Chris Leslie
Main Page: Chris Leslie (The Independent Group for Change - Nottingham East)Department Debates - View all Chris Leslie's debates with the Cabinet Office
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Chris Leslie Excerpts(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
This is a seminal debate in the history of this House and for the future of our country. I have been in the House since 1983, and this debate and the decision we will take next week is one of the most important we will ever take as Members of this House.
The deal before us would make our country worse off. Taken together with the withdrawal agreement and the future partnership, it represents a huge and damaging failure for Britain. The Prime Minister says this is a good deal, and is so confident of that that she attempted to refuse to publish the Government’s legal advice—she was forced to publish it by votes in this House today.
However, the economic assessments and other assessments that we will see indicate that this is actually a bad deal. These documents are the product of two years of botched negotiations, in which the Government spent more time arguing with itself than it did in negotiating with the European Union. It is not only on Brexit where they have failed. The economy is weak, investment is poor, wage growth is weak, our public services are in crisis and local councils are collapsing because of this Government’s refusal to fund them properly. More people in this country are living in poverty, including half a million more children, since 2010. The Government should be ashamed of themselves for that. Poverty is rising, homelessness is rising and household debt is rising, too.
It is against that backdrop that the Government have produced this botched deal, which even breaches the Prime Minister’s own red lines. Across the House the deal has achieved something—it has united Conservative remainers, Conservative leavers and Members of every Opposition party in an extraordinary coalition against the deal.
Jeremy Corbyn
Mr Speaker—[Hon. Members: “Give way.”] Mr Speaker, it could have all been so different. Following the 2017 election, the Prime Minister—[Interruption.]
Jeremy Corbyn
Mr Speaker, no deal is not a real option, and the Government know that, because they are not seriously prepared for it. Eleven out of the 12 critical infrastructure projects that would need to be in place by the end of March 2019 to manage a no-deal Brexit are at risk of not being completed on time, according to the National Audit Office.
Jeremy Corbyn
I am quite happy to debate with the Prime Minister. I notice she was not very keen to debate with anybody during the general election, but we understand that.
The Government have been forced to publish their full legal advice, as voted for by this House. I hope and assume that that advice will be published tomorrow, because Members ought to be in possession of all the facts. In 2007, the Prime Minister then argued, and I absolutely agreed with her, that the full legal advice should have been made available before the Iraq war. Why did she push it right to wire here and lose two votes in the House in order to try and prevent the publication of the legal advice, which is so necessary to inform us in our debates?
This withdrawal agreement is a leap in the dark. It takes us no closer to understanding what the future of our country post Brexit would look like, and neither does the future partnership, which I will come on to. The Prime Minister states that the transition period ends in December 2020. Article 132 actually says it can be extended for up to two years, to 31 December 2022.
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. The Labour party discussed this issue at great length at party conference and agreed that we would oppose this deal. We said that if the Government cannot govern and cannot command a majority of the House, then the great British tradition is that those Governments resign and we have a general election.
Jeremy Corbyn
My hon. Friend is right, because the deal does not ensure that if there are changes across the EU that improve workers’ rights and conditions, they are necessarily mirrored in this country. When the Prime Minister talks so grandly about workers’ rights in this country, what comes to my mind is a million people on zero-hours contracts; what comes to my mind is people trying to make ends meet by doing two or three jobs just to feed their children.
As I said, the Prime Minister states that the transition period ends in 2020. Article 132 actually says that it can be extended for up to two years, to December 2022. The Business Secretary is already clear that it is likely to be extended to that period, and under this bad deal we would have to pay whatever the EU demands to extend it for those two years.
Jeremy Corbyn
Under this deal, in December 2020 we will be faced with a choice: either pay more and extend the transition period, or fall into the backstop. At that point, Britain would be over a barrel. We would have left the EU, have no UK rebate and be forced to pay whatever was demanded. Alternatively, article 185, on the Northern Ireland protocol—the backstop—would apply. Not only would that mean that Northern Ireland would be subject to significantly different regulations from the rest of the UK, but the EU would have a right of veto—a right of veto—over the UK’s exit from the backstop arrangement. Far from taking back control, that is actually handing control to somebody else. That is what the Prime Minister is asking us to support. Whether in a backstop or an extended transition, the UK would have no say over the rules. By that time, we could have already given up our seat on the Council of Ministers, our commissioner and our MEPs, without having negotiated any alternative say in our future. This Government are not taking back control; they are losing control.
Jeremy Corbyn
Well, if the House rejects this deal, as I hope it will, it is then up to the Government to go back and negotiate something, like a new comprehensive customs union, which would be backed by both the TUC and the CBI, and which is necessary to defend jobs and also have access to a strong single market. We cannot be told that this is the only thing we can do. The process of negotiation is to be accountable. The Government will be held to account. I hope this deal is rejected, in which case we will force the Government to go back and negotiate.
Mr Speaker
Order. I want to hear the intervention. There is a lot of noise.