UK’s Withdrawal from the EU

Dominic Grieve Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I was and I have. I have visited that border many times. I visited it with the Police Service of Northern Ireland many times when I was working there for five years—as it policed the area around the border, which has particular issues—and I have been there since on a number of occasions. I am well aware of the nature of that border. I am also well aware of the fact, in relation to that border, that it is a mistake to think that the only issue is, technically, how to get people or goods over a line in the road. That border is the manifestation of peace: it is a settlement between two communities. Therefore, the very idea that this is just a technical exercise does not understand the nature of that border.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

It goes beyond that, does it not? The right hon. and learned Gentleman may share my anxiety that this issue seems to be consistently ducked. We have a pre-existing international treaty with Ireland that places obligations on us in respect of the border. I do worry, and he may share this anxiety, that in this House this is constantly brushed under the carpet, whereas as we are a rule-of-law state that believes in the international rules-based system, we cannot depart from that without reneging on such obligations.

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful for that intervention and I agree with it.

This is really the heart of it: we know what the problem is, we know what the House thinks about the backstop and we know that there is an unlikelihood that those problems are going to be addressed in the next 14 days. When the Prime Minister lost the first meaningful vote, she had a clear choice. Choice 1 was to plough on with the failed deal in the usual blinkered way, and eventually put the same deal back to us. That was option 1. Option 2 was to drop her red lines, and negotiate changes that were credible with the EU and could command a majority in this House. The Government have chosen the first course—blindly ploughing on, rather than really engaging—and, as we have seen from the last few weeks, that path leads nowhere.

That is regrettable, because there is an alternative, and I want to address amendment (a). We have set out this alternative repeatedly over recent months. It was set out in full in the letter from the Leader of the Opposition to the Prime Minister on 6 February, and it is spelled out in today’s amendment (a). I remind the House that the focus of the changes we are calling for are to the political declaration, not the backstop.

The changes are to negotiate a permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union. That is the first part. Why is that important? Because it is essential for protecting manufacturing, particularly the complex supply chains, and to avoid the hard border in Northern Ireland. I know that those on the Government Front Bench have, like me, gone to many of the big manufacturing companies to discuss with them their complex supply chains and how anxious they are about protecting the customs union arrangements that allow them to do that. As I said, it is also essential to avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a challenge the House will face the moment it has voted for an extension, because I am sure that is what the European Union will say to us.

I am setting out what I think are the three alternatives that would be available to the House at that point. The first requires agreement. I do not think the Prime Minister is prepared to give that; that is what the evidence shows. The second would require the European Union to change its approach to the negotiations completely. It would be the sensible thing to do, but the EU may not agree. The third—the one we will be left with if we cannot agree—will be to go back to the people and ask them what they think.

I simply want to say that I welcome the decision that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition announced on Monday. It cannot have been an easy decision to make, and I do not at all underestimate the difficulties of holding a second referendum. However, it would in those circumstances answer the question from the European Union about what the extension is for. When it comes to the question in such a referendum, to me it is clear: the only deal that has been negotiated to leave—the Prime Minister’s—even though it would have been rejected by Parliament, and the alternative of remain, because there is not an alternative leave on the table. Let me say to those who might want to jump up and say, “What about no deal?”: first, if we go back to the referendum of 2016, nobody on the leave side argued for leaving with no deal—nobody; secondly, we know how damaging it would be; and, thirdly, why should an option that was never before the British people in 2016 suddenly appear on a ballot paper in 2019, if we have a referendum?

[Mr Grieve]

I am sorry to bang on about this, but we are a rule-of-law state and it is an unlawful question to put. If a Government choose to put no deal on a referendum ballot paper, they are in effect saying that they will not respect and have decided as a matter of a policy not to observe their international obligations.

[Hilary Benn]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman very forcefully makes one of the arguments for why no deal is not an option in every sense of the word.

In conclusion, we are in a marginally better position than we were when we had the last of these debates, because the Government have been forced to face reality. I pay tribute to Ministers who, we are told, in a series of delegations to the Prime Minister, made her realise that she would not be able to defeat the amendments today if she did not make a concession yesterday.

However, we are still in a very perilous position for the country. I have no doubt at all about our ability to prosper, but our future prosperity depends on the decisions that we choose to make. It is not automatic, as the Brexit disaster is proving. That is why I echo the view of others who have said that those who argued for leave bear a very heavy responsibility for the crisis the country is now in. Parliament’s job is to make sure that, when that moment comes, if the deal is defeated again, we are ready to make a choice about what we are for. The tragedy of Brexit is that the Government have been completely incapable of making those choices. It is Parliament’s responsibility to step up and take those decisions if the Government continue to fail to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

I agreed entirely with my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) when she said the atmosphere of this debate was notably different from that of previous debates, and I am delighted if the system of amendable motions, previously so vociferously attacked, may have made some small contribution to enabling sensible debate to take place, because it is, frankly, doing exactly what I hoped might come out of it: breaking the logjam and enabling this House to look sensibly at problems relating to Brexit and to come to conclusions.

In that spirit I am also delighted that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister indicated yesterday that she would move on this issue of removing no deal and extending article 50 for that purpose and enabling the House to express its opinion. It is manifestly obvious that a no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic. I do not want to repeat all the things that have been said. The Government’s own documentation is there, and on top of that I only have to sit in my constituency surgery to have pharmaceutical companies, of which I have many, coming in and explaining the cost to them of having to anticipate no deal—all of which, I might add, will ultimately be manifested in the takings of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the lack of those funds to pay for public services.

We are impoverishing ourselves; we are making it harder to deliver a good quality of life for our citizens, and we are doing it with a relentless enthusiasm which at last we have found some common sense to check. I have very little doubt that when this matter comes back we will extend article 50, and I hope very much that the Government will finally adopt a policy of indicating that no deal is completely unacceptable.

But I also agree with the point that has been made that there is no point in extending article 50 if we do not know what to do with that. I do not know if this House is going to be capable of coming to a consensus. As a Member of this House, I accept that if there is a majority in this House for some form of Brexit and we vote for it and it is deliverable, that is doubtless what will happen, whatever my personal views may be. However, I will just say this—and I will repeat it, I suspect, ad nauseam until this whole sorry saga is over: I only have to look at the emails I get on Brexit from people who want to leave to see that the principle theme is the demand to leave in the form of catastrophic no-deal Brexit.

The reason that I am getting those emails is that people have, in my opinion, been thoroughly misled over a long period by a form of propaganda that believes that the EU is evil. This was rather highlighted by the extraordinary speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), who put forward the stab-in-the-back theory. I am sorry, but these are mad fantasies. They are absolute fantasies about the EU and its relationship with us. So people are writing in and saying that is what we should be doing, but I have to say that we are not going to be doing it.

The fact is that we are likely to be offering an extraordinary halfway house palliative that a large number of Members of the House absolutely know will be less good than remaining in the EU. Maybe that is a burden that we are going to have to carry because of the 2016 referendum result, but speaking personally I find it deeply unacceptable that I should park every aspect of my own opinion and evaluation of these options simply in order to go along with an instruction that is now nearly three years old and seems to be running out of steam in virtually every single one of its characteristics.

That is why I urge my right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench not to ignore the possibility of consulting the public. If the public want the Prime Minister’s deal, which is the only deal we are ever likely to get, then so be it; but if not, they should have the option to express the view that they want to stay. Ultimately, my own opinion is that that would be very much better than anything else we have done.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) has been successful with his amendment, and I am happy to have supported him. I should also like to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), in conclusion, that he talks about dysfunctional relationships, and some people looking at the two of us would say that our relationship has been dysfunctional for a long time, but we have stayed in the same party, and that is a good reason for our staying in the EU as well.