European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). I have known him for many years and I do not doubt his sincerity in this matter at all. I myself had sincerely hoped that the Government would be able to make the wholly modest changes that this House urged them to make, and that there would be no risk that this country would find itself trapped in the backstop or that we would lose our democratic right to make laws for this country and pass them to a foreign entity for all time, as we are in danger of doing.

But whatever the Government tried to do, they have not, I am afraid, succeeded. Though I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Attorney General on their efforts, the result is that, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they have sewed an apron of fig leaves that does nothing to conceal the embarrassment and indignity of the UK. As the Attorney General confirmed in his admirably honest advice, the backstop does not just divide our country in fundamental ways—it ties our hands for the future and sets us on a path to a subordinate relationship with the EU that is still, despite what we were told yesterday, clearly based on the customs union and on large parts of the single market.

[Lady Hermon]

rose—

[Boris Johnson]

I give way with pleasure to the hon. Lady.

[Lady Hermon]

I am very grateful indeed to the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene, because it gives me an opportunity to remind him of the many opportunities that he took during the EU referendum campaign to assert that this country was going to take back control of its borders. May I just ask him whether he has ever visited South Armagh or Crossmaglen? How, with the greatest respect, does he think he is going to take back control of the border without the backstop arrangement?

[Boris Johnson]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. I have certainly visited the places that she mentions—indeed, at the times of the troubles—and I can say that nobody wants those types of border controls to come back, least of all the Governments in Dublin or in London, or indeed those in Brussels; and, by the way, nobody thinks it necessary, under any circumstances, for hard border controls to return in Northern Ireland. But what I think her constituents will want is for this country to have the unilateral right of exit from the backstop, and that is not what the British people are getting out of this deal.

[Lady Hermon]

rose—

[Boris Johnson]

If the hon. Lady will allow me, I will make some progress.

I want to stress this point. I really cannot accept the repeated assertion by the Attorney General in his very powerful speech this afternoon that there is a minimal legal risk of us being trapped in the prison of the backstop, because it is now more than a year since I stood in Downing Street—in No. 10—and was told that there was a minimal legal risk that we would even have to enter the backstop. That is not a view that I believe could now be plausibly defended by the Government.

[Alex Chalk]

Of course there is a risk with the backstop —it would be infantile to suggest that there is not—but does my right hon. Friend not agree that there is also a very great, if not much larger, risk in respect of a no-deal outcome? Would he at least recognise that point?

[Boris Johnson]

I will come to that, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for conceding that it was always infantile to pretend that there was no risk of getting into the backstop, because that was, for a long time, the contention of those who proposed that the backstop should be instituted.

I am afraid that this deal has now reached the end of the road. If it is rejected tonight, I hope that it will be put to bed and we can all face up to the reality of the position and the opportunity that we have. What we need to do then—now—is to behave not timorously but as a great country does. We have broadly two options. We can either decide, if the EU is unwilling to accept the minor changes that we propose, that we will leave without a deal—yes, I accept that that is, in the short term, the more difficult road, but in the end it is the only safe route out of this and the only safe path to self-respect—or we can decide to take a route that will end in humiliation by accepting arrangements with the EU that seem to limit disruption in the short term but will leave us as an EU protectorate with many important rules set elsewhere.

Members have asked, “What’s the worst that could happen?” I will give two examples, but there is any number of rules and regulations. The financial services industry would be subject to laws set by its leading competitors, which is emphatically not what the City wants. The Commission has already made it clear that it wants to use the passerelle clause of the existing treaty to bring in qualified majority voting on taxation. We would be subject to that, under a qualified majority vote in which this country would not participate. I urge Members to think hard and to see that that predicament would be democratically intolerable. We would have to tell our constituents that they had no power or influence in setting some of the rules that govern our country.

[James Cartlidge]

I have huge respect for my right hon. Friend, but he said that there were two choices. In terms of WTO rules, which he has advocated, there are two choices; that is correct. We can either have tariffs that hit our consumers, or we have no tariffs on imports, which would leave our exporters and industry at a terrible disadvantage. Which of those two options would he go for?

[Boris Johnson]

In any circumstances, we would have the freedom to decide what our tariffs were going to be, and under this—[Interruption.] Under this deal, we would lose the power to decide what tariffs we levied on the perimeter of the UK.

The most powerful argument that has been made this afternoon is the threat that some Members are apparently ready to hijack the long-standing rules of the House in order to take our constitution hostage, with Parliament to direct the Executive in international relations. That upends hundreds of years of constitutional practice and makes a nonsense of relations between Parliament and the Government. I believe it would lead to an even greater gap between people and this place. Let us abandon that project of dismantling our constitution in the name of making this country an effective colony of the EU.

Instead, we should take what now seems to be the more difficult route but is, in the end, the only one that preserves our self-respect, which is to leave as we are required by law on 29 March and to become once again an independent country able to make our own choices. I am not in favour of crashing out, as many call it. The Malthouse compromise indicates the way forward—the UK observes single market rules and customs duties and restrains our right to compete for a period of three years while we negotiate a free trade deal. I believe the EU would be open to that.

As we come to the final stages, it is vital that we retain our freedom of manoeuvre and do not rule out no deal. A delay will achieve nothing except to compound the uncertainty for business. Now is the time to behave as what we are—the fifth biggest economy in the world, the second biggest military power in NATO and, by many counts, the most influential cultural and intellectual force in Europe—and not to accept what I believe would be a humiliation and the subordination of our democracy.