UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gethins]

This is the thing: just like that promise, every other promise fails to stand up to scrutiny, which is exactly why the DEFRA Secretary would not take any interventions from SNP Members. We have a clear position and know what we want, and the DEFA Secretary should be ashamed of the role played by Vote Leave and the promises that have not been kept.

The DEFRA Secretary also said that the House has been good at saying no. I want to remind him and other Members about something to do with taking responsibility. After the vote, the Scottish Government took the responsible step and put together a group of experts—the SNP still thinks that it is worth listening to experts from time to time—including diplomats, academics, colleagues from other political parties with something to say and a former European Court of Justice judge, to consider the ways forward, and they came up with a compromise deal two and a half years ago. Did the Government respond to that deal? Nothing of the sort. It was the most thought-out plan for this mess and certainly a lot more than we have had so far. No wonder, then, that we are talking about no deal. The House should reflect on that and think about the economic disaster and the social impact on the future opportunities of our young people. Almost 1,000 days on, we are still discussing a no-deal scenario that should have been taken off the table the day after the referendum.

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

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. Does he agree that to be prepared to deliberately and willingly inflict no deal on the people of this country, given all the hardship and chaos that it would cause, is really the action of a rogue state? It is bewildering that some Conservative Members still think that Brussels will be intimated by the sight of us putting a gun to our own head. That strategy is not effective.

[Stephen Gethins]

As usual, the hon. Lady makes an excellent point. Hers is one of the few sane voices that we have heard throughout the debate, given her interventions and the way in which she stands up for her constituents and others in the United Kingdom.

I noted the other night, with regard to the no-deal situation that we are in, that one Conservative MP—in fact, the longest-serving Conservative MP in the House—described the “headbanger” wing of the Conservative party. I am not sure what the names of the other wings are, but I was taken with that: the party’s members are talking about a headbanger wing, which must be a sizeable proportion of the party. While we are talking about no deal, I note the words of the Dutch Prime Minister, who is alleged to have said that a decision to vote for no deal was

“like the Titanic voting for the iceberg to get out of the way”.

The Chancellor seems to get this, and in his spring statement today, he talked about a smooth and orderly transition that would be threatened by no deal. He knows that it would threaten jobs and wages, yet we still debate it and we still have not ruled it out.

I am not sure which wing the Secretary of State for Scotland belongs to, whether the headbanger wing or some other wing, but he claimed the other week—I am sorry that he is not in the Chamber—that the SNP wanted no deal. I do not have his experience, but I remind him that the SNP was the first to come up with a compromise, as I have outlined; we were the first to ask for an extension; and last week, we even tabled a simple parliamentary motion on ruling out no deal. I know that the Tories are trying to turn democracy on its head and claim that defeat is in fact victory, as we have just heard from the DEFRA Secretary, but that is surely a step too far. We wanted to rule out a no deal, and he could easily have voted for our simple motion.

Let me remind the DEFRA Secretary—I hate to break it to him—that Tories lost the last election in Scotland, again. The SNP won the last election in Scotland, again. Guess what? Unlike the Tory party, we kept the majority of our seats, so if he wants to talk about democracy and winning, he is welcome to take some lessons from us. On negotiating tactics, if we are in a situation of no deal and hearing what the Chancellor said today, it as if the Prime Minister has shot herself in one foot, then wants to shoot herself in the other foot, just to show everyone how terribly serious we are.

Today’s trade tariffs will hit our industries, not least the food and drink industry on which jobs in my constituency and others rely and for which the DEFRA Secretary has responsibility. [Interruption.] The Trade Secretary is back. He promised that the UK would

“replicate the 40 EU free trade agreements that exist before we leave the EU so we’ve got no disruption of trade”.

Secretary of State, how is that going? Not going well? No, it is not going well, is it? This is not just a political problem for the Conservative party, as Ministers seem to suggest—it is a problem for public services; it is a problem for jobs; and it is a problem if we want to look forward to the future. It is not just a Tory civil war that is being waged among Tories—it is a problem for us all.

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

It is always a great pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who speaks with such wisdom on this issue. If the social and economic catastrophe that is no deal were being caused by some kind of natural disaster, there would be a collective outpouring of grief and concern. They would be a huge amounts of Government action to try to mitigate it, and there would no doubt be offers of international aid as well. The fact that this catastrophe is being so actively, willingly and even, by some, enthusiastically chosen is the height of masochistic self-indulgence. Doubtless psychologists will spend many years analysing exactly why this psychosis came to infect so many members of our ruling class at this time and exactly how we ended up with this concept of masochism as revolt.

The desire to create such chaos, and the exhilaration that comes from it, is perhaps understandable in those who will not be affected by the results—those who can move the investments they might be lucky enough to have to Ireland, to take a random example—but this is certainly going to hurt our constituents, who are in many cases already struggling to get by. It is even more shocking that this is being deliberately embraced at a time when we know of the illegalities associated with the leave campaign and the evidence of Russian interference. I was looking at Twitter a few moments ago. As we are here debating no deal, people like Aaron Banks—the biggest donor to the leave campaign; the biggest donor ever in British history—is busy going round the European Governments and lobbying them to block any UK request for an extension of article 50. So let us be clear that we are being played for fools here and that we will be responsible for this if we do not wake up and notice it. And the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has some gall to stand at the Dispatch Box as though he is completely independent of all this and as though he is not complicit in it and was not an architect of it. That is the height of absolute shamelessness.

We have heard so much about the economic costs of a no-deal Brexit, and the effect on constituents in Brighton will be no exception. I have been lobbied by so many individuals, families, businesses and universities. The University of Sussex, where one in four staff is an EU citizen, is already having problems with recruitment and retention, research grants and so on, and the same goes for both big and small companies.

This is about much more than the economy, however. I worry that a no-deal Brexit would make it harder even to begin to address some of many reasons why people voted to leave in the first place. Of course, people chose to vote to leave for many different reasons, but a good many of them were voting to say that the status quo is intolerable, that the inequality in this country is grotesque and that they want their communities to have a say in the future. The idea that any or all that will be easier to address if we leave with no deal is fanciful and irresponsible.

We need an honest conversation with the people of this country. We need to level with them. We need a new social contract, better jobs, higher-quality public services and investment in the green economy. We need people of all backgrounds and communities to be treated with respect and given the opportunity and the power to thrive. We need genuinely to give back control to people. We need to put young people at the heart of all this. We need that kind of future. We need a green new deal, not the Prime Minister’s failed deal or, worse still, no deal.

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[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I stand by that: I think it is what any self-respecting Speaker should say and mean.

[Caroline Lucas]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do wonder how the Prime Minister has the brass neck to come to this Chamber and to say that we should be worried about losing fragile trust when she herself is responsible for losing the trust both of this Parliament and of the country. She has just whipped her Members to vote against the deal that yesterday she stood at that Dispatch Box and promised would be a free vote. We urgently need an extension of article 50, and it needs not to be time-limited, because we need the time that is necessary in order to resolve this by going back to the country. If the last few weeks have proved anything, it is that MPs in this House are incapable of finding something they agree on, and it needs to go back to the people as soon as possible in a people’s vote.

[Mr Speaker]

Let me say to the hon. Lady, who was attempting, I thought, to raise a point of order, that we will have to wait for the business statement by the Leader of the House. But unless I have a problem with my short-term memory—and I do not think I do—my clear recollection is that the Government indicated that if the House voted to demonstrate its opposition to exit from the European Union without a deal in the vote, or votes, today, there would be an opportunity on Thursday for there to be a vote, or possibly a number of votes, on an idea, or ideas, of article 50 extension. So I keenly anticipate that the hon. Lady will be in her place not just for the business statement but tomorrow for such important proceedings as we can expect to take place.