Leaving the EU

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that at the point at which a meaningful vote is brought back to this House, it will be the responsibility of every Member of this House to determine their vote according to the nature of that deal and, of course, according to the views that they feel about no deal. It is the case that the only way to avoid no deal other than—I am sorry, Mr Speaker; I may inadvertently have misled the House myself earlier when I said that the only way to avoid no deal was to agree a deal. Of course, it is possible to avoid no deal by staying in the European Union, but we are not going to do that. [Interruption.] We are not going to do that because that would be going back on the vote of the people of this country. We will be leaving the European Union, and when the deal comes back it will be the responsibility, as my hon. Friend says, of every Member of this House to determine whether or not we move forward with that deal.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

With the Prime Minister recklessly running down the clock to a crash-out Brexit, can I say to the responsible members of her Government that if they fail to act soon to prevent such a calamity, history will judge them very, very harshly? But can I also say to my own Front Benchers that now the Government have rejected our offer, if they fail to honour the unanimously agreed policy at our conference in favour of a public vote, they too will be judged very harshly by history?

[The Prime Minister]

The second part of that question was not addressed to me, so I will not be responding to it. The right hon. Gentleman stands up and says that we are recklessly running down the clock in order to crash out with no deal. That is not the case. If that was the case, I would not be spending time talking to EU leaders, going to Brussels, going to Dublin, and trying to work out a way that we can find to deliver on a deal that respects the concerns raised by this House and that will get through this Parliament.