EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)

George Freeman Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I start by sincerely thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) and other Members on both sides of the House who have worked to make this afternoon possible. They and all of us participating in this debate are doing democracy, this House and the Government a favour, although the Government will not admit it. And they are doing the British people, who want us to find a sensible Brexit solution, a favour.

I was a remain Minister in the last Government, but I have been very clear that we have to honour and respect the referendum result both nationally, in my duty as a Member of this House, and locally in my responsibility and duty to the people of Mid Norfolk, who voted 62% to leave whereas the country voted 52% to leave.

I have also been consistently clear that we have to respect the concerns of the 48% who did not want to leave, the legitimate interests of those citizens who could not vote in the referendum, particularly the young whose future we are shaping and who will have to live with the consequences of our actions, and the legitimate grievances of the 52% who voted to leave. One of the great disappointments of the last two and a half years is the almost shattering silence of those who brilliantly harnessed those grievances to deliver Brexit but who have not spoken about how we tackle them—the feeling of blue-collar job insecurity, the lack of proper local infrastructure, the house dumping and the sense that big government and big debt are working against the localities of this country. That agenda of renewal has to be right at the heart of delivering Brexit.

We were told today that this debate—this hunt for indicative votes—was a constitutional outrage, was a remainer conspiracy and was tying the Government’s hands. All three claims are completely false. First, since when is it a constitutional outrage for this House to control its own business? It has always controlled its own business. To those who say that the Government of the day control the business of the House, I say that, yes, they do, because their Back Benchers, normally, automatically grant them the power so to do. The sovereignty over our time has always, since the civil war, been with this House. To hear my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) pray in aid medieval and Tudor laws against the sovereignty of this House, which I thought he was the greatest champion of, defending an Executive who prefer not to listen, was one of the most extraordinary moments of today.

Secondly, if it is a remainer conspiracy, it is some conspiracy and some set of remainers, because all of us who are working with my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) are supporting the Brexit withdrawal Bill. We are not trying to defy Brexit; we are trying to find a way to get it through. Thirdly, the claim that we are tying the Government’s hands is nonsense. This is an indicative vote to help the Front-Bench team to see where, if, God forbid, this is needed, a plan B or some further concession might be found to carry this Bill through the House if, as I hope they do not, some of my hardline Brexit colleagues, who would prefer a no deal to a deal, continue to hold the Government to ransom. Let us reach out across the House to find a Brexit that the whole country can support. Tonight, I will be voting for motions (D) and (H)—for EFTA—and I will be voting against having a second referendum. If this shambles goes on and on, in due course the British people will ultimately decide, probably in a general election. This House has to lift every rock to find a Brexit deal that can get through.

The arguments for EFTA have been beautifully put by others this afternoon, and I wish simply to make two points. The vast majority of my leave voters in Norfolk said, “Mr Freeman, I voted to be in or I want to be in a common market, not a political union.” They were stunned when they heard that the Brexit vote was somehow going to mean an extraction from all of the single market—from all the trade benefits of being in Europe. That is why EFTA is such a powerful solution. It does require free movement, but it is free movement of workers, not of citizens. I argue that it goes with two key reforms. The first is welfare reform, to make it clear that people who come here to work should not automatically receive the universal benefits that Clement Attlee put in place for those who had fallen on the beaches and paid into our country—they can earn that right. The second is a massive programme of blue-collar skills investment to support those fearing economic insecurity. Mostly, I think EFTA has something that no other solution has: it is a settlement of this question. We would be joining a bloc in Europe whereby, as we joined, we would change the dynamics of Europe. It is a bloc that has been going for 40 years. It is tried, tested and proven, and business can rely on it. I commend it as plan B, should the Government’s deal not go through.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I passionately believe that we have to follow the 2016 referendum result, even though I voted remain. I voted for the triggering of article 50, to keep no deal on the table, against a second referendum and against a long delay to our exit date. My voting record in Parliament reflects the will of the British people because I feel that anything else would lead to huge mistrust in our political system.

I also believe that Parliament and politicians are becoming toxic. The 17 million people who voted to leave think that the establishment is against them, too busy playing party politics and determined to stop Brexit, so I would not do anything—and I mean anything—that I believe would undermine the decision of the people who voted to leave. I want a strong Brexit, a workers’ Brexit and a Brexit that unifies our country. How do we achieve that? Through common market 2.0 and membership of the European Free Trade Association. We would be out of the political union of the EU, out of the common agricultural policy, and out of EU rules on home affairs and taxation. We would be out of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. But, as an EFTA member, we would have access to the single market, thereby safeguarding our businesses and jobs.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) pointed out, it is worth remembering that the British founded EFTA in 1959, when Harold Macmillan signed the Stockholm convention. The Chancellor at the time, Derick Heathcoat-Amory, said:

“We wanted to be able to share in the prosperity that a great single trading unit would bring with it”.—[Official Report, 14 December 1959; Vol. 615, c. 1057.]

Our joining would be welcomed by member states—by the Icelandic Foreign Minister and by the Norwegian Prime Minister—and it has been reported that the EFTA court president has said that EFTA membership would solve the problem of the Irish backstop.

On freedom of movement, with EFTA membership, we would take back control, because articles 112 and 113 of the EEA agreement would provide us with important safeguards, allowing Britain to

“unilaterally take appropriate measures”

in the event of

“serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties”,

or on grounds of public policy, security or health, in the case of workers.

It is wrong to think that we would be rule takers. My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) highlighted that Norway and Iceland alone have derogated from 400 EU Acts between them and how Norway has declined to implement the postal services directive. As a member of EFTA, we would be part of the EFTA court, which is a guidance court, not an authoritative court in the same way the European Court of Justice is. The customs arrangement on our side would be temporary until we were able to solve the issue of the frictionless border, and then we would have full EFTA membership and be able to do trade deals, as other EFTA members have done.

The common market 2.0 is also a Eurosceptic Brexit. Many Eurosceptics over the past few years have supported the Norway option—even UKIP tweeted in support of it. Dan Hannan has supported EFTA in the past. Douglas Carswell has supported EFTA in the past.

[George Freeman]

Margaret Thatcher.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend reminds me that Margaret Thatcher said in her 2003 book how supportive she was of EFTA:

“These countries now enjoy free trade with the European Union…They also enjoy the unhindered access guaranteed by the operation of the European Single Market. But they remain outside the customs union, the CAP, the CFP, the common foreign and security policy and the rest of the legal/bureaucratic tangle of EU institutions.”

If it is good enough for the right hon. Lady, it is good enough for me.

In joining EFTA, we do take back control. It is a workers’ Brexit because we keep workers’ rights and protections, such as annual leave, equal pay and maternity leave. It is a take-back-control Brexit because we are out of the political union of the EU, and we safeguard jobs and our economy. Above all, it is a uniting Brexit. It brings together remainers and leavers and keep us in an alliance of democracies.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

George Freeman Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You did quite a good job to shout down the shouter downers.

The reality is that this is about who governs this country. This country is governed ultimately by an Act of Parliament that gave the sovereign right to the people. It was a deliberate and voluntary transfer and—the primacy of the House of Commons rests in this—it was done by 6:1 in this House. Some Opposition Members did not vote for that referendum.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend knows that I am not a remoaner and that I am completely committed to delivering Brexit, but he is not being fair to the thinking behind the amendment. Many of us are committed to delivering Brexit. Our fear is this, and the question for him is this. I do not want to tie the Prime Minister’s hands or to put her negotiations in Europe at the whim of this great colourful Parliament. I want her to be able to go and negotiate, but if we were to vote down a deal or have no deal, is his view that the House would then be locked into accepting no deal, or that this sovereign House at that point should have the ability to say to the Prime Minister, “Go back and push harder.”?

[Sir William Cash]

I absolutely disagree with the notion that this House has the right to overturn the decision taken by the people. Furthermore, approval on the terms of the amendment is completely unacceptable. I repeat that the amendment states that the Government

“must follow any direction in relation to the negotiations under Article 50(2)…which has been—

approved by a resolution of the House of Commons”.

That is not acceptable for one simple reason: the decision was taken by the people. We gave them that decision and we have to stand by it.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

George Freeman Excerpts

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Grieve]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend. Yes, it is a self-denying ordinance, but it was taken for what I think is a good reason, and partly because I did not wish to inflame the debate into something more general. However, despite my best endeavours and making speeches of what I thought was studied moderation, I seem to have been singularly unsuccessful, but that is merely a reflection of the fevered atmosphere in which this Committee meets.

I have to accept that I did raise the temperature a bit on amendment 381, because when it was first presented to the Committee, I expressed myself in respect of it in very strong terms indeed. I did so not because I was making some statement that I refused to contemplate the day of exit as being 29 March 2019 at 11 pm, but because I considered that to introduce that date into the Bill as a tablet of stone made absolutely no sense at all for the very reason that I sought to highlight in my intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). In actual fact, that amendment would make it harder to move the date forward if we had wish to do so at the conclusion of the negotiations, because that would require a statute. I know that statutes can be implemented quite quickly in this House, but that process would nevertheless take significantly longer than the alternative. I could not see why we were losing the sensible flexibility provided by the way in which the Bill was originally drafted.

Underlying all this, there appears to be a sort of neurosis abroad that the magical date might somehow not be reached or, if it were to be reached, might be moved back. I am afraid that I cannot fully understand that neurosis of my right hon. and hon. Friends, but it is there nevertheless. It may give them some comfort to have in the Bill this statement of the obvious. However, it is worth bearing in mind that we are leaving on 29 March 2019 as a result of the article 50 process, unless the time is extended under that process, and we are doing so as a matter of international law even if the European Communities Act 1972 were to survive for some mistaken reason, which would cause legal chaos and put us in a very bad place.

In order to try to reassure my right hon. and hon. Friends and to give out the message that this is a process Bill, I am prepared to go along with things now that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) have so sensibly and creatively come up with a solution that appears to provide what my hon. Friends want and, at the same time, removes what I consider, perhaps in my lawyerly way, to be an undesirable incoherence in the legislation.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for making so eloquently the point about the importance of process as the best defence of our liberties. Will he join me in welcoming the work that assiduous junior Ministers have done for their Secretary of State with my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) in agreeing a package of amendments that I am happy to put my name to and vote for tonight, along with amendment 381? As he mentioned tidings of comfort, it seems at this Christmas moment that not since the soldiers met on no man’s land to sing “Silent Night” has peace broken out at such an opportune moment.

[Mr Grieve]

I am filled with my hon. Friend’s Christmas spirit, and very much wish that it may be carried through to the new year, and for many years to come. For that reason, I am prepared to support the Government on amendment 381, on the obvious condition that we have the other amendment, and with the assurance from the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), that we will get the necessary further change on Report to make the matter subject to the affirmative procedure. I fully understand why we cannot have that today—it is too late. We should have acted earlier if we wanted to get that into the Bill during Committee.

I want to put on record an argument that was made to me against this course of action: what we are doing has an impact on clause 9, as amended by my amendment 7. The intention behind amendment 7, which the House voted for, was always that the powers in the Bill for removal should not be used until after the final statute had been approved. That included the power to fix exit date. As a consequence of the amendments before us, those powers are removed from the ambit of clause 9, and therefore have a stand-alone quality that could mean that they could be invoked by making the date earlier than 29 March—so early that we would not have considered and implemented the statute approving exit. Some have expressed concern to me about that.

I have given the matter careful thought, and while I understand those concerns, they appear unrealistic. It would be extraordinary if we were in such a state of chaos that a Government—I am not sure which Government, or who would be the Ministers in government—decided to take that course of action in breach of our international obligations to our EU partners, because that is what that would involve. In truth, that would still involve getting an affirmative resolution of the House, hence the assurance that we needed from my hon. Friend the Minister, and this House would be most unlikely to give permission for such a chaotic outcome. I wanted to respond to what others, including individuals outside the House, had represented to me, but we should not lose sleep over that aspect of the matter. In truth, my amendment 7 was never aimed at exit day. It was aimed at the other powers that the Government might wish to start using before a withdrawal agreement had been approved.

I had an amendment 6, which was about multiple exit days, but that issue has been resolved, so the amendment can be safely forgotten about. I also had amendment 11, which dealt with whether retained EU law was to be treated as primary or secondary for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998. My hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench know very well that that is part and parcel of a wider issue that we have debated on many occasions. I have chucked the ball—delicately, I hope—into their court to see how they respond to some of the many anxieties expressed by Members on both sides of the House about how fundamental rights that are derived from EU law that I think most people now take for granted can be safeguarded properly. I look forward very much to hearing a little more about that on Report.

I want to bring my remarks to a close. I am personally delighted that the problem that I could see coming down the track has been so neatly averted by the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

George Freeman Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Last year, as Minister for Life Sciences, I voted for the EU referendum on the basis that I would be bound by the result. Despite watching over many years with a heaviness of heart the growing failure of the EU to create an entrepreneurial economy, on balance I felt that we were better off staying in to fight for a reformed, 21st-century EU. As Life Sciences Minister responsible for a £250 billion sector, I felt that I had to speak for its interests. So I campaigned, along with many colleagues, for remain, not in a bullying way but in an open way.

I actively offered my constituents a choice by inviting my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and my friend the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) to my constituency to put their side of the debate. We held the debate, and I lost it. Our constituents voted to leave the European Union. My constituents voted, and the country voted, in one of the biggest acts of democracy we have seen for centuries.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said, we are not delegates. As Edmund Burke said, we are not sent here to be slaves to our constituents. I believe that the one thing that parliamentarians should never give away is the sovereignty vested in us by the people we serve. The truth is that successive Parliaments in recent decades have done that, not least in the Maastricht and the Lisbon treaties, fuelling public anger and disillusionment and the sense of unaccountable political elites giving away powers that were never theirs in the first place. That is why I believe we were right to give the people their say and we are right—all of us—to recognise the importance of that vote and the anger that was expressed.

[Mr Baker]

Since my hon. Friend mentions our debate, I hope that he will not mind my saying that he fought the fight with great nobility and grace, and he was eloquent at all times. If only both sides of the campaign—I do mean both sides—had conducted themselves as he did, the referendum campaign would have been far happier.

[George Freeman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that gracious intervention. Having won sovereignty back for this House, we must use it. We must show that the House is worthy of that sovereignty and capable of acting in the interests of all the people we serve. Churchill said once:

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

In the referendum campaign, we all stood up and spoke passionately for our respective sides, but now is the time for us to do the other courageous thing and listen to the will of the British people.

We have to make Brexit work for the 48% as well as the 52%, for London as well as the north, for white-collar as well as blue-collar workers and for Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England. We need to deliver not a soft or a hard Brexit but a British Brexit, which allows us to respect our European neighbours, to be a good neighbour and, as the Prime Minister made clear in her recent speech, to be an active European ally and collaborator—outside the political institutions of the EU, but members of a European community of nations and neighbours.

In my view, proper democrats cannot and must not say, “Oh, the Brexit vote was illegitimate. Brexit voters were ignorant. They weren’t qualified.” How condescending! Do we say that when they vote Labour, or when they vote UKIP? No. We all of us accept such results, and so we should now. Although the referendum was, in my opinion, a low point in British political discourse—let us remember that it included the appalling murder of one of our colleagues by a deranged neo-Nazi—the core underlying mandate of the British people was crystal clear. To the extent that it was not crystal clear, it is our job as elected democrats in our debates in this House to bring to the vote the crystal clarity that it needs.

All we are now doing is giving the Prime Minister and her Government the authority to start the negotiation of the terms on which we will leave the European Union. In many ways, the real debate will come not this afternoon, but when we discuss the terms of the negotiation in the House during the next two years and, ultimately, the package that she brings back to us.

[Alex Salmond]

Scotland is an equal partner in this “United Kingdom of nations”, to quote the former Prime Minister, so how does it come about that a massive vote in Scotland to remain and a narrow vote in England to leave results in Scotland leaving on England’s terms?

[George Freeman]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point. One of the most interesting aspects of the Supreme Court judgment—the media have not picked it up—is that Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales were and are bound by the vote of this sovereign House, which SNP Members participated in, to give the British people such a decision.

[Alex Salmond]

rose—

[George Freeman]

The truth is that the real challenge now falls to our new Prime Minister, who stepped in—

[Alex Salmond]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I must protect the hon. Gentleman.

[George Freeman]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Our Prime Minister stepped in to lead a Government committed to delivering Brexit, but who would tackle the domestic policy challenges that fuelled much of the wider disillusionment that the vote also signified. It is my privilege to work with her team on that. She now faces an extraordinary political challenge: to deliver Brexit, to negotiate the most important deal for this country in 100 years; to negotiate new trade deals with countries around the world; and to continue the great and urgent task of domestic social and economic reform, such as tackling our structural deficit, shaping our old-fashioned public services and tackling the urgent challenges of social and economic exclusion.

The truth is that the Brexit negotiations ahead of us are perhaps the greatest test of British peacetime diplomacy for a century, and the burden that falls on our Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union is heavy indeed. To succeed, we will have to put aside many of the differences that divide this House, and instead work together to make sure that we get the best deal for the country we all serve. Our interests are not served by requesting that the negotiation be carried out on Twitter.

At a time when trust in politics has never been so low, we have an opportunity to restore public trust in mainstream politics not to score easy points, but to show that we are worthy of the sovereignty vested in us and in the name of which the Brexiteers have campaigned. Our Brexit deal must be an ambitious Brexit deal for Britain. It must be a Brexit that means we can once again control our own laws, strengthen our Union, protect workers’ rights and strike ambitious new trade deals around the world. [Interruption.] Yes, for Scotland, too. To do this, however, we will have to continue to be engaged with the world, and to cherish our British values. [Interruption.] As the Prime Minister made clear in her recent electrifying speech—I encourage the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), who is chuntering from a sedentary position, to read it—the work of bridging the gap between Europe and the United States will remain one of the key tasks of international relations for many decades to come.

I believe our Prime Minister has set out to do for markets and the west what the great Lady Thatcher did for the defence of the west. Last week, she showed that she was more than up for leading such a mission. It may not always be easy, but it is necessary for this country, which is not something that the right hon. Gentleman who was chuntering understands. I welcome the fact that she has made such an encouraging start with President Trump—he, too, has been elected—because although he campaigned for “America first”, the foreign policy signals are that for the Americans it is now a case of “Britain first”, and we should welcome that.

[Alex Salmond]

When the Prime Minister this week refused three times to condemn an obvious breach of not just this country’s values but any liberal democracy’s values, what part of great British values was she standing up for?

[George Freeman]

I think the people of this country, in the way they have rewarded our Prime Minister with a huge lead in the opinion polls, know exactly the answer to that question.

We need a Brexit that works for the UK, the EU and the USA, because the west is facing a major test. It is in all our interests to make it work. This is not just a cultural debate; it is a hard-headed economic negotiation. The truth is that our diplomatic, military and political authority in the west is based on our economic growth and economic success. That is why I am passionately excited about the future for this country as a source of science for global sustainable growth in food, medicine and energy: Britain as a crucible of a deregulated, innovation economy leading the world in the challenges of the 21st century.