Article 50 Extension

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

The problem with the Prime Minister’s approach is that last week we voted on a motion that said she would seek a short extension if the deal was passed by today—that was in paragraph (2) of the Prime Minister’s motion—and it has not been put before the House today, and that she would seek a longer extension if that was not the case. So, there was an expectation that the Prime Minister would do the opposite of what she has done today. Equally important is that there is a growing expectation that the House needs to have time to decide what happens next. A different Prime Minister might have reflected on what happened last week and come to the House this week to say, “I recognise that my deal is not going to get through as it is and I, the Prime Minister, will provide a process of some sort, or ask the House to help me with a process of some sort, to decide where there is a majority, so that we can move forward.” That is what is being missed in the letter.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Ind)]

As ever, the right hon. and learned Gentleman makes a powerful speech. He has given a description of what he would have expected the Prime Minister to do in the circumstances; what explanation does he put forward as to why the Prime Minister has not behaved in that way? Is it because she is stubborn, or is it because she is in the pockets of the European Research Group—the hard Brexiteers who are essentially running this country and this Brexit process? What does he think the explanation is?

[Keir Starmer]

The immediate concern is that the Prime Minister does not appear to be acting in accordance with her own motion of last week, but the deeper problem, which is what I am most concerned about, is that the Prime Minister still thinks that the failed strategy of the past two years, “My deal or no deal”—a blinkered approach with no changes and no room for Parliament—should be pursued for another three months. In other words, all she will do is use the three months in exactly the same way to bring back the deal over and over again—or as many times as she can without breaching the rules of the House—and try to force it through. That is the strategy that she has been pursuing throughout these negotiations and it has failed badly. We must not allow another three months to be used up on the same approach.

The letter sent by the Prime Minister this morning makes two requests to the Council—that it approves the documents agreed in Strasbourg on 11 March, and that it allows three months for the Prime Minister to get the same deal through Parliament. If I have read and understood the letter properly, I think the Prime Minister may be planning to bring the deal back on the basis that the documents that were before us last time have now been approved formally at the Council, and that some domestic arrangements have been agreed with possibly other parties, which means that she can then say that the deal can now be put to another vote, notwithstanding the fact that the documents on the table are exactly the same as the ones that we voted on last week. Obviously, that will raise the issue as to whether that is in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House, which will have to be addressed at the time.

The letter continues,

“it remains my intention to bring the deal back to the House.”

That is not a new deal, but the same deal. That is extraordinary, given how the House voted last week. It does not reflect the motion that was passed. Paragraph (2) of the motion clearly mentioned a short technical extension if the deal was passed by today—that was when the Prime Minister had the intention of bringing the deal back for today—or a longer extension if that was not the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keir Starmer]

I am not sure how another day with me at this Dispatch Box and us here discussing Brexit could be considered a happy day in anybody’s book.

[Anna Soubry]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. I am sure he is aware, though it may have escaped his note, that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster made the purpose of the Government’s motion very clear in his opening remarks on Thursday 14 March, and that it is recorded in column 562 of that day’s Hansard. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman has already told us, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster made it clear that the motion was to deal with this House approving the withdrawal agreement and a short extension, and he then said:

“If for whatever reason that proves not to be possible, we would be faced with the prospect of choosing only a long extension”—[Official Report, 14 March 2019; Vol. 656, c. 562.]

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has said that more than once, and the purpose of the motion was extremely clear to the House.

[Keir Starmer]

I really do think it was clear to anybody who was in that debate. The Minister for the Cabinet Office also went on at least to hint that if the deal did not go through this week, he at least would be open to some sort of process by which the House could come to a different agreement and move forward; I think he indicated that that would be next week. Of course, on Monday we are due to vote and possibly amend the section 13 motion that the Government have to table as a result of the last meaningful vote failing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

It might well be irresponsible, reckless and thoroughly irrational, but that does not mean that this Prime Minister will necessarily rule it out.

Within the last three or four days—the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) made this point very well earlier—we have received a clear message from the Government. They plainly intended the House to believe that we would be voting for a long extension if the agreement were not accepted.

The Prime Minister has whipped herself to vote against a motion that she herself tabled and presumably supported at the time when she tabled it. The Secretary of State—although he tried to say that this was not what he had done—has commended a motion and later voted against it. As two Members have pointed out, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, on behalf of the Government, has said that asking for a short, one-off extension would be reckless, a few days before the Prime Minister, on behalf of the Government, went off and asked for a short, one-off, reckless extension.

The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), who is present, told us that there had been many votes in the House against Scottish National party amendments for revocation. There have not; there have not been any. He told us that the presidential rules for the Joint Committee under the withdrawal agreement did not provide for delegations. Rule 3 of annex VIII refers explicitly to delegations, so the Minister was wrong again. The same Minister told my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) that during the transition period we would still be in the European Union. That was a clear statement from the Dispatch Box, and it was absolute nonsense.

We have reached a point at which the House can no longer take at face value anything said by Ministers at that Dispatch Box. One of the most ancient and surely most sacred traditions of this House is that when a Minister speaks at the Dispatch Box, their word can be taken as being correct. That no longer applies, not through any ill will on behalf of individual Ministers but because far too often a Minister says something that was true today and different Ministers say something tomorrow that makes it cease to be true. This is no way to run a Government and no way to run a Parliament.

[Anna Soubry]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in the House on, I think, Monday when the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), who is present now, was answering an urgent question or whatever—there have been so many—stood at the Dispatch Box and said it is

“very plain that if we are given the meaningful vote, we will seek a short extension, if we get that through the House, and if we do not, we will seek a longer extension.”—[Official Report, 18 March 2019; Vol. 656, c. 818.]

So that is yet another Minister giving a promise—a commitment—at that Dispatch Box which, with respect, has not been worth the paper it has been printed on in Hansard.

[Peter Grant]

I thank the right hon. Lady for giving yet another example. It is becoming increasingly clear that when Ministers come to the Dispatch Box to defend their Government’s handling of Brexit, they will say what they think needs to be said, and if it happens to coincide with the truth that is useful, but if it does not, someone has to come back afterwards and correct it. How can we expect European negotiators to have any faith in what British Government representatives are saying when time and again it is abundantly clear that we cannot take at true face value anything Ministers say from the Dispatch Box? We have a system of government and Parliament that depends entirely on being able to trust what Ministers are saying, and Ministers are simply not bothering to check the facts before they declare them in some circumstances.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that, and I will come to it shortly in my closing remarks.

The extension that we require clearly needs to be for a purpose. There are only so many versions of Brexit. We can do a clean-break, hard Brexit, which I know many MPs want, and I respect that. Indeed, the millions of people who voted to leave had that kind of Brexit as their expectation. Alternatively, we can have this soft Brexit that the Government are proposing, but I see very little support for it in this House or among the public more widely. The last opinion poll I saw on this deal showed just 12% of the public supporting it.

[Anna Soubry]

My right hon. Friend—she will remain my friend, and she is a great friend of this House, who speaks with great authority and good sense—has, in the past, talked about shabby deals behind doors. Does it concern her to learn, as many of us are learning on Twitter, that the Prime Minister is meeting leaders of parties and groups—I believe this is the first time she will have met all the party leaders, including the Independent Group, in one room at one time—and is then meeting a group of hard Brexiteers, presumably from the Back Benches of the Conservative party? Apparently, at 8 o’clock she is then not coming to this place to make a statement to this Parliament, but making a press announcement of some description in Downing Street. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that that speaks volumes about the entirely inappropriate and shabby way that this entire process has been conducted from the outset?

[Justine Greening]

I agree about that.

In a sense, there are two issues here: the substance of the decision we need to take, which I was just talking about; and the manner in which the decision is taken in a way that makes it a sustainable one. The substance is that there are only so many routes forward on Brexit. This House just needs to decide whether it can find a consensus on any of them. If we cannot, we need to confront what that means for finding a decision for the country as a whole.

I have been clear that I felt back in July that it was obvious that this place was gridlocked. I take no pleasure in the fact that that has been proved absolutely correct. It has not served this country well that the Government have sought simply to avoid that fact, putting their head in the sand, and that therefore we are days away from Brexit with no decisions having been taken. There is no point in saying that a referendum will waste time, given that the Government have wasted far more time than a referendum would have ever taken. For this extension debate to have any quality or meaning, we should be debating whether we want to delay until the end of the calendar year, the end of a fiscal year, or beyond that. We should be talking about the rationale for the different strategies on Brexit—there are only so many. I do not think that the way this debate has been approached or how it reflects the broader Brexit process has served our democracy well—it has been hugely counterproductive.

I wish to finish my comments this afternoon by talking about what happens even if the Government win a vote on their deal next week—if they are allowed to have one; I listened to your ruling and felt you were right to make it, Mr Speaker. Even if somehow a third meaningful vote on a motion not substantially different was allowed to be put to the House and it was won, the Government would not have won the argument. Brexit is not a moment and a vote in this House; it is about a process—a journey on which we will take Britain over the coming years—so just cobbling together a majority at one moment does not fix anything. It does not take the decision for those of my colleagues who genuinely feel that this version of Brexit is not what 17 million people voted for; it does not address their concerns. Quite rightly, they are simply not going to accept this version of Brexit when they feel so passionately that the thing for which they have campaigned for so many years is not being delivered. Such a vote will resolve nothing. It will end up feeling like the Government have simply tried to get something over the line for the sake of ticking a box, when this process should have been about so much more than that. It will not work and it will not be sustainable, so it not only serves our democracy badly but serves our country badly. I predict that we will have to revisit these issues anyway.

I know that what I am saying will not be welcome to Ministers’ ears. They have set their face for years—certainly for months—against listening to comments in this Chamber that are contrary to Government policy, but the time has now come when they need to face facts and face reality. It seems the one thing this House cannot do is take decisions per se for the Prime Minister and make her follow them. We need Government Ministers to wake up, smell the coffee and start acting responsibly on behalf of this country. This House rejects the Government’s deal. We want an alternative. We must allow the House to have the debate that can find the alternative, and if we cannot do that, allow it to take a decision about what we need to do as a Parliament. We cannot just steadily get to the 29 March cliff edge and simply ignore the fact that this is a grave crisis for this country that will affect people’s livelihoods and jobs. Having grown up in a place where there was unemployment, I find that totally unacceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

I think that—not quite in fairness to the Prime Minister—her purpose and her method has been obvious for a long time. To Opposition Members, it has been, “My deal or no deal.” In recent months, there has been a variation for others that she hopes to persuade to get on board with her proposal, which has been, “My deal, no deal, delay or no Brexit.” Ultimately, it falls to us as Members of the House of Commons to determine what happens and, courtesy of the important Wightman judgment, if the worst came to the worst next Friday, revocation is the one other option that we have, because it does not require the approval of the other 27 EU member states. I really hope that we do not get to that point, and I cannot see how it can be in the interests of the European Union to force us out with no deal, because it will get all the blame for all the consequences that would flow from that.

After we have been through the process that I described in answer to the intervention by the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), I urge the Government to listen to what Parliament says. It is no good inviting us to say what we are for if the Government say, “We are not prepared to go in that direction. We are not prepared to change.” If we are going to move, the Government will have to move along with everybody else, but the past two and three quarter years have shown that the Government have been unwilling to move one inch. The Government should then come back with a revised plan, because that is their responsibility. We do not want to seize control of the process for the sake of it, but if the Government are not acting, Parliament will have to act in their stead. The Government should bring a plan back, having listened to what the House said, so that we can debate, amend and vote on it.

[Anna Soubry]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share the frustration of many of us when more hon. Members voted against no deal—the original Spelman amendment—than voted for the Brady amendment? However, the Prime Minister completely ignored the vote that rejected no deal and, to put it in crude terms, kept banging on about the benefits of Brady.

[Hilary Benn]

The right hon. Lady makes a powerful point. There is a certain selectiveness in the Government’s reflection on the decisions that we have made. The public expect us to get on and do our job. If we can agree a deal or if we remain deadlocked, I look forward to the moment when we get the chance to vote in favour of the proposal for a confirmatory referendum proposed by my hon. Friends the Members for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Hove (Peter Kyle), so that the British people can make the final decision.

In conclusion, if it is democratic, as the Government argue, to come back not once but twice and—who knows?—maybe three times to ask us to change our minds on the Government’s deal, why is it undemocratic to ask the British people whether they, on reflection, would like to change theirs?

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Ind)]

I will try to keep my comments short because many others want to speak and I have spoken a lot in the last couple of weeks.

As we all know, it feels like groundhog day, but we have had the privilege this afternoon of hearing some outstanding speeches. It is the content, in particular, of some of those speeches that should concern members of the Government and those who sit behind them. I am thinking, for example, of the comments of the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) and of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who did not hold back in describing his sheer despair, as a long-serving Conservative Member, at our situation—a situation that is of the Government’s and, in particular, the Prime Minister’s own making. It does not give anybody any pleasure to say that.

I listened with great care, as I always do, to the wise words of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who always speaks with dignity, wisdom and experience. In a pragmatic and sensible way, he seeks often to provide the very leadership that has been so desperately lacking in the past three years. He said that he did not like to engage in the blame game, and I agree with him. However, it is absolutely critical, as others have said—including the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), and, indeed, the hon. Member for Leicester East—[Hon. Members: “Leicester West.”] I mean the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall). East or west, it is always very good in Leicester—not as good as in Nottingham, but that is by the way.

Let me say this, in all seriousness. Those Members made very important points, as ever, about how the Government are interpreting events and, quite wrongly, trying to set this place up as if it were in opposition to this thing called “the will of the people”. That could not be further from the truth. There are many right hon. and hon. Members who, from the very outset, have spoken without fear or favour on behalf of their constituents, doing the job that we are here to do, which is to represent all our constituents, not just to pander to the members of our political parties.

I would like to think that this was an inaccurate tweeted representation, but what a shameful moment it was when, apparently, one Conservative Member asked another, “Why did you vote in the way that you did?” and received the reply, “Well, it is my association annual general meeting this week.” That is the simple reality—the truth of the situation that we are in.

I have said this before, and others have said it as well. We know of Members, primarily Conservative Members, who regularly vote not in accordance with their consciences or what they believe is in the interests of their constituents, but because they are fearful either of being attacked or assaulted—and as you know, Mr Speaker, that is a very real threat to many—or of being deselected by their Conservative associations. That is a fact. It goes to the very root of democracy, and also, I believe, to the heart of much of what has happened over the past three years: the inability of people to speak with honesty, and to do the right thing by their constituents.

There is a sense of despair in the country, which is reflected in this place. I will not say who it was, but a Member who sits on these Benches, although not in the area where I sit—they know who they are—said to me at about half-past 8 or 9 o’clock this morning, “For goodness sake, will she,” meaning the Prime Minister, “not now listen, and reach out, and try to form some sort of compromise and way forward?” I had to reply, “I am afraid to say, on the basis of my experience, that this Prime Minister will not listen to anyone who does not agree with her, and when she does listen and does change her mind, it is only in response to those on the hard Brexit right of the Conservative party.”

What we should all seek to do is put our country first. Let me echo what was said by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield—and it must have been heavy and difficult for him to say it. I am afraid that time and again, when this Prime Minister should be putting her country first, she is putting her party first, and that cannot be right.