European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Grayling Excerpts

3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons
Thursday 9th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments, which anticipate a point I was just about to make. He is absolutely right. Throughout this process we have called for alignment on workers’ rights, environmental standards, equalities and human rights not simply because that is right—although that is hugely important—but because it provides the basis for the close relationship on which our trade and our economic partnership with the European Union depends.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

I am slightly puzzled by the hon. Gentleman’s decision to oppose the Bill today, since the consequence of the Bill going down would be us not leaving the European Union on 31 January, which is clearly still Labour policy. Is he actually saying that he wants, once we have left the European Union, future laws in this country on employment rights and the environment to still be decided not by this Parliament but by the European Union, without us having any involvement whatever in the shaping of those laws?

[Paul Blomfield]

I will explain precisely what I mean by my comments, which echo the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock).

The last four years have divided our country like no others. It did not have to be like that. If only, after the referendum, when David Cameron ran away from the crisis he created, the then new Prime Minister had been straight with the British people. If only she had said that our country is split down the middle; it has voted to leave but by a painfully close margin of 52:48, which is a mandate to end our membership of the EU but not to rupture our relationship with our closest neighbours and most important trading partners. If she had said that we would leave but stay close—aligned with the single market in a customs union, and members of the agencies we have built together over 47 years—we would have supported her. She could have secured an overwhelming majority within this House. She could have brought the country together again after the divisions of the referendum. Instead, she pivoted to those whom her Chancellor—not those on the Opposition Benches but her Chancellor—described as the Brexit extremists in her party, risking the economy and security of our country. The Bill continues on that path. We have consistently rejected that approach, and that is why we will do so again today by voting the Bill down.