EU Exit Day Amendment

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I did not see what my hon. Friend said in that debate, but I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for promoting me so that I have junior Ministers underneath me.

The question before us is not whether the extension to article 50 happens, but the separate question of whether the domestic statute book reflects this extension, without which there could be a confusing and unclear statute book with clashing provisions. If we are to resolve that, it is essential that this instrument is passed before 11 pm on 29 March so that it can come into force ahead of that time. This will align exit day in UK law with the new day and time on which the EU treaties cease to apply to the United Kingdom in both EU and international law.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

This Executive decision was approved by a Minister without proper reference to Parliament, bringing back to this House not just international law but law that is binding in our own law and binding on this Parliament. May I put it to my hon. Friend that it is exactly this kind of decision making and law making that people voted against in the referendum?

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend makes an important point on which many of us could agree—that this process reflects some of the issues that caused people to vote in the way that they did. However, the House voted for an extension and it was in respecting the vote of this House that the Government sought to negotiate one.

I am acutely aware of the huge amount of work undertaken by Members across this House to scrutinise—

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman to the extent that we have to do everything possible to avoid a disastrous no-deal exit. This SI does not do that; the extension agreed by the European Council and the UK does it. This SI ensures that our domestic legislation aligns with what has already been agreed and that we do not create legal confusion.

It is certainly the case that no one, including those who have no problem with the extension, expected that this Government would fail so miserably that an extension of any kind would be required, but it was always a possibility. That is precisely why the EU withdrawal Bill, at least in its original form, was drafted to provide for circumstances in which a withdrawal agreement came into force later than 29 March, following an extension. As the Government themselves put it at the time in their delegated powers memorandum:

“Exit day will be dependent on the withdrawal negotiations with the EU.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) has commented, it was the Government’s decision to play politics with the issue of exit day for the purposes of our domestic legislation—constraining the flexibility provided for in the original drafting of the Bill by putting in a fixed exit date and time in a vain attempt to curry favour with the hardliners on their own Benches—that means we require a statutory instrument in the form before us. That said, it remains the case that it is simply not reasonable to question the legitimacy of the Government’s actions in agreeing to an extension to the article 50 process or the fact that these regulations have sequentially followed that agreement.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I want to correct the hon. Gentleman’s account of recent history. In fact, the Government agreed to put in the date voluntarily, and then were blackmailed by the remain faction in our party to provide flexibility on the date. That is actually what happened.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I think the hon. Gentleman would agree with me that the original draft of the Bill did not include the date. The reasons why the Government put it in and the actions of the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) in again helpfully coming to the rescue, I will leave to the hon. Gentleman and his view of what happened at the time.

It follows that, if the House votes against this statutory instrument, it cannot prevent an extension of the article 50 process until at least one of the two proposed dates. In short, and much to my delight, there is nothing that right hon. and hon. Members on the Conservative Benches can do today to force the UK out of the EU in two days’ time. All that would be achieved by voting against these regulations would be immense legal confusion, with two parallel sets of regulations in place—those deriving specifically and directly from EU law, and those made under the 2018 Act, which would diverge from it. As the Minister put it, our statute book would be in a complete mess. That is why this statutory instrument should self-evidently be supported, and why the Opposition will be doing so when we divide on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) gave the game away when, amid all her hyperbole and rhetoric, she betrayed her desire for a “much longer delay”. That is what the remain majority in this House really want. I was rather shocked to hear the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) say that this measure should be entirely uncontroversial. He might not have been listening, but millions of our voters certainly have been listening and they were expecting to leave the EU on 29 March. For them, this debate comes as a very great disappointment, because this order cancels exit day on 29 March. The way in which the Council decision was agreed illustrates exactly why people voted to leave the EU, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) set out.

History will mark this day as the moment when this House decided to start to turn against the decision to leave the EU and against the mandate upon which most MPs in this House were elected—[Interruption.] Oh yes, there are exceptions, but I am talking about the 85% of votes that were cast for pro-Brexit parties. So far, the EU’s withdrawal agreement has been rejected for good reasons, not least because it is so far from taking back control over our laws, borders and trade. That is one point on which I agree with the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard). In fact, if this statutory instrument goes through, the next time the Minister brings an order to this House to implement an EU directive, decision or regulation, there will probably have been no UK Minister sitting at the table in Brussels to agree that decision, or even to be there to be outvoted. That decision will just have been handed down through the withdrawal agreement.

I have never considered myself a populist or a man of the people, but it is only those like me, who will vote against this decision to cancel leaving the EU on 29 March, who are truly representing what the British people decided in the referendum. We are the real majority in this House, but we are sorely under-represented by its Members.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

rose—

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am going to press on.

This House has now embarked upon an unprincipled constitutional experiment. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which I chair, recently heard from a retired Lord Chief Justice that nothing like this experiment has occurred since the recasting of the role of Parliament in 1688, which shows just how radical it is. I recognise the sincerity of many right hon. and hon. Members involved in the experiment, but they have resorted to the most questionable constitutional methods, which leave no Government or anyone else accountable for what is being decided. Who will the voters now hold to account for the outcome of the Brexit question?

Moreover, the process has been supported by those either embarking upon embellishing the discredited withdrawal agreement with ever greater restrictions on our right of national democratic self-determination or seeking to disrupt Brexit or stop it altogether in defiance of the manifesto promises upon which most of us were elected. I therefore regret to conclude on these matters, including these regulations, that this House is left with questionable democratic legitimacy.

[Sir William Cash]

I absolutely endorse what my hon. Friend has said. I remind Members, including those on the Conservative Benches, that they voted consistently for the Acts of Parliament, including the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, that will give effect to all the enactments and that to pursue such an objective is effectively to reverse their decisions on specious and unacceptable grounds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I will vote against these regulations, and let me say something about the mess that we are now in. I can fairly claim to be one of the minority in this House who were the authors of the voters’ referendum decision, and I am proud of that. Most of us who voted leave have stuck with what we believe, one way or another. We are not the authors of what the remain majority in this House, with the Government, have made of Brexit, nor of what they continue to inflict upon our sad and disillusioned voters.