European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Charlie Elphicke

Monday 14th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

For many months, we have been confronted with a series of choices and a series of false choices. The country had to choose whether to leave or remain. Those in the Cabinet had to choose whether to leave or remain in the Cabinet. For many Government Members, the choice has become whether to leave with or without a deal. For many Opposition Members, the choice has been whether to call for a second referendum or to accept the first.

Many famous figures have been quoted since we started our debate back at the beginning of December, but these are the words that keep coming back to me: it is not our abilities in life but our choices that define who we truly are. For all the heart searching and the division that these questions have caused, I am convinced more than ever that the real divide in our country is not between those who voted to remain and those who voted to leave but, as the leader of my party said last week, between the many who do the work, create the wealth and pay the taxes, and the few who set the rules, reap the rewards and so often dodge paying the taxes. The real choice is choosing whose side we are on when we see injustice, unfairness and inequality. In answer to that question, my party—the Labour party—has always throughout its history had one and only one answer. As the party of the many, we seek to heal the appalling divide that we now see in our society.

The speeches that have moved me in the long course of our debate since December were those like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), who explained that his constituents were not interested in the processes and the amendments. He said:

“They want to know how they will feed their kids and heat their house, and how they will get to work if there is no bus. How will they make ends meet if they have to move from their current benefit on to universal credit?”

That view was intriguingly echoed from the Government Benches by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), who said:

“The vote to leave was in no small part a cri de coeur from millions of people who feel that the powers that be in Westminster no longer know, let alone care, what it feels like to walk in their shoes…At every level, there was a direct correlation between household income and the likelihood to vote for leaving the EU.”—[Official Report, 6 December 2018; Vol. 650, c. 1144-1159.]

The social divide in our country is real. I agree with my colleagues who say, “That was not caused by the European Union.” That is true, but nor did the European Union provide a shield against it. It will not be solved if we become poorer by leaving the EU, but while our country has been a member of the EU, the experience of those millions of people has been the loss of secure jobs, the hollowing out of their communities, and years of austerity and harsh social policy. That is why remaining in the EU does not appear to them to be a solution to the inequality we face.

Cri de coeur it may have been, but those people will feel nothing but anger and disgust for us as politicians if we turn around now and patronise them by ignoring and reversing on the message they gave us in the referendum. My good friend the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) expressed that with an eloquence we rarely hear in the Chamber when she said:

“The right to be heard is a key battleground in the history of our country, and it is at the heart of the age-old division between those who labour in silence and those who speak from a gilded platform.”—[Official Report, 4 December 2018; Vol. 650, c. 832.]

My God, I wish I had said that.

When the referendum result came in, those who voted to leave finally felt that their voices had been heard. The House has to understand that despite the social chapter and the good will of our MEPs, the EU did not present itself as a champion of the voiceless. It was against that backdrop that the Prime Minister had an opportunity to put together a future that met the aspirations of those voters. She could and should have recognised that when our fellow citizens are divided 52% to 48%, it is the time not to go back in the political bunker but to reach out. She should have reached out and tried to build a consensus across Parliament that would have united our country. That would have been leadership, but instead she doubled down, put her party interests before the country and tried to appease the European Research Group.

I do not deny that the Prime Minister has shown steel and determination, but there is a point at which steel and determination become obstinacy and recklessness, and she has gone far beyond it. The Labour party consistently argued that before triggering article 50, Parliament must be properly consulted on, and fully involved in, the impact assessments, the right to a meaningful vote, the deal and the financial modelling. We argued that Parliament had the right to see the full legal opinion prepared by the Attorney General. The Prime Minister’s refusal at every stage was a blunder that resulted in an achievement unique in 1,000 years of our history in this place: a Government being held to be in contempt of Parliament. That is ironic, given that Brexit was supposed to be about restoring the sovereignty of Parliament.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the importance of uniting the House. Will he unite with me in rejecting the idea of a second referendum? We need to honour the referendum mandate and leave the European Union.

[Barry Gardiner]

I will conclude on exactly the point that the hon. Gentleman raises, because it is at the heart of the conundrum facing the House and the country. If he gives me time, I will get there.

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[Barry Gardiner]

Of course it was right to look at the 15-year long-term assessment. Nobody is disputing that. Indeed, I will quote later from precisely that analysis. The problem is—and this is not just my criticism but the all-party Treasury Select Committee’s criticism—that these crucial elements of how we will transition to the future relationship have not been analysed or presented to the House.

[Charlie Elphicke]

As a member of that Committee, I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about the modelling, and I do believe that the Treasury needs to get better at listening, but would he agree that Labour’s various Brexit tests are not worth the paper they are written on? Indeed, I believe one member of the shadow Cabinet used a profanity in describing Labour’s Brexit policy not so long ago.

[Barry Gardiner]

Oh dear, Mr Speaker!

It is precisely this lack of specificity that has left Members across the House unable to have confidence in the Prime Minister’s deal. I probably should not call it a deal, because the future political framework document is no more than a placeholder for the future trade and security agreements that the Government hope eventually to conclude. It is both this lack of detail and the fact that the Prime Minister has wound down the clock that have significantly reduced the ability of Parliament to be properly involved in the most important decision facing our country.

When my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the shadow Brexit Secretary, fought and won the battle for a meaningful vote, which is now scheduled for tomorrow, he made it clear that the word “meaningful” must imply both a level of detail and clarity about what was proposed and a timeliness that would enable Parliament to amend the proposal and the Government to respond appropriately. We should not forget that originally the Government quite correctly wished to pursue the negotiations on the withdrawal agreement and the political framework side by side, but they agreed the chronology set out by the European Union.

That, I believe, was a mistake, but it made it all the more important that the negotiations on phase one be concluded expeditiously. The Government failed to do that. As a consequence, they ended up agreeing to everything that was vital to the EU in the withdrawal agreement and leaving everything about the future trade, security and political agreement that is vital to the UK to fall into a thin wish list, with words such as “the parties envisage”, “the parties will explore”, “the parties will use their best endeavours”.

The truth is that the real negotiations that will affect our economic life and our citizens’ future security have not yet properly begun. Look at the provisions for data protection: we have lost our place on the European Data Protection Board. The Prime Minister said in Munich that staying on it was one of her objectives so that we could continue to influence the rules and development of the general data protection regulation regime that we had been so influential in setting up. We will still have to comply with the scheme, but under the political declaration the EU will “start the assessments” of whether it should recognise the UK as a fit regime and will endeavour to reach a decision by 2020.

It is the same with REACH and the chemicals regulations: these are areas in which the EU is leading the world and in which we were leading the EU. No longer—our chemicals industry has spent more than half a billion pounds registering more than 6,000 chemicals with the EU’s database. The Government are now asking it to re-register every single one with our own Health and Safety Executive because we will no longer have access to that EU database. It is the same for financial services, where we are talking about equivalence, not even mutual recognition: the EU will start assessing whether it can declare our regulatory and supervisory regime is equivalent only after the withdrawal date. Then it says that it will try to reach a decision before the end of June 2020. Well, how very good of it.

The hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) spoke with great clarity and from his own bitter experience of negotiating with the EU when he advised the House:

“We must be clear-eyed as we go into these negotiations because they have been set up for failure. The EU will manage the timetable, it will manage the sequencing of the negotiations, it will set the hurdles and it will tell us when we can progress to the next stage. That is what happened in the first phase of the negotiations and that is what will happen in the second phase. We will always be in a position in which we have to walk away or fold”.

The hon. Gentleman was clear about what he thought would happen, from his own experience of negotiating Galileo. He said:

“we will always fold because the clock will be ticking.”—[Official Report, 5 December 2018; Vol. 650, c. 920.]

I agree. If we give the green light to the Prime Minister’s proposals tomorrow, we will end up not with the unique agreement that the future framework dangles before us, but with a free trade agreement dictated to us by the EU. We will have a long and difficult road to a future trade agreement that will not solve the economic problems we face or heal the divisions in our society. In the weeks since the Government called a halt to this debate, the US ambassador put to bed any idea of a quick and massive trade deal with the Americans. I do not usually find myself in agreement with the Trump Administration, but the assessment made in Washington that there will be little scope for a major trade deal with the United States is one with which I wholly concur.

The future political framework sets out that

“the United Kingdom’s commitments on customs and regulatory cooperation, including with regard to alignment of rules, would be taken into account in the application of related checks and controls”.

There is nothing remarkable there, really—it is what we in the Opposition have been pointing out for a very long time. If we want a strong trade relationship, the facility of market access must be proportionate to regulatory alignment.

Finance Bill

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Charlie Elphicke

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

I was not there at those times, I did not sit through those Bills and I cannot comment. I am only a newish Member, elected in the 2010 general election, and I have personally been pretty consistent in making the case that we should not have tax avoidance and should be far more vigorous in tackling tax avoidance by individuals and by corporates. Corporate tax avoidance is particularly important, but it is not on the subject of this debate, so I shall move on quickly before you call me to order, Mr Deputy Speaker.

There is an issue and we need to tackle it. Overall, I want the allowances for the least well-off to be higher so that we take more of them out of tax. I think the Government have taken the right Budget decision on the higher rate numbers and have taken a difficult but principled decision on age-related allowances. The Government have struck the right Budget balance.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

“No cash losers”: I must say that I think that those are the most disingenuous words that I have heard in this Chamber for a great many years. I remember that in the Budget the Chancellor was not particularly keen to draw the House’s attention to this change.

In the Budget, the Chancellor glossed over the whole issue of the granny tax very quickly indeed, yet only a year before, he came to the Dispatch Box on Budget day and said that he would not hide anything—he would tell it like it was. He would tell the bad with the good. That was just a year before, but in this year’s Budget, he glossed over the granny tax altogether.

“No net losers”—how accurate is that if we look at the total picture for pensioners? For existing pensioners, the age-related allowance will be frozen. It is interesting that the year before, it was not the Chancellor, but the Prime Minister, no less, who promised that the allowance would increase in line with the retail prices index. “No net losers”—those who believed the Prime Minister’s promise to pensioners might be excused for feeling that they were losers under the change. That is what happens. People listen to what the Prime Minister says, and make their financial plans on the basis of it: “The Prime Minister promised me, so of course I can expect to have that.” Well, it did not happen, and I think that is disingenuous.

We heard in this Chamber that there are no net losers, but what about people who are about to become pensioners? Are they net losers? They certainly expected an age-related allowance, but they find that, for them, it is not frozen, but cut. We can stand here and call black white, but it is incumbent on us not to take the public for fools, and I am afraid that the speech from the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) did that. I regret that, because he is not a disingenuous character—he is quite a lovable character in this House—but to say what he did is to treat people with contempt. It is treating them as though they do not understand their own affairs, when it is their own affairs—their own pennies, in many cases—that we are talking about. That hits hard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

I do not want to see dissent break out on the Government Benches. No fighting amongst yourselves, please, gentlemen. These are serious matters. They cannot be treated as an experiment because people suffer.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is a courteous and jolly fellow. Let me help him by digging him out of the hole that he is rapidly getting himself into in his exchanges with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). The point that we are making is simple: reducing the top rate will not change the income and revenue numbers significantly, but it sends a message to wealth creators that their investment is encouraged and will help to grow the economy.

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman has already said once in the debate that he does not believe the Treasury’s figures. He has now reinforced that. The Treasury has made the calculations. He can choose to say, on a personal level, “I think the Red Book is a load of tosh,” but he cannot say that that is the Government’s position. The Government’s position is that the measure will cost £3 billion a year. [Hon. Members: “No, it is not.”] The Government cannot get out of this one. They say that it will cost money. That money will be taken away from some of the poorest people in our society to pay for it.

That is what people find so distasteful about the way the Government are behaving. They are taking away from some of the poorest in our society, yet feel that it is so important to send that signal out to some of the wealthiest. The people who are being excoriated in the public conversations around the country for what they have done and what they continue to do to our economy—those are the people who will benefit, and it is the poor in our constituencies who will suffer.

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend, yet again, makes an excellent point. There is an implicit acceptance that people will try to avoid tax, and that therefore it is better to reduce the level of taxation so that there is not the same level of avoidance.

Most of my constituents listening to this debate and to the debate that has been going on since the Budget think the Government do not understand what people are going through, what they are feeling and just how difficult it is for some of them to make ends meet. They do not understand that precisely because of the sort of signals the hon. Member for Dover just mentioned. The Government consider it more important to make those signals to the wealthy. They think it is more important to focus on what they understand about their involvement in society, and they do not give the same attention to getting those messages to the poor in society.

What the Government have done in the Budget is to say, “If you are poor, we know that the best thing for you is to cut your benefits to make sure that you work harder, and if you are rich, we know that the best thing for you is to cut your tax so that you work harder.” People look at that and say, “This doesn’t make sense. It’s one law for the rich and another law for the poor.”

[Charlie Elphicke]

Yes, we do understand, and I in particular understand because my constituency is one of the most deprived in the south-east. The economic numbers are much more like those of a constituency much further to the north of England than the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. We do understand, and we also understand that wages have stagnated since about 2004, on the hon. Gentleman’s Government’s watch. This is not a new problem. We understand that, which is why we need to reduce the top rate of tax to encourage the job creators to create the jobs and the money that will give my constituents more prosperity.

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the way in which wages have broadly stagnated. We are now seeing wages going down and jobs being lost, and we are back in recession. He should look at the promises of his Government in that first Budget. The promises, commitments and assertions were that the measures in it would pull us out of the problems that we were in and get the economy back on track. They would deliver growth and prosperity, but they have not. He will remember, because he is an honest fellow, to use his word, that at the time, on the Opposition Benches, people were saying, “No, this will lead to a double-dip recession.” All those on the Government Benches told us in unison that we were wrong and that the Budget would pull us through the problems.

The electorate look at that, see the analysis, see what steps were taken and ask, “Who was right?” They know, because we are back in double-dip recession, that the Government got it wrong. We are at a point where there is £150 billion extra borrowing, the largest single increase year on year in the UK’s history.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Charlie Elphicke

Monday 16th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

Aid charities have made the case that corporations headquartered in the UK should be paying more tax overseas. That is not our job. Our job is to secure our own tax base in the UK. That is what I want to focus on, and it is what the previous Government totally failed to do over many, many years. If we put a stop to it and raise the due amount of tax from companies not resident in the UK with anti-avoidance measures and proper tax reform, we could have lower fuel duties for hard-pressed families and a lower basic rate of tax—and goodness knows we could even pay down some more of the debt that the previous Government shockingly, disgracefully saddled this country with.

I hope that the anti-avoidance measures in the Bill will be widened in the following way: the first principle is that business tax rates should be low, simple and attractive. Britain should be open for business, but open for business on a level playing field for national and international companies. Businesses should have a social responsibility to pay a fair share of tax. Some object to the idea of morality in the tax system, but this is an issue of corporate social responsibility. Tax avoidance should be dealt with firmly and rules changed to stop the avoidance. I shall come to specific measures in a moment.

For many years, the European Union has consistently and systematically sought to undermine our tax base in its pursuit of a common corporation tax base. We need the EU to support member states in protecting tax revenues rather than undermining them with so-called anti-discrimination rules.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Could the hon. Gentleman enlighten the House as to his view of the patent box? The Chancellor first mentioned it in last year’s Budget—I think—although it was Lord Mandelson who introduced the concept in the first place.