European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Geraint Davies and Gary Streeter

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 2nd sitting
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

To be clear, I said that the proposition was remain or public vote on the deal. The Labour party position essentially was that the oven-ready Brexit would be bad for Britain—it would make us more divided, weaker, poorer, more isolated and so on—and that we could put together a better Brexit that protected our jobs through trading alignment and our environment and workers’ rights through dynamic alignment of those conditions.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Gary Streeter)]

Order. This is very interesting, but the hon. Gentleman is not speaking to the amendments or the clause. His speech is more a Third Reading speech, for which there will be plenty of opportunity tomorrow. If he has a speech to make on the amendments, we look forward to hearing it.

[Geraint Davies]

I apologise for responding to the speech made on this subject by the right hon. Member for Wokingham, but I will not go on about that any more.

I want to focus on clause 38, on sovereignty, and new clause 28, on whether we should have a confirmatory referendum, which I was just talking about. I was making the argument, which I will stop making, Sir Gary, in support of the proposal in new clause 28, that there was a legitimate case for a confirmatory referendum on the grounds that most people voted for either remain or a second referendum and that the position of the Labour party was to have a second referendum.

In defining sovereignty, the hon. Member for Stone and others have said that having sovereignty means we can make all our own decisions here and that everything will be all right. I accept that that is an idea in the minds of many voters, and intuitively it sounds very sensible, but in practice is that really what would happen? I contend that this Brexit will reduce our sovereignty and that therefore clause 38 is misleading. At the moment, we have pooled sovereignty in the EU. We are one of 28 countries, but our vote is proportionate to our population. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that things are rammed through without our being consulted—that they just happen to us—but even in majority voting we have a veto, together with others, such as Germany, for example, which is the biggest player and is very worried that when we leave it will not be able to exercise, with us, certain restraints and constraints on the EU.

Ultimately, if we have a close trading relationship with the EU, to which after all 44% of our trade goes—from a Welsh point of view, more like 60%—we will need some level of equivalence, which will mean our having to accord with standards decided in a closed room without us being in that closed room. Surely, that is less sovereignty, not more. We will have to make the following decision: do we agree with something that has been decided without us rather than our being able to argue and block it, with Germany and others, or do we want to be out of the room deciding whether to accept the rules that are coming over—and if we do not accept them it might hinder our trade? That does not sound like sovereignty improvement to me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geraint Davies]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point about the chilling effect of that overhanging threat.

Let us be clear on the specifics. Lots of people talk about the impact of this on our health service and about the Americans arriving and taking our data and privatising the health service. But apart from that, let us think about the public health impact of these changes in relation to sugar. The NHS spends £12 billion a year on diabetes—

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Gary Streeter)]

Order. I understand that the hon. Gentleman is trying to link this to the overall concept of sovereignty, but he is now talking about future trade deals rather than about clause 38 of the Bill and sovereignty. I would just encourage him to come back to the clause.

[Geraint Davies]

I am grateful for your guidance.

I guess the point is that sovereignty is about our ability to make laws here without intimidation or interference, but that we could find ourselves outside the EU and no longer able, for example, to introduce a tax on sugar that would reduce the cost of obesity to the NHS. We could have a situation where we want to let people know that there are six teaspoonfuls of sugar in a Müller Light yoghurt and nine in a Coca-Cola, and we want to drive down sugar content in order to drive down diabetes and health costs. Instead, we could be fined because the projection of a manufacturer of a sugar-impregnated product was less than that. That is not sovereignty. If we cannot protect our environment, our public health and our trade because we will be under the cosh with these companies suing us through the arbitration panels, that is not sovereignty. This clause should therefore be struck out, because it is completely misleading.