shame of the Conservative party if it were to continue to support a no-deal Brexit. As ever, I make my views with perhaps too much robustness and sometimes with some passion, but I am one of the founding members of the people’s vote movement—I am very proud of that—and I believe that the only way through this impasse and mess is for this matter to go back to the country. However, I have now taken the view that the bigger national interest—I say this without any fear—is that I am no longer prepared not to vote in the interests of my country and my constituents and in accordance with my conscience. I am now of the view that ensuring that we do not crash out without a deal is my absolute priority and that is why I tabled amendment (e). I make that clear to my right hon. and very dear learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). We disagree on the people’s vote, but on this we are absolutely—probably as ever—as one.

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

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Anna Soubry]

I will not, just because I am running out of time and I want to make several important points.

The Conservative party is the party of business. This party is the party of competence when it comes to the economy—[Interruption.] Oh yes, and history shows that a Conservative Government always leave office with the economy in a better state than when they inherited it, because we always have to clear up the mess made by a Labour Government. That is the simple fact and reality of history. However, will this great party be so reckless and go against all that we value in our principles by actually suggesting that we should leave without a deal in the face of overwhelming evidence? How many more car manufacturers—Ford, Toyota, Nissan—have to make it clear that if we leave without a deal, that will seriously impact the way that they do business? In the real world, that means our constituents will risk losing their jobs. Over 800,000 people work in just the automotive sector, never mind all the other millions who work in our manufacturing sector. Everybody with a scintilla of knowledge of the real world and of business and trade knows that the worst thing that could happen to our country is to leave without a deal. That is the view of the majority of Members of this place.

I gently say to the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, who is a thoroughly good and decent man, that his speech chilled me to the bone. He is a Conservative, yet he stood at that Dispatch Box ignoring the amendment that was passed that was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman)—a former chairman of the Conservative Party—and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) for which 318 Members voted. The other amendment that was passed, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), was passed with 317 votes in favour. It is therefore shameful that the Secretary of State spent almost the entirety of his speech addressing the latter, not the former, even though the former had won cross-party support and the support of more hon. Members.

However, my party is in hock to the party within the party: the ERG. As others have said, it is funded by the taxpayer and others, with its own leader and its own Whip. The Secretary of State stood up and tossed out red meat to keep the ERG on board, instead of doing what each and every one of us must do, which is to do what is right for our country. The right thing for our country is to be as one in rejecting no deal and standing by, as this party once did, the people of this country, their jobs, their futures and the prosperity of business and trade.

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[Sir Oliver Letwin]

The right hon. Gentleman, who was a colleague of mine in the coalition Government, and to whom I pay tribute for his part in taking forward this Bill and other measures in which we are jointly engaged, is absolutely right about that. On 27 February, there is no place to hide. On that date, this House will make a decision that will lead either to this country leaving the EU without a deal, or to delaying the UK’s exit, thereby giving us a chance, if many other things follow, to find an alternative deal that can be agreed by this House, that can be legislated through, that can be mandated for the Government, and that can give this country a secure and prosperous future outside the EU. It is on 27 February that we will have to make that decision.

My final point is that in these circumstances, being an ordinary Member of Parliament, as opposed to a member of the Cabinet—many of us have been in previous Cabinets—is no longer the kind of task that many of us have always assumed it would be. Mostly, our country has operated on the principle that its great work is done by Governments, and that we in this House have the extraordinary privilege of observing, informing, scrutinising and checking, but do not have to take the ultimate responsibility for those crucial decisions that those of us who have served in Cabinets and in National Security Councils have, from time to time, had to take about what this country does. On 27 and 28 February, if we come to debate that Bill, and in succeeding weeks and months, as we have to legislate for the policy of this country in relation to the EU, all of us in this House will suddenly have to take the awesome responsibility of playing our part in trying to find a way through that enables our fellow citizens to have a secure and prosperous future.

[Anna Soubry]

As ever, my right hon. Friend is giving a passionate and brilliant speech and statement of the situation we are in. I wonder whether he could help us in one respect: does he believe that the papers I mentioned in my amendment (e) should be published? Would that assist?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I most fervently believe that they should be published; much more information on the no-deal exit should be available. I would vote for my right hon. Friend’s amendment, were it not for the infelicity of the fact that it would knock out the Government’s motion, which I am committed to voting for, having consistently maintained the position in this House that I will always back the Government in their endeavour to get their deal through until that is no longer possible. Perhaps I am a romantic, but I have always thought that my task was to try to assist a Conservative Government in coming to a solution. Although many of my hon. Friends do not find themselves able to do that, I will continue to do it. It is only for that reason that I shall not back her amendment; I shall abstain on the matter.

My right hon. Friend is of course right in substance: those papers should be out, because when this House comes to legislate, as I hope it will and fear it must, it will be, so to speak, a Cabinet. We will be making real-life decisions about what happens to our fellow countrymen—not just legislating in the hope that many years later, subject to further jots and tittles, the law, as administered by the system of justice, will work better. We will be making a decision about the future of this country. How can we possibly make those decisions unless we are properly informed? The process of which we are now at the start will require the fundamental realignment of the relationship between the civil service, Government and Parliament. There is no way we can continue to act as though we were merely a body to which the Government were accountable; for a period, for this purpose, we will have to take on the government of our country.

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[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister’s own personal approach to Brexit has created what 40 former ambassadors have today rightly called a “national crisis” that she is presiding over. In their serious and important speeches, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), my right hon. Friends the Members for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), and the right hon. Members for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) have risen to the occasion of the crisis that is now facing us. I only wish that the Secretary of State could have risen to it as well.

The fact is that the Prime Minister, from the beginning, has chosen to put the interests of keeping the Conservative party together over the national interest. She chose, because she had decided to kow-tow to the Brextremists in her own party, a hard Brexit to get through her own party conference, without even discussing it with her own Cabinet. She set the hard red lines—out of the single market; out of the customs union—that created the problems with the Irish backstop. From the beginning, she made no attempt to forge a consensus across party lines or, indeed, across the country to define what Brexit would be so that it could be delivered in a consensual way rather than a way that has exacerbated disunity and further divided this nation. She has decided that she has to deliver Brexit with Conservative and DUP votes, and nothing else, to keep her party together and avoid a split.

This has pushed her to a harder and more damaging conclusion than she might have reached if she had reached out, and it will do our country more damage. By her choices, the Prime Minister has further divided the country. She has not sought unity, and we are all paying the price. Unity does not consist merely of being forced to agree with her dubious, partisan choices and her definition of what Brexit should be, which are reckless in the extreme.

[Anna Soubry]

Does the hon. Lady also take the view that given the result of the general election, which resulted in a hung Parliament and the Conservative party actually losing its majority, there is no argument that there is any mandate for a hard Brexit, and in fact, if there is any mandate, it is against a hard Brexit and against no deal?

[Ms Eagle]

Not to my surprise, I find myself agreeing with the observations of the right hon. Lady. The only national poll that the Prime Minister talks about these days is the referendum. Somehow she never refers to the 2017 election in which her party lost its mandate for a hard Brexit.

The Prime Minister’s response to the result of that vote in 2017 and the loss of her majority surely ought to have been to go for a softer, more consensual Brexit that would have kept us in the customs union and avoided all these problems. But instead we have a Prime Minister who characterises disagreement with her own particular partisan choices on Brexit as if it is a betrayal of democracy. She has used those words, and that has further exacerbated the anger that we have in this country. In my view, it is actually beginning to bring democracy itself into disrepute. She flirts with authoritarianism and division, and invites the betrayal narratives that increase anger even more, so she is being reckless with our political stability.

The Prime Minister has ignored Parliament in the way in which she has gone about delivering Brexit. She allowed her attack dogs to attack judges who pointed out that in fact Parliament needed to have a say about the triggering of article 50 in the first place. Indeed, the Prime Minister has allowed her Government to be found in contempt of Parliament. Today’s motion only exists because she was defeated in an attempt to shut down Parliament’s say in Brexit, and yet the Government are fulfilling the terms of that vote by holding this debate according to the letter, not the spirit, of the defeat they suffered. They routinely ignore votes in Parliament. Opposition days have simply disappeared, and they do not deign to vote in Divisions that the Opposition secure anyway, much less take any notice of the result. We are seeing the phrase “non-binding on the Government” increasingly applied, which is why I made the point of order before the debate.

This development would have been unthinkable when I came into the House. The unwritten rules about our constitution are beginning to be ignored. Political gravity, which was always thought to be something that everybody respected, is being ignored. It is the letter, not the spirit, of our constitution and our law that is now apparently more important. We will rue the day we went down this dangerous path.

All agreements are intra-Conservative ones. The Chequers agreement was with the Cabinet, and that did not last the weekend. The ludicrously named Malthouse compromise has already been ruled out by the EU. The alternative arrangements working group, funded by civil service support, is all about trying to get the rabble of the ERG to agree with the rest of the Conservative party, so that the Prime Minister can move forward. It is all to kick the can down the road and let her stay in office another week.

The Prime Minister is deeply reckless, and she has made a deeply reckless decision to play a hugely damaging game of brinkmanship with her own party by threatening the entire country with no deal. We have heard in the powerful speeches so far the real damage that that is doing to our country, trashing our international reputation abroad and doing irreparable damage to our standing in the world.

Going to the brink in pursuit of this tactic is reckless with our economic prosperity and reckless with our political stability. Jobs are being lost now. Investment opportunities are being lost now. Growth is being sacrificed now. The Prime Minister has allowed the Tory Eurosceptic virus to infect the entire body politic. We are all ill with it; we are being weakened with it. Her and her party will never be forgiven for the damage that she is causing.

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[Henry Smith]

We have seen significant majorities both in favour of leaving the European Union, in that about 80% of Members of Parliament elected at the last general election said they would follow through on it—

[Anna Soubry]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Henry Smith]

I do not have any time; I do apologise.

[Anna Soubry]

Oh!

[Henry Smith]

Actually, yes, I will give way very briefly.

[Anna Soubry]

Can my hon. Friend remind us of the promises made by the leave campaign, which he supported? It repeatedly said that we would not leave the European Union until a trade deal securing our future trading relationship with the EU had been secured. Does he remember such broken promises?

[Henry Smith]

I never made that promise when I supported leaving the European Union. I believe that a deal is the best way forward, but let us not forget that the vast majority of right hon. and hon. Members voted in favour of the legislation to leave the European Union on 29 March, and if no deal is the result, that is the default position.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

I thank the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), for her comments about people’s speeches. She mainly chose people on her own side, but there were some excellent contributions from Government Members as well. A notable one was from the Father of the House, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who pointed out the logic of the position of so many of the Labour Members who spoke. Based on the shadow Brexit Secretary’s argument today, they should all be supporting the Prime Minister’s deal. If the Father of the House will forgive me, I am very glad that his amendment was not selected, because it was one of the most lengthy amendments I have ever seen on an Order Paper, and it would have taken some doing to get through it.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) correctly pointed out that those who asked for an extension of article 50 are just reinforcing uncertainty for businesses and people alike. I both understand and respect the position of my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman). She knows, and pointed out, that the best way to stop our country leaving the European Union without a deal is to do as she has always done, and work with and support the deal that the Prime Minister is trying to achieve for this country.

I was not quite sure about the story from my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) about a shortage of Viagra in a no-deal scenario. I am not sure that stands up at all. [Laughter.] We have had this debate a number of times; you have to try to liven it up. Hard Brexit, soft Brexit—who knows?

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said when talking about her amendment, there is a long-standing convention of not publishing advice given by civil servants, quite properly and candidly, to members of the Cabinet. The Government, through the Chancellor the Duchy of Lancaster, are very happy to meet her to identify the information that she wants published, and then to commit to publishing that information. In the light of that offer, I kindly ask her to consider not pressing her amendment.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful for the Minister’s comments, and congratulate him on what I think is his first speech at the Dispatch Box. In any event, this seems like a very sensible resolution, because if those papers, which I believe must be published, as others do, are not forthcoming, I reserve the right to move an amendment on 27 February, or into the 28th, and I will do that unless we get those papers. However, I am confident that we will identify them in that meeting, that they will be published, and that people will then realise what a danger no deal is.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that clarification.

This afternoon continued the tradition of robust discussion on this subject, with a degree of deliberation that is only appropriate for an issue of such national significance. As you would expect, Mr Speaker, the Government are following the direction delivered by the House on 29 January to return to the European Union to seek legally binding changes to the backstop. This House has instructed the Government on how to proceed, and we are delivering on that instruction. As the Prime Minister set out on Tuesday, there are three ways in which that could be achieved. First, the backstop could be replaced with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Secondly, the backstop could have a legally binding time limit. Thirdly, there could be a unilateral exit clause.

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[Mr Speaker]

I understood from the exchange the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) had with the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), that she was not minded, on this occasion, to move her amendment (e). Is my understanding correct?

[Anna Soubry]

It is, Mr Speaker, on this occasion; I am sure we can sort it all out.

Main Question put.