Leaving the EU: No Deal

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I am not going to give way again for another few seconds.

To answer a point raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, we have brought forward legislation that takes account of different scenarios, including the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, the Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, and the Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Act 2018, and I am sure that a number of Members present today have sat diligently in Committees ensuring that the secondary legislation we require is well scrutinised. We are confident of the UK’s long-term prospects in all scenarios, and we will ensure that the public finances and the UK economy remain strong, and we have taken extensive steps to provide businesses and citizens with advice and guidance aimed at helping to mitigate the potential impacts of not having a deal.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister confirm or deny reports put out that the Army is on standby to slaughter thousands of lambs in the event of a no deal? We put that to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs at the Select Committee and he said he had no knowledge of this. I therefore wonder whether this is No. 10 putting out scare stories to scare us into this deal.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I think it might be the hon. Gentleman who is making things up.

The Government are also ensuring that staff have the correct training and skills to undertake this preparation effectively, and we are confident of the UK’s long-term prospects in all scenarios. More than 10,000 civil servants are working on Brexit with a further 5,000 in the pipeline, which will allow us to accelerate our preparation as necessary, and hopefully for a deal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

Not just now.

It is not what they were promised either in the Government’s information or by the leave campaign. It is not what they voted for, and I believe it is the absolute duty of this Parliament and of this Government to make sure it is not what they get. It would be an unpardonable dereliction of duty for the Government, or anyone else, deliberately to use the procedures of this House in such a way as to maximise the danger of the worst possible outcome, the least-favoured outcome, simply because it is the only conceivable way to deliver an outcome that the Prime Minister has decided she wants but which practically nobody else in this Parliament wants.

In the past few days, as was mentioned earlier, a number of Conservative MPs have said publicly that they are likely to resign the party Whip if it looks as though the Prime Minister is herding us towards a no-deal Brexit. I would not want to see anyone put in that position.

I have respect for a number of Conservative MPs—for most Conservative MPs, in fact—even though I disagree with them, and I do not think any of them will hand back their party card easily or with a light heart, but think about it. It would not need many more Tory MPs to do that before suddenly, even with the Democratic Unionist party, the Government no longer have a working majority. There is already a motion of no confidence in the Government on the Order Paper, and it would take only one signature on that motion, and a few more people in the Conservative party to decide to put the countries of this Union before narrow party advantage, and suddenly the entire Government, not just the Prime Minister, would find that their jaikets were on the shoogliest of shoogly nails. That might be what concentrates minds, which would be welcome, but what does it say about the state of British politics when hundreds of thousands of other people’s jobs can be sacrificed by the Cabinet for an ideologically driven hard Brexit but a threat to their own jobs suddenly makes them sit up and take notice?

Ultimately, whatever voting procedure the Government decide to use whenever, if ever, we get to that vote, Parliament will be faced with a choice between two final options, and no deal cannot be one of them. Think about what happens in, to take a random example, a Conservative party leadership election. I understand that quite a few Conservative Members had reason to check the rules recently. If there are more than two candidates, they go through a series of eliminations, with the least supported candidate dropping off at the end of each round and the election finishing with a run-off between the two most supported candidates.

If that process is good enough to pick a temporary, sometimes extremely temporary, leader of the Conservative party, why cannot we do it for the most important peacetime decision these islands have ever taken? If we did that, no deal would be off the table before we started, which would ease a lot of the concerns that the Government are now quite deliberately fuelling.

[Geraint Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman then confirm his support for my European Union (Revocation of Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, which I presented yesterday? The Bill would basically rule out no deal, and unless a deal is agreed in a public vote, we would stay in the EU.

[Peter Grant]

I think the hon. Gentleman knows the answer to that question, because I have co-sponsored his Bill, although if I had realised that that meant I was expected to be here to speak on his Bill on Burns Day next year, I might have thought other about it.

I do not think it is acceptable, and it will be forever held up as a mark of shame on this entire Parliament, that it is left to Opposition Back Benchers to try to use procedural methods to force the Government to allow Parliament to give the decision that Parliament wants to give, rather than trying to force Parliament to give a decision that we really do not want to give in preference to a decision that we really, really do not want to give. When it comes to a decision, by whatever process, it is not acceptable, it is anti-democratic and, in terms of sovereignty of the people of Scotland and the rights of the people of Northern Ireland, it is unconstitutional to force us into a situation where no deal is one of only two deals left on the table. No deal can be ruled out and should be ruled out. For all the parroting of this and other Ministers, it is not up to Parliament to take no deal off the table by accepting an unacceptable deal. It is up to the Government to take it off the table right now by saying that no matter what happens, they will not impose it on us and on everybody else.

When it comes to a final decision, the two options available to us have to be the ones most likely to be accepted by as many MPs as possible, even if they are not supported by as many MPs as possible. I will not support anything that takes us out of the EU, but I might be willing, reluctantly, to accept something that is less disastrous than what we are faced with just now. The final choice cannot be between the Prime Minister’s deal and no deal. The combined Parliament of our four nations and the citizens of our four nations must be given a choice, and that choice, if it is to be a fair choice, can only be between the Prime Minister’s Brexit and no Brexit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

What we are witnessing is the most expensive hoax in history. Some £2 billion is being wasted preparing for a no-deal situation that would have a catastrophic impact on our economy: medicine and food shortages; an economy 10% smaller; £6 billion in tariffs—£2.1 billion on vehicles alone, £1.6 billion on food, £1.1 billion for metals, and so it goes on. The million diabetics who depend on insulin will be put at risk. We have heard about radioisotopes. This cannot be a serious proposition from a serious Government. The idea that we should face this catastrophe unless we accept a botched deal that nobody wants is completely unreasonable.

Let me turn to this botched deal. People voted, quite reasonably, for more money, more jobs and more trade, and for control of migration and their laws. All that sounds quite reasonable. It would be reasonable to vote for it, and I would not knock anyone for doing so. The problem is that the people who did vote for those things are not getting any of them in this deal. It is therefore reasonable for them to reject it, and reasonable and proper for them to have the right to reject it in a public vote.

Some people say, “Oh well, they voted this way, and if we force them to have another vote, they will be terribly angry.” They will be much more angry when they lose their jobs and their livelihoods. Many people I speak to in Swansea say, “I voted leave, but I did not vote to leave my job.” Some 25,000 people in Swansea Bay rely on EU exports. They are critically worried about tariffs and constraints even within the proposed deal, because we will not be part of the single market.

In my 2017 election manifesto—my personal promises to Swansea—I pledged to do my utmost to ensure that we were in the single market in order to avoid those problems, and give the people the right to have the final say on whether they wanted the deal. My share of the vote went up by 50%, to 60%. It was the highest Labour share in history: higher than the one in 1945 and higher than the one in 1997, without there even being a Labour Government. It was a leave area, but people have changed their minds because they have seen the facts, as any rational person would. The irrationality is on the part of the Government who say, “That is what they thought two years ago before they knew the impacts, so we must force-feed them.” People who ordered a steak and got a bit of chewed-up bacon still have to eat it, which is completely ridiculous.

Under the Prime Minister’s deal—I am not talking about the catastrophic gun that the Government are holding to our heads, and I know that the Prime Minister has tried her best to do what she can—we will end up as a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker. There will not be less migration; it will merely be from further afield, and culturally different. There will not be more trade; there will be less trade, because we will not have the collective leverage of the EU to negotiate with China, with Donald Trump, or with any other large market. When it comes to all the bilateral trade deals, anyone in their right mind, whether from Uruguay or Chile or from South Korea, will say, “Hold on: we are negotiating with a single country rather than a collective. We want a better deal.” We will have worse terms and worse trade, less money and fewer jobs. People do not want that.

Some say, “People will be very angry if we have a people’s vote.” People will be absolutely enraged if they find that they are much poorer, with poorer jobs, because we forced through a botched deal—although obviously it is not the catastrophe that is now said to be the choice. That is why yesterday I presented a Bill proposing that we revoke article 50 if this place cannot agree on a deal that is then ratified by the public. That would enable us to stay where we are, in the status quo, in the EU, and that is what businesses want.

People may talk about parliamentary democracy, but parliamentary democracy involves a duty of care to our citizens. I have been saying, on behalf of Swansea, “We want a vote, and we want to stay in the single market at least, as well as the customs union.” My constituents have endorsed that. They have not said, “Oh no, this is terrible”, because they expect me to think about these things, day in day out, which I do.

No deal would be a disaster. It should be taken off the table. It is irresponsible, and a waste of £2 billion. We should give the people the final say, and then decide what is best. Ultimately, our children and our children’s children will make a judgment on what we have done. If what we have done sets us off on a road to ruin and isolation and to be inward looking, rather than being part of a collective that espouses the values of rights, democracy and the rule of law, shared prosperity and the creation of a better world—if we choose wrongly—they will never forgive us, so let us give the people the final say.