European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Debate between Hilary Benn and Anna Soubry

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 4th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I respectfully disagree with the hon. Gentleman, because just as no deal is unacceptable, so revocation—which is basically saying, “Let’s cancel the whole result of the referendum”—is not acceptable either. I have expressed previously in the House my view about how we should resolve this matter by going back to the people. Other Members have different views, but that is not the issue today.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (IGC)]

If I may say so, I am particularly grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the way in which he chairs the Select Committee and takes vital evidence. Is that not really the point, over and above the Bill? That is precisely the sort of work that should be done. Questions should be asked of Ministers. This place should be making sure that we are ready for no deal, yet we are being closed down next week when we should be sitting and asking questions. The right hon. Gentleman’s Committee, and others, should be able to do their valuable work.

[Hilary Benn]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. One consequence of Prorogation is that our Select Committees cannot meet. We cannot scrutinise the Government and hold them to account. That is what we are missing.

Business of the House

Debate between Hilary Benn and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I am on record as saying that I do not have a problem with the withdrawal agreement, but I am also on record as having voted against the Government’s attempt last week to separate the withdrawal agreement from the political declaration, because they come as one. I cite, as the authority for that argument, the Prime Minister.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Ind)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this was always a three-part process? Big progress has been made. Is it his understanding that, now we have begun to conclude the procedure, at least one composite, and arguably two, is now coming forward? There is every chance that we really will be able to settle on something that would reach agreement across the House.

[Hilary Benn]

I hope very much that that is indeed the case. This has been a new approach for the House. Let us be frank, there was quite a lot of scepticism, first time around, about whether we would get anywhere. I think we have made progress, notwithstanding the fact that none of the motions was able to get a majority. That should hardly be a cause for criticism, since the proposition the Government put to the House, having worked on it for over two years, lost, in sequence, by 230, 149 and 58 votes. I think the House of Commons is slightly nearer to finding a way forward than the Government have managed so far, but that is not an argument for not trying again.

Article 50 Extension

Debate between Hilary Benn and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I think that—not quite in fairness to the Prime Minister—her purpose and her method has been obvious for a long time. To Opposition Members, it has been, “My deal or no deal.” In recent months, there has been a variation for others that she hopes to persuade to get on board with her proposal, which has been, “My deal, no deal, delay or no Brexit.” Ultimately, it falls to us as Members of the House of Commons to determine what happens and, courtesy of the important Wightman judgment, if the worst came to the worst next Friday, revocation is the one other option that we have, because it does not require the approval of the other 27 EU member states. I really hope that we do not get to that point, and I cannot see how it can be in the interests of the European Union to force us out with no deal, because it will get all the blame for all the consequences that would flow from that.

After we have been through the process that I described in answer to the intervention by the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), I urge the Government to listen to what Parliament says. It is no good inviting us to say what we are for if the Government say, “We are not prepared to go in that direction. We are not prepared to change.” If we are going to move, the Government will have to move along with everybody else, but the past two and three quarter years have shown that the Government have been unwilling to move one inch. The Government should then come back with a revised plan, because that is their responsibility. We do not want to seize control of the process for the sake of it, but if the Government are not acting, Parliament will have to act in their stead. The Government should bring a plan back, having listened to what the House said, so that we can debate, amend and vote on it.

[Anna Soubry]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share the frustration of many of us when more hon. Members voted against no deal—the original Spelman amendment—than voted for the Brady amendment? However, the Prime Minister completely ignored the vote that rejected no deal and, to put it in crude terms, kept banging on about the benefits of Brady.

[Hilary Benn]

The right hon. Lady makes a powerful point. There is a certain selectiveness in the Government’s reflection on the decisions that we have made. The public expect us to get on and do our job. If we can agree a deal or if we remain deadlocked, I look forward to the moment when we get the chance to vote in favour of the proposal for a confirmatory referendum proposed by my hon. Friends the Members for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Hove (Peter Kyle), so that the British people can make the final decision.

In conclusion, if it is democratic, as the Government argue, to come back not once but twice and—who knows?—maybe three times to ask us to change our minds on the Government’s deal, why is it undemocratic to ask the British people whether they, on reflection, would like to change theirs?

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Hilary Benn and Anna Soubry

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Next Tuesday will be the House’s opportunity to have its say, and I rise to move amendment (c), which stands in my name and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends and colleagues.

I want to begin by acknowledging the effort that Ministers, including the Prime Minister, and civil servants have put into trying to negotiate a deal. The fact that so many of us object to what has been brought back reflects not on that effort, but on the decisions that the Government have made. First, as we have heard, the Government embarked on the negotiations with the cries of those who argued for Brexit ringing in their ears. We need to remember the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett). We were told that

“we will hold all the cards”;

that this

“will be one of the easiest trade deals in history”;

that

“getting out the EU can be quick and easy”;

that

“within two years...we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU”.

How slowly the truth has been revealed, and how painful a process it has been.

Secondly, while the referendum result made it clear that we would leave the institutions, it did not determine the future of our economic relationship. Thirdly, I believe that history will record the Prime Minister’s red lines to have been an absolutely catastrophic mistake, because they created the problem of the border in Northern Ireland and removed the Government’s room for manoeuvre. They boxed the Prime Minister in. These illusions and decisions resulted in the plague of disagreement that affected the Cabinet and led to so many ministerial resignations, including the loss of not one but two Brexit Secretaries. Goodness me! They exited the Department before we even exited the EU.

The Government spent two years trying to agree what to ask for, and the result was the contortion that was the Chequers proposal—an attempt to keep the border open and save friction-free trade. The problem was it was rejected by the EU. The Prime Minister spoke about home truths. Now is the time for some honesty. If we wish to maintain an open border in Northern Ireland, we will have to stay in a customs union and observe most, if not all, of the rules of the single market, but not a single Minister is prepared to acknowledge that truth.

As was demonstrated by the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) in his contribution, those who argued for Brexit have been exposed as having absolutely no plan for it at all. A Canada deal would fail to solve the Northern Ireland problem and would not give us friction-free trade, and as to the suggestion that we should leave the EU on WTO terms—no deal—I will turn to that in a moment.

The problem with the deal is the political declaration. We were assured that it would be substantive and detailed. It is not. It is merely words and aspirations that have no legal force. We have no idea where we are going, no idea where we will end up, no clarity and no certainty, and for business and future investment, which hate uncertainty, what kind of a deal is that?

The Prime Minister was questioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, about security. She was asked why there was no reference to ECRIS or SIS II in the deal. In 2016, the police in Britain made 100,000 requests to ECRIS. In 2017, we made 500,000 queries to SIS II. That tells us how important those two sources of information are to the protection of our security, but neither is mentioned in the political declaration.

What about services, foreign policy co-ordination, policing and information sharing, taking part in EU agencies, fisheries, data, recognition of professional qualifications, broadcasting rights, intellectual property, public procurement, consumer safety, aviation, freight, energy, medicines, scientific co-operation, and lots of other things? What is the answer on all those? “We do not know.” “We cannot be sure.” “It is yet to be sorted out.” The truth is that that will not do.

The Treasury figures published last week, showing the reduction in GDP that would result from a no deal compared with what would otherwise happen, are sobering and speak for themselves. Those who try to wave all that away by saying, “It would not be the end of the world”, or “There would be some disruption initially”, simply fail to do justice to the economic consequences of taking such a highly damaging step. They pay no heed to the fears and concerns of businesses that know it would be a disaster, and they do not respect the importance of the Good Friday agreement and the open border in Northern Ireland.

[Anna Soubry]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the use of the slogan “No deal is better than a bad deal” was most unfortunate, given that no deal is in fact the very worst thing that could happen to our country? Was that not verging on the irresponsible?

[Hilary Benn]

I completely agree with the right hon. Lady. That is a nonsensical argument that the Government have advanced for the last two years. Ministers know that we cannot leave with no deal: they know that we are not ready. I do not think that any responsible Government would allow this country to leave the EU with no deal, but they are unwilling to say that, because no deal must be kept alive as the bogeyman to frighten the House of Commons into voting for the Prime Minister’s deal.

Government’s EU Exit Analysis

Debate between Hilary Benn and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

Indeed, that is the case. Ministers have made those arguments and, of course, when the growth is better than that in any other countries, they would. However, what the analysis appears to show cannot be avoided: in all the options that it looked at, the country would be less well off than we would otherwise be.

We are told that the analysis is preliminary. Nineteen months after the referendum, how on earth can it still be preliminary—really? We are told that the people who are meant to be in charge had not seen it until two nights ago, when it is about to be shown in a locked room to members of the Cabinet. We are told, as has been said, that it does not include modelling of the Government’s preferred option. Why on earth not? The answer is a simple one: the Government do not know what their preferred option consists of. Therefore, they cannot model it.

Apart from anything else, the Government said that they really hoped with the Florence speech last October to get the European Council to move on to phase 2 of the negotiations, but we clearly were not ready then, because we now know that they had not done the modelling, and we are still not ready now, in view of what we have been told. As any teacher would understand, there are only so many times that the family dog’s eating habits can be offered as an excuse for not producing homework.

Being told graciously, as we all were yesterday, “We will give it to you eventually, when the deal has been done,” was not on. I very much welcome—I say this to the Minister in all sincerity—the fact that overnight Ministers have had a rethink and will accept the resolution. I say on behalf of the Exiting the European Union Committee—because we are buying some more lever arch files—that we will handle the material when it is given to us in the same, I hope, professional way that we handled the last lot of information, in line with the commitments I gave to the Secretary of State.

This shambles—I use the word deliberately—is a symptom of a fundamental problem that the country faces. First, the Government took decisions early on, such as leaving the customs union, leaving the single market, having nothing to do with the European Court of Justice and no free movement, without having made any assessment of what impact that would have on the British economy—none. The decisions were taken for ideological reasons, without looking at any evidence.

[Anna Soubry]

May I take the right hon. Gentleman one step back? Does he now share the view of many right hon. and hon. Members on the Government side that the other mistake was to trigger article 50 too early as well, and that has not helped us in our negotiations either?

[Hilary Benn]

In retrospect, there is force in the right hon. Lady’s argument, but since the Government chose the date on which to trigger it, we would have expected them to plan how they would be in a position to be able to negotiate what was required.

The second thing that the Government have done is to demonstrate their complete inability thus far to set out what they would like in phase 2 negotiations—that deep and special partnership. Why? It is an open secret that the Cabinet is in disagreement about the right way forward—that is not just among 35 Government Back Benchers, but inside the Cabinet. Every day we open the newspapers to find the symptoms of that inability to reach agreement spread all over the pages. Heaven knows what the people we are supposed to be negotiating with make of all this. As a result, neither this House nor the 27 other member states are any the wiser about what we or they will be asked to consider when the Government finally reaches a decision.

What is the task now? The Government need to tell us what they will be seeking. Much more importantly, they need to indicate what trade-offs they are prepared to make to achieve the things they say they want, because the choices have consequences that cannot be avoided. It is clear that the Government face, apparently with equanimity, the prospect of going into a negotiation from which, whatever they achieve, we will come away with less than we currently enjoy. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) absolutely hit the nail on the head when she said that if there was any evidence to the contrary, boy, would we have read about it already.

The Government need to face up to the consequences of their own red lines for the border in Northern Ireland. I reinforce the point that has been made, including by my hon. Friend, because the Select Committee was in Dublin last week, and we went to look at the border in December. It is not just a fudge. We could describe it as an attempt at alchemy, because the Government are hoping that they can turn the base metal of full alignment into the gold of an open border, when nobody knows how that extraordinary achievement can be brought about, given the utter contradiction between the two positions that they have set out.

The Government also continue to insist—I hope at some point they will stop, because it does not add to their credibility—that between now and the end of October this year, we can negotiate and reach agreement on all these things: trade in goods and services; security and foreign policy co-operation; policing; information sharing to fight terrorism; the regulation of medicines, aircraft and food safety; the transfer of data; the mutual recognition of qualifications; and our future role in the 30 trade agreements that the EU has negotiated on our behalf—and everything else—the Minister sitting there knows better anyone what a long list it is—and that we are going to get a final agreement by October, and by the way, even if things go well, the negotiations will not even start until March! That is why we do not know—the right hon. Member for Broxtowe was right—what will be on offer by the time we get to the end of the article 50 negotiations.

I conclude with the issue that the House is going to have to confront—and we had better start thinking now about how we are going to deal with it, because the House is going to have the final say: we are going to vote on the draft agreement. Before it does so, however, the House needs to make it clear that we will expect to know what our future relationship, when it comes to trade in goods and services, is going to be. The vague offer, come October, of a possible post-dated cheque for an unspecified agreement simply will not do. Ministers should not rely—I say this with all the force I can offer—on the House of Commons just accepting whatever they come up with, on the grounds that the alternative is no deal at all; it is not the only alternative, and if Ministers do not start exploring those alternatives pretty quickly and doing the analysis to support what the implications of those alternatives will be, they may well find that Parliament ultimately decides it will have to do it for them.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Hilary Benn and Anna Soubry

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the existing Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments could be that very body to do this exact work of triaging and sifting?

[Hilary Benn]

That would be one possibility. I hope that the Government will listen to all these suggestions and come forward with a proposal. I welcome what the Secretary of State said in response to my point about the relationship between Parliament voting on the withdrawal agreement and the exercise of the powers under clause 9. He was kind enough to say it was a logical point, so will he reflect on putting it in the Bill?

On how EU principles will be incorporated into our law and interpreted, I agree absolutely with the point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) about the charter of fundamental rights: it needs to be brought across into our law not least because, as we have heard, the Secretary of State relied on it in the case that he brought. The same argument applies to the environmental principles that were set out in the Lisbon treaty. If Members look at the explanatory memorandum, they will see that it has an illustrative list of directly effective rights that derive from EU treaties that the Government say they intend to bring across under clause 4. However, it does not include the provisions of article 191 of the Lisbon treaty, which cover environmental principles and protection, and that will need to be remedied.

Finally, I want to turn to the state of the negotiations, which will have a huge impact on the way in which the Bill is used. The Secretary of State told Andrew Marr last Sunday that this is

“the most complex negotiation probably ever, but certainly in modern times.”

He is of course right, which raises the question: why do ministers, I am sorry to say, still pretend that a comprehensive relationship can now be negotiated in the 10 and a half months that now remain? Here we are, 15 months after the referendum and six months on from the triggering of article 50, and, as we know from the Secretary of State’s statement on Tuesday, the Government have not yet sorted out the money, citizens’ rights or Northern Ireland.

Michel Barnier has been absolutely clear that the negotiations must be completed in 10 and a bit months’ time, so that everyone involved can look at the deal. We have to take a view, as do other bodies such as the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. The Government must now have realised that it was never going to be possible to negotiate a special bespoke deal that will cover all the issues that need to be addressed. Given that there will inevitably be many outstanding issues come the end of the talks in October 2018, and given that leaving without a deal would mean falling off a cliff edge, with all the disastrous consequences for the British economy, surely it is now plain that we must have transitional arrangements and that they will have to involve staying in the customs union and the single market for a period if we want to avoid the kind of disruption that businesses have repeatedly warned the Government about.

I realise that this self-evident truth will come as a shock and a bitter disappointment to some people. I do not know how Ministers will break it to them—presumably, gently bit by bit—but it will have to happen because only by doing this will we as a nation have the chance and the time to negotiate a comprehensive free trade and market access agreement that our businesses want and on which our economic future depends.