European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Bernard Jenkin

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

Unfortunately, even the European Parliament cannot change the exit date. It would have to be agreed by all the other member states. To predicate our negotiating position on our ability to persuade the 27 member states—and the Commission and the negotiating team in Brussels—to extend the date would be completely wrong.

Any Members who intend to vote against this date must be really confident that they can change a date that has already been set by the European Union treaties. The whole point about the deal/no deal scenario is that—as I have already said to the right hon. Member for Knowsley—either we accept the deal, and the House votes on it, or there is no deal. That is the choice that is available to the House. The House cannot veto Brexit—[Interruption.] I wish to conclude my speech.

Any Members who voted for the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill are obliged to support the amendment, because that is the date for which they implicitly voted when they voted for the Bill, and for a two-year period. Any Members who voted for article 50 but now do not wish to fix the date are open to the charge that they do not actually want us to leave the European Union—[Interruption.] Let me say this to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield. He has suggested that if we do not have a deal we will be jumping into “a void”, and that fixing the date will constrain our negotiations and disenfranchise Parliament. I respect the sincerity of my right hon. and learned Friend’s passion, but he calls the cut-off date barmy when he voted for that date by voting for the article 50 Bill. This amendment rumbles those who have not really accepted that we are leaving the EU.

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend knows that I share his fundamental beliefs about the need for us to leave the European Union, but is there not merit in the suggestion of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) that we need not have a fixed date? After all, our own negotiators might wish to have an extension; this is curtailing the flexibility and room for manoeuvre of our own negotiators. My right hon. and learned Friend has proposed an ingenious and commendable solution: that we write into the Bill the date, but we create exceptions for circumstances in which the negotiators might need it. I urge my hon. Friend, and all my hon. Friends who share my view on the EU, to reflect carefully on the suggestion made by my right hon. and learned Friend; it is a commendable one and it requires careful reflection.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am still seized of the truth that if we beg the EU to extend the time because it has run us up against the timetable—after all, it is the EU that is refusing to negotiate on the substantive issues at the moment, not us—that is the position and responsibility it must face. We should be clear and strong that if the EU does not reach an agreement with us by a certain date, we are leaving without a deal. That would put us in a stronger negotiating position than ever.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Bernard Jenkin

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

There is a serious question about whether civil servants should be closely involved in referendum campaigns over a period much longer than 28 days. There is a serious problem for the civil service if it allows such things to happen. That is why one of the main recommendations of our report is the addition of a paragraph to the civil service code to the effect that what applies to civil servants in general elections should apply to them equally in referendums. That would prevent civil servants who are put in difficult positions, and perhaps asked to do things that they know are not in the spirit of the code, from acting in such a way.

The underpinning of the principle of civil service impartiality during a referendum now rests on section 125 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. If we do not press the amendment, we consent to the removal of that protection from the Bill. My right hon. Friend the Minister cannot ask us to do that. It is an issue of principle, and he is asking us to accede to completely the wrong principle. As I have said, I believe that he has been given very wrong advice. Far be it from me to speculate about how many Eurosceptics there are among the permanent secretary community, who might want a bit of extra freedom about what they get Ministers to do during a referendum campaign.

I am deeply disappointed that the Labour party has abandoned all its principles, but we know that it is split on the matter. On Second Reading, it was in favour of scrapping purdah. At Prime Minister’s questions, it was against scrapping purdah. Last night, Labour Members were going to vote for amendment 11, but today they are no longer going to do so. I think that they are in a bit of a muddle, and I suspect that quite a few pro-EU Labour Members would like to help to rig the referendum in favour of the yes campaign. [Interruption.] I see I have provoked the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). In the interests of brevity, I shall not invite him to intervene.

Unless we insist that the provisions for purdah remain in the Bill, we are acquiescing in the dilution of an important principle.

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has insisted, and I understand this, that any safeguards relating to a purdah period should be in the Bill and should be made clear by statute. As I understand it, the Government’s undertaking, by means of the Minister’s letter, is to table amendments on Report, which would go into the final Act of Parliament and have legal force. It is not a matter of relying on the assurances of civil servants; it is a matter of law. If that is correct, it may go some way to alleviating the concerns of Government Members.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing the Committee’s attention to that point. We should all be grateful for the fact that the Government have listened, but they are still requesting that we withdraw the amendment. To do so would be to concede the principle that purdah might not exist in statutory form. The Labour party’s amendment on purdah would not actually create purdah; it would require the Government to produce a list of things. What we want in the Bill is purdah. If the Government are not prepared to accept that principle now, on the Floor of the House, I fear that we will have to force the amendment to a vote, because it is a matter of principle.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

Amendment 6 stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who, as I mentioned earlier, is abroad on other House business as Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee.

We are at a curious juncture in the Bill and, indeed, in our constitutional history. The background to the amendment is the tension, since time immemorial, between this House’s ability to function immune from judicial interference, and the courts, which periodically have sought to limit the extent to which we can continue our business unimpeded by the courts. That was, of course settled—to a degree—in the Bill of Rights in 1789—

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

1689.

[Mr Jenkin]

Sorry, 1689. My hon. and learned Friend will keep me up to the mark, because he is much more of a lawyer than I am.

In recent years, however, the tension between the courts and the independence of this House has been thrown into relief. I remind the Committee of cases such as the one brought by Lord Rees-Mogg for judicial review of the ratification of the Maastricht treaty after this House had passed an Act of Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

We all know that we are talking about heated and potentially controversial circumstances. If there was a raging controversy about alleged malpractice in our proceedings or surrounding them, and if public opinion was strongly supportive of one view or the other, there would be intense pressure on a court to intervene. Does my hon. and learned Friend not think it would be difficult for a court not to intervene under such circumstances?

[Mr Cox]

No, I do not think that. Intense pressure is precisely what an independent judiciary is set up to resist. One would expect and hope for that from a senior judge. We are fortunate in the judiciary we have in this country. I hope that hon. Members will reflect carefully on some of the language that we have used in this debate today. It is not the case that the judiciary have an appetite to assume the powers of this House. Indeed, in my experience the preponderance in the judiciary is to be careful and scrupulous in the way they observe the parameters of judicial power.

The problem is—if I can extend this parenthesis as briefly as I may—that we have invited the judiciary into the territory time after time, since the European Communities Act 1972, which fundamentally altered the constitutional arrangements in this country. It essentially meant that there was a higher constitutional court, namely the European Court of Justice—we already have it—which presupposes and believes it is capable of trumping domestic law. That ultimately led to a decision in a case called Factortame, in which an Act of Parliament was set aside by the House of Lords, on the basis of the seniority—or superiority—of the European Union’s law. Then we had the Human Rights Act 1998, which preserves—or attempts to preserve—a careful balance. Nevertheless, it invites the courts into consideration of the policies and legislative objectives—almost on the basis of their merits—that this House has always considered to be its prerogative and to fall within its exclusive sphere. The courts are careful, but they themselves acknowledge that the Human Rights Act has invited them further into that territory.