Exiting the European Union: Meaningful Vote

Dominic Grieve Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

If my hon. Friend listened to what I am arguing, he would realise that I have said repeatedly that I think we are embarked on an exercise in self-mutilation, but that I recognise that, if that is what people want now that the self-mutilation is so apparent, then that is what they will indeed have. What I am not prepared to do, as a Member of this House, is to carry it out myself without going back and asking them if that is what they really want.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Let us now dispose of the dangerous idea that there can be some disingenuous second people’s vote to try to force remain back on to the agenda. Who with any authority suggested in 2016 that the question would be only a dry run?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), but I shall try to confine my remarks to the issue on the Order Paper, rather than the more general debate on the merit of the Government’s deal.

I supported this debate because I happen to agree that what happened yesterday was essentially pretty unprecedented. We have a deal before this House, and this House was in the middle of considering it. The terms under which the EU withdrawal Act passed through the House were an absolute and clear undertaking by the Government that Parliament would be involved at every stage, and that as soon as the deal had been reached it would be brought expeditiously to us—indeed, so much so that some people wondered if it might not appear in the House almost too early, before we had the opportunity to consider it properly. We were in the middle of that consideration.

I fully appreciate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s difficulty. If by going away and speaking to our European partners she will be a position to achieve some change to the deal that she can properly bring before the House, I can understand why she may have wished to interrupt its consideration. But I really do worry about the implications, because although I listened carefully to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the Government appear to have given themselves very considerable latitude as to when this business might return to us. If it is clear by Monday of next week that the Prime Minister has not changed the terms of the treaty, I would expect that this House’s consideration of the business ought to resume at once, because it is not in the national interest that we should be prevented from expressing our view on the deal as soon as possible. That is my principal concern.

I was reassured by some of the things I heard this afternoon about the Government’s intentions, but it would simply not be acceptable for the debate to resume on 19 January. I just wanted to make that point, because it seems to be key.

[Chris Bryant]

I wonder whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman has heard the view expressed by some Government Whips that if the Prime Minister has not really got anything out of this week, there would be no point in Parliament sitting next week at all, and that the Government would therefore announce on Thursday that we were not going to sit next week. He will of course be aware that we would have to have a vote on that.

[Mr Grieve]

I am quite clear that the urgency of the situation that we face, and the divisions both in the country and within this House make it imperative that this House should be able to pronounce on the deal that the Government bring forward.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes eloquent points, as ever, but is not the fundamental issue here that we have a Brexit nation and a remain Parliament? However eloquent his points are, there is an emotional desire on the part of him and other Members not to respect the mandate of the British people, and that mandate is a critical one if we live in a democracy.

[Mr Grieve]

For two and a half years now, we have watched the process of trying to implement the result of the 2016 referendum, and if there is one thing on which I hope we might be able to agree, it is that it is perfectly plain that it is proving extraordinarily difficult to do. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, mindful of the risks of economic damage and damage to our national security and wellbeing, has laboured long and hard to try to get a deal. Yet the reality, which has become quite clear in the last week, is that when that deal is examined, it contains numerous flaws and places us in a new and complex legal relationship with the EU, which in many ways, on any objective analysis, appears to be rather less desirable than remaining in it.

I appreciate that there are hon. Members, including some of my hon. Friends, who believe that there is some clean and easy way through this process. I simply make the point that each of us as Members of this House has a responsibility to our constituents, but also to ourselves, to make judgments on what is for the best for our country. That is what I will continue to try to do, while respecting, or doing my best to give effect to and think through the consequence of, the referendum.

But I say to my hon. Friends that at the end of the day, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that it is unlikely that there is going to be agreement in this House on the model that we want, because of the inherent difficulties that flow from Brexit itself. In those circumstances, I can only repeat what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) about why I support a referendum. It is not because that presupposes a single outcome—after all, it might go against my own arguments—but because at least it provides a way of resolving this that I happen to think would be rather less divisive than the interminable debate that is going to beset us here, even if we leave on 29 March, for the next two and half to five years.

[Mr Seely]

rose—

[Mr Grieve]

No, I will not give way again.

That is the true problem that we face. The alternative, I suppose, is that this Government may collapse and we may have a general election, but I have to say to my hon. Friends—indeed, even to Opposition Members—that I am not sure that in itself will solve the conundrum that we face.

As I say, what I would ask of the Government at the moment—I do not wish to labour these points—is that we are given the necessary space to debate this rationally, because one thing that has worried me in the past 12 months has been repeated attempts to close down opportunities for debate in this House by short-circuiting the process, and that has done us no good at all. Some of us have had to fight really hard to make sure that the process has been followed properly, and have been reviled at times for doing so—yet the evidence shows, I am afraid, that we were right. For that reason, I will try to continue in the same fashion. If we have the right process, we will come up with the right answers.