European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alex Salmond]

The Tory 2015 manifesto is not my bedtime reading, but as I recall, page 72 said:

“We say: yes to the Single Market”.

The Tories were right to say yes. It was funny that yesterday all the Conservative speakers remembered the commitment to a referendum, but not one of them remembered their commitment to the single marketplace. Of course it was not the case that a withdrawal from the European Community meant a withdrawal from the single marketplace. During the campaign, I had the pleasure of debating with Daniel Hannan MEP, who said:

“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the Single Market”.

Of course it is possible to honour the result of the referendum and stay in the single marketplace, and even if people think there will be an exit from the single marketplace, it is madness, in diplomatic negotiating terms, to abandon that position now. The UK should keep its place in the single marketplace and allow the other European countries to negotiate it out of it, not give it away before the first word is spoken in the negotiations.

I come next to the procedures of this House. I have here the list of amendments tabled to the Bill, stretching to 103 pages; we are told that they are to be debated in three days. Eighteen months ago, the Scotland Bill, which was not the greatest constitutional change in history, got six days of debate. I say to Labour Members such as the right hon. Member for Doncaster North, who listed all the things wrong with the Government’s approach, that if they believe that now, they should vote against the Government; if they cannot do that, they should at least vote against a programme motion that will make it impossible to debate the sensible changes that the right hon. Gentleman outlined.

As was well pointed out yesterday, the process is procedurally deficient, not only in terms of the time given, but in terms of the question that will eventually be put to the House. The final vote will be on the deal that comes back from a Prime Minister who said that

“no deal…is better than a bad deal”,

so the choice the House will likely get is a bad deal or no deal. It is therefore crucial that when the House debates it and comes to a decision, there is a meaningful vote—a vote that can make a difference—as opposed to Hobson’s choice, made with a metaphorical gun to the House’s head.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

If we end up in a situation in which the only deal on the table is a bad deal, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the responsibility for that will lie with the Prime Minister? It is not as if she can deny responsibility for that being a problem.

[Alex Salmond]

Yes, I would agree, but of course if we are all in the soup, finding out that it was the Prime Minister’s responsibility will avail this country very little. It is far better to try to ensure by our votes that we get a realistic choice that can actually make a difference.

Finally, I come to the situation in Scotland. Scotland has a 1,000-year history as a European nation. There is a plaque to Sir William Wallace in great Westminster Hall, the site of his unjust trial—for which, presumably, he will get a pardon at some point soon. After his greatest victory in the battle of Stirling bridge, which was akin to Leicester City winning the premier league last season, in terms of upset and surprise, his first act was not to hold a cèilidh, but to write to the Hanseatic League in Lübeck and elsewhere to secure Scotland’s trading concessions throughout Europe. The importance of Scotland’s European connections stretches back a millennium, and we are not going to allow this non-vision—this act of madness from this House—to take Scotland out of those connections.

The Scottish Government have put forward the proposition, “Scotland’s Place in Europe”, which offers the Prime Minister a way for Scotland to stay in the single marketplace, regardless of what she wants to do to this country. She said today that a frictionless border in Ireland was quite possible under the circumstances, without realising that if it is possible in Ireland, it is of course possible in Scotland. I see the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) nodding; in the early hours of this morning, I think I saw him, or perhaps it was one of his hon. Friends, say much the same thing on the BBC’s “HARDtalk”—a sad case, watching “HARDtalk” at 1 o’clock in the morning—and it was an important admission. Actually, it was the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab). It is important to understand that there are examples in Europe at present.

The Prime Minister has it within her power and capacity to accept the Scottish Government’s compromise proposals and allow Scotland as a nation to retain its trading place in the European context. If that is not to happen; if the House says, “We will go ahead with a hard, Tory Brexit,” or a full English Brexit, as we are now calling it in Scotland, and says, “We’re going to sweep aside concerns from across the House about the economic and political damage, and we will not accept the proposals from Scotland to follow the votes of the people in the nation of Scotland and retain their European connection. We are not interested in preserving Scottish jobs and investment”; if those are the criteria and that is the attitude of the Government; if that is what the Prime Minister wants to do with Scotland, and she is determined to throw down that gauntlet, she can be absolutely sure that Nicola Sturgeon, as First Minister, will pick it up.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

I will take one further intervention, from the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna).

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

The point is that if this is to be a meaningful concession, the House needs the opportunity to send the Government back to our EU partners to negotiate a deal if one has not been reached. Going to World Trade Organisation rules will be deeply damaging for our economy and wholly unacceptable.

[Mr Jones]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but frankly I cannot think of a greater signal of weakness than for the House to send the Government back to the European Union saying that we want to negotiate further. That would be seized on as a sign of weakness and therefore I cannot agree with it at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I have just condemned pretty much every forecast, I will not make that forecast. I will say that once Scotland gets back to domestic policy, it is almost certain that the Scottish nationalists will be seen for what they are doing: running down education, health and the economy. Let us get back to the real forecast.

I do not wish to sow the seeds of dissention, so I simply say that the new clause and the related amendments, which would put another set of shackles around the Government’s hands and stop them getting on with what the British people voted for on 23 June last year, must be rejected, because the Government must seek the best deal they can in line with what is good for the EU and for the United Kingdom.

[Mr Umunna]

I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). Before I speak to the amendment in my name, which is on a subject that was totally absent from the right hon. Gentleman’s contribution, I have to say that I am bemused by what can only be described as a 15-minute diatribe against forecasters and economists—the experts. That is why I was not surprised to see the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) join in with the diatribe. The Opposition have spent the past five or six years listening to these two now former Cabinet Ministers telling us about the importance of listening to independent economic forecasters. They told us how important it was that they set up the Office for Budget Responsibility, which the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green has just spent the past 15 minutes slagging off.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Umunna]

I will just make a bit of progress. I will come to the hon. Gentleman in a bit, but I do not want to speak for too long because I know a lot of people wish to speak.

I am bound to say that I wish we were not here. As the right hon. Members for Chingford and Woodford Green and for Surrey Heath know well, because I debated with them a lot during the campaign, I campaigned strongly for us to stay in the European Union. I led the Labour “In for Britain” campaign in Greater London, and played a role in the “Britain Stronger In Europe” campaign nationally. But we lost. As a democrat, I accept that result, which is why I supported the Bill’s Second Reading. Of course, I respect people who interpreted the referendum result differently. Although we all have different views on whether to trigger article 50, we can all agree that while various promises were made by both sides in the referendum campaign, the key pledge of the winning side was that if we leave the European Union, £350 million extra a week will go to the NHS, which is why I tabled amendment 11.

Dominic Cummings, who worked, of course, for the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath and who ran the Vote Leave campaign, said on his blog last month that the £350 million NHS argument was “necessary to win”. He said:

“Would we have won without £350m/NHS? All our research and the close result strongly suggests No.”

Hon. Members can go and read that on his blog. So the importance of that pledge cannot be overestimated. It cannot be detached from the triggering of article 50. It is inextricably linked to why millions of people voted to leave, to our withdrawal from the European Union and, therefore, to this Bill.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was at a public meeting in one village where people said, “It’s fantastic that we are leaving the European Union, because we are going to get £350 million a week for the NHS, and the Government will be able to reopen the A&E in Bishop Auckland hospital.”

[Mr Umunna]

That is right, and there are lots of examples of that throughout the country. That is not surprising, because prominent members of this Government—the Foreign, Environment, International Development, International Trade and Transport Secretaries, who are all members of the current Cabinet—went around the country in that big red bus that said:

“We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead.”

None of them disowned that pledge during the campaign. They also stood by a big sign saying:

“Let’s give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week.”

[Ms Angela Eagle]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that kind of cynical campaigning gives politics and politicians a really bad name? The people who saw the pledge on that big red bus now expect this Government to deliver on that pledge.

[Mr Umunna]

That is absolutely right. Those Members seek to hide behind the wording and to claim that it was conditional, but they knew exactly what they were doing when they stood in front of that big red bus and that sign: the clear message they intended to convey was that if we leave the European Union, £350 million a week will go to the NHS.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I have a huge amount of time for the hon. Gentleman, and I like him very much, but seeing as we are swapping stories about town hall meetings, I had a number of people come up to me in town hall meetings, saying, “Mr Walker, we’d love to vote to leave the EU, but the Chancellor has told us that if we do, we’ll lose £4,400, and there will be an emergency Budget.” I do not think it helps this country or this House to rehash the campaign from seven months ago.

[Mr Umunna]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman raised that point, and I also have a lot of respect for him. However, the point is that I am not trying to re-litigate the referendum campaign but to make sure that the promises these people made are delivered.

We know the NHS needs the extra cash, so it was not unreasonable for people to believe those promises. The Health Committee—people on both sides of the House sit on it—pointed out recently that the deficit in NHS trusts and foundation trusts in 2015-16 was £3.45 billion. We know that Ministers’ claimed increases in NHS funding are being funded by reductions in other areas of health spending that fall outside NHS England’s budgets. We know that reductions in spending on social care are having a serious impact, which is translating into increased A&E attendances, emergency admissions and delays in people leaving hospital. The NHS needs that extra cash, so it was not unreasonable for people who voted to leave the European Union to think that that pledge would be delivered on.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is complaining about a slogan on the side of a bus about giving extra money to the NHS and implying that his amendment gives money to the NHS, but it does not—it merely suggests that there should be a report on the effect of the withdrawal from the EU on national finances, including health service expenditure. He therefore seems to be falling into exactly the same trap as he is accusing others of. Motes and beams come to mind.

[Mr Umunna]

I do not know about the hon. Gentleman’s mote, but this amendment has been drafted so that it is inoffensive to people like him. Given that it is such a reasonable amendment, I suggest that he simply votes for it.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of Change Britain’s latest press release where the £350 million a week has gone up to £450 million a week through its exhortations to scrap such onerous regulations as the motor vehicles regulations, the greenhouse gas emissions reporting regulations, the welfare of animals in transport regulations, and the welfare of farmed animal regulations?

[Mr Umunna]

That is very interesting. I note that the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath is still in his place. I saw in The Sun, no less, in November that he was demanding—demanding!—that the Prime Minister spend a £32 billion Brexit dividend on the NHS, so I hope that he will be supporting our amendment as well.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making some very important points. It is interesting to hear Conservative Members scoffing and laughing at this. This was not just one of many pledges—it was the key pledge. I am looking at a collection of photographs of all the key proponents of the Vote Leave campaign. It was their No. 1 commitment to this country if it voted to leave the European Union. On that basis, does not this Chamber have a responsibility to honour the pledge on which people voted to leave the EU?

[Mr Umunna]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

For all these reasons I have tabled amendment 11, which, as the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) stated, is very reasonable. It requires the Prime Minister to set out how the UK’s withdrawal from the EU will impact on the national finances, particularly on health spending. In short, she needs to set out how she is going to make good on that Vote Leave pledge to spend £350 million extra per week on the NHS.

[Seema Malhotra]

I am very pleased to support my hon. Friend’s amendment. Does he agree that this will also be a vital part of the keeping the public’s confidence in the process as we go forward over the next two years, not least given the conversations in a focus group I held in my constituency on Sunday where people said that this issue remains topmost in their minds as the reason they voted to leave?

[Mr Umunna]

Absolutely. This issue is not going to go away. It will be a major part of the general election campaign, whenever the next one comes.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Umunna]

I will very shortly.

I hope that we will have the opportunity not only to debate this amendment but to vote on it too. It has been signed by more Members than any other amendment. It is supported across parties and of course has the support of the Opposition Front Bench. In the end, in our democracy, it is in this House that Members are held to account for the promises they make and the things they say to the people. What better way to test the resolve of people such as the right hon. Members for Chingford and Woodford Green and for Surrey Heath than for there to be a vote on this issue so that people can see whether they meant what they said?

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Another commitment was that they wanted to make Parliament sovereign again, but Government Members are saying today that when we exercise that sovereignty we are being obstructive and using delaying tactics. They cannot have it both ways.

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

These people will never be forgiven if they betray the trust of the people by breaking their promise to do all they can to ensure that the £350 million extra per week for the NHS is delivered. They all know that only too well. Mr Cummings, who, as I have said, worked for the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath, discloses in the blog I mentioned that the Foreign Secretary and the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath planned to deliver, in part, on that pledge as part of the Foreign Secretary’s leadership campaign. Mr Cummings writes that when he told the Foreign Secretary

“‘you should start off by being unusual, a politician who actually delivers what they promise’”,

the reply was

“‘Absolutely. ABSOLUTELY. We MUST do this, no question, we’ll park our tanks EVERYWHERE’”.

Apparently, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath strongly agreed. Mr Cummings goes on to say:

“If they had not blown up this would have happened.”

No doubt the Minister will say to us that there are a number of reasons why the Government cannot support the amendment. I am going to pre-empt him and deal with each in turn. First, there are those who claim that it was not a pledge at all. The Transport Secretary has said:

“The specific proposal by the Vote Leave campaign was in fact to spend £100 million a week”—

of the £350 million—

“on the NHS. I hope that aspiration will be met.”

I say to the Transport Secretary, who of course is not here, that the poster, which the Vote Leave campaigners all stood by, did not indicate that that was an aspiration or use the £100 million figure. It was a pledge, pure and simple. The poster did not read, “Let’s aspire to spend £100 million extra.”

[Karl MᶜCartney]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Umunna]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman shortly. The poster gave the clear impression that the money would be spent. It is true that the Office for National Statistics said that the £350 million figure was misleading, but the Vote Leave campaign, which the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath chaired, kept on using that figure regardless. Now they will be held to account for it.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for eventually giving way. He really should listen to the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who talked about forecasting. The hon. Gentleman has forecast—I think he will be wrong—that the £350 million will be an issue at the next general election. Does he agree that the Conservative party was not Vote Leave, and that the £350 million was the slogan of Vote Leave, not the Conservative party? As he is giving us a grand tour de force of the Brexit campaign, would he like to comment on “Project Fear”?

[Mr Umunna]

I think the hon. Gentleman was involved in Vote Leave—perhaps he was not—but I am not going to take any lectures about peddling fear and all the rest of it, in any campaign, from anyone associated with Vote Leave. I will come on to the point that he made about the Conservative party shortly.

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I entirely agree with the points that the hon. Gentleman is making. Having made that complaint to the UK Statistics Authority, the response that I received was that the claim was potentially misleading. As he has said, Vote Leave campaigners kept using it. Surely, they kept using it because they knew they needed to do so in order to win the referendum. Now that they have done that, we need to hold them to account.

[Mr Umunna]

That is absolutely right, and I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I come to the point that the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) made about the Conservative party—[Interruption.] Admittedly, it could also apply to some people from the Labour party. Some say that the pledges were made primarily by people who may have been members of a Conservative Government, but who did not speak with the authority of that Government. Of the five Cabinet Members I have mentioned who took leading roles in the campaign, three were members of the Government at the time and one, the Foreign Secretary, attended the political Cabinet. Part of the reason why those key campaigners were put up to do media and to campaign for Vote Leave was that they carried the authority of being Ministers. We cannot detach one from the other.

The other, and connected, argument that is made is that the commitment was given by one side in a referendum campaign, not by a Government, so we should leave the matter alone and get on with things—we should all shut up. I am sorry, but I do not think that that will wash. Whether they were Ministers or not, all the key Vote Leave campaigners were Members of this House. As I have said, if our democracy is to mean anything, it is that Members of this House answer and are held to account in this House for the promises that they make to the people. After all, as has been said, they campaigned in the name of parliamentary sovereignty. If Parliament is sovereign, they should be held to account here.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Umunna]

I will not give way; I am going to finish.

Either those people made the pledge in the expectation of delivering on it, in which case they must now show us the money and vote for this very reasonable amendment, or they made it in the knowledge that it would never be met, in which case they will never be forgiven for their betrayal of those who, in good faith, relied on that promise.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am wholly in favour of spending £350 million or £375 million or whatever the figure is. But I want to ask the hon. Gentleman a specific question, as this is his amendment and he has stopped short of saying what he really thinks: the amendment says only that a report should be published. What is his and his party’s position on the spending on the NHS that will come only as and when we leave the European Union and get back the money that we give at the moment, which is £350 million or £375 million? Does he want to spend that all on the health service or does he not?

[Mr Umunna]

I think I detected a hint of support for the amendment in the remarks that the right hon. Gentleman has just made.

[Chris Leslie]

He’s melting!

[Mr Umunna]

The right hon. Gentleman seems to have accepted—I hear the word “melting” behind me—the premise behind the amendment. I very much look forward to his joining us in the Division Lobby.

My party established the national health service in the face of opposition from the right hon. Gentleman’s party. We have a far better record of providing the funding and support to our NHS. We need no lectures or demands from his party, which is in government and throwing it all into chaos.

I finish by saying this to the right hon. Gentleman. His Prime Minister goes around saying, “Brexit means Brexit”. If Brexit means anything, it is that he and all his colleagues who campaigned for Vote Leave need to deliver on their promise to put £350 million extra per week into the NHS. I look forward to seeing the right hon. Gentleman in the Division Lobby tomorrow.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

The right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) argued that we should not support the two amendments because they are justiciable; on that basis, we might as well pack up and go home, because everything that we put in legislation is justiciable.

I rise to support the two amendments, and I draw the House’s attention to the unanimous recommendation of the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union, which I have the privilege of chairing: the Government should now make a unilateral decision to safeguard the rights of EU nationals in the United Kingdom. I say to the Secretary of State that the only argument against doing that, and against the Lords amendment, is that someone might be prepared to put the status of those 3 million EU citizens into play in the negotiations. That raises the question of how exactly that would be done, and to what purpose. It is precisely because the Secretary of State, and indeed the Prime Minister, have been so clear in saying to the House “We intend to ensure those people’s status and rights” that no one in the Chamber believes that the Government would be prepared to put those people’s status into play in the negotiations. If the Government are not prepared to do that, why not do the right thing now, and tell those people that they can stay?

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

Is the Government’s position on EU citizens not based on a fiction? If they did not grant EU citizens the right to stay, presumably they would remove those who could not stay from the United Kingdom, but the Minister for Immigration has said that the Government do not know where EU citizens are in order to remove them from the United Kingdom. It is an empty threat, so why cause all this stress?

[Hilary Benn]

I agree with my hon. Friend entirely. The whole House knows that that course of action cannot be contemplated, so the Government should follow the advice of the Select Committee.

On Lords amendment 2, I listened carefully to the arguments that the Secretary of State advanced, but I say to him gently that I do not think they would have persuaded him in his previous incarnation, before he became Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Let us just pause for a moment on the point that the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) raised about the incentive to offer a bad deal. If that argument holds any sway, it held sway when Ministers said at the Dispatch Box, “Yes, we will give you a vote on a draft deal.” It cannot be the case that if the Government offer a vote on a draft deal, it does not raise the possibility of a bad deal being offered, whereas if we in this House vote to put that vote on a deal on the statute book, it does raise the possibility of a bad deal being offered. The two arguments are wholly inconsistent, and the House is not persuaded.

I also listened carefully to the language used by the Secretary of State, who I see is engaged in earnest conversation. He talked about our being able to act without our hands being tied, and to pass the Bill “without any strings attached”. We in this House are not strings; we are part of our democracy, and we are very attached to that democracy. Lords amendment 2 is not about seeking to reverse the decision of the referendum. Like the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), I and many others voted for this legislation because we respect the outcome of the referendum, but it is about Parliament deciding, in either eventuality, on how we leave the European Union. There is a terrible irony here. We are hearing the voices of those who, in the course of the referendum, used the restoration of parliamentary sovereignty as one of their principal arguments for voting to leave the EU, but whose enthusiasm for that sovereignty disappears in a puff of smoke when the House is asked to put that sovereignty on the statute book.

Finally, I say to the right hon. Gentleman that it is now time to put behind us the matter of who voted leave or remain in the referendum. We should come together and put aside division, including the division that is being urged on us by others in this Chamber. I say to him that having Parliament behind him in these negotiations and knowing that, in the end, the Government must account to Parliament for what they are able to achieve in those negotiations is not a weakness for this country, but a strength, and the sooner the Government recognise that, the better.