European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Damian Collins Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I, too, rise to speak against the withdrawal agreement, which I will not be voting for this evening. I believe the deal is not what people voted for in the referendum, and I believe it will leave us worse off and having less control in our relationship with the EU than we have today.

I believe there is a lack of good faith, which is why so many Members across the House have spoken against the deal. When the negotiations started, we were told that there would not be an agreement on anything until there was an agreement on everything. We were told that the future arrangement on trade would be part of the negotiations on the deal. We were then told that an agreement on the amount of money we would need to pay during the transition period would unlock the process of discussing the future trade agreement. We are now told that we must pay the money as part of the transition, with no obligation or requirement on the part of the EU that we should agree a trade deal. We will not get any of that money back if the negotiations fail.

My concern is not just that; it is the immediate future—what we are voting to happen now. To use the Attorney General’s analogy of the key into his airlock room, which is really the backstop, he is right that we can turn the key and go into the backstop. However, what became clear from his remarks—he did not necessarily express this when he used the analogy—is that when we go into that room, our key is taken off us. We will neither have a key to go back to where we were, nor one to go through the door into the next space.

We are trapped in the backstop, and the EU has lots of good reasons to want to keep us there. It has us, by default, committed largely to the rules of the customs union. It has us shadowing the rules of the European single market, with no say in how they are made. It can sit back and wait for something more favourable, and perhaps it would like something more punitive, too. The EU is left holding all the cards in any negotiation on our future relationship. That is not a situation this country should put itself in. It is not the basis on which to negotiate a good deal for the future that gives us a good trading relationship and protects the interests of this country, which we should not give away.

We are being asked to do something now that we were promised would never happen. We are being given a fait accompli and told that we have to accept this deal, otherwise there is no Brexit or there is no deal at all. I do not believe that. The German Foreign Minister has said today that, if the deal is voted down, talks can resume, and they must do. It would of course be a betrayal of the people of Northern Ireland to lock them into a different economic and political status, without ever having asked them whether that is what they would accept and whether that is what they wanted.

We have to reject this deal today. We have to go back to the negotiating table. We have to make sure that whatever option we choose gives us the freedom to choose our future direction and does not lock us into arrangements we have no power to get out of. That would be a betrayal of the interests of this country, and something that I could not accept.