European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I imagine that the hon. Gentleman supports the Prime Minister’s deal because he is incredibly loyal to his party, with a blindness about the dangers of this deal for the rest of the country and the jobs that go with it.

The lack of clarity around these proposals also means that there is no guarantee of a strong deal with the single market, to ensure continued access to European markets in services. There is merely a vague commitment to go beyond the baseline of the World Trade Organisation.

As both the Attorney General and the Environment Secretary made clear in recent days, the commitments to workers’ rights, environmental protections and consumer safeguards are very far from secure. The social Europe that many people supported and continue to support was not part of why people voted to leave. All of that is at risk from this deal. This deal fails to give so many economic sectors and public services clarity about our future relationship with several European Union agencies and programmes.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Prime Minister’s deal seriously undermines environmental protection in this country, because it does not replace the European Court of Justice with anything like the strength of an enforcement body? Instead of the promised watchdog, we have little more than just a lapdog.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Lady is absolutely correct. The environmental protections that we have are essential. We cannot protect the environment inside national borders; it has to be done across national borders. We have to have the toughest possible environmental protection regulations, and the suspicion many of us have is that there is an appetite on the Government Benches to remove many of those protections as time goes on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

This debate goes to the very essence of what we want to be as a country—confident, compassionate and outward-facing, or fearful, inward-looking and isolated. All the major challenges that we face today—the climate crisis, terrorism, the refugee crisis, cyber-crime—are trans-boundary, and so all of them would be far harder to address if we leave the EU. I therefore stand by my decision to campaign to remain in 2016, and still believe that the future will be brighter, fairer and greener inside the European Union.

I also stand by my vote against the Prime Minister’s foolish decision to trigger article 50 before she and her Cabinet had even worked out what “Brexit means Brexit” actually does mean. At a stroke, that recklessness surrendered all leverage to the EU27, and it has resulted in the miserable, blindfold package that we have before us today, with its 26-page, 8,000-word wish list guaranteeing absolutely nothing about our future relationship with the EU. The Prime Minister urges us to “get on with it”, as if accepting her plan would be the end of it, but let us be very clear: in reality, it is the starting gun for years of more negotiations and more political infighting, with uncertainty hard-wired into it.

Over the past two years, I have not seen any evidence that the Government understand or appreciate the importance of many of the amendments that many of us tried to make to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, whether to do with upholding basic legal rights, trying to safeguard jobs, protecting freedom of movement and the Good Friday agreement, or enhancing the protection of our precious environment. Indeed, all the evidence I have seen, including the Government’s own impact assessments, has simply confirmed to me that Brexit would make my poorest constituents, and the nation’s poorest communities, poorer still. It would lead to a smaller Britain with less influence: borders closed, horizons narrowed. It would betray the hopes and dreams of young people, who overwhelmingly voted to remain. It is an unforgivable act of inter-generational betrayal. It puts our contribution to vital cross-border work on climate change and nature in jeopardy. It sees us abandoning what is frankly little short of a miracle that few would have dreamed possible when the bombs were raining down on British towns and cities in the middle of the last century. It helped us to emerge from the rubble and the destruction of the second world war into a nation that has been at peace with its neighbours ever since. With a supreme irony, the Prime Minister’s package would also result in people having considerably less control over the decisions that affect their lives, not more.

In recent days, the Prime Minister has been admonishing MPs to think of our constituents when we vote on this deal. Well, I can assure her that I have been doing— and we have been doing—exactly that. I think of my Brighton constituents when I consider that every single economic impact analysis shows them being worse off as a result of any kind of Brexit. I think of them when I learn of a study by the local UK Trade Policy Observatory that concludes that her deal would cost at least 960 of them their jobs. I think of them when the leisure sector in the city reports how seriously it would be affected by the end of free movement. I think of them when the universities tell me how worried they are about the future of European research, their research grants, and the Horizon Europe programme. How does the Prime Minister have the gall to suggest that MPs are not thinking of our constituents in this debate? How dare she call on our constituents to unite behind her deal when she knows how much damage that deal will do to them and to their families?

For more than two years now, I have consistently said that the 2016 referendum was, and could only be, the start, not the end, of the democratic process. In 2016, voters could not, and did not, express any opinion on the terms on which the UK should leave the EU, because at that time the terms were completely unknown. That is why I believe the outcome of the negotiations must now be put before the public in a people’s vote. That people’s vote must give the option of remaining inside the EU, which every recent poll shows to be what a clear majority of voters now want. This is not about subverting democracy or seeking to overturn the referendum result; it is simply giving voters a proper say on important issues that were not put before them in 2016.

If it is still the will of the people to leave the EU in the light of what they know now, then that is what they will vote for in the people’s vote. But if they decide that it would be better to stay in the EU, and reject the Prime Minister’s deal, then the UK could continue as a member of the EU on the same terms as now, as the opinion from the Scottish courts has underlined today. I would put it to the Prime Minister that the will of the people is not fixed in stone. As she learnt to her cost last June, it can change and it does change. There were 25 months between the general elections of 2015 and 2017. Those 25 months were enough time for the Prime Minister to lose her majority, her mandate and her credibility. A longer time has elapsed—29 months—between the referendum of June 2016 and today. Every recent opinion poll shows that the will of the people has changed since then as well.

Brexit and the lies, false promises and cheating of the leave campaign in 2016 have unleashed forces that should worry us all, so I take seriously the charge that a people’s vote could risk yet more division. But I have thought about this clearly, and I believe that nothing would be more divisive than the people of this country discovering the hard way that the Prime Minister’s blindfold Brexit does not deliver the sunlit uplands that they were promised.

I want to say clearly that a people’s vote is not about putting the clock back to 22 June 2016 or pretending that the last two years somehow never happened. Those Brexit voters who voted to leave because they believed the status quo is intolerable were right—it is. We are a country of grotesque inequalities. Far too many people are living in communities with proud histories that have been hollowed out by years of deindustrialisation and decades of neglect, compounded since 2010 by an ideologically driven assault on national and local public services under the name of austerity. Economic vitality has been drained from their neighbourhoods, and many feel hopeless and trapped

Last year’s Social Mobility Commission report identified the 30 worst coldspots for social mobility, and it is no coincidence that every single one of those 30 places voted to leave. The lie at the heart of the leave campaign was that this downward spiral can be reversed by leaving the EU. The truth is that Brexit would make things much harder to fix, and we know that the real answer lies in far-reaching reform at home. We need a new social contract—better jobs, high-quality public services and investment in the green economy, with people of all backgrounds and communities treated with respect and given the opportunity and power to thrive. We need to ensure that the net economic benefit that people from the EU bring to this country is spent in those areas that experience the largest changes, on projects collectively decided by local people.

Those of us campaigning for a people’s vote need to make clear our commitment to addressing the grievances aired during and since the 2016 referendum, to campaigning for far greater public investment in those regions that need it most and to working towards a Britain where people have a real say in the decisions that affect them.

In my last few words, I simply want to say that I reject the false choice presented by the Prime Minister between a catastrophic no deal and her miserable blindfold deal. That is no choice at all, and that is why we need a people’s vote.