European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Claire Perry Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), who speaks with total sincerity. I obviously do not agree with her analysis of the economy, and I do not agree with voting against article 50, but I absolutely respect her sincerity in making the decision she has. One important aspect of today’s debate is that it is about individual Members making up their mind.

Anyone who goes to a Conservative selection event will find that one question likely to be asked is, “What would you put first—country, constituency or party?” The answer is country first, constituency second and party third. Happily, in most cases that aligns; it certainly aligns now, and I am delighted with what the Government have done.

I think that the Government were wrong, but I understand why they tried to go via the royal prerogative. They took the view that this House had delegated to the British people the decision on whether we should stay or leave the European Union. Once that decision was made, they thought they could trigger article 50 through the royal prerogative. In fact, I remember the previous Prime Minister saying that he would trigger article 50 the day after the vote. I argued against that privately. I said that we should have a parliamentary process, and that it should be done through a Bill in Parliament. I introduced a private Member’s Bill to do exactly that, and trigger article 50 by 31 March. The only reason it did not get a Second Reading was that the Labour deputy Chief Whip objected to it.

I am very pleased that the Labour party has now taken a very different line. I thought the shadow Secretary of State got it right: trigger article 50, because that is what the British people voted for, then let us have full parliamentary scrutiny of the Bill. No Bill going through this Parliament—the great repeal Act or anything else—will fail to benefit from the parliamentary process. It may well be that this Bill will benefit next week from the approval of some amendment or other. I do not know, but it will benefit from full parliamentary scrutiny.

I apologise for wearing the hideous tie again. It has come out of retirement for today and tomorrow and for three days next week. Obviously, however, if this House were somehow to vote not to trigger article 50, I would have to wear the tie for a lot longer. Hopefully, that might change some votes on the other side.

The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green mentioned that it was very difficult to get on and work with some people. As a founding member of GO —Grassroots Out—which was a cross-party group that campaigned to leave, I know exactly what she means. I had to work with people from the Labour party, the Democratic Unionist party and the UK Independence party—and, what was even more difficult, with people from my own party—to try to get us all to agree to put party politics to one side. It was an amazing feat as we toured up and down the country to find that people who could not really stand each other—[Interruption]; yes, and that is just the Tory party—could actually work together and produce something in the national interest.

I look across the Chamber and see the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). What an outstanding parliamentarian! She put the country first. It was difficult enough, all those years ago, to be in the Conservative party when it was absolutely for the European Union and we were idiots to request a referendum. It must be much more difficult to be in the Labour party and campaign for us to leave, and I congratulate members of the Labour party who put their country first.

It may seem somewhat controversial in this Chamber, but I also congratulate Nigel Farage. I think that he campaigned for something in which he believed passionately. When I worked with him, he toed the GO line. Four people decided GO policy: the hon. Member for Vauxhall, myself, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), and Nigel Farage. Despite our different views, we all managed to work together in the country’s interest.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I am actually rather enjoying my hon. Friend’s speech, but will he say whether he and the other members of the GO campaign supported the shameful and outrageous “Breaking Point” poster?

[Mr Bone]

I am afraid that by the time we embarked on the referendum campaign proper, the GO movement alliance had broken down. I am sorry if I misled the House. I should have said that prior to the designation of the official campaign, the GO organisation was united, but after that its members went their separate ways. If we are touching on the issue of immigration, however, let me say that it was always GO’s view that European Union citizens who were in this country before the referendum had the right to stay. I personally would have liked the Government to act on that unilaterally, although I completely understand why they have not done so: they want to protect our citizens abroad.

Whichever way we look at it, and whichever side of the argument we were on, this was an extraordinarily democratic exercise. The great thing now is that the focus of the country is back here in this sovereign Parliament, where we can make the decisions. Let me say this to Opposition Members. Some time in the future, you will be on these Benches, and you will be able to make the laws. You will be able to push it. Hopefully, that will not happen for a long time—

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[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

It was the country’s first woman Prime Minister—this may of course arouse the ire of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies)—who said:

“In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.”

I am extremely pleased that our current Prime Minister is in place, because she is taking on an unbelievably difficult task and delivering it with intellect, grace and clarity. She has made very clear to this House, regardless of how we campaigned or voted, what the process and the timetable will be, and for that I am truly grateful.

The quote in this case is a little incorrect, because it has been men and women, over many years, who have debated endlessly in this place and elsewhere the European question—something that was a monumental talking point when I first came to this place. Rather confusingly, the debate did not seem to include talking about the issues that face this country and that will continue to face this country after our departure from the European Union, our puzzling and troubling productivity gap in British industry, our lack of skills, our lack of investment in education, our problems with the low savings rate that mean that families have so little to fall back on and that the country has very little to draw on for investments going forward. Suddenly on 23 June, we all went from talking to doing. I totally agree with hon. Members that this is not the place to re-run either the referendum or the arguments—people will know that I was a remain supporter.

Like so many who have spoken today, I was appalled by the quality of the debate and of the conversations that took place. We were asking the country to make a very profound decision on the basis of slogans. Extremely complicated questions and trade-offs were boiled down into a single yes or no question. The whole issue was spiced up with anti-immigration rhetoric. I am sorry for hon. Members who believe that that was not what the leave campaign represented. I thought that the breaking point poster of people wanting to come into this country was a particularly low point in the debate. The conversation was also sullied by misrepresentation over funding. We have debated today the £350 million and the £100 million or whatever it was. On foreign policy, what has happened to those conversations about Turkey, which, if we listened to many Members who were campaigning for a certain side, was lined up to join the EU?

Equally, I accept that it was the remain side that gave us project fear. We were not given positive measures on which to campaign. What about staying connected or staying relevant in the world, rather than frightening people with theoretical models, which, thanks to quantitative easing and an interest rate cut, have yet to come true?

Since the referendum result, the Government, ably led by our Prime Minister, have taken the pragmatic approach that we are where we are and that what we need is strength and leadership. As the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said earlier, the major problem facing us and representatives of other western democracies is a crisis of trust in our institutions and politicians. Therefore I will, like so many others, vote with the Government tomorrow night to support the triggering of article 50.

We will never be able to prove the counterfactual: what would have happened if we had not voted to leave, without the depreciation in currency and the changes already happening in the European Union. I, for one, feel ill-informed about this debate. I went back to the debates held in this House at the time when we joined the EU, which started with the publication of a White Paper in 1967 and ended with the referendum in 1975. I have read the speeches given by Charles Morrison, my predecessor but one, who contributed to those debates; he was an arch-European, I am pleased to say. He was given the opportunity to take part in extensive debates over six White Papers in the formation of a manifesto for the 1970 election and in multiple conversations with Parliament.

Indeed, the White Paper presented by the Heath Government in 1971 reported back on the progress of negotiations that had been made until that point between the British Government and members of the then small European Economic Community, and set out what areas still needed to be discussed. Compared with my predecessor, I do not feel well informed about the process and the trade-offs for the British economy. I reject wholeheartedly the idea that people voted one way or another in the referendum based on some perfect knowledge of all the facts. I sat through many a hustings in which my opponents said, “It’s not for us to define what leave looks like. You’re the Government—it’s your job. We just know that we want to be out.” Everybody’s view of Brexit is slightly different.

As we near the end of the two-year process, how do we assure ourselves and our constituents that we are making the right decision? First, I urge the Government to be as open and transparent as possible and to bring forward the White Paper before the Bill goes into Committee. When we get to the end of the process and there is a binary offer—we will be either in some form of relationship with the European Union or not—I ask the Government to say what the economic consequences of those deals look like. We cannot possibly sit down and make an assessment of what a free trade world—or, indeed, a relationship with the EU, plus or minus any economic contribution we would be asked to make—might look like without understanding the implications for our country. Perhaps we have made a good decision for all the wrong reasons, but I do not yet feel that we have the right information to justify that to the country.

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[Richard Drax]

I have already mentioned Airbus, and I cannot think of a better example. It would be crazy for politicians—

[Claire Perry]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Richard Drax]

I am afraid that I cannot give way. I know that other people want to speak. I would love to give way to my hon. Friend—[Interruption.] All right, I will give way to her—