Article 50
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Further to the question asked by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), when the Labour Government legislated for the Lisbon treaty, Parliament had 25 days, including 11 days in Committee of the whole House, to debate it. There are 66 days before 31 March. How many days is the Secretary of State planning to give us?
Mr Davis
I will say two things. First, was it not the Lisbon treaty on which Labour promised a referendum, which we never got? Selling a false bill of goods is not a very good example to Parliaments around the world. This is article 50. This is the triggering process only —nothing more than the triggering process. There will be vast quantities of legislation—much more than on the Lisbon treaty—between now and the conclusion.
The Government's Plan for Brexit
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Davis
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will make a bit more progress for a few moments and keep him in mind.
All this does not mean that parliamentary scrutiny is not very important—of course it is. I, of all people, would be last to argue that. That is why I have already given three oral statements to this House and answered more than 350 parliamentary questions. It is why Ministers from my Department and I have already appeared before Select Committees on 10 occasions—I will be appearing in front of the Brexit Committee in a week. It is why the Government announced a series of themed debates, with workers’ rights and transport already discussed, and another debate coming up before Christmas. There have also been more than 15 debates about this in the other House.
However, there is no doubt that the way in which we handle and disclose information is important to the negotiating process. Needless to say, I have given a great deal of thought to how we achieve accountability at the same time as preserving the national interest. That was why at the first parliamentary Committee hearing I appeared before—I think it was the House of Lords Select Committee—I volunteered an undertaking that British parliamentarians would be at least as well served, in terms of information, as the European Parliament. As I said to the Opposition spokesman, I have said on several other occasions that we will provide as much information as possible—subject, again, to that not undermining the national interest. This is a substantive undertaking, but it must be done in a way that will not compromise the negotiation.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The Secretary of State repeats that what he is doing is—he thinks—in the national interest, but he must have heard from industrialists, as Labour Members have, that the uncertainty and lack of clarity from Ministers means that people are putting back projects and not investing. That is why the growth rate is down and the public finances are in such a mess.
Mr Davis
We heard during the campaign about how the economy was going to collapse, but I seem to have noticed in the past few months that really it is doing very well indeed, thank you very much. This nay-saying—this talking down the country—is, frankly, the least desirable part of the Opposition’s behaviour.
Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)
The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) has made out that the essence of today’s debate is about whether the Government publish a plan and how it is scrutinised, and the shadow Secretary of State echoed that thought. I do not believe that is the debate we are having today; as was made clear in the response to me from the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), the former Leader of the Opposition, the debate we are actually having is congruent with the discussion going on in the Supreme Court, over the road. It is about a great constitutional issue: the old Leninist question of “who, whom?” The question is: should the Government of the UK, following a referendum, be able to conduct negotiations in the style and manner and with the intent that they decide, on behalf of the people of the UK, or should Parliament seek to constrain the negotiation, ultimately by passing a law constraining the activities of the Government in that negotiation? That is the issue we are facing.
I wish briefly to argue, in the time allotted, that if we think about it carefully, it is clear that it is impossible to conduct that negotiation successfully on the basis of a legal mandate given by Parliament. Why? It is because once a law is passed that determines negotiation, the negotiation as a whole, and in every particular and at every moment, is justiciable. We will end up with the Supreme Court and lower courts being called upon to decide, from moment to moment, in judicial review after judicial review, whether the Government have sufficiently transparently made clear every detail of the negotiation to satisfy the Court that the mandate of Parliament in the law is being observed; and whether they have fulfilled the terms of the mandate, once everything is transparent. Any Member of this House who believes this country will have an advantage in the outcome from such a process is severely misguided.
I voted to remain, and I still believe that would have been the right decision for this country. I believe we would be better off inside the customs union than out and better off inside the single market than out; I wanted to be free of the rest of the EU’s jurisprudence, but not of those things. I think we might have achieved that, but that world has passed; the referendum has occurred—we are leaving. If we are leaving, we have to negotiate an exit. The horror and the tragedy of the discussion we are having now is that, if it does lead to Parliament imposing those kinds of constraints on the Government, it will not be possible for the Government to do a trade deal with the remainder of the EU when we have left—by that, I mean left the single market and left the customs union, as we are bound to do by the logic of the situation—and it will not be possible for the Government to negotiate a trade deal to the advantage of our country because it will not necessarily be within the mandate, and that could leave us in the worst of all possible positions. So I urge Opposition Members to remove the cloak, cease to pretend that this is about transparency and plans, as we know perfectly well where the Government are going, admit that this is a constitutional argument and give up the attempt to control the negotiations line by line from Parliament.
Helen Goodman
When the right hon. Gentleman looks at the way the other European countries conduct their negotiations within the EU at the moment, he will surely acknowledge that, for example, the Chancellor of Germany goes to her Parliament and receives a negotiating mandate, and then goes to Brussels. It is that kind of process that we on the Labour Benches are looking for.
Sir Oliver Letwin
The hon. Lady is an old friend of mine, but she is totally misguided if she thinks that this is an analogous situation. This is the first time in history that a country has sought to remove itself from the EU. We are engaged in the most complicated game of multidimensional chess that any country has ever engaged in. To imagine that that can receive a legally binding negotiating mandate from Parliament, justiciable by the courts, is pure fantasy.
Angela Smith
I shall come on to the option that we should follow in the negotiations. As many Members have illustrated, we all have views on where we should be going. The National Farmers Union has modelled three scenarios for the outcome of the negotiations: a free trade agreement with the European Union; World Trade Organisation rules; and trade liberalisation.
The potential cost to farming of non-tariff barriers to access the EU and worldwide trade range from 5% as a result of regulatory divergence to 8%. If direct farm payments are reduced or taken away completely from farmers in those scenarios, there will be a hugely negative impact on farm incomes, ranging from a reduction of £24,000 per annum under the best deal—the free trade deal—to an impact of over £30,000 per annum on individual farm income under the trade liberalisation scenario. The EU spends £3.2 billion a year on support to farmers, which is just under 25% of what we pay the EU to be a member of the Union. A key question for the Commons is whether we continue direct farm payments to farmers at the existing 100% level. Do we reduce it, and do we look at the impact on farm trade and individual farmers? We need answers to those questions before we can sign off any Government position on what we do in Brussels in summer 2017.
The farming industry employs more than 80,000 seasonal workers a year. The NFU has called for a seasonal agricultural workers permit scheme. The Government refuse to commit to such a scheme, but without that input there is little hope for the horticultural sector. Furthermore, the food and drink manufacturing sector has a skills gap. By 2024, it will stand at 130,000. On top of that, one in 12 employers in the sector report an intention on the part of their employees to go back home.
The road haulage industry, which is a critical service for the food and farming sector, has a skills shortage of 45,000. Sixty thousand drivers in the UK are foreign, mostly from the EU. The veterinary sector is another vital service for the food and farming sector, and reports that over 50% of vets registered every year in the UK come from abroad, mostly the EU.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech about the importance of the farming sector. She will know that we have had representations from the National Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which have millions of members, all of whom are concerned about biodiversity, which is what farmers support in this country. Farmers cannot provide the environmental goods if their income makes farming uneconomic.
Angela Smith
Mr Speaker, I did not get the extra minute for the second intervention.
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr David Jones
My hon. Friend is entirely right. The regulation is not designed for the British system. We intend to oppose it, but sadly it will be carried by a qualified majority vote.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The OBR, the IMF, the Bank of England, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and the London School of Economics all say that Britain’s share of world exports will fall post-Brexit. Does that not show how empty the Government’s rhetoric is about us being a global leader in world trade?
Mr David Davis
The hon. Lady should be very wary about taking economic assumptions underpinning a forecast as a statement of what is going to happen. The outcome after the Brexit process is over will depend very much on the deal we strike. That will be a good deal and there will be an increase in the amount of world trade we take.
EU Customs Union
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to have a short debate on the UK’s membership of the customs union.
My constituents voted to leave the European Union, largely because of what they see as uncontrolled immigration, but also because of the slightly bossy tendency of some of the EU institutions, which I think can be taken as a rejection of the European Court of Justice. However, they did not foresee all the consequences of the vote, partly because a number of false promises were made—most notably that there would be £350 million extra every week for the NHS, and also that no jobs would be at risk.
In the circumstances, it is reasonable of the Prime Minister to work on the assumption that part of her mandate is to end the free movement of citizens from the EU to the UK. That, in itself, does not amount to a negotiating strategy. The problem is that we are hearing wildly different things from different members of the Government. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has just reassured Nissan and it is going ahead with significant inward investment. I welcome that. Meanwhile, the Foreign Secretary still seems to believe that it will be easy and straightforward to do free trade deals “very rapidly indeed”.
The Government continue to say that they will not provide a running commentary on the negotiations. I know they claim that that is because they want to maintain confidentiality, but it appears from the outside as if it is because they are finding it difficult to agree among themselves on what should be done.
What I find alarming is the Government’s refusal to answer parliamentary questions. I asked the Minister a written parliamentary question about the Government’s policy on the customs union. He gave a rather opaque answer. I can live with that, but I have also put down a large number of written questions that ask factual things, such as how much we export, what the value of it is and what would be covered by the rules of origin were we to leave the customs union. On those questions, I also received the answer, “We will not give a running commentary.” That is why I felt it necessary to have a debate and explore these issues in more detail. I am alarmed by this situation, because the risk is that decisions will be taken on the basis of rhetoric not facts and on the basis of ideology not analysis.
An intelligent negotiating strategy needs to meet the public’s expectations, to be based on a hard-headed assessment of the national interest and to be deliverable. With that in mind, the Treasury Committee visited Berlin and Rome in September to find out what some of our counterparts might think. I am sorry to say that Brexit is not at the top of the in-tray for the other EU member states. They all see it in the context of their domestic political worries. Angela Merkel is looking over her shoulder at Alternative für Deutschland; Hollande is worried about Le Pen; Matteo Renzi is worried about Movimento 5 Stelle. Probably only the Irish take Brexit as seriously as we do. Over and over again we heard the same word: precedent. There should be no reward for exiting the EU, and no precedents must be set.
I conclude from that that if controlling immigration is going to be part of the British position and we are to move to a more skills-based approach for managing migration, our EU partners are going to say that we cannot remain members of the single market. However, there has not been so much attention paid to our membership of the customs union, which I am beginning to think may be more important, especially if we want manufacturing industry to thrive in this country.
It is worth recalling the history. The customs unions was established in 1968. It is what we joined in 1973, and what the public affirmed with the referendum in 1975. It is what most people call the Common Market. Unlike high levels of immigration or the ECJ, it is rather popular with the British public.
The shadow Chancellor has rather pejoratively described the Government’s approach as a “bankers’ Brexit”. I know why he has done that. We must base what we are doing on some facts. I remind the House that we export more goods—some £285 billion-worth—than we do services, the figure for which is £226 billion. That is a ratio of 56:44. This is important. At the moment, we have a common external tariff, goods move freely within the EU and the Commission has competence for external trade negotiations. The customs union is not the same thing as the single market. Norway is in the single market but outside the customs union, whereas Turkey is in the customs union and outside the single market.
It is also worth recalling that the export of goods into the European Union comprises 48% of our exports. The EU is our biggest partner. Exports to Europe bring 3.3 million jobs. The next most significant partner is America, with 17% of our exports, and way down the numbers is China, our third biggest trading partner, with just 4%, or one 10th of the significance of our European exports. So what would happen if we were to leave the customs union?
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for calling this debate. She is precisely correct that this is what most of the debate in the House will be about. She said a little earlier that we joined the customs union when, effectively, we joined the European Union, as was reaffirmed in the referendum of 1975. Is that correct? If so, that sets the basis for what the Government have to argue, namely that in the referendum that we held this year we voted to leave the European Union and the directive is therefore to leave the customs union; we have to argue back from there. Will she clarify that point?
Helen Goodman
We joined the Common Market, which is the customs union, in 1973. Now we have voted to leave the European Union. People want to leave the EU, because of their concern about migration and perhaps about the ECJ. In my opinion, the move is not driven by concerns about the customs union, which in fact is very popular. That is what I am arguing.
Richard Fuller
We come from different points of view, I suspect, about the referendum—I supported our leaving the European Union—but there are very positive reasons for both sides regarding the customs union. We have to understand where we are coming from after the referendum result. The presumption from that result is that we will leave the customs union. It is therefore beholden on people who may want us to stay in the customs union to argue what strong reasons there are for staying in—and there are strong reasons.
Helen Goodman
Let me come on to give some of those strong reasons. If we were to leave, we would face tariffs ranging generally between 5% and 10% on our exports. Even more significantly, our exporters would have to comply with the rules of origin. I think this is the biggest problem. I have the last television manufacturer in Britain, Cello Electronics, in my constituency. It imports a lot of components from China, puts the televisions together and sells them into the European market. The OECD estimates that the cost of filling in all the forms and complying with the rules of origin would add 24% to the export costs of selling into the European market. That would wipe out firms such as Cello, which, as I say, is in my constituency.
In Norway, which is outside the customs union, we know that some exporters find the bureaucracy of the rules of origin so burdensome that they prefer to pay the tariffs. This is really what the Nissan problem was. Belonging to the customs union was the first thing the Japanese Government listed in their hopes for what our deal would be, but the Government cannot take a factory-by-factory approach. Let us look at some of the big industries that would be affected: the automotive industry employs 450,000 people; aerospace 110,000 people; pharmaceuticals, such as Glaxo in my constituency, 93,000 people. All those industries have the same complex integrated international supply chains and would be badly hit were we to leave the customs union.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate and making some very strong and powerful points. Does she agree with me that if we are outside the single market there will be a load of non-tariff barriers that would definitely hit those sectors, and so membership of the single market is just as important as the customs union?
Helen Goodman
We need to explore that and think about it in a little more detail.
A leaked document from the Treasury found that were we to leave the customs union, our GDP would fall by some 4.5%. Of course, I am not asking the Minister to comment on a leaked document, but it would be very nice if he could say how many jobs a fall of 4.5% of our GDP would translate into us losing. I think it would be hundreds of thousands.
It is true that staying in the customs union limits our capacity to do new trade deals on the goods it covers with third countries such as India and Australia. Some of the hard Brexiteers, such as the Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade, the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), seem to think that this is a good thing. He made a speech in Manchester in which he hailed the “post-geography trading world”. Well I have heard of the end of history, but I have never before heard of the end of geography. I think he is being wildly over-optimistic. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out to the Treasury Committee, world growth and growth in trade are both slowing. This is not a good background in which to initiate these deals. The Government’s export target of £1 billion is bumping along at half that level and there would be a time lag. We cannot start the negotiations at least until our relationship with Europe is clear. That is obviously going to take three or four years, so we need to have transitional arrangements.
Finally, there must be a big question mark over whether we can get deals with third countries that are so much better that they more than compensate for what we would lose if we left the customs union. The UK is one tenth of the EU market of 550 million people. The Americans have already told us we would be at the back of the queue. The Swiss have found, in negotiations with the Chinese, that the Chinese get access to the Swiss market seven years before it gets access to the Chinese market. Ministers are at sixes and sevens on this, with the Treasury and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy apparently on one side, and the Department for International Trade and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the other. Robert Peston has pointed out that the mere fact that the Department for International Trade exists makes it a fiduciary obligation for multinational manufacturers based in Britain to start thinking about moving investment and jobs to the rest of the European Union. I will not talk about the Irish dimension, because I have already taken interventions on it, but it does present a significant political problem.
What I am mainly saying to the Minister this evening is that millions of jobs depend on our staying in the customs union. I am sure that the Secretary of State for International Trade is delighted that his career is flourishing and that he is travelling around the world, meeting all sorts of interesting people and trying to do lots of deals, but those million manufacturing jobs matter more than his grandiloquent ideas. What we want from the Minister is some concrete evidence that decisions will be taken on a proper basis. My message is simple: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Mr Walker
I think it important to engage with arguments on both sides of this debate. The key thing is to secure the UK national interest, so before we take a decision, we will want to listen very carefully to the arguments for leaving the customs union and the arguments for staying in it.
I think we can all agree that the issue has numerous aspects. The hon. Lady speaks with considerable experience of complex economic issues, having been a Treasury fast-streamer serving on the Public Accounts Committee and the Treasury Committee, and a former Minister. She will appreciate that, as the Prime Minister said in her reply the other day, making a full assessment of the options of a customs union is more complex than it might seem when first described to the public.
First, it is important to understand exactly what a customs union is and is not. It is an arrangement that relates to trade in goods; it does not cover trade in services or free movement of capital or people. To facilitate trade, a customs union removes tariffs and customs controls on goods moving between its members. While services are not directly included— they are not subject to either tariffs or customs controls—they have become increasingly embedded in goods production, so a customs union could indirectly affect trade in services industries. For example, in parallel to exporting an aircraft engine, an engineering firm might also provide maintenance services; or in parallel to exporting cars, an automotive firm might provide financial services.
To function properly, a customs union must have a common external tariff, applied equally by all members of the union. That supports the free circulation of goods within the customs union, preventing trade diversion by ensuring that no one trading with the members of the union can be given preferential access to any individual members relative to the others. In the case of the European Union, in practice, we have chosen to make a reality of the common external tariff through the common commercial policy under which the European Commission negotiates on trade on the United Kingdom’s behalf, and in that way sets the common external tariff. In the case of members of the EU and the EU’s customs union, 80% of the tariffs that are collected by member states on imports from non-EU countries are paid into the EU budget, with member states retaining just the remaining 20% to cover collection costs. The UK collected £3.1 billion in tariffs on non-EU imports in the financial year 2015-16.
However, a customs union is only one of the many ways in which countries have sought to minimise the impact of customs procedures and support the free flow of goods. There are numerous examples around the world in which co-operation between customs authorities has helped to reduce the costs of customs processes at the border, short of a customs union. Even in the case of the European Union, the customs union is only part of an approach that also focuses on strengthening systems and processes on the ground. For example, the vast majority of customs declarations in the UK are submitted electronically and cleared rapidly, with only a small proportion experiencing delays—for example, when risk assessment indicates that compliance or enforcement checks are required at the border.
Norway has been involved in customs co-operation with Sweden and Finland, both of which are EU member states and are therefore in the EU customs union, as they have been since the 1960s. Norway has an agreement with the EU to mutually recognise each other’s schemes to impose less onerous checks on exporting firms with secure supply chains. It sits, as an observer, on some of the EU’s committees that discuss customs issues. Notwithstanding the issues raised by the hon. Lady, and although our Prime Minister has made it clear that we are seeking not an off-the-shelf solution but a UK solution, it is important to note the collaborative agreements that exist in other countries. Switzerland and the EU have an agreement that recognises the equivalence of security checks at their external borders, and waives the need to make pre-departure and pre-arrival declarations. If we look more widely, we see that the United States and Canada also co-operate closely on customs issues, including schemes to expedite customs procedures for firms with secure supply chains and collaborative arrangements for operations at the border.
Helen Goodman
I am listening with interest to what the Minister is saying, but according to my constituents, who do a great deal of exporting, exporting to Switzerland is a nightmare by comparison with exporting to the EU, because of all the bureaucracy. Does the Minister not agree that the UK is in a different position from Norway? Its major export is oil, and exporting oil is incredibly simple, but, as I said earlier, most of the goods that we export are manufactured goods, which have complex supply chains.
Mr Walker
That is a fair point. I shall say something about our engagement with some of those industries and the importance of supply chains later in my speech. It is worth noting, however, that many countries also have authorised economic operator schemes, which means that exporters with supply chains that are demonstrably secure are subject to fewer and less stringent checks. The EU has such arrangements with China, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and the United States, through which both sides recognise each other’s authorised economic operators for customs purposes.
Turkey, which the hon. Lady mentioned, is one country outside the EU that has a customs union arrangement with it. That arrangement covers most but not all goods. Raw agricultural produce, for instance, is excluded. The EU and Turkey have been preparing to update the terms of their current customs union arrangements, which were always meant to be transitional, given that Turkey has applied to be a full member of the EU. I could go on, as there is a multiplicity of examples, but the point is that any decision about membership or otherwise is complex, and must take account of the full spectrum of options.
During last week’s debate, the Prime Minister also said that the way in which one dealt with the customs union did not involve a binary choice. There are different aspects to a customs union, which is precisely why it is important to look at the detail, to carry out the hard analysis that the hon. Lady called for, and to get the answer right. We have made it clear that we will pursue what works for the unique circumstances of the United Kingdom, and we continue to analyse thoroughly what it might look like in order to ensure that we make the best choice for the UK. That includes the broad-based analysis of more than 50 sectors that my Department is undertaking in relation to the impact of the UK’s leaving the EU.
As with the broader UK-EU negotiations, we recognise the need for a smooth transition that minimises disruption to our trading relationships and seizes the opportunities that are presented. The issue of a customs union has also been part of the Government’s programme of stakeholder engagement. We have been discussing this matter with numerous companies, organisations and trade bodies, including the chemicals sector, car manufacturers, and the agriculture and food and drink sector. We want to ensure that their views are reflected in our approach. The Prime Minister has been very clear that the intention of the Government is to ensure a competitive market so that people are able to prosper here in the United Kingdom and add to our economic growth.
We are also aware of the specific circumstances faced by businesses in Northern Ireland, which I know the hon. Lady could have touched on if she had not taken the interventions. We had a common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland many years before either country was a member of the European Union. Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past. I underline the will and commitment of ourselves, the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to support the common travel area and to ensure that there are no hard borders. We must now work closely together to ensure that as the UK leaves the EU we find shared solutions to the challenges and maximise the opportunities for both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, which I expect will continue to be a close friend of the UK in years to come.
Helen Goodman
I am slightly nervous that the Minister might sit down before I ask him another question. He said his Department is looking at 50 sectors. My basic request tonight is that we should have more information and facts from the Department, so will he make a start by telling us which 50 sectors and how large they are, how much they export and how many people are employed in them?
Mr Walker
In the six minutes I have left, it would be a challenge to run through each of those 50 sectors, but we will certainly disclose that information in due course. It is important to emphasise this is a whole-Government effort. Our Department is engaging with those sectors and conducting the analysis and drawing it all together, but we are also working closely with colleagues at the Treasury, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and all the other relevant Departments to each sector of the economy, because it is important we get this right and there is a role for every part of Government in informing that process.
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Davis
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. When the Prime Minister is at the European Council tonight and tomorrow, she will reiterate what we have said many times already: we want an outcome that is successful for both the United Kingdom and the European Union. As my hon. Friend suggests, if the UK and the EU do not achieve an open, free and barrier-free trading relationship, it will be harmful to many European countries and harmful to European financial stability, and no one wants that.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Were we to leave the customs union, the businesses exporting 44% of our exports to the EU would face extra costs for compliance with the rules of origin, which the OECD estimates at 25%. Does the Secretary of State not agree that membership of the customs union is even more important than membership of the single market?
Mr Davis
As I said earlier, these matters are assessed very carefully, but perhaps the hon. Lady should look at various other countries around the European Union, although they are all smaller than us, so they are not really good models. There is Turkey, which is inside the customs union and outside the single market; there is Norway, which is inside the single market and outside the customs union—actually it manages to trade with Sweden very easily—and there is Switzerland, which is outside both the customs union and the single market. What we are looking for is the best balance to achieve the best outcome.
Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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John Redwood
Indeed. This is not a prediction, because I know that a lot of people have lots of good and bad reasons to want to delay and make this more complicated, but it would be quite possible to negotiate the trade issue very quickly.
We have two models available. My preferred model would be to carry on trading tariff free without new barriers, as we are at the moment. That is the most sensible model to adopt, and I think it makes even more sense for our partners, who are much more successful at selling to us than we are to them. I have not yet heard them say that they want to impose barriers. Then there is the WTO most-favoured-nation model, which would also be fine. If one wishes to have a successful, quick and strong negotiation, one should not want anything. We do not want anything from our former partners. We want them to get on and develop their political union in the way that they want, in which we have been impeding them, and we want to be free to run our own affairs in an orderly and friendly way.
We want to have even more trade with our European partners. We want more investment agreements, more research collaborations, more student exchanges and more of all the other good things we have. Those things are not at risk, and there will be an enormous amount of good will from a more united United Kingdom. [Interruption.] Opposition Members want to split us up by saying that everything has to go wrong. If they want us to negotiate successfully, they should show confidence and optimism—let us show that we can do this and be good friends with our European partners.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we have a mutual interest with other European countries in continuing research projects and university collaborations. However, those things are part of the EU budget, so if we are going to do them, he will have to get off his high horse about not making any contributions to the EU budget.
John Redwood
We will behave like all other independent countries of the EU and have lots of collaborations with them. We will have agreements on those collaborations as the need arises. The important thing is that we will have taken back control.
I urge the Labour party to understand that I and people like me are passionately in favour of parliamentary democracy. That is why we waged the long campaign that we had. I have every confidence that Parliament will rise to this occasion. Today is a good example of that. The Opposition had time and allotted it to this crucial subject. They could have tabled a motion about the position they would like us to strike in the negotiations, but they are not yet ready to do so. I understand that, but it was in their power to do so. They could have tabled a motion to try to veto an article 50 letter, had they wanted to, but they were very wise not to do so because many of their constituents would have seen it as an attempt to thwart the will of the people in the vote. There is nothing stopping this great Parliament doing those things.
I am pleased that the Secretary of State has already made two statements and given evidence to two Select Committee investigations. He was here in person today to answer the Opposition debate. We do not always get the courtesy of having the Secretary of State before us in an Opposition day debate. That augurs well for there being more scrutiny.
I am pleased that the main way we will leave the European Union is by repealing the European Communities Act 1972, because that means that the central process will be a long constitutional Bill—not long in length or wordage, I hope, but in terms of proceedings, as I am sure SNP Members will want to cavil over every “and” and comma, and they have every right to do so, up to a point. Parliament will consider that legislation and vote accordingly. That is exactly as it should be. It will be a great celebration of our parliamentary democracy, which the majority voted to strengthen, that we do it by parliamentary means.
The right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), the former leader of the Labour party, correctly said that all the European law will at that point become British law—that is the irony of it—but we will do that for the purposes of continuity. Thereafter, we in this House will be able to judge whether it is wise or necessary to repeal or amend any part of that legislation. If it would have a direct bearing on our trade with the European Union, it would not be a good idea to do that without knowing that the EU was happy or that it would not react unreasonably. For example, when selling into a market, one needs to meet the product requirements, and things like product standards will be part of that continuation of the legislation.
The only thing about the single market that is really worthwhile—it is mainly very bureaucratic, expensive and pretty anti-enterprise—is that it provides common product specifications and standards, so that if a washing machine is saleable in France, it is also saleable in Greece. The great news is that when we are out of the EU, that will still be true. It is an advantage for an American exporter into the EU, just as it is for a UK exporter into the EU. When we are in a similar position to America—a friendly independent country trading with the EU from the outside—we will get the full benefit of that.
Let us bring the country together. Let us show that we can be more prosperous and more successful. Let us show that our trade is not at risk. Let us be confident in our negotiation. Let us not use this place to make all manner of problems that will give those who want to wreck our negotiation good comfort, support or extra research. Let us show how everything we do can create more jobs, more trade and more investment.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak in favour of the motion on the parliamentary scrutiny of the UK leaving the EU, which was put down by my hon. and right hon. Friends. We all want Parliament to scrutinise the negotiating strategy before Ministers trigger article 50, but I am in favour of us having a vote on it as well.
Article 50 states that it should be triggered in line with our constitutional arrangements. Well, I think if anybody was asked to define Britain’s constitution, they would say that it is basically a parliamentary democracy. They would not say that it is a royal autocracy or that it is a bit like the Kingdom of Bhutan. Therefore, for the Government to choose to use the royal prerogative is to choose to do something that is arcane, undemocratic and secretive, and none of those is conducive to a good deal.
The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), who is sadly not in his place at the moment, was confident that the Government would have to come back because of the Standing Orders of the House. I hope that the Government will come back, but we see no sign of that at the moment from Ministers or their lawyers. They are still fighting a case to defend the royal prerogative. They are saying that compelling the Government to introduce legislation would be to trespass on Parliament. When I asked the Secretary of State about that on Monday, he gave a very interesting reply. He said:
“The main guidance I gave to the Attorney General was that a would-be vote in this House on article 50 could have two outcomes. It either lets it through or it stops it… It would be a refusal to implement the decision of the British people”.—[Official Report, 10 October 2016; Vol. 49, c. 615.]
The Secretary of State should go back to his original idea of producing a White Paper. As many hon. Members have said, people voted for Brexit, but they did not vote on how to Brexit. If the Secretary of State followed his initial idea of producing a White Paper, the Government could set out different options for Brexit—whether soft or hard, or something more complicated would probably be better—and the House could vote on which Brexit strategy it thought would be best. That is not a completely revolutionary new process; it is the process that we used when we voted on House of Lords reform in the last Parliament, and I commend it to Ministers. The leave campaigners voted to restore parliamentary sovereignty and take back control, and that is exactly what we should do.
I am extremely concerned about the problems with the customs union. I remind the House that the customs union was established in 1968. It is what we joined in 1973. It is what people voted in favour of last time we had a referendum in 1975. Although people clearly have reservations about immigration, European law and the European Court of Justice, most people are in favour of what they call the Common Market. I am very keen that one of the options that the Government keep on the table is that we remain within the customs union because, without it, we will see a huge burden on the 40% of our exports that go to the EU.
Next Steps in Leaving the European Union
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I gently implore the Secretary of State to face the House so that we can all benefit from his mellifluous tones. [Interruption.] Somebody chunters rather ungraciously from a sedentary position or otherwise, “You pays your money and you takes your choice,” but the right hon. Gentleman must be heard.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Last week, the Government were required to publish the submission they put into the court defending their reasons for using the royal prerogative. This is what it said:
“The relief sought…to compel the Secretary of State to introduce legislation into Parliament to give effect to the outcome of the referendum—is constitutionally impermissible. The Court would be trespassing on proceedings in Parliament.”
It is obviously nonsensical to say that to involve Parliament is trespassing on Parliament. Did the Secretary of State really give the instructions to the lawyers for this submission?
Mr Davis
I shall be very careful because one has to be careful when we are talking about court cases. The main guidance I gave to the Attorney-General was that a would-be vote in this House on article 50 could have two outcomes. It either lets it through or it stops it. If it stops it, what would be the outcome? It would be a refusal to implement the decision of the British people, creating as a result a constitutional problem to say the least. That was then interpreted by the lawyers as they saw fit.
Exiting the European Union
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman has always been a great defender of parliamentary democracy. Throughout the afternoon he has emphasised that the situation is complex and there are trade-offs to be made. That is why it is so incomprehensible to many of us that he does not want the House to have a vote before the path is chosen for how to trigger article 50. I wonder whether he is aware of the statement made by the former Foreign Secretary, Lord Hague, that it would be sensible
“to endorse the start of negotiations”
as
“a defeat for the terms of exit, after lengthy negotiations…could leave the UK in…limbo”.
Mr Davis
I always listen very carefully to my fellow Yorkshireman. Let me say to the hon. Lady that the reason for the question of article 50 not being put to a vote of the Commons is simply this: I am a great supporter of parliamentary democracy because it is our manifestation of democracy in most circumstances; in this unique circumstance we have 17.5 million direct votes that tell us what to do. I cannot imagine what would happen to the House in the event that it overturned 17.5 million votes. I do not want to bring the House into disrepute by doing that. I want to have the House make decisions that are effective and bite into the process. That is what will happen.