European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Conor McGinn and John Redwood

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making a powerful point and for making the Committee even noisier than I was able to make it by my modest remarks.

My final point—I am conscious of the time and I have taken a lot of interventions—is that a big confusion about single markets underlies the SNP amendments. We have this strange contradiction in their logic whereby staying in the single market of the European Union is crucial to the health of the Scottish economy, whereas leaving the single market with England, Wales and Northern Ireland would be fine as part of the process of independence. Far more of Scotland’s business, of course, is done with the single market of the United Kingdom than is done with the single market of the EU. Some SNP Members try to justify it by saying, “Well, of course we would be allowed to stay fully in the single market with the rest of the UK, so we would want to do exactly the same thing with the EU.” That would be a matter for discussion and negotiation, if there were to be a second referendum and if SNP Members were ever to get to the point where they could win one—two things that look extremely unlikely today.

SNP Members need to look very carefully at their contradictory position. My view in both cases is that what matters is access to the market, not membership of the market, because membership comes with budget contributions, acceptance of law making, acceptance of court powers and all the rest of it, which is true of our single market in the UK just as it is of the single market as designed in the EU. Successful independent trading countries just need very good access to markets, which is what can be got under most favoured nation rules under the WTO and probably even better access through the negotiation of a special free trade agreement. It should be much easier to negotiate a free trade agreement where there is already one de facto, because it is not necessary to remove tariffs that are difficult to remove. They have already been removed; we are just trying to protect them.

I thus urge the Scottish nationalists to think again about this issue and to understand that we are all on the same side: we want maximum access for Scottish whisky as well as for English beef or whatever the product. There is every possibility that we can achieve a good deal, and we are much more likely to achieve it without the amendments tabled by SNP Members, and with a concerted view from this place that we are going to get on with implementing the wishes of the United Kingdom voters. Their message to us is, “Just do it.” That should be the message from this week’s debate in this Chamber.

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 109, tabled in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends. I shall also speak to amendment 86 and new clause 150, tabled in the names of my hon. Friends the Members for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell), for Foyle (Mark Durkan) and for South Down (Ms Ritchie). I will be brief, because I want to allow Members from Scotland, Wales and, of course, Northern Ireland to speak on these matters.

Before I come on to my substantive point about my new clause, I want to say that as a Member of Parliament representing an English constituency, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) gets a chance to speak to her new clause 168. In Merseyside and Greater Manchester, directly elected Mayors will be in place by the end of this May. My constituents in St Helens North, people in Greater Manchester, in the Liverpool city region and indeed people across the north-west of England will expect their views and those of their elected representatives to be taken into account as part of this process.

The Good Friday agreement is, for me, at the heart of progress made in Northern Ireland and with respect to relations between Britain and Ireland. The progress made over the last number of decades has been forged by and through our common membership of the European Union. In speaking to my new clause, I am of course cognisant of the fact that this debate is taking place in the context of the implications of the referendum held last May. I voted in this Parliament to hold a referendum; I took part in that campaign; and I lost. Those who argued for a remain vote lost. I respect that fact, and I voted accordingly last week. I want to be constructive about working with the Government to get the best possible Brexit that we can for my constituents and for the United Kingdom.

However, I am also cognisant of the need for respect to be shown to a different referendum, the one that took place in Northern Ireland in 1998 on support for the Good Friday agreement. On the same day, there was another referendum which resulted in Ireland’s withdrawal of its territorial claim over Northern Ireland. That goes to the heart of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends in the Social Democratic and Labour party. So the people of Northern Ireland, through a referendum, endorsed the Good Friday agreement. Subsequent agreements have been made between the Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland, supported by the efforts of my hon. Friends in all the Northern Ireland parties—and I call them my hon. Friends deliberately.