European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Many hon. Members have long believed that the United Kingdom’s interests would be best served outside the European Union. They campaigned passionately for what they believed in, and their view is that we must now leave the European Union. The Prime Minister says that she wants to deliver a Brexit that works for all and that unites our divided country. I, too, want to bring the country back together. Members right across the House will have experienced just how divided the country became in the months leading up to last June and how divided it has become since, but we cannot bring the country back together if we pretend that it has spoken with one united voice.

People who voted to leave did so for all sorts of reasons, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with the European Union, so when the Prime Minister speaks of the will of the people, her interpretation is frankly no clearer or more precise than anyone else’s. Let us not pretend that the people have spoken, because not all of them have. In fact, only 27% of people of the country voted to leave. Some 13 million did not vote, another 7 million eligible voters were not registered and 1 million British ex-pats were not allowed to vote. Even though the futures of 16-year-olds were on the ballot paper, they were denied a say. Only two of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom voted to leave, and there was no quadruple lock. There was no two-thirds supermajority, which is common in all other countries making major constitutional change. Even so, we are told that the people have spoken.

Look at what we have been allowed to become. In a matter of months, our public discourse has been consumed by vitriol and abuse. Hate crimes rose by 40% in the aftermath of the referendum, and we do not yet know what forces will be unleashed on our departure.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Like a number of colleagues including, I am sure, my right hon. Friend, I have been subject to the most orchestrated abuse that I have seen in the past 16 years in this House. Does he agree that there is a danger that the debate is corrupted by a small minority who feel that they are the masters now and that, therefore, any dissent is unacceptable?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is easy to dismiss views with which you disagree if you never listen to them and just dismiss the people who hold them as villains or enemies of the people.

Yet it is on these terms that we are being asked to rubber-stamp a blank cheque for the Government to deliver the most extreme version of Brexit imaginable. We are being asked to ignore the fact that leaving the European Union will saddle us with a £60 billion divorce bill. We are not going to get tariff-free access to EU customers while rejecting free movement; that is not on the table. We are not going to get a more favourable trading agreement with Europe from outside the single market; that is a paradox. We are not going to come to a full agreement with Europe within two years; believing otherwise completely flies in the face of precedent and all evidence.

Exiting without a deal and falling back on the World Trade Organisation rules is being talked about as though that is a good option. That is totally wrong—it would be an absolute disaster for this country. Even on the optimistic assumption that we can sign trade agreements all over the world, this does not even come close to making up for the loss of the single market. We are facing a return to a hard border in Northern Ireland and a breakdown of the Union with Scotland. We are not reclaiming sovereignty, another promise that falls apart under any scrutiny: we are transferring it to a negotiation behind closed doors.

Doctors are against it, scientists are against it, the financial services sector is against it, and manufacturers are against it because of their exports, but these people are dismissed—and why? Because these days we do not listen to experts. Yes, we are leaving, but it is the EU nations that decide how we leave and what we end up with. Where will this end in 2019? We do not know. Outside the single market, for sure, and outside the customs union, with no trade deal with Europe or anywhere else, our only friend President Trump—a man who has demonstrated why we should worry greatly about a free trade agreement that will probably lead to Kaiser Permanente running the NHS.

We should not fool ourselves. This is not, and never has been, a debate about the economy; it has always been about immigration. We are staring down the barrel of a hard Brexit because immigration has been prioritised over everything else: the economy, jobs, and living standards.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the whole debate on immigration has been completely dishonest in that it has failed to recognise that like all developed, ageing economies, we are going to need migration in order to thrive in the future? We could stop more than half of the net immigration into this country tomorrow, because it is from outside the EU.

[Mr Lammy]

Absolutely.

We were told during the campaign that we could cut immigration without hitting our economy. We were sold the lie that immigrants come here and take more than they contribute. Between 1995 and 2011, European immigrants made a net contribution of £4.4 billion to our public services. In the same period, our native population cost us £591 billion. Our economy cannot exist without people coming here to do the jobs that people in the country either do not want or do not have the skills to do.

It is almost half a century since a Member of this House, in a very different era, made these same warnings of

“wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth…children unable to obtain school places”

and

“homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition”.

How far we have fallen when a black British Member of Parliament, of African and Caribbean descent, has to stand here quoting Enoch Powell. It is the easy option to blame migrants who come here with skills instead of successive Governments, both Conservative and Labour, who have failed: failed to educate our own to compete, failed to build affordable housing, failed to fund our public services, and failed to ensure that growth is felt outside of London and the south-east. A hard Brexit will not deal with any of the long-standing structural problems highlighted by the Brexit vote—it will make them worse. The real tragedy is that Whitehall and Parliament, so consumed with Brexit for the next decade, will have no capacity to deal with these hard-pressing issues.

There are Conservative Members who have been dreaming of a low-tax, low-wage, low-regulation offshore tax haven for decades, and now they have it in their grasp, they salivate at the thought of us becoming the new Singapore. I am not going to stand with them. If we let the Prime Minister pursue this reckless course—this Brexit at any cost—we know who will suffer. It will be the poorest, many of whom are in my constituency. The referendum was not just about votes from the north; 52% of leave voters lived in the south of England, 59% were middle class and 58% voted Conservative in 2015. I remind my colleagues who are worried about this, and who are thinking of voting with the Government, of those things.

Let me finish by asking one simple question, which was once asked by one of our most celebrated parliamentarians:

“Is it prudent? Is it possible, however we might desire it, to turn our backs upon Europe”?

When Churchill spoke those words, he was talking about appeasement, and he was going very much against the prevailing wind. The same is true today. Patriotism requires more than just blind faith. We must remember our history, our values, what we represent and what we stand for. Most of all, we must remember what we stand against. For all those reasons, and for the sake of this country that I love, I will be voting against triggering article 50.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

When I was first elected to this House seven years ago, I knew this job would be hard. I anticipated the soul-searching that would accompany, for example, a decision to commit troops to military action, but what I did not anticipate seven years ago were the fundamental questions about our democracy that I have been asking myself since the referendum last year.

We might talk today about the will of the people, the process which has led us here and the process which follows, but ultimately this debate is about how we take decisions in the best interests of our country and how we respect the diverse views of our electorate. I will vote against triggering article 50 tomorrow evening, and I will be called a democracy-denier. “How can you ignore the will of the people?”, some will cry; “You voted for a referendum. How many times do you want to rerun it?” Democracy did not start or end on 23 June; it is a process, not an event, and I see it as my responsibility to say it as I see it.

There were circumstances in which I would have voted to trigger article 50. The Prime Minister killed off that prospect for me when she made her speech in Lancaster House: a speech in which she said she would pull us out of the single market; a speech in which she put her desire to reduce immigration above our country’s economic interest; and a speech in which she threatened the countries closest to us with a trade war if she did not get her way. I was ashamed by the words of the British Prime Minister that day, and I resolved then to vote against the triggering of article 50. How we negotiate with our European neighbours is as important as what we seek to achieve. I disagree with the Prime Minister on her priorities and I disagree with the manner in which she is setting about achieving them.

This is the start of a process that we might not be able to reverse. The Government want to take us out of the single market.

[Mr Lammy]

Did my hon. Friend see some of the headlines in the European papers following that speech, and does she agree that those reactions will make the negotiations much harder in the coming months?

[Heidi Alexander]

I did see some of that commentary. One of the Spanish newspapers described the speech as a mixture of delusion and outdated nationalism.

I can predict the future no better than anyone else in this Chamber, but my instincts tell me that coming out of the single market will do us harm for many years to come. Last June, the British people were asked whether they wished to leave the European Union. They were not asked whether they wanted to leave the single market or the European economic area—those are different things—and the words “customs union” were barely uttered in the run-up to the referendum. Instead, we had a toxic and misleading debate that inflamed rather than informed.

Some people might say, “Get over it,” but I cannot. We had a Conservative manifesto that promised to safeguard British interests in the single market. We had a leave campaigner on the airwaves telling us:

“Only a madman would actually leave the market”.

Even that man of the people, the ex-public school educated ex-stockbroker Nigel Farage, pointed out how countries such as Norway—outside the EU but inside the European economic area—“do pretty well”. And then what happened? A Prime Minister who was crowned her party’s leader without a single vote having to be cast sits in No. 10 and determines what leaving the EU looks like. That might be democracy to some but it is not democracy to me. Parliament or the British people should determine whether we leave the single market. Article 127 of the EEA agreement states that a party to the agreement must notify its intention to leave 12 months in advance. There is a key democratic imperative for more people than just the Prime Minister to have a say.

Some colleagues here today will vote to trigger article 50 when in their heart of hearts they are deeply fearful of the economic and social repercussions for our country. They will do so for good reasons, including the need to reflect in their own minds the broad wish of a majority of those who voted in the referendum. I cannot do that, because as the reality of Brexit Britain emerges over the next few years, I want to have acted in line with my conscience. I fear for our economy. I fear for the livelihoods and living standards of my constituents. I also worry for jobs in Swindon, the town where I grew up and a place with a big Honda plant whose supply chain spans Europe. Yes, we might make some gains as a result of new trade deals elsewhere, but what of the losses we incur from coming out of the single market?