European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Ben Bradley Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

It is unfortunate that I rise to speak against the approval of this withdrawal agreement, which does not represent the best deal for the United Kingdom or fulfil the spirit of the referendum result. It ties us to EU rules and regulations for the long term while removing our ability to influence those rules. It ties us to a backstop arrangement that would create different circumstances for Northern Ireland compared with the rest of the UK and that we cannot leave of our own volition. It ties our hands to prevent us taking advantage of the full extent of independence over our international trade policy. For that reason, I feel that it is worst of all worlds; it is a state of purgatory, which, as the Attorney General made clear yesterday, has no fixed end point.

In her Lancaster House speech, the Prime Minister was clear: she said simply that we would seek to negotiate a bold and ambitious free trade deal with Europe that would also give us the ability to strike out around the world. She was honest with us, and did not pretend that this would have all the same benefits of full membership. We were leaving so things would have to be different, but we could still have a positive relationship built around free trade. She aimed to take back control of our money, our borders and our laws. She was quite right that those were at the heart of why people voted to leave. She said that no deal was better than a bad deal, and that if the EU would not give us something that worked for the whole United Kingdom, we could walk away and succeed on our own merits.

Looking back, it is hard to understand how we have ended up here, particularly when our manifesto in 2017 committed us to so much more. My Labour predecessor in Mansfield held the seat for 30 years, longer than I have been alive, but, more recently, the constituency has shown its appetite for change. Local people voted Conservative for the first time in 2017, sick of decades of representatives moaning about the past, but having no plan for the future. They also voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU in 2016, fed up with being forgotten by the establishment and eager to take back control of their destiny.

I am under no illusion that each of my constituents—in fact, most people in the country—have dissected the details and come to a conclusion on their preferred customs arrangements; some have, but the vast majority have not. That does not mean that they did not know what they wanted when they were voting. I have had this conversation on literally thousands of occasions now with local people who felt—to coin a phrase—that leave meant leave. It meant not being part of the institutions, not being tied to their rules, and not paying into their budgets. We were leaving, in the English dictionary sense, which is “to depart from permanently, to cease to be a part of” the European Union. I think that it is a fundamental misunderstanding by many, not just in this place, but out there, that it might be possible to make it look like leaving while actually seeking continuity. At Lancaster House, the Prime Minister did not phrase things in that way. She accepted that our relationship would change, that it would be a different and a looser one, and that it would give us the freedoms that we wanted. At that time, I am fairly certain—and the votes back it up—that she had the support of the majority in this House for that kind of deal.

I draw the comparison, an overly simplistic one perhaps, between the referendum and a game of cards—a choice between stick or twist. Voters knew, and they were told each and every day throughout that campaign, of the risks of voting to leave. They were told all the horror stories. Things were overblown and exaggerated, just as they are now, but they voted to leave anyway, because the status quo does not work for them. In the choice of stick or twist, they opted for twist, recognising the consequences and the uncertainty, but wanting to take that risk in order to seek new and different opportunities. Having ticked a few boxes that looked a bit like leaving, they did not want to try to replicate the status quo; they wanted change, because they felt that the status quo did not work for them. We cannot deliver an outcome that meets the “spirit” of the referendum result if we remain tied, possibly indefinitely, to the institution that we promised to leave and if we compromise on all the things that mattered in that decision. It cannot be boiled down to a spreadsheet with data on economic forecasts; the decision was so much bigger than that. It was about the heart as well as the head; the outcome was for change.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I am listening with interest to one of my Nottinghamshire neighbours. When the hon. Gentleman’s constituents voted to leave, does he think that they voted to be poorer, because we have heard that every Brexit scenario will leave people in Nottinghamshire poorer?

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. People did not see it in those terms. Part of the fundamental misunderstanding of the Government and of this House is that people saw it solely as an economic transaction. As I have just said, it was about more than that. Despite the forecasts and the doom and gloom that is discussed in this place and in the media, the vast majority of people who come to me—75% in local polling—say “Reject this deal and seek a looser relationship.”

[Mr Paterson]

Thinking about the previous intervention, does my hon. Friend agree that his constituents and mine were very sensible and completely ignored these ludicrous forecasts, which are all part of “Project Fear”? Our constituents have been bombarded with further utter nonsense forecasts this week, but they do not believe them; they see real opportunities for this country when we get our freedom back.

[Ben Bradley]

I totally agree. The more obscene these forecasts become, the less they are believed. My favourite was that we are all going to get super-gonorrhoea if we leave the European Union. This week, the story is that babies will die through milk shortage because of leaving the European Union. These are the stories that exist in the media, and people out there give them no credence or credibility. It was interesting to hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) making many similar arguments earlier today. However, I would argue that the right conclusion is not a second referendum; it is to deliver on what we promised.

It is right that people are sick of this debate and want to get it done, but this proposal does not allow us to do that. Instead, the debate rolls on for another year or 18 months as we try to agree a future relationship. It offers little certainty to business and almost guarantees that we will be back here again in 2020, having an equally divisive and difficult debate. As it stands, the withdrawal agreement does not end the problem—far from it. The only way to truly get it done, put it in the rear-view mirror and get on with talking about a positive domestic agenda, which Opposition Members have mentioned, is to accept that we cannot agree on a specific deal. Then we can go back and talk to the European Union about how to agree on all the things that we can actually agree on, including issues such as citizens’ rights, security, travel and all the rest, and carefully manage a transition to World Trade Organisation terms.

The only way to have certainty at this point is to have a clean break. I would prefer us to seek a more positive free trade arrangement first and to be strong in that approach, because that is what we promised in our manifesto and at Lancaster House, but we should not fear leaving on the same terms that govern 98% of global trade. It may be true that better relationships can be agreed further down the line, with or without this withdrawal agreement, but our hand is most certainly strengthened by being true to the mantra laid out in the Lancaster House speech—no deal is better than a bad deal—rather than being held over a barrel throughout the coming year and being threatened with this backstop arrangement, as President Macron has already told us he will do.

After months of saying that it could not be done and it was impossible, the withdrawal agreement accepts in black and white that the Irish border situation can be resolved through technological solutions. It is a political problem, not a practical one, and again, we are better prepared for that debate if we leave and come at it from a position of strength.

The World Trade Organisation has been clear that its rules would not require a hard border, and HMRC on both sides has said the same. If the barrier to achieving this is a political one and the Prime Minister is right that there is no deal without the backstop, we have to take charge of that debate in the interests of the whole UK, put ourselves in the driving seat and say, “This is not acceptable, so how do we handle that no deal scenario, because we are not going to agree to something that is detrimental to the United Kingdom?” That is the only way to force the issue that currently dictates this entire arrangement, which has always been built around the problem, rather than around the positive outcomes that we all want to see. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who has great experience of this issue, said earlier, customs has moved on. We have to embrace that, as does the EU.

This is a divisive issue and reaction is of course mixed. I have had constituents ask me to support the deal and to support remaining, but as I said to the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), the overwhelming majority of my constituents—collaring me in the street, answering me on social media or writing to me—want us to be stronger and to agree a looser arrangement with the European Union that gives us the freedom that they sought.

We have to start from the premise that we are a free and independent nation seeking a trade deal with Europe as we laid out at Lancaster House, not from the position of seeking continuity with our existing arrangements as this agreement does. If we do that, and if we truly take back control and deliver on the referendum result, we would restore the brittle faith in democracy that led to that outcome in the first place. It would prove to people in constituencies like mine that the Government do listen and act on their decisions, and that they do have a voice. Brexit presents a huge opportunity to give people who have felt forgotten for a long time a chance to believe in government and to believe in a country that is proud, independent and embracing new opportunities across the whole world, but I regret that this withdrawal agreement cannot deliver that outcome.