EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)

Debate between Anna Soubry and Nick Boles

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) on managing to deliver a powerful speech despite a certain amount of distraction. He was responsible for my defeat in his constituency in 2005—not as the candidate but as the campaign manager—and I have always been slightly frightened of him since.

I find myself wondering whether it is a coincidence entirely that the people who normally sit around me on these Benches are not here, given that we all know that among them are counted noted naturists. It has long been a thoroughly British trait to be able to ignore pointless nakedness, and I trust that the House will now be able to return to the issue we are discussing.

In last Monday’s debate, my great friend and mentor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), urged the House to take to heart the words that are recited every day during Prayers by the Speaker’s Chaplain:

“never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind”.

In the nine years since I arrived in this House, there has never been a day, or a debate, in which this injunction is more relevant. If by doing this a clear majority of right hon. and hon. Members are able to support one of the Brexit compromises on the Order Paper today, the vast majority of the people we represent will breathe a deep sigh of relief. We are sent here to make the most difficult decisions on behalf of our constituents. If we vote for a compromise version of Brexit this evening, they will see that we are up to the job.

[Anna Soubry]

As my hon. Friend knows—and he is my friend—I have made the case and voted for the single market and the customs union for almost the past two years. My difficulty with his motion is that paragraph 1(i) says that it seeks to

“renegotiate the framework for the future relationship”.

I think that he would have won more support if, like motion (C), on the customs union, he had sought to change the withdrawal agreement as well as the future framework. The problem with his motion is that it is about only the future relationship, which any Government and any Prime Minister who succeeds the current one can change. In other words, it is non-binding.

[Nick Boles]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her point, but I do not agree with it. My motion specifically includes a provision that the political declaration, as renegotiated, should then be cemented into the withdrawal Act, as will come if this House votes for this, and therefore this will require a majority of this House to vote to amend statute if there is to be a change. So it will not simply be a matter of a future leader of the Conservative party being able to rip this up and renegotiate it. They will have to amend an Act of Parliament in this House, and currently there is no majority for amending it in the direction that she fears.