EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Votes)

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I always reflect on points that colleagues make to me, but I am not anticipating what might happen in days to come. The hon. Gentleman has made his own point in his own way. I do not mean it in any unkind or discourteous sense, but it is a point I have heard floated in parts of the popular prints in recent days; that does not invest it with the validity that it might otherwise lack.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I profess myself upset that the Father of the House’s motion missed getting a vote by three votes, particularly given that five members of my party who profess to want a softer Brexit voted against it and could have made a decisive impact on tonight’s decision. Given that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said, we are considering this again on Wednesday, can you give us an early indication of what procedural wisdom will look like, when motions can start to be tabled and whether there will be a new way of looking at this, in order to come to a conclusive outcome?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The only early indication I can give him is that I think it is reasonable, on the basis of what was passed earlier today in the business of the House motion, to suppose that the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) will be carefully contemplating the intended procedure for Wednesday. Specifically, I think it is reasonable to expect that he will be looking to table a business of the House motion and, from that, the hon. Gentleman will gather what the right hon. Member for West Dorset has in mind.

Colleagues will be able to take a view about that. Moreover, just as colleagues have spoken to each other in recent days to bid for support for particular options, it is open to colleagues to communicate with each other about these matters before Wednesday, and I rather imagine that they will do so. Precisely what procedure is envisaged I cannot say, nor is it self-evident that there can be only one procedure proposed. There may well be a number of alternative ideas circulating in colleagues’ minds, and I cannot say more than that. We will have to see. [Interruption.] There is nothing very significant about that. I hear a knowing grunt from someone on the Treasury Bench as though something remarkably significant or suspicious has been said, but neither of those things is so.