European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between David Lammy and Ben Bradshaw

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[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.

Aleppo/Syria: International Action

Debate between David Lammy and Ben Bradshaw

Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bradshaw]

I will not give way for the moment.

There have been so many missed opportunities. As the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), said in his excellent speech, many people across the world have been calling for action against Assad since he started slaughtering his own people five years ago. In August 2013, after the international outrage at his use of chemical weapons, we had the chance, but we blew it; the Conservatives blew it, we blew it—every political party in this House blew it. The former Chancellor was absolutely right when he said that that had a direct impact on what the United States did then, with President Obama fatally withdrawing from the red line he had drawn on the use of chemical weapons, with absolutely horrendous consequences, not just now in Syria, but for the future of our world to come.

At any stage since that calamity, the Government could have come back to this House with proposals for safe areas, no-fly zones and, most recently, aid drops, but they did not. Just two weeks ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury made it quite clear that we would support airdrops. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), hid behind the excuse of not having parliamentary authority, but he did not even seek it, which has been a pattern of this Government over the past few years. As a desperate aid worker told the BBC yesterday, it might now be too late.

We now have the disgusting spectacle of a combination of far right and far left from around the world, united only in their contempt for democracy and human rights, celebrating what they call a “liberation”. Why do we constantly forget the lessons of appeasement, whether from the 1930s or more recently from the Balkans? Statements on Syria from Conservative Ministers have sounded just like the ones I remember from when they were dealing—or not dealing—with Milosevic as he rampaged through Bosnia. When will we understand that dictators such as Assad and Putin only respect strength and the credible threat or use of force? When will we realise that Russia’s strategy is to weaken and divide the free world and that driving the biggest refugee flows into Europe since world war two is a deliberate part of that plan? When will we admit that Putin is already achieving what he cannot achieve militarily through cyber-warfare and propaganda?

The motion that we are debating is welcome, but it is pathetic. It refers to the House considering “international action” in Aleppo. There will no international action, because there is no political will, either here or in the other countries where such will is necessary.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend as anxious as I am? With Putin and Russia linked to interference in the American election, with the bombing of Syria leading to a refugee crisis in Europe and with many central European countries looking inward, like we are, Putin’s expansionist tendencies and desire for a warm port should make the Foreign Secretary think carefully about the actions from this point on onwards.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I completely agree. We have not even begun to wake up to Russia’s cyber-warfare. Its interference in the American presidential elections is now proven. It probably interfered in our own referendum—we do not have the evidence for that yet, but it is highly probable. It will certainly be involved in the French presidential election. There are already serious concerns in the German secret service that Russia is already interfering in the upcoming elections. We have to wake up to this, but when?

Finally, the tragedy today is the tragedy of the benighted people of Aleppo issuing desperate, and probably futile, last-minute appeals for help to the outside world. The tragedy tomorrow will be all of ours for failing to stop this happening and for the consequences. Shame on us.