EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my good friend the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous).

It is extraordinary, is it not, that we are here today? I, like others, welcome the constructive tone struck by many in this debate, but it is 27 March and we have known for so long that the end date was 29 March. This kind of debate should have been held so much earlier; to start it today is, I am afraid, a mark of failure for the whole process.

I am not one of those who can say that I have changed my mind through this process. I represent one of the most remain constituencies in the country, and I am a passionate remainer myself. I have found that difficult at times, because I recognise that many of my colleagues are in a much more difficult position.

I caution colleagues slightly about the policy discussion we are having today. Although we may well be able to move towards a rational compromise, I have wondered throughout whether that is really where many members of the public are. If I needed any proof of that, when I floated the idea of revocation in this Chamber some six months ago, it was seen, to be frank, as a bit of an outlier positon. However, if I needed any confirmation of that position, it is the extraordinary strength of the petition that has been running over the past few weeks.

I am a member of the Petitions Committee and it is unfortunate that aspersions were made earlier today on the veracity of that petition. The staff work very hard. To be frank, if Russian bots were crawling over parts of one of the campaigns during the referendum, I think we can send a strong message that they are not going to be running over the parliamentary petitions website, because we are very careful. Whatever one feels about the issue, there is strength of feeling: 27,000 people in my constituency—almost one third of the electorate—have taken the trouble to make their point. I would say that for them, remain means remain. I fear that some of the compromise positions will not satisfy people elsewhere. That leaves me to conclude, having looked at some of the intermediate options—I can see their merits from a policy perspective—that we have people who feel passionately about this issue on both sides.

How do we resolve that problem in a democracy? Frankly, I think there is only one answer—I thought the most powerful contribution this afternoon came from my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett)—which is to make that plea to reconcile our differences by doing it in the way that we do best in this country: to have a sensible discussion, now that people actually know the facts. Goodness, we all know much more about all this than we did two or three years ago. I do not think we should be afraid of asking the people if they want a final say. Give it to them and they will tell us what they think.