Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I will come on to the prerogative, and I think that the treaty was debated for at least 20 days.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Is not the prerogative absolutely key here? In 1924, when there was a Labour Government, we insisted that all treaties would be laid before the House for 21 days, so that the House and the House of Lords could take a view on them. That was the Ponsonby rule. When there was a Conservative Government, they got rid of it. When there was a Labour Government again in 1929, we put it back, and in 2010, we put it on the statute book. Is it not really worrying that Ministers have been going to the House of Lords and this Chamber and relying solely on the prerogative in relation to treaties?

[Keir Starmer]

It is, and I will deal with the prerogative in some detail because it is not fixed. The prerogative changes over time, and in any event, even if it may legally allow the Executive to proceed without scrutiny and accountability in the House, it does not prevent that scrutiny and accountability. It does not require the Government to proceed in that way. It is being used as cloak to avoid the scrutiny that is needed.

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[Mr Davis]

There are very many things I could do at this Dispatch Box, but criticising David Cameron is not one of them.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

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[Mr Davis]

I see no reason not to help the Select Committee on that basis; that seems an eminently sensible use of time and of the Select Committee’s expertise, so of course we will do that. However, this will be an issue right across the board; pretty much every Select Committee in the House of Commons will have an interest, one way or another, in the progress of Brexit and in what the outcome will be.

[Chris Bryant]

May I ask the Secretary of State about timing? As I understand it, the Government intend us to have left the European Union by 1 April 2019. The two years allowed for in article 50 will transpire during that period, but he has already laid out loads of different areas that will have to be legislated for as a result of the negotiations. After the negotiations have happened, he might be overturned in this House or at the other end of the building. How will he make sure that he carries the whole country with him on each of the bits and pieces of the detail if he has not produced a draft of what he is aiming for in the first place?

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[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I want to return to the topic under debate, which is how this House will scrutinise the Brexit process. To do that, we need to go back to first principles. What is the power and authority of this House? What is the sovereignty of Parliament, and where does it come from? Here, I take a view that will be popular with the SNP. I believe that the sovereignty of Parliament is delegated by the British people. We do not have sovereignty in this House in a vacuum. It is not that God suddenly created the House of Commons and said it would be sovereign over the United Kingdom. Every five years, the British people delegate their sovereignty and rights to us, to implement as we see fit; we then present ourselves for re-election when that period is ended.

Within that, we have had a referendum. It is fascinating to hear from all sides, left, right and centre, that everyone has accepted the result and that the will of the British people must be obeyed, respected and followed—[Interruption.] That is the will of the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which, I am glad to say, includes the good people and crofters of Na h-Eileanan an Iar. That needs to be put into practice.

We also know, because this is the legal advice that has gone unchallenged, that the only legal way of leaving the European Union is to exercise article 50. We therefore know that the vote on 23 June was a vote to exercise article 50. All that is under debate is the point at which that is done; the big decision has been taken by the British people.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman and I are in rather similar positions. The Rhondda voted to leave, but I support remain; North East Somerset voted to remain, but he supports leave. Given what he has said about sovereignty, does he fully accept that all of us in this House are sent not as delegates but as representatives, and owe to our constituents our conscience as much as our vote?

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to follow the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) Like her, I was a remainer—not only that, but I am a remainer, and will remain a remainer until my dying day.

I first want to make a constituency point: last Friday, I visited a business just outside my constituency, in Llantrisant: Markes International, a high-tech company worth about £15 million in turnover a year. It started with two people fewer than 20 years ago, and now has 120. It makes mass spectrometers and thermal desorption—things that I did not really understand. It is all very technical. That is precisely the kind of high-end business that we really want to prosper in this country. The company made two points to me. First, it is really worried about staff recruitment, because a lot of the people whom it recruits are at PhD level. If, after Brexit, the arrangements for EU people coming to this country are the same as those that we currently have for non-EU people, it will find it phenomenally difficult to continue recruiting in the way that it has done, and therefore to grow the company. That is particularly because those people may be here for only five years on a short-term deal. It is very difficult to get a mortgage in this country at the moment, and that makes it much more unlikely that people in areas such as mine in south Wales, where there is not much of a rental market for people at that level, will think it is an option to move to this country.

Secondly, the company is passionate about us staying in the single market, as members of the single market, because it wants full access, as members, to all the organisations that establish the technical standards for the things that it makes. Otherwise, the company is absolutely certain that the Germans, French and Italians will make sure that those things are made in the way that German, French and Italian companies make them, and that we do not. They are anxious because, if this goes wrong, they will simply have to move all their business to Germany to continue growing the company. That will be an enormous loss to the local economy.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I very much agree with the points that my hon. Friend is making. Is it not also the case that manufacturing of that kind is integrated across the EU, with an EU integrated supply chain? If the UK is not part of that, that is another reason why a lot of jobs will be lost.

[Chris Bryant]

That is an extremely good point. It is often Europe that enables people to think of opportunities in the UK because of cross-border co-operation on education and research skills.

I would like to come on to the process. The Government have to take the 48% with them. It will not be good enough if, when we leave at the end of the process it is still only 52% of people who think that we have made the right decision. That will be a recipe for disaster and lack of confidence in this country. I would also say to the Government that I have never believed royal prerogative to be absolute. We have fought wars—quite a lot of wars—about this. Even on the question of going to war, the royal prerogative barely exists any more. One could argue that, after the war of American independence, when Parliament, rather than the Government, decided to stop fighting the war, we abandoned the royal prerogative on war-making powers on 22 February 1782. In recent years, it has become absolutely established that we do not send troops to war, except in extreme situations, without the permission and say-so of Parliament. Mr Cameron and William Hague explicitly agreed as much when they lost the vote on Syria in the House and decided not to proceed with the action they had intended to take.

Prerogative is not absolute in relation to war, and it is certainly not absolute in relation to treaty making. The 1713 treaty of Utrecht had to go through Parliament, and only got through the House of Lords because Queen Anne was persuaded to introduce 12 more Members of the House of Lords. The Government are rapidly increasing the number of Members of the House of Lords, but I hope that they do not do that.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The hon. Gentleman is widely acknowledged as a capable historian, so he will know that treaties, under any kind of Lockean or mixed constitutional thinking, were always matters of federative powers.

[Chris Bryant]

That is completely wrong, I am afraid. The hon. Gentleman, too, is an historian, and doubtless an impressive one: I have never got round to reading any of his books, but I am sure that in my present retirement I will have an opportunity to do so. Under the Ponsonby rule of 1924 it is absolutely clear that all treaties are laid before both Houses, and if either House votes down a treaty, the Government will not proceed. I do not think that even in relation to treaties, the Government’s argument stands.

On timing, the Government seem to anticipate that we will leave the EU, at the very latest, on 1 April 2019. Let us work backwards from that date. Any new domestic legislation resulting from the negotiations would require Royal Assent at least six months before so that it could be implemented in law around the country. That means that a treaty Bill implementing the negotiations would have to be introduced in the Commons or the other place at least 12 months before 1 April 2019 on 1 April 2018, which would fall in the previous Session. I do not think that the Lords would like such a Bill to be carried over, so we may well have to have a two-year Session running through 2017 and 2018.

Finally, I will die trying to persuade people that we would be better off in the European Union, but that does not mean that I intend to stand in the way of the will of the British people.