European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Darren Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara).

I rise as one of the Brexit generation of politicians elected to this place because of the causes and consequences of Brexit. I now find myself, as a Member of this House, faced with a divided Parliament and a divided country embroiled in a constitutional crisis not previously seen in our history, and I am being asked to use my vote on behalf of my constituents to make this great country of ours poorer and weaker in the world. Understandably, in that context, many people look to us with bemusement, questioning our ability as elected politicians to lead and to serve.

Regardless of whether one voted to leave or stay in the European Union, we do not have what we were promised. The Prime Minister’s proposals are worse than our current position, and they mean that Brexit will dominate the political agenda for many years to come. Leave voters were promised £350 million a week for the NHS. Instead, we have European doctors and nurses leaving us and Government risk assessments resulting in the stockpiling of medicines. Leave voters were promised that the UK could go it alone, with new trade deals around the world. Instead, we have heard the United States say it is not that interested, and we have the prospect of a transition period—which we may never get out of—that will make us unable to conclude trade deals until 2021 at the earliest.

Leave voters were promised that we would take back control of our laws. Instead, the Prime Minister’s proposals lock us into European regulations without the UK having a meaningful say. Unsurprisingly, this confirms that we have more power and more influence as a member of the European Union. We do not have what we were promised. Our current position is far better, and we will be locked into a debate on Brexit for the next decade.

Britain is a powerful nation. We are one of the largest and most sophisticated economies in the world, and we should be proud of our status and of the benefits it brings to the British people. In contrast, the Prime Minister’s proposals are a humiliation.

The majority of my constituents in Bristol North West voted to remain and, based on my extensive engagement with them, I know they continue to want to do so. Whether for advanced manufacturing jobs in aerospace and automotive industry across north Bristol, for NHS jobs at Southmead Hospital, for research jobs at our two universities or for warehousing and logistics jobs reliant on import and export in and around the port at Avonmouth, our current position as a member of the European Union is far stronger than any other option on the table.

I did not stand to be the Member of Parliament for my home constituency, where I was born and raised, only to come here to vote to make my constituents poorer. Whether I am an MP for a short time or for a long time, as a millennial and as the father of a daughter who turns one today, I will be left to deal with the mess left behind by this incompetent Government long after they leave the Treasury Bench.

In the face of the inevitable rejection of the Prime Minister’s proposals, I support the call for a people’s vote. All of us, regardless of whether we voted to stay or to leave, now know what leaving the EU means. I did not know when I voted to remain, and nor did people who voted to leave. New facts have emerged. It is not patronising to say to people that they have the right to change their mind now they know what leaving the EU means—a basis for the rules on which we leave and a wish list for the future. It is not undemocratic to provide more democracy by going back to the people. It is the right of the British people to have the final say on whether we leave on the Prime Minister’s proposed basis or stay in the European Union.

Securing a people’s vote is not the end, regardless of whether the outcome is to leave or stay. We now know loud and clear that the country is divided, driven apart by an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots, between the cities and the towns, between the south and the north, between the old and the young and between the rich and the poor and struggling, characterised by differences in access to education, in the ability to rent or own a secure home, in the reliance on struggling public services and in the despair that comes from flatlining wages and a fear that our children are being raised in a country in decline.

Leaving the European Union will not fix these woes, and neither will remaining, unless we reform both the EU and Britain. As politicians, it is our job to step up to meet that cry for change and put forward a radical programme of reforms that shows we can be on the up once again. As politicians, we must not pander to the politics of the easy answer, as we have seen in this Brexit campaign. Instead we must be honest about the significant challenges facing our country in a fast-changing world. We must embrace the opportunity and the power of patriotism to drive our great nation forward, and discard the destructive desire of national populism to secure power for power’s sake.

This country of ours feels as though it is coming to the end of its current chapter. In a proudly sovereign Parliament, at the centre of a strong and successful United Kingdom, we have a choice to make about what comes next. We are a proudly sovereign Parliament, with our sovereignty derived from the British people, which gives us the right to go back to them to check and ask for further instruction. I truly hope that from the ashes of Brexit, whatever that will mean, we choose a future of hope and possibility, anchored in the reality of the world that we find ourselves in, and not another chapter of self-inflicted, populist decline.