European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

David Lammy Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I rise to support new clause 3 and amendment 7. As mine is the second name attached to amendment 7, which was tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who is mainly responsible for it, I also incline to the view that it is slightly the better drafted, but I will support either proposal if one or both are put to the vote.

I might well succeed in being reasonably brief, because I agreed with every word of the speech made by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and I will not repeat what she said. A welcome note of cross-party consensus exists across a large part of the House, and it represents the cross-party consensus that is in favour of what is lazily called a soft Brexit and of having the best possible close relationship with the European Union after we leave.

The main issue in this debate seems to turn on what we mean by a “meaningful vote”, which relates to our discussion on the role of parliamentary sovereignty in a situation of this kind. I accept that today the Prime Minister—not for the first time—promised us a meaningful vote, but she later went on to qualify that slightly by talking about the need for statutory instruments to be brought forward during the period of the Bill, within the extraordinary powers that the Bill gives Ministers to enact, by regulation, even changes to British statute law. We have to be clear what a meaningful vote is, and the key is the timing. It is quite obvious that if the British Government are to be responsible to the British Parliament, the vote must take place before the Government have committed themselves to the terms of the treaty-like agreement that is entered into with the other member states. Any other vote will not be meaningful.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I will give way in just a second, but let me finish this point.

That means that a meaningful vote cannot take place until a detailed agreement has been arrived at about certainly the precise nature of our trading and economic relationships with the single market of the European Union, and actually quite a lot else besides, because we still have to embark on the security discussions, the policing discussions and the discussions about which agencies we are going to remain in and which agency rules we are going to comply with. This is, we all agree, a huge and complex agreement, and it is going to determine this country’s relationships with the rest of the continent of Europe and the wider world for generations to come. Can that happen before March 2019?

We face the genuine difficulty that it is quite obvious that we will not be remotely near to reaching that agreement by March 2019, and we have to think through what that actually means. The negotiators have been very optimistic in saying that they will have first a transition deal and then a deal by 2019. I am sure that they will try, but they have not a chance. I think that what they are actually saying—certainly the continental negotiators—is that they might be able to have some heads of agreement on the eventual destination by March 2019, which we can all carefully consider. They will certainly have to agree a transition deal of at least two years within which the rest of the process will have to be completed.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford that everybody wants things to be speedy, because one of things that this country is suffering from most at the moment is the appalling uncertainty caused by the fact that we have taken a ridiculous length of time to reach three obvious conclusions on the three preliminary points that had to be determined as the basis of our withdrawal. At the moment, however, we do not quite know what the British Government are going to be seeking as their end goal in the negotiations that are about to start, because the British Government, within the Cabinet, have not yet been able to agree exactly what they are seeking.

If I may say this to my desperately paranoid Eurosceptic friends, it is not as if I am somehow trying in some surreptitious remainer way to put a spoke in the wheels of the fast progress of the United Kingdom towards our destination. The Government do not know what leave means. Nobody discussed what leave meant when we were having the referendum. Our overriding duty is not just to our political allegiances and so on; it is to provide this country with a good, responsible Government who face up to the problems of the real world and, accountable to Parliament, can produce the best new order that they can for the benefit of future generations.

[Mr Lammy]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is demonstrating why he is Father of the House, so I hesitate to interrupt him, but on his point about having a meaningful vote prior to the Prime Minister of the day making the deal, does he agree, with his wealth of experience, that if we are to keep the country together, it is important that that Prime Minister has in the back of her head when trying to pull off that agreement, “I have to get this through my Parliament”?

[Mr Clarke]

The right hon. Gentleman makes one of the points that I was going to make. The most important effect of passing either new clause 3 or amendment 7 —there is actually more to this than a meaningful vote, if we consider the various stages—and achieving proper parliamentary accountability is that that would affect the tenor of the negotiations. Like every other Head of Government in the European Union, our Prime Minister would need to have at the back of her mind, “Can I deliver to the House of Commons what I am thinking of conceding?” Every other political leader in Europe will do that, because they will have to sell what they sign up to to their own Parliaments. If we do not have a meaningful vote, we will be the only member state whose negotiators are not under a legally or constitutionally binding commitment to sell the deal, because they will be able to make the deal and then come back to the House of Commons and the House of Lords and say, “This is it. What do you think of it?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Elphicke]

The Committee will know that, from my point of view, we cannot get out of the European Union fast enough. Time and again, I have said that we need to be ready on day one and be prepared for every eventuality, deal or no deal—or, should I say, regional deal or global deal—but we must remember why we are taking back control. It is because of the vision we have for our country and because of our values. Those values include the rule of law, natural justice and the sovereignty of Parliament. The rule of law exists to ensure that executive power is not abused, and that is why I object to clause 9. It is not right that a measure of this sort should be put through by any form of statutory instrument.

I welcome the fact that the Government are going to bring forward a withdrawal agreement and an implementation Bill, and nothing I have heard today has indicated to me any sense of urgency or any reason why a statutory instrument will need to be put through in a hurry. As far as I am concerned, I am prepared to stay up all night long to pass legislation to get us out of the European Union as soon as possible. For that reason, I urge the Government to withdraw clause 9, and I have to say that I will not be able to support it on stand part.

[Mr Lammy]

I am coming up to my 18th year in the House. During that time, we have had serious votes on going to war in Iraq and in Syria, and on different occasions, parliamentary sovereignty has asserted itself. On the war in Iraq, we thought we had the information, but it turned out that we did not, and we went to war. On Syria, despite some strong arguments to intervene, we chose not to. I also remember sitting through the night for the 90-day detention legislation under Tony Blair, and this House resisted the move to a 90-day detention period for those arrested for terrorism offences. Tonight, we are again being asked to make a very important decision that will affect the future of this country.

I might say that the sovereignty of this Parliament is why we are here in the first place, so I applaud the Government Members who are standing by their principles and remembering the importance of coming back to debate in this House. This is about timing. We may have had a discussion about what is meaningful, but I think we all know what is meaningless. It is meaningless to have a debate and a vote in this House after the decision is made. For all those reasons, I hope that we will return after the vote on amendment 7 and find that we really have given back sovereignty to the UK Parliament.

[Vicky Ford]

The Government have now made it clear that the House will have a final meaningful vote on the EU withdrawal agreement before the UK leaves, which is extraordinarily important because the last point in the process of withdrawal is actually the vote in the European Parliament. My former colleagues—the ones who are trying to help us get an amicable agreement in that Parliament—have told me that unless there is a full democratic process here, there will be people who try to scupper the deal in that last vote in the European Parliament. The rest of the world is watching how we legislate, and transparency is important.

I am new to British legislation, but I have heard it time and again from Members as diverse as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) that the powers in clause 9 are inappropriate, too strong and could mean that the Government are able to make material changes to legislation without a scrutiny process before we leave. I am therefore extremely pleased that the Minister made his announcement at the last minute. If he would like to, I would love him to intervene once more to ensure that everybody has heard exactly what he said.