United Kingdom’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Friday 29th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I must make progress, but I will give way, particularly to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).

The reason for the motion today, and for the form of the motion, is that it enables the House to secure this legal right. It is the case that the Government make that the agreement is required in any event. Members on the other side do not dispute the requirement for the agreement to be passed, so we invite the House to secure the certainty of the extension; to continue the process of the political declaration reconsiderations; to enable us, by 22 May, to ratify the domestic implementing legislation; and to conclude discussions on the political declaration.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Attorney General’s argument is basically that this is a way to guarantee certainty for business in the country. However, if today’s motion is carried, there will be no certainty. The Government will not be able to ratify the treaty—I think that he accepts that they will not be able to do so—and a proper motion will still have to be introduced in this House, and the other House, including both sides. There will still have to be a Bill, which will be the subject of contentious dispute. There is no certainty—if anything, today throws more uncertainty into the process.

[The Attorney General]

There will certainly have to be a Bill. There will have to be a process of ratification in the House, which is why, if it votes for the withdrawal agreement today, it would be surprising if it did not vote to implement the withdrawal agreement. This is the step that we need to take.

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[Hilary Benn]

Indeed, and it has always been the case, because of the withdrawal agreement, that it would have to reverse the—

[Chris Bryant]

It cannot, because it is the same session.

[Hilary Benn]

That is an interesting question, but I am being diverted from the final point that I want to make.

I listened to the Attorney-General’s kind reference to the indicative votes process. I almost forgot that the Government voted against it happening this week. If they were taking it seriously, they would indicate a willingness to compromise if the House is able to find a way forward.

The deal has been defeated twice because it offers no clarity or certainty for our future. If businesses come to me in my constituency and say, “Hilary, I know how it works today. I export. Tell me how it will work with this political declaration in three, five or 10 years.” I have to look them in the eye and tell them the truth: I have absolutely no idea. So is it right to ask the House to take us out of the European Union on that basis, especially when a new Prime Minister may be coming?

On “Newsnight” last night, it was reported that a Cabinet Minister was asked why the Government were going ahead with this vote and they replied, expletive deleted:

“I’m past caring. It’s like the living dead in here.”

I will not comment on the language, but that is the problem and it has always been the problem.

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[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry). I admire her consistency, but she will not agree with what I am about to say. I am afraid that I did not agree with what she said.

This is a simple question of democracy, sovereignty and accountability. That is why 17.4 million people voted to leave. They were told, “You are sovereign. You make a decision. The Commons, as elected, will interpret that.” They trusted us to deliver what they voted for. They will be bitterly disappointed. At 11 o’clock tonight, we should be leaving, and we will not be leaving, and that is a terrible blow to integrity and their trust in us. The Conservative manifesto was very clear that we would interpret leave to mean leaving the single market, leaving the customs union and leaving the European Court of Justice. The Labour party pretty well said the same thing. More than two thirds of Members of Parliament represent seats that said leave, and 444 and 498 Members voted for the Second and Third Readings of the Bill to trigger article 50. At that stage, perhaps Opposition Members were stunned by the effect of the referendum, but now I am amazed by the nature of these debates. There is a sense that that enormous vote—that enormous expression of popular demand—has faded into the past. It is seen as a bit embarrassing and bit like a bad smell at a dinner party

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Mr Paterson]

Other Members want to speak, so I must push on.

The issue is live. Those people are out there and they believe that it should happen and that we should deliver it. It is not going back. It cannot be put back in the bottle, with the top screwed on, and then hidden in a cupboard or put in the fridge. That huge vote will continue to dominate our politics. The issue is not going away.

It is extraordinary that the fifth largest economy in the world is proposing to have laws imposed on it by 27 other countries, many of which are competitors that have no incentive to pass law in our interest. We will not be present when the law is made and we will not be able to amend or repeal it, and if we do not apply it to the satisfaction of the European Commission and, ultimately, the European Court of Justice, we will be subject, as we heard during last week’s urgent question, to unlimited fines—“disallowance”, in EU-speak.

We have the horror facing Northern Ireland. The whole basis of getting the Unionist population to vote for the Belfast agreement was the principle of consent. There was an extraordinarily successful campaign by Lord Trimble; it was an amazing effort to get Unionists to vote for it. The basis was trust that the status of Northern Ireland could not be changed, yet we are going to have something horrible called UKNI, which is actually in breach of the Acts of Union of 1801.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), and I very much hope that he will now join the all-party parliamentary group on acquired brain injury, since he has some spare time.

Round and round and round we go. It is not so much a stuck record as a record played at the wrong speed, and frankly it is about time we changed direction. I am going to vote against the motion—[Interruption.] The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) looks depressed and upset as if I have let him down terribly.

The truth is that this is a ludicrous attempt at a body swerve by the Government. This House decided in this parliamentary Session the proper process for proceeding: first, a meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration, all in one—that is what the House decided and enacted in this Session—and secondly, an Act of Parliament to implement them. I feel that the Government actually intend to use the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill to repeal section 13 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and yet we have already made a decision about the proper process in this Session of Parliament. I do not think that they will be able to do so, which is why our passing the motion today does not provide more certainty, as the Attorney General argued. It provides more uncertainty, because we will still have to go through the process of a full meaningful vote.

Until this moment, the Prime Minister has always agreed that the political declaration and the withdrawal agreement must be taken together. Her party’s manifesto expressly says it; she is always preaching to us about manifestos, so I am preaching back to her. She also said repeatedly, “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” I agree with the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) that we should never separate out the divorce settlement and the custody of the children. The whole thing has to go together. That is an intrinsic, fundamental principle.

There may be good reasons for voting for the motion, and I fully accept that many Ministers adopt those, but it worries me that so many have said that they loathe this deal but none the less intend to support it today. That is not a good reason. The European Research Group said of the agreement:

“we will become a ‘vassal state’ many of whose laws will have been created abroad and over which we have no influence.”

How can they possible vote for this?

This is a constitutional crisis. We need a settlement that will last for generations. There is a deep wound in the body politic, and a sticking plaster will not suffice. We need to stitch the nation back together, and we can only do that if we proceed in good order, with no more parliamentary shenanigans, no more partisan jiggery-pokery and behind-stairs work and no more subjugating the national interest to private ambition.