European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I have never written a speech before and then had it typed out, Mr Speaker, and now I do not know why I bothered: not only have you cut the time, but you can see how the debate has advanced.

I am sorry but I am going to speak, as ever, frankly. This has got to stop; this is unseemly; this is the most important piece of legislation that this House has considered arguably since the second world war, and we sit here and watch a peculiar sort of horse-trading over the perfectly excellent amendment put forward by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who served in the Government for decades—[Interruption.] He served in the Government for a number of years, but he has served this party for decades and he has never rebelled once. I gently say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who in just eight years rebelled 58 times, and to the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, who along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) rebelled in total 160 times, that we here understand the concept of being loyal to leadership and, indeed, being true and honourable to our principles—and I believe they are men of conscience and principle.

Let us look around us at what is happening. There are good men and women of great ability, and indeed courage, who are, unfortunately, no longer in our Cabinet, such as my right hon. Friends the Members for Ashford (Damian Green), for Putney (Justine Greening) and for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd)—all great people who have been lost from our deeply divided Cabinet. Never before have we had a Cabinet that is so divided, and with some of its most senior people, who hold the greatest offices of state, at every twist and turn, when our Prime Minister moves towards securing a Brexit that will serve everybody in our country—the softest, most sensible of Brexits—both publicly and privately undermining her and scuppering her attempts. It simply has to stop, and the moment for it to stop is now.

I know absolutely that the Solicitor General is a man of great honour, whose word will always be true, but I say with the greatest respect to him that he is not the most senior person around today and it is not his decision. He knows that I say that as somebody with great respect and love for him. So where is the Secretary of State? All he has to do is accept the amendment of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield. If he does not, he will force Members who for decades have never before rebelled to traipse through a Lobby or sit and abstain, just as they did in the Lords—and who I will support in each and every one of those important amendments on the EEA and the customs union and amendment 19.

Those Lords were Members of this place once; they include a former Chief Whip, a former Deputy Prime Minister, more Secretaries of State than we could shake a stick at, a former Leader of the House and two former party chairmen. For decades they were always loyal to every leader. Meanwhile, there lurk some, I am afraid, who for decades have plotted and connived. They have got rid of leaders and anybody and anything that stood in their way, and they will continue so to do. Even if they are supported by Russian bots and their dirty money, they will do what they have had a lifetime’s ambition to do, which is to take us over the cliff into the hard Brexit that my constituents did not vote for. I will continue to represent my constituents. We reckon that overall 52% voted to leave, but the 48% who voted to remain have been put to one side in this process and ignored. That has to stop. We have to come back together and we have to do the right thing.

I know and understand how difficult it is for many of my colleagues to go through the Lobby and vote against their party, but I say this: I am getting a little tired of the right hon. and hon. Members on the Back Benches, in government and even in the Cabinet who come up to me and others in quiet and dark corridors; of the British businesses that demand private meetings in which they lay bare their despair but refuse to go public; of the commentators who say to me, “You’re doing a great job. Keep on going,” in the face of death threats which have meant that one of our number has had to attend a public engagement with six armed undercover police officers—that is the country that we have created and it has got to stop; and of the journalists who fight nobly for every cause but on this most important of issues are mute. It has got to stop. Everybody now has to stand up and be true to what they believe in.

Finally, Mr Speaker, I hope you will give me time to find and read out some great words:

“The House is made up of 651 robust individuals whose position gives them a powerful say in what the Executive can and cannot do. The powers of the House are sovereign and they have the ability to upset the best-laid plans of Ministers and of Government, which no Minister ever forgets, and nor should any Back Bencher”.

Those words were true then, and they are true now. They were spoken by the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Accept the amendment!

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) has spoken with passion and clarity, and above all she has spoken about courage and about putting our country first. I should like to pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who has done exactly that today. This involved personal sacrifice—and who knows what the electorate might do in the future—but he is using his judgment and making an assessment about what is in the best interests of his constituents, and that is greatly to be respected.

I was fascinated to hear the exchange between the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and those on the Government Front Bench a moment ago. It seems to me that the obvious solution would be for the Government to signal that they will accept the amendment in lieu tabled by the right hon. and learned Gentleman—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Leslie]

No, I am not going to give way. There are lots of others who want to speak—[Interruption.] No, sit down.

If the Government were to accept the amendment, and if the House were to approve that—as it would, because this would be done by consensus—that issue would then go to the House of Lords. Through the discussions that would subsequently take place there, it might be amended or tweaked in some way, and there would then be an opportunity for the other place to send it back here for final confirmation. However, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman were simply to take the word of Ministers on this question—I understand that that sometimes happens—the leverage of this House could be lost if those discussions came to naught.

[Mr Grieve]

We have to be realistic, and there is an issue here. If the Government wanted to accept the entirety of the amendment, that could probably be done this afternoon and that would be the amendment that went back to the Lords, incorporated in theirs. In fairness to the Government, I have always appreciated that there might be some tweaking to be done. I understand that. Having said that, does the hon. Gentleman agree that there needs to be some certainty that the substance of this amendment will come with the acceptance of the Government in the other place?

[Mr Leslie]

That is right, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I suggest that it is far better to have that amendment in the Bill as it goes to the other place, which may decide to tweak or change it following discussions. That seems to reflect what feels like the majority view in the Chamber today on the need for a sense of certainty that something will be done. This is not just a matter of one Minister, because a Minister’s word can be given and then changed—

[Sir William Cash]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Leslie]

No, I will not give way.

Ministers can come and go, but we across this Chamber need that level of certainty. We of course accept the fact that there will be further discussions. The question about taking back control was put to us consistently throughout the referendum. As someone was saying earlier, we obviously cannot call hon. Members hypocrites, but we can point out the hypocrisy in general of the argument of those who might have said in one breath that we should take back control and then had the audacity to come here and say, “Oh well, the UK Parliament clearly has to be cut out of this issue altogether.” I know that we were all elected in 2017 on a mandate drawn up subsequent to the referendum. Our mandate, collectively, has a value, and we should not diminish that and pretend that we should be cut out of this process altogether when there are so many things at stake.

This is not a binary question, and I do not believe that the British people voted to take back control from Brussels only to give that control unilaterally and in its entirety to the Prime Minister and her friends. This is a matter for us, and our constituents would expect nothing less than for us to say, “Hang on a minute, what about our jobs in the manufacturing sector? What about the car industry? What about those who work in the financial services sector?” All the people working in those sectors have the right to expect us to do our job with due diligence.

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has rightly pointed out that we could find ourselves in a situation in which no deal is reached because the discussions and negotiations have collapsed. There is no certainty that the motion would then come forward. When the Secretary of State was intervened on and asked what would happen if no deal were to materialise, he said that the Government would come forward with a statement. When he was asked how the Government were going to prevent us from falling over the cliff, no answer was forthcoming. This is an incredibly important point. We have a duty to safeguard our constituents from harm. That harm could affect not only their livelihoods and their jobs but all the revenues that taxpayers pay towards our public services. So if we care about our NHS, we have to ensure that there is a safeguard in place. If we care about schools and council services, we need this insurance policy in place. We should not go through such a crucially important issue without those particular safeguards.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recall that, during the general election, the Prime Minister said that she was being obstructed in Parliament and needed a big majority? Well, she got her answer at that election. Coming back to another point that my hon. Friend has made, the midlands rely on trade, and we should not be jeopardising hundreds of thousands of jobs in the west midlands.

[Mr Leslie]

My hon. Friend says it perfectly. We would be failing in our duty if we were simply to delegate all our decisions to the Prime Minister and say, “That’s it. Everything has been done.” Leaving the customs union or the single market was not on the ballot paper, and those are things on which we have a right to express our view.

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

rose—

[Mr Leslie]

I want to conclude. The other problem with the deal is the future relationship, because when that motion comes, my constituents expect that it will be about not just the divorce proceedings, the money and the process of leaving, but what our future relationship will be. It must be. If there is simply a side of A4—a flimsy statement of words—with the famous fudge that we are so used to hearing about stapled as an annex to the back of it, that will be unacceptable. We have a duty to press Ministers to do a proper deal that safeguards our constituents’ interests. As MPs, we must ensure that we exercise pressure on the Government to do things properly.

The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield clearly now has the majority of the House with him, because we would not see the Government Chief Whip scuttling around so rapidly—I have never seen him move so quickly—trying to find a form of words. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will take this opportunity to get his amendment in lieu in the Bill now and send it to the House of Lords. The Lords can always amend, change it or look at it again, and we can come back to this next week and do things properly. It is not our fault that only 12 hours were allocated to this whole ridiculous process; we could have had far longer. The Government have made their bed, and they must now lie in in it. They set up this process, and they cannot realistically complain, “Ooh, I didn’t have the chance to read this overnight.” If they want a particular change, they need to accept the will of the House. They can always table amendments in the House of Lords. That seems the best way forward.

[Several hon. Members rose—]