UK’s Withdrawal from the EU

Debate between David T C Davies and Peter Grant

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I assure the hon. Gentleman from direct personal knowledge that the story I told earlier, of Karen Vaughan being ordered to apply for permission to become a foreigner in her own country, is 100% true. Does he accept it is true, and does he think it is an acceptable consequence of his Brexit?

[David T. C. Davies]

I do not know the hon. Gentleman’s constituent, but my wife is an EU national, although she would not call herself one. She is Hungarian, and no doubt she will have to apply, as will everyone else. That is perfectly fair, and it will all be done on a straightforward application. It will not cost any money. Why is it so unreasonable for the Government to want to make a few checks on those who have chosen to come and live in this country and take back control of our immigration process? I fully support the Government in doing that, and I believe they have gone about it in a perfectly reasonable fashion.

The real experts at the port of Holyhead told us very clearly that they are perfectly well prepared for a no-deal Brexit. They made it clear that it would cause some inconvenience and a bit of extra work, but they know what paperwork is required. They told our cross-party delegation that they want a message to go back to Members of Parliament to dampen down the fears of Armageddon, which simply is not going to happen. The real experts are prepared.

The 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit in the original and genuine people’s vote did so because they know that this economy is the fifth biggest in the world and that Great Britain can stand on its own two feet, with or without a deal. I will vote for a deal, with its imperfections, because I believe in compromise. I can accept a bit of a compromise, which is why I back the Prime Minister. It is for Opposition Members, and some Conservative Members, also to accept that we all have to compromise if we want to sort this out. If they truly believed their own scare stories, they would be queuing up to back the Prime Minister’s deal.

We should leave at the end of March. We can leave with a deal, but we should not be the least bit afraid to leave without a deal. The 17.4 million people who are confident and optimistic about this country’s future expect Members of Parliament, their political leaders, to show that same optimism and confidence.

Privilege (Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Advice)

Debate between David T C Davies and Peter Grant

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I commend those hon. and right hon. Members who secured this debate and thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing it. I also pay tribute to the stamina of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) and of other colleagues who ensured that you had ample time last night to consider the response to the original application.

Later today, we begin five days of debate on possibly the most important peacetime decision that this Parliament will ever take. Also today, Ofsted has described the Government’s treatment of thousands of vulnerable schoolchildren in England as a “national scandal”, we have a major investigation into alleged profiteering by funeral companies, and we have had reports from the UN special rapporteur and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlighting the appalling poverty that exists here in one of the wealthiest economies on the planet. What does all that have to do with the motion before us now? The only reason why we are allowed to know and discuss those things openly and without fear is because the power of the state to prevent us from knowing about them is tempered by the rights of this democratically elected Parliament—not tempered nearly enough in my humble opinion. Elections to this Parliament are not democratic enough, but we do have an elected Parliament to hold back the excesses of the Government, and that is what today’s motion is all about.

We have a Parliament of 650 people, and each of us is entrusted to exercise sovereignty on behalf of those who have sent us here. A contempt of this Parliament is a contempt for the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the people. A Government who seek to place themselves above the express will of Parliament are a Government in contempt of the people. They are a Government who have already taken a dangerous step down the road from democracy to dictatorship.

Today’s debate is not about the rights and wrongs of the original motion presented to the House on 13 November. Astonishingly enough, the time for debate on those questions was on 13 November. Let us not spend time today on questions of convention and precedence, of the confidentiality of legal advice or of when that confidentiality should be waived. The time for opposition to the terms of that motion was when that Question was put to the House, but the Government instructed their MPs to do nothing. They instructed their Members not to oppose the motion. I welcome the degree of humility that they have shown in admitting that they got that wrong, but that admission is not an excuse for the Government unilaterally to seek to change the wording of or meaning behind a binding decision of this Parliament. They have the audacity to come here yesterday and today and say that they, not Parliament, know what Parliament decided. They are placing themselves above Parliament. That is a contempt of Parliament.

As for the “legal position” document published yesterday that was going to fix it all, it could hardly have been more patronising if they had included pictures to colour in and wee join-the-dots puzzles every so often just to keep us interested. It was not a legal position by any accepted definition. It was possibly an attempted sop to some Conservative MPs, who are in a very difficult position—struggling between their understandable loyalty to their Government, to their party and to individual Ministers and their overriding loyalty to the people and to this Parliament.

As the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) said, the Government have made a habit of not turning up if they think they are going to lose. Maybe the problem is that they are so used to being allowed to ignore the views and opinions of Parliament that they forgot that sometimes Parliament takes decisions they are not allowed to ignore. Maybe that is why they are so upset now. Maybe it is because, alongside the issues of what should and should not be made available to Members of Parliament and to the public, this decision has laid bare the incompetence at the heart of a Government who do not even know the basics of parliamentary procedure.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to openness now mean that he will be asking the Scottish Law Officer to publish all her advice to the Scottish Parliament in future?

[Peter Grant]

I have absolutely no doubt that, if the Parliament that represents the sovereign people of Scotland gave a binding direction to the elected Government of Scotland, the elected Government of Scotland would comply with that binding direction. No such binding direction has been given, so let us not try to deflect attention from the clear and blatant contempt that has been committed against this House with completely false accusations of contempt elsewhere.

We have a Government who are behaving like a football team who do not turn up for friendlies if they think they will be beaten and then discover that they have missed a cup final and have forfeited the tie with a notional 3-0 score. Not only are they asking to be allowed to replay the final, but they are complaining that the score is void because the three notional goals would all have been offside if they had been there to defend them.

We are not talking about a game of football with a trophy at stake, and we are not talking about the sanctity or non-sanctity of the confidentiality of legal advice; we are talking about the most fundamental principle that governs our nations, the principle that Parliament can tell the Government what to do, not the other way around. This is not just some temporary individual aberration; it is part of a pattern of Government attempts to keep Parliament out of this altogether. They want to restore sovereignty to Parliament by keeping Parliament out of its own sovereignty.

The Government went to the Supreme Court to stop us having any say on the triggering of article 50, and they lost. They did their damnedest to stop Parliament having any say on the withdrawal agreement, and they lost. They spent thousands of pounds of our money trying to prevent a group of Scottish parliamentarians from finding out whether article 50 can be unilaterally revoked, and they lost. The Court of Justice of the European Union will now almost certainly find that article 50 can be revoked.

I pay tribute to the parliamentarians from five political parties and three national Parliaments who took that case to the Court. What they have won will prove to be a pivotal victory, but it raises a question that is too important to be treated as rhetorical, and a question that is highly pertinent to the substance of today’s debate. What kind of Government go to court to prevent their own citizens from knowing that the Government have legal powers but have chosen not to use them? What legitimate reason can there be for a Government to want their people to believe something is legally impossible when the Government already have legal advice telling them it is perfectly possible?

This morning’s preliminary opinion from the CJEU is simply another example of this Government’s attitude that the path they have chosen unilaterally is the only one worthy of consideration and that nobody is even allowed to know that other paths might be possible. They have their priorities completely wrong. They repeatedly tell us, and the Leader of the House said it often enough in moving the amendment, that their ultimate duty is to act in the public interest, but in fact they are demanding that Parliament and the public act at all times in the Government’s interest—that is not the same thing at all. The Government, and not the Parliament that holds sovereignty on behalf of the public, have taken upon themselves the right to decide what is in the public interest. The Government declare they know better than Parliament what is in the public interest. The Government place themselves above the decisions of Parliament, and they place themselves in contempt of Parliament.

Early next year we will see the 370th anniversary of the day when a crowned king of Scots was executed, just a few hundred yards up the road from here, for defying the will not of this Parliament—this Parliament did not exist then—but of one of its predecessors. I do not think anyone is suggesting a similar fate for those who are found in contempt of this Parliament, but we should be under no illusions about the gravity of what we are discussing, and we should be under no illusions as to how the mockery from the Conservative Benches is being perceived by those who believe this Parliament should be allowed to tell the Government what to do.

The elected Parliaments of our four nations, for all their faults, flaws, imperfections and ridiculously outdated, arcane procedures that the Leader of the House sometimes does not like, represent the rights of our citizens. No one, but no one, has the right to wield power over the people without the consent of the people. In a parliamentary democracy, that consent is expressed through Parliament, not through the office of the Prime Minister or any other office of state.

When Parliament speaks, it speaks on behalf of the people and the Government must listen. When Parliament instructs, it instructs on behalf of the people and the Government must comply. Parliament has spoken, and the Government must listen. Parliament has instructed. It has not asked, opined or suggested; it has instructed. The Government can disagree, moan or complain as much as they like, but they must comply with the instruction of Parliament.

Instead, the Government seek to defy the instruction of Parliament. They seek to defy the sovereignty of the people, as expressed through their elected representatives. It is now for Parliament to take the only course of action open to us to compel the Government to back down.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between David T C Davies and Peter Grant

Committee: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Monday 4th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

Let me return to the matter in hand for a minute, because the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) was also there for the underwhelming vote for devolution in 1999, and she will surely recall that the Conservative party did not call for a second referendum. We did not threaten to drag the whole thing through the courts to get the judges to overrule the will of the people of Wales. We were not going around pretending that people had changed their minds and saying that we needed to run the whole thing over again. We did not say that we were going to drag the whole thing out and do everything possible to undermine it. In actual fact, Nick Bourne, who was then the leader of the Welsh Conservatives and is now a Member of the other place, sat down with Members of all parties on the National Assembly advisory group and helped to draw up the Assembly’s Standing Orders, most of which are now in place. That is the difference between the Conservative party’s approach when we were on the losing side of a referendum and the approach of the Labour party, the SNP and many others now that they are on the losing side.

The reality is that the change will be called a power grab. I did not hear the phrase used today, but it will be described as a power grab. Of course it is a power grab, and what a wonderful power grab it is, too. We are grabbing powers from Brussels and bringing them back to London. Not only that, but over the next few years—[Interruption.] SNP Members can shout all they like; I am waiting for one of them to intervene.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

I would be delighted.

[Peter Grant]

Perhaps the reason why the hon. Gentleman’s campaign against the Welsh Assembly in 1999 failed was that the people of Wales voted in 1997. It might have gone better if he had turned up two years earlier. As we are talking about where power ultimately resides, I believe 100% in Scotland’s ancient doctrine that the people are sovereign. Where does he believe ultimate sovereignty over Scotland resides?

[David T. C. Davies]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is for the Scots to decide, and they decided that, for the time being, ultimate sovereignty rests within a United Kingdom Parliament in which the Scots are heavily and well represented, if I may say so. I totally respect that, and I hope he does, too.

A few weeks ago, Scottish National party Members were telling us that we should all support and recognise the referendum result in Catalonia, where a nation decided that it wanted to break out of a union with Spain. I find it ironic that the SNP is saying that we have to recognise referendum results when it happens to agree with the policy but that we should completely ignore referendum results when it does not agree with the policy.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between David T C Davies and Peter Grant

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Twenty years ago, almost to the day, I was involved in another bitterly fought referendum campaign in which both sides accused the other of exaggerations and even outright lies. The result was extremely finely balanced, our nation was divided and many were of the opinion that the Government of the day had absolutely no right to proceed with such a profound constitutional change on the basis of a tiny majority. I refer not to the EU but to the Welsh devolution referendum.

There the similarities end. The day after the Welsh Assembly referendum, I did not see BBC reporters trawling the streets of Cardiff or Swansea for anecdotes about people who had allegedly voted one way and then changed their minds—I can well remember in fact that BBC reporters from Wales could hardly contain their delight—and we did not see business representative groups and trade unions whipping up fears about the future of the economy; instead, they embraced the opportunities. Those of us who had been actively involved in the campaign against the Welsh Assembly realised that, whatever we thought of the result, the people had spoken. Even though it was a narrow margin—much narrower than in the EU referendum—and on a much smaller turnout, we did not try to stop the process. We did not try to take the Government to court. In fact, we got involved in the shaping of Welsh Assembly standing orders through a body called the National Assembly Advisory Group.

The First Minister of Wales and some of his colleagues in Parliament would do well to remember that. He and others have been complaining about a power grab and making accusations about undermining the Assembly—

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

I will give way in a moment. I am coming to something the SNP said earlier.

The only powers being grabbed are those being grabbed from Brussels and taken back to London. There is absolutely no grabbing of powers from Cardiff. Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) asked the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) whether he could name a single power being taken from Edinburgh, and he could not name any.

[Peter Grant]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies]

I am happy to give way to his colleague to see if he can come up with a few.

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman is keen to draw parallels between the EU referendum and that which established the Welsh Assembly. The result of the EU referendum casts great doubt over the continuing human rights of 3 million people living in these islands. Can he name a single person whose human rights were threatened as a result of the Welsh referendum 20 years ago today?

[David T. C. Davies]

It was about the same number of EU nationals whose human rights are being threatened by the latest referendum. One of those 3 million is my wife. Not a single Government Member has ever suggested stripping EU nationals of their rights. We are totally opposed to that idea. I am happy once again to say on behalf of all my colleagues that none of us wants to do anything to take away the human rights of the hard-working, law-abiding EU citizens in this country. We welcome them as much today as we always have.

We are not taking powers away from Cardiff, Edinburgh or anywhere else. In fact, over the last few years, Conservative MPs have voted several times to give significant extra powers to the Welsh Assembly—and, I believe, to the Scottish Parliament. To be honest, if I am going to criticise my own colleagues, I would criticise the number of extra powers we have given to the Welsh Assembly and will do again. I probably will not be quite as enthusiastic about that, but there we are. The Bill will actually strengthen devolution. It will mean more powers for the Welsh Assembly in the not-too-distant future, and it will be much easier to transfer powers from the Westminster Parliament back down the M4 than it would be if those powers stayed in Brussels. Let us be frank about that. If those powers were to stay in Brussels, they would not come to the Welsh Assembly at all.

It is time for Opposition Members to do what those of us who opposed the Welsh Assembly did 20 years and recognise that it is the will of the people, including in Wales, which voted for devolution and to leave the EU. It voted mainly for Conservative and Labour MPs in the last election who stood on a manifesto commitment to respect the referendum decision and bring Britain out of the EU. The people having made their voices heard over and over again, it would be an outrage if we did what Commissioners in Brussels have done many times in the past few years and went against the stated will of the people. The Bill represents a great day for democracy in Britain, including in Wales, and I look forward to joining my colleagues in the Lobby to support it tonight.