European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am surprised that there can be that level of divergence on what is a most important point. He makes the vital assertion, which I think is right, that the important amendments considered yesterday, which were outlined very carefully, relate to the powers in the Bill and how the Bill will operate. Of course they are consistent with Government policy, and there is absolutely no question but that their terms are entirely consistent with what the British Government want to achieve. It is important to note, however, that they relate to the powers in the Bill: a correcting power, the withdrawal agreement power, consequential powers and transitional powers.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Does the Solicitor General not accept that the answer he has just given to the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds), on the nature of the border between Dublin and Belfast, necessitates similar arrangements between Dublin and Holyhead if we are to sustain the Union between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain?

[The Solicitor General]

The issue of the border will apply to the length and breadth of our United Kingdom. I have no doubt about that. I think the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) made the proper point that we do not want a hard border in the Irish sea between one part of our kingdom and another. That is a different point, I think, from the one made by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams).

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Soubry]

The right hon. Lady represents an area of the country that I know quite well; I am from north Nottinghamshire—from Worksop—and I also represent the constituency of Broxtowe. It is often quite peculiarly unique, and perhaps a little bizarre, that those who complain most about immigration are in areas where there is actually very little of it. That is the point: it is about the fear of the stranger—the fear of the unknown—and we have a duty as Members of Parliament to make the positive case in our constituencies for immigration and to have these debates with our constituents.

It is true, and I agree, that in some parts of our country a large number of people have come in, but these are invariably Polish people, Latvians and Lithuanians who do the work that, in reality, our own constituents will not do. It is a myth that there is an army of people sitting at home desperately wanting to do jobs. The truth of the matter is that we have full employment, and we do control immigration. How do we control it? It is called the market. Overwhelmingly, people come here to work. When we do not have the jobs, they simply do not come.

Now, it is right, and I agree—this is a sad legacy of previous Labour Governments—that there has not been the investment in skills that this Government are now making, and they have a proud record on apprenticeships, by way of example. However, I say to the right hon. Lady that she must speak to the businesses in her constituency, and she must ask them, “Who are these people? Where have they come from? Why have you not employed locally?” I have done that with the businesses in my constituency, and some have told me that they have probably broken the law. They have gone out deliberately and absolutely clearly to recruit local people, and they have found that, with very few exceptions, they have been unable to fill the vacancies. They take grave exception to anybody who says that they undercut in their wages or do not offer people great opportunities. It is a myth, as I say, that there are armies of people wanting to work who cannot work because of immigration.

The huge danger of the argument being advanced by some Opposition Members, as the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) said, is that people play into a narrative that, instead of looking at other factors in life, turns to the stranger and—history tells us the danger of doing this—blames the foreigner, the unknown and the person with a different coloured skin or a different accent, when there are actually other reasons for the discomforts and the problems people have in their lives.

I say to Opposition Members that they should be proud of their fine tradition. What they should be doing is making the case for immigration and then saying this: “Suck it up!” No alternative has been advanced in this place other than the customs union and the single market. Let’s grab it—let’s do it and move on.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry). I rise to speak to Plaid Cymru’s amendments to Lords amendment 2, which would clarify that “a customs union” was the customs union. Plaid Cymru campaigned to remain, and we have been consistent in our support for remaining within the customs union and the single market and, for that matter, for looking at the EEA.

The Government and the Labour party are facing some pretty difficult problems, and that is because reality is intruding. Labour is split, as the Secretary of State said the other day, and I am sure we all marvelled yesterday at the bit of negotiation in the Chamber between the Solicitor General and the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). That shows me that both parties are intent on pursuing their own internal conversations as well as the matter in hand.

It is not quite one minute to midnight, but it is pretty close. Our European interlocutors are asking us to tell them what we want and they are still not getting an answer. I can say that for industry in Wales, for universities in Wales and for health in Wales, we certainly need an answer, and pretty sharply too. The question for us is this: what is happening in respect of divergence as time progresses? We are getting no real answers.

Last night, I was here late and I took a taxi home. On the way, I asked the taxi driver what he thought of yesterday’s proceedings. His answer, predictably, was, “Why haven’t we left yet? Just get on with it.” I then asked him what he would do about the Land Rover jobs and the problems with the Galileo programme, at which point he said, “You’re from Wales aren’t you? I went up Snowdon once.” That suggests to me that he has a promising career ahead of him as a Brexiteering MP evading the real questions that face us.

As I said in an earlier intervention, the arrangements for the north-south border in Ireland will be very instructive for the arrangements between the EU and the United Kingdom in general. We will see the adoption of certain north-south arrangements, which will inevitably mean that they are adopted in the rest of the UK. I think all Unionists would agree with me in that respect. I asked Pascal Lammy, when he gave evidence to the Brexit Committee, if he knew of any two countries with two customs regimes for different parts of their states. Of course, he said no. To me, that means the arrangements between Dublin and Belfast will be the same as the arrangements between Dublin and Holyhead, and for that matter between Dover and Boulogne. By the way, he was also asked about the effect of having no controls at all, which has been suggested by some Conservative Members. Quite reasonably, he said that abandoning all controls means we would have nothing to bargain with in trade negotiations.

We have heard of a cake Brexit, a red, white and blue Brexit, a hard Brexit, a Brexit for jobs and a green Brexit. My suggestion is for a Welsh cake Brexit, which would entail staying in the single market and the customs union. We have been consistently in favour of that, and it would suit our economy and the requirements we have for health, industry, universities and so on.

Today, the Labour party has an opportunity to defeat the Government. I think we would all love to see that. Instead, however, it seems to have decided to try to water down the Lords amendments and pave the way, eventually, for the Tories to steamroller through a hard Brexit. I do not think we will be supporting them in that.

[Richard Benyon]

This may sound breathtakingly naive to some Members, but I think there is an opportunity to reboot the debate on immigration. I think what concerned many of our constituents was the inability to control the numbers coming in. Now that they, rightly, believe there is an opportunity to have that control, it is up to us, on all sides of the House, to make the case for the reasoned and controlled immigration from which our economy and society benefits.

I rise to talk about environmental measures. In all the weighty subjects discussed today, some may say that is a trivial issue by comparison. I would say that it is not trivial at all: it is about the air we breathe, the rivers from which we get our drinking water and the kind of society we bequeath to future generations. The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), who is sadly not in her place, is a magnificent champion of the environment. She and I started on this issue from exactly the same point: we felt there was a lacuna, a vast hole or governance gap as some have called it, in the Bill.

In my few remarks on Second Reading, I talked about the importance of putting into British law the regulations and laws that have seen our beaches cleaned up and our rivers start to get to a stage where we can be proud of them, where they are achieving what they are supposed to as functioning ecosystems. We are protecting landscapes and doing something to reverse the disaster, the tragedy and the crisis of species decline. We need to replicate, in a bespoke British way, the kind of measures we have benefited from in recent years. The Lords had a pretty good pitch at it, but there were flaws in their amendment.