Future Relationship Between the UK and the EU

Lord Swire Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I will not give way.

Tomorrow I will be in Brussels to meet my counterpart, Michel Barnier, to discuss the details of the White Paper and to take stock of the negotiations. The UK will extend the arm of friendship in a spirit of optimism and good will, backed by an ambitious and innovative plan that respects the position, interests and concerns of the EU. I certainly hope that that ambition and good will will be reciprocated.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

I also welcome my right hon. Friend to his place. When he meets Mr Barnier for the first time tomorrow, will he ask him, as evidence of that good will as the pace of the negotiations starts to increase, whether he will look again at the exclusion of Britain from some parts of the Galileo project and also address why the Department for International Development is being excluded from some projects that it co-funds with the EU?

[Dominic Raab]

I will certainly consider all those areas not only in detail, but in terms of the strategic overview and the state of play of the negotiations as a whole. As I said, I hope that the ambition and good will reflected in the White Paper will be reciprocated.

Equally, it is the duty of any responsible Government to prepare for every eventuality, including the unlikely scenario that we reach March 2019 without agreeing a deal. It is essential that plans are in place to mitigate risks and ensure stability whatever the outcome of the negotiations. The Government have been working on nearly 300 no-deal plans for almost two years, and some of them are already in the public domain. Last month, we passed the Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018, which provides the legal basis for developing our own regulatory system in that vital area. We have also been taking other practical action to ensure that the infrastructure is in place. For example, we have recruited 300 extra border staff, and a further drive to create another 1,000 was launched earlier this year.

Many of our no deal preparations have so far been developed internally and through targeted engagement with relevant parties. However, more of the preparations will now become public, and I can tell the House that the Government will release a series of technical notices over August and September to set out what UK businesses and citizens will need to do in the event of a no-deal scenario, thereby making the public more aware of our preparations. That due diligence is designed to provide reassurance. In reality, such planning cannot properly be done without some public-facing engagement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I would expect everyone in Scotland to respect the result of the Scottish general election in 2016, which returned a majority of MSPs who supported independence and a Government with a mandate that said that if Westminster did to Scotland exactly as it is doing now, it would be grounds to give the people of Scotland a chance to control their own fate.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We have very little time for this important debate, and I suspect that at any stage you might limit our speeches, yet the debate seems to be turning into an internal, navel-gazing exercise by the SNP about what it has and has not achieved at Holyrood. Can we get back to the subject of the debate, which is the future relationship between the UK and the EU?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) is setting out the context of his remarks. What he says is, of course, not a matter for me, but if he exceeds the parameters of the debate, I will stop him and insist that he stay within them. At the moment, I think that he is erring a little but will soon come back to the main purpose of the debate. I am also certain that he, appreciating that a lot of people wish to speak and that his speech is not time limited, will not take an awful lot longer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend makes a wise and sensible point.

I have just set out the first option. The alternative option, I believe, is no deal, and I fear it is as simple as that. If there is no deal, I am sure we will survive and all will be fine in 10 years’ time, but it will not be fine at the outset. No deal—at least at first—will threaten our levels of growth and risk the living standards and prospects of those we are sent here to represent. It risks endangering the opportunities we want to see for our constituents, not least the younger ones leaving education and entering the world of work. And it will be this Administration who will be blamed: whether people voted leave or remain, the Conservative party owns this process and will be held to account for no deal. In any event, the Government need now to increase massively their planning for this eventuality and, in my submission, to report to Parliament in detail on it when we return in the autumn.

I have one final point to make. There are those who, with great eloquence, advance the case for a second referendum, but I have come to the conclusion that while it is just possible that Parliament might wish to seek public endorsement of the deal itself, it is most unlikely. That is because if we held another referendum with a different result, why not have the best of three? We see ourselves as a serious country, we have settled the matter in a significant referendum, and for better or worse we are leaving.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

Could not my right hon. Friend cite as an example what happened over the Lisbon treaty and the Republic of Ireland, when its voters were invited to have a second referendum, but not until the EU had made it worth their while to vote in a different way? Does my right hon. Friend fear that that could happen here if we had a second referendum, and be very divisive?

[Mr Mitchell]

For the reasons I have set out, I think another referendum would be profoundly divisive, and actually it might not advance agreement in our country and bring people back together again.

The Government must now use the summer to advance the case that they all agreed at Chequers and move towards some specific agreement with the EU. It will then be for the Government to propose, but for this House to dispose.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

We can all quibble about how this whole process has been handled, from the perhaps premature triggering of article 50 through to the backstop arrangements and how much we will pay the EU. Indeed, some of us have continuing concerns about the continuing reach of the European Court of Justice—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. My apologies, I should have formally announced the five-minute limit.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

We are where we are, and this White Paper is the first time, in all fairness, that those with whom we seek to negotiate will have some idea of what we seek to negotiate. That is important in itself. We need to learn the art of compromise. We did not get a clear indication one way or the other either in this House or in the country, and we should now compromise and do what is it the best interests of the British people. It seems to me that this is the best we have so far.

The most important thing to me is business certainty. This country has had an extraordinary record of inward investment, and that is a climate that we have unfortunately begun to damage through all these deliberations over where we are now heading. We have heard perhaps too much from the big businesses and multinationals, all of whom employ huge organisations or have people to represent them, such as the CBI. We heard very little from small businesses. Those are the businesses of our constituents. This is often forgotten, but there are only 2,000 plcs in this country; 0.3% of UK business, employing 2.6 million people and providing 8% of the workforce. There are 4.8 million family-run businesses in this country, and they make up 87% of all UK private sector businesses —5% are manufacturing firms, and 19% are construction firms. They employ 12.2 million people, 38% of the 32.2 million UK workers. That is 46.5 % of UK private sector employment in these smaller, often family-run companies. They generated £149 billion in tax in 2016. These are the companies that we seek to protect. These are the companies that need to grow. These are the companies we need to enshrine in a framework with the EU that ensures they can continue to prosper. They are the lifeline of the economy and the lifeblood of our constituencies.

I shall end soon, Mr Speaker, but let me just say that those who seek a second referendum basically want to introduce a new range of questions and to overturn what the British people decided the first time. We saw second referendums in Denmark on Maastricht and in Ireland on the Nice treaty. In 2008, the first time that Ireland was invited to reflect on the Lisbon treaty, 53.4 % rejected it, versus 46.6%. Lo and behold, a year later, after negotiations with the EU, the Irish people were invited to vote again and voted in favour. You know what? They were told at the time that they did not understand the question. They were told that it was too complicated for the people—the same accusations that people make in a very condescending way against those people who voted to leave. I voted to remain, but the difference is that I abide by the wishes of the British people—I do not question them, as the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) did—and that is what the rest of the House should now do.