United Kingdom’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Friday 29th March 2019 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Attorney General for giving way. The amendment that I tabled with colleagues today was very clear. Any process for the House would have to be underpinned by legislation—it would have to form part of a withdrawal agreement implementation Bill, and there would have to be a clear role for the House to agree the future relationship before it was signed off with the European Union. Can he give confirmation at the Dispatch Box, if he introduces the Bill next week, that those measures will be in clear text, in that Bill, in black and white?

[The Attorney General]

We would have accepted the hon. Gentleman’s amendments. Clearly, in terms of the detailed working out of those amendments, in discussion—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”]. No, no, no—hon. Members can table an amendment. If it requires amendment to that legislation, we would obviously consider the detail carefully, but we would be minded to accept such.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am going to make some progress; I have given way a number of times.

The Prime Minister signed off the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration in November. She was originally supposed to hold the meaningful vote on 11 December. Since the day she took the decision to abandon that vote—the day before it was due to take place—109 days have passed. She knew then that the deal was going to be defeated by a substantial margin, but she ploughed on. On 15 January, the Government suffered the biggest defeat in parliamentary history, by a margin of 230 votes, on the first meaningful vote. Two weeks later, on 29 January, the Prime Minister promised the House that she would change the withdrawal agreement:

“What I am talking about is not a further exchange of letters but a significant and legally binding change to the withdrawal agreement. Negotiating such a change will not be easy. It will involve reopening the withdrawal agreement”.—[Official Report, 29 January 2019; Vol. 653, c. 678.]

At this late stage in negotiations, any withdrawal agreement would have required the backstop. It was always totally unrealistic for the Prime Minister to pretend that she could drop the backstop entirely or make substantive changes to the withdrawal agreement, yet she wasted weeks and weeks on this fruitless pursuit, including voting for the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), which required the Northern Ireland backstop to be replaced by “alternative arrangements”. Those arrangements have not been secured and they could never have been secured.

On 12 March, the Government suffered the fourth largest defeat in parliamentary history, by a margin of 149 votes, on the second meaningful vote. And now the Government are trying to carve out the withdrawal agreement, in a last-ditch attempt to save a botched deal that has failed to even come close to commanding the support of a majority of this House. This Prime Minister has recklessly run down the clock. She knows that her deal is unacceptable and she has failed time and time again to listen and to change course.

Too often this Government have ignored motions of this House. It took Parliament to fight for a meaningful vote on the two documents, the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration, to be considered together. To suggest that they should be considered separately now is to go back on what the Government have been saying about the importance of the link between them for months and months.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. As always, he is giving a fine performance at the Dispatch Box highlighting the Labour party’s position, but could I seek from him two points of clarity? As was made clear by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), the Labour party has on numerous occasions put forward what we consider to be an acceptable form of Brexit. If the Prime Minister were to relent on her red lines and accept that form of Brexit, and the Labour party were to consider that acceptable, can he confirm for me whether the Labour party would still consider that deal as requiring a confirmatory public vote? Secondly, when this deal fails this evening, our choice on 12 April will be no deal or a lengthy extension. Can he outline for me what length of extension the Labour party will be seeking and for what purpose?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The purpose of the extension is always the critical issue. Let me just say, in respect of the issue of a—[Interruption.]

Northern Ireland Backstop

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

As colleagues will know, the word “rum” was much favoured by PG Wodehouse of whose works, I suspect, the Solicitor General is, among others, a devotee.

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

The Solicitor General says it is in the fate of the Labour party to help him secure a deal, but that simply is not true. What concessions, if any, will the Government make towards the deal that the Labour party has put down as a potential way through this? He knows that I have given his Government the benefit of the doubt on more than one occasion by not supporting things that my party has asked me to, and actively opposing things on other occasions. I did not support the Government on the Brady amendment, but nor did I oppose it, because I believed it was important that the Government had the space to conduct negotiations to get a deal through. The wording of that amendment quite clearly said that the backstop should be “replaced”, so can the Solicitor General tell me, without equivocation, that when he brings that deal back, the backstop will have been replaced?

[The Solicitor General]

I note with care the hon. Gentleman’s position and I have observed what he is doing to represent his constituents. It would be somewhat pre-emptory for me to anticipate what might come back from the negotiation. I assure him that we are trying to get on with it at some speed, so that his position can be as clear as possible, and so that he can, with the rest of this House, make that all-important decision on his constituents’ behalf.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

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

Can my right hon. and learned Friend explain the tangible difference between us being in a customs union with full access to the single market and our being members of the EU, other than the fact that we will not be electing Members of the European Parliament?

[Keir Starmer]

Obviously, politically, we will not be in any of the institutions, and we will not be a member of the EU. We are dealing with the question of whether we should have a close economic relationship with the EU, which everybody recognises is a critical issue, and working through the best configuration for that. I do not think that the mere fact that there has been a vote to leave the EU can be interpreted as the wish of anybody who voted to make our economic relationship with the EU any worse. I do not think that anybody was voting to harm the ability of businesses in this country to do business.

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[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I rise to contribute briefly on two aspects of the debate: first, Lords amendment 51, which would require the Government to have, as a negotiating objective, membership of the European economic area; and, secondly, Lords amendment 2, which would require the Government to participate in a customs union. As a pragmateer, I know that we can make a case for both of them, for the risks of leaving the European Union are considerable and surely no one still believes that either the process or the negotiations are simple, because they are not.

Both approaches involve significant setbacks, however. Membership of the EEA would mean that we had no control over EU migration, and membership of the customs union would mean that we continued to subcontract our trade policy. This matters because, when it comes to immigration, the hard fact is that we cannot deport a criminal from the European Union unless their sentence is longer than two years, and it is virtually impossible to deport long-term unemployed rough sleepers from the European Union, as the recent European Court of Justice judgment made clear.

I believe that my constituents—indeed, all of our constituents—want their elected representative to take decisions about who can come here and work, and they do not hugely differentiate between individuals from Croatia and those from China or the Commonwealth. They would like us to take such decisions based on the needs of the country, the skills required, and whether the individuals coming here to work have those skills. On that basis, I believe that people in this country do want to see immigrants coming here.

On the customs union, the free trade agreements that the EU has already made are definitely an advantage. For example, we benefit hugely from the agreement with South Korea. However, to say, as some do, that we can never actually do as well as the EU is to underestimate the potential for us out there. Let me highlight the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to which some nine countries have now signed up, because there is a real opportunity for us to become part of that arrangement. Leaving the EU is clearly a risk—it is not a risk that all of us thought was worth the potential return—but if we are to make the most of doing so, membership of the EEA and of a customs union is not the way to satisfy anyone.

Lord Alli, a Labour peer, said on introducing Lords amendment 51 that

“it is up to the elected House to decide on the EEA, not this House.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 May 2018; Vol. 791, c. 58.]

He was right, and I trust tonight that we will vote down Lords amendments 51 and 2, and support the greatest flexibility, which is what the Government need in the negotiations.

[Gareth Snell]

It will come as no surprise to Labour Members that, when we divide this evening, I shall not be voting for Lords amendment 51; in fact I shall be voting; to remove it from the Bill. I do not believe that the European economic area is the answer to the problems we face. I have been very clear with my constituents at every opportunity that the problems we have in Stoke-on-Trent were not caused by the European Union, but a continuation of a Europe-lite version will not be their salvation either.

On the customs union, I fully support the work that Labour Front Benchers have been doing to secure a proper trading relationship for goods with the European Union once we have left. Our trade deal with South Korea is vital to the ceramics industry, and it is only by continuing those arrangements after exit day that we will be able to sustain growth in that very important industry in my city.

What I do not understand is those who now advocate that we can have some sort of customs union plus EEA membership. I am aware that Monsieur Barnier came out last night and said that that was possible, but as far as I am aware, nobody in this House today has spoken to the members of the European Free Trade Association to ask whether that is something that they are willing to wear. Many Labour Members have recently rightly argued that those who join a club late and then seek to fundamentally change its rules of association should not do so, and it is wrong that we should take that approach into the European Free Trade Association with the intention of trying to change the way it has operated for many years.

No one I have heard this afternoon has advocated joining the EEA without some form of change, whether that be to freedom of movement, the terms and conditions or the way we trade. If we do not believe that the EEA is the right model for us, why do we advocate hitching ourselves to it after exit day? Unpicking ourselves from the EEA will be much more difficult than getting the bespoke deal here and now that practically all of us have spoken about this afternoon. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) made that point when she said that there are elements of the EEA that simply would not work.

There has been much talk about articles 112 and 113 of the treaty around EFTA and the EEA allowing us to put a brake on immigration. Article 112 talks about severe and extreme societal, environmental or economic situations being taken into account for a time-limited period only. It does not address the concerns regarding immigration that were raised with me on the doorstep in Stoke-on-Trent during the general election. I take umbrage at Members who seek to suggest that people such as me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) raise the issue of immigration simply because we are opposed to it. I want a firm and fair immigration system that allows those from Poland as well as Pakistan to come here, work hard, do their bit and pay their taxes.

[James Cartlidge]

Not for the first time, I want to talk about the EEA. Just to be absolutely clear, the EEA arrangement is distinctly inferior to the bespoke, deep trade relationship that we would like to negotiate under what I would call plan A, which is the Prime Minister’s policy. Equally, however, it is distinctly superior to WTO rules, if we fail to get a deal and we need a fall-back position. I have always set out that view.

I just remind everyone of a key point that we might have overlooked. People say that they would not want free movement to continue after we leave the EU but, whatever happens, it will be continuing through the transition, and we will not even have an emergency brake, a vote or a say. Even an EFTA member will have a say through co-determination rights in the EEA. It also has to be said that the issue would still be under the jurisdiction of the ECJ, rather than the EFTA court, which is a non-political court.

I have always very much argued that we should support the Prime Minister because we want to get that bespoke deal, and I still believe we will get it—it is the best option available to this country, for all the reasons that have been set out, particularly by those who campaigned to leave. It would be very odd if someone took the view that I have and then, just on the eve of an important negotiation, voted to completely change the Government’s negotiating stance. We should be backing the Prime Minister to achieve that deal. The question is what would happen if we did not have one later in the year, and I sincerely hope that we do not get to that point. I simply warn colleagues not to trash this option too much. It is not so much about burning bridges; we could be concreting over the only escape hatch credibly left to us if we get into a crisis.

Let me just address the immigration point, because the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) raised it in his very good speech. When I intervened on my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General, he confirmed that if we end free movement in this country, we also end the fact that we legally restrict unskilled immigration to people from the European Union and, effectively, open it up to 90% of world’s population. That is a legal fact; we will no longer discriminate. Although we will “control” it, it is non-EU immigration that is now rising sharply. EU migration is falling sharply. Why is it falling sharply? In my view, and from what I hear from employers—this is a very welcome thing—it is because the economies of Poland and Romania are growing, and the well-qualified people who have come here to work on farms and so forth are getting good jobs back in their own countries. My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who is of Polish descent, is agreeing, and that is certainly the situation I have found.

We in this Chamber need to debate unskilled immigration: whether we open it up to everyone, whether we have a visa system and whether we ourselves expect to need visas when we travel within Europe. The EEA is a good backstop, but it is not the ideal long-term position, which is why we should vote to support the Prime Minister today.