UK’s Withdrawal from the EU

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

I can confirm that we have taken it forward to the European Union, in that I have raised it with Monsieur Barnier. I will be discussing it again with him. He has raised some initial concerns, but we are making that case and discussing it with him. It is already accepted by the European Union in terms of the political declaration and the workstream that will flow from that.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State just told the House that he has put proposals to Michel Barnier. Can he therefore explain why Donald Tusk said yesterday that the EU27 are

“still waiting for concrete, realistic proposals from London on how to break #Brexit impasse”?

[Stephen Barclay]

One should always be slightly cautious about what is said on Twitter, and that applies even to someone as esteemed as President Tusk. I was simply updating the House on the discussions I have had with Michel Barnier, my opposite number in the European Commission, to follow up on what this House agreed, which was that we should explore that. We have engaged seriously with colleagues on it and raised it with the European Commission.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

What a mess. What a complete and utter mess our country is in. There are just 43 days to go before we leave the European Union and, as we currently do not have an agreement, we are staring down the barrel of leaving with no agreement at all. I urge the House to lift up its eyes from the Order Paper, the amendments, the whispered conversations, the scurrying of the Whips, and the scripted exchanges that we saw earlier, which I have to say reminded me at times of a badly written play in which some of the actors did not seem to know their lines, and actually look around at what we can see. We know that companies that export to Europe and companies that provide services to Europe are in a state of despair. Some of them are spending millions of pounds on preparing for the worst, including moving their operations across the channel. Official figures from the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency showed this week that 42 companies relocated to the Netherlands last year citing Brexit as the reason.

Other firms have no idea what to prepare for. Last week, I was on a train and the man opposite me leaned over and said, “Can I ask you a question?” I said, “Of course.” He runs a small firm that makes products, and he sends his fitters out across Europe to fit them for their suppliers. He told me that his largest customer had rung him up and said, “Can you promise me that if there is a no-deal Brexit, you will be able to continue to fulfil my orders?” He looked at me and said, “What am I meant to say to him, because I don’t know the answer?” I had to look at him and say, “Well, I don’t know the answer either.” I wonder whether the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), will be able to tell him what the answer is, because that man’s fear—we heard this from my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)—is that his big customers will say, “We’re not taking the risk anymore. We’re taking our business somewhere else.”

Look at the companies that manufacture in Britain. We have heard about Airbus, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover and, most recently, Ford. Look at those that export from Britain. We have spent much of this week debating the fact that the trade deals we were promised would be rolled over by now are not all going to be rolled over. The truth is that we are not ready and we are not prepared. Most Members know that no deal cannot possibly be allowed to happen, yet it remains—we heard it again from the Dispatch Box today—the official policy of Her Majesty’s Government that they will allow it to happen.

I was genuinely puzzled when the Secretary of State said that he respects the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) and the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) two weeks ago, and which was passed, but that his hands are tied by legislation. Well, I have a message for him: untie your hands and change that legislation.

It is no wonder that the rest of the world looks at this country with utter astonishment and amazement at what we are doing to our economy, our country and our future, and it should not need to be said in this House that our economy, the investment that goes into it and the jobs we hope our children will get depend entirely on the decisions that thousands of businesses make about their future. What are we offering them? The Prime Minister said this week, “Hold your nerve.” I am entitled to ask, hold our nerve for what?

It is now more than two weeks since the Brady amendment was passed, more than two weeks since the Malthouse compromise was seized upon like a thirsty man grabs at a drink in the desert, yet I fear it is a mirage. We all know that the search for alternative arrangements to keep an open border in Northern Ireland did not start two weeks ago; it has been going on for about two years. The best minds, the best negotiators and the best brains have searched, but they have not found. Those arrangements do not currently exist, a point made forcefully by the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in his evidence to the Exiting the European Union Committee yesterday, and it is why Donald Tusk said yesterday that he is still waiting for proposals from the Government.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

Further to the point my right hon. Friend is making, last year there was all this discussion of the so-called “max fac” option and the European Union rejected that option, which was based on technology that is now being put forward again.

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend is, of course, entirely right. Nothing I heard from the Prime Minister on Tuesday and nothing I heard from the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box today persuades me, or anyone else, that those alternative arrangements will miraculously appear in the 43 days that remain.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Just a slight nuance on the earlier debate. The European Union is not so rude as to say that it has rejected this, but it is saying, “If your fantasies don’t come through, let us have the security policy of a backstop. We don’t say your fantasies are wrong, but we are taking our insurance policy just in case.”

[Hilary Benn]

The backstop is, indeed, an insurance policy, and we cannot put a time limit on it, because it would not be an insurance policy if it is not there when it is needed. We cannot allow one side to withdraw unilaterally. The tragedy that the backstop illustrates is that we are spending all this time on something that is necessary because the Prime Minister created the problem in the first place when she casually announced that we are leaving the single market and the customs union, probably not thinking through the consequences that have brought her to this point.

We have these debates every two weeks, but we are spending barely any time focusing on the real problem. As the Father of the House pointed out in his wonderfully eloquent speech, we have no idea what Brexit actually, finally, means, because the Government have refused to make the choices that confront them and have failed genuinely to reach out across the House.

Nothing illustrates that more clearly than the example of a customs union. In her heart, the Prime Minister knows that, if we want to keep an open border in Northern Ireland and if we want to keep friction-free trade, we will have to remain in a customs union with the European Union, yet she cannot bring herself to confirm that fact, not because it would be economically damaging—it would be quite the opposite—but because it would be politically damaging to the party she leads.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

I suspect the Prime Minister knows that the advice from the Law Officers is that to create a hard border, which follows axiomatically from the policy wanted by my colleagues in the ERG, would be a breach of our international legal obligations under the Good Friday agreement. As we are a rule of law state, we do not do that sort of thing, which is why it is a complete fantasy to try to pursue it.

[Hilary Benn]

I can only bow in admiration to the clarity with which the right hon. and learned Gentleman makes that point.

We know that is where we will have to end up, and humouring those who refuse to recognise it is where we will end up, while the national interest is being threatened, is not what I regard as the leadership that we have a right to expect from any Government in this country.

If the Prime Minister were genuinely to reach out, even at this late stage, I would welcome it, but we are careering towards a cliff. She is at the wheel and the Cabinet are sitting on the back seat. At some point, they will have to decide to lean over and take the steering wheel off her. If that does not happen, a no-deal Brexit might come to pass.

We know that today is not the day when we will take that decision, but in two weeks’ time we will. Two weeks’ time will be decision day on whether Parliament is going to take for itself the means to prevent a no-deal exit from the European Union, so long as the Government continue to stand at the Dispatch Box and refuse to give the House the assurance it is entitled to receive, especially given the amendment passed two weeks ago.

I am one of the proud sponsors of the Bill, in its new and improved form, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and I will enthusiastically support it in the Division Lobby if the amendment is chosen. Whatever our different views about where we should go afterwards, I hope the one thing that will unite the House is that almost everyone—not everyone, but almost everyone—agrees that we cannot leave with no deal.

In most of my previous speeches I talked about where I would like to go, but the fundamental problem is that we have not debated what we want Brexit to look like. Future generations will look in puzzlement at the way in which the negotiations have been structured. One day I will see the Prime Minister stand at the Dispatch Box and say, “I am applying for an extension to article 50,” and at that moment the stranglehold of 29 March will be broken, the Members who have been humoured will discover that they were led a merry dance in their belief that we would, in fact, leave with no deal on 29 March and the question will then be asked: what do we use the extension for? At that moment, we will no longer be able to hide from the choices that need to be made, and I, for one, look forward to that happening.

[Several hon. Members rose—]