European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

That is right. That Financial Times analysis was worth sharing and should be shared, but we should not rely on journalism alone to do the job. We have a professional civil service; let us not gag it or try to lock it under the stairs somewhere. We should let that expertise come out so that we can all see and hear it.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Leslie]

Members are enjoying new clause 21 so much! I thought it was a simple one.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I only want to help the hon. Gentleman. Does he think it would have been a lot easier had the Exiting the European Union Committee asked the Secretary of State for the impact opinions that he may well have had?

[Mr Leslie]

Again, when is an assessment an opinion? In some ways, it diminishes and slightly denigrates the professionalism of our civil service to suggest that its output is merely conjecture or opinion. There are some things in this world that are facts, from which we can draw conclusions and which any rational observer would not really question.

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[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

rose—

[Mr Grieve]

I think that I am about to take up much more time than I wanted to. I give way to the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon).

[Mr Grieve]

The hon. Lady is right. [Interruption.] Next to me, from a sedentary position, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex is saying, “It’ll only be used for technical matters.” Indeed—let us be clear about this—I strongly suspect that that is the intention, but this is a very extensive power and, as it is worded, it goes way beyond technical amendments. As we are in Committee, it seems perfectly proper for me, as a Back-Bench Member of Parliament—it does not matter which side of the Chamber I am sitting on—to ask my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench to explain to the Committee how the power will be used. I gently say to my hon. Friends that the problem with this debate is that the heat that starts to come off very quickly goes into issues of principle about what has been going on over the past 50 years. Could we just gently come back to focus on the issue at hand?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

rose—

[Mr Grieve]

As much as I would like to give way to my right hon. Friend, I am actually now going to sit down.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Just for a second.

[Mr Grieve]

All right, I will give way.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I want to take up my right hon. and learned Friend on one small point. After agreeing with the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and justifying the past 40 years by saying that decisions were agreed by Ministers sitting together to make law, he knocked down his own argument as to why he cannot support what Ministers are doing because, of course, they would use this power as Ministers who have been elected to implement change and make law. My right hon. and learned Friend cannot have it both ways. Either he thinks that the last 40 years were wrong, which is why one defends the idea of change, as he did originally; or he thinks that the last 40 years were fine, in which case there is no attack on this particular aspect of the Bill.

[Mr Grieve]

I am afraid that I disagree totally with my right hon. Friend. In the last 40 years, we decided to pool sovereignty as a matter of national interest and necessity. This is a totally different issue; it is about our domestic law. When it comes to matters of domestic law, this House does not have the necessary constraint, which is the very reason why I have asked these questions. I am quite confident that my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench will be able to provide some cogent answers to the points I have raised.

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[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Gentleman is a good example of those who see conspiracy in any corner. I note the article he wrote in The Guardian on 8 October under the title “It’s a sad truth: on Brexit we just can’t trust the Treasury”. He went on to say:

“There is no intrinsic reason why Brexit should be difficult or damaging, but the EU itself has so far demonstrated it wants to make it so…it has co-opted the CBI…the City and…the Treasury to assist.”

Well, I think that the majority of Members take a more rational view.

The decision taken in 2016 was not a mandate for driving over a cliff edge with no deal or for having no transitional arrangement in place. It was not a vote for leaving all the agencies and partnerships from which we have benefited over the years and could continue to benefit or for turning our back on the single market, walking away from the customs union or—I say this with an eye on the contribution made in the last debate by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who is paying more attention to his phone than to the debate—turning our back on the Court of Justice of the European Union.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Would the hon. Gentleman let me intervene?

[Paul Blomfield]

I was hoping the right hon. Gentleman would.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Is the hon. Gentleman not guilty himself, however, of attempting to interpret what the vote was for? On the ballot paper was the issue of whether to leave; the rest is down to negotiation. So, surely, his position is as absurd as that of anyone who says they know these things. He does not know. He knows only one thing: that the British people voted to leave. The rest is for negotiation.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The rest is indeed down to negotiation, and it is down to this Parliament to make the final decisions.

In the right hon. Gentleman’s contribution to, I think, the debate on day one, he sought to interpret the mandate by saying that the primary reason, from the research he had done, for leave voters voting as they did was their antipathy to the Court of Justice of the European Union. I was quite surprised by that, because I talked to hundreds of people on the doorstep who told me they were voting to leave, and the jurisdiction of the CJEU was not one of the regular issues raised.

Therefore, after day one, I took the time to look at the right hon. Gentleman’s research, which was carried out in partnership with the Foreign Secretary’s and the Environment Secretary’s favourite think-tank, the Legatum Institute. I located the report, and I read it with interest. Unusually, it did not include data on the full results, only the final weighted results, but the interesting thing was the question itself. Whereas the other choices were value-neutral—the economy, immigration, national security or the NHS— one option was

“The ability for Britain to make its own laws”—

a leading question if ever I heard one. [Interruption.] If the question had been “Jurisdiction of the Court of Justice”, the right hon. Gentleman may well have found a different answer. Other research, with larger samples—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can skip that and go to the point that was in that pamphlet, which made it clear that when people were asked what their primary reason was for voting to leave, it was “Take back control”—control of our laws, our borders and our money. He can debate that as much as he likes, but the public knew about that when they voted.

[Paul Blomfield]

rose—

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[Mr Clarke]

Parliament will have an opportunity to give its assent to the Government’s approach to the transition deal, which they are on the point of trying to negotiate over the next few weeks. I have never known a Government go into an international agreement and start negotiating something towards a conclusion without giving the House the opportunity to express its views and without subjecting themselves to the judgment of the House on the objectives they are declaring.

This transition deal—I think that this is agreed on all sides—is probably going to be agreed in the next month. We are about to go away for Christmas. Everybody is hoping we will have a clearer idea of the transition or implementation deal by the end of January. As things stand, I do not think this House has ever discussed this—it has never had a debate on the subject. No motion has been put before this House to approve what the Government are seeking to do. If the Government have their way, we are simply going to discover, when they come back from the next step in the negotiations, what exactly they have signed up to.

The reason it is important that we should put down this marker is that I want to stick with what was set out in Florence, which was a Government policy position. At this moment—over the course of this week—the Cabinet is having a discussion. There is an attempt to keep this secret, but, unfortunately, leaks are coming out in all directions, and I sympathise with the Prime Minister on that. The Cabinet is debating whether everyone is prepared to be bound by the Florence speech or whether some of its members want to reopen it and start modifying it. That is why this new clause is a chance to say that if that be the case, the overwhelming majority of Members confirm and approve what was set out in the Florence speech.

I hope that we will not see the extraordinary spectacle of the fear of right-wing Eurosceptics meaning that such lengths are gone to that the Government put a three-line whip on their Ministers and all their Back Benchers to cast a vote against the Florence speech, so that some room is left for them to be able to negotiate further with the Environment Secretary, the Foreign Secretary or whoever it is wanting to reopen it again. The Foreign Secretary made a speech before the Florence speech in which he tried to undermine the Prime Minister’s position going there. When she had made the Florence speech, he wrote an article a few days later—I think that I have this the right way round—putting out a starkly different interpretation of what she had said. This House of Commons has not so far had the opportunity to express an opinion, which is what new clause 54 is about.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

For the most part, this is a fairly benign new clause, but I am not certain, even from listening to him now, what my right hon. and learned Friend’s concern is in subsection (2) of his new clause where it refers to subsection (1). It seems he is concerned that somehow there will not be an implementation period. Alternatively, is it just that that implementation period has never been discussed by Parliament? Is there a fear the Government will try to do the dirty on us? I do not understand why he feels he has to have this provision.

[Mr Clarke]

It is an attempt to rule out both. Before anybody starts resorting to talking about drafting points, which is what has happened on every point of principle we have had in the past seven days of debate, they can all be sorted out on Report. If something in the wording of the new clause raises some serious technical difficulty, the Government should table an amendment on Report to sort it out. I am sure that would face no resistance at all.

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[Ian Murray]

I absolutely agree. The 34 million people who voted in the EU referendum probably voted one way or the other for 34 million different reasons, but it is incumbent on politicians to start taking a lead and to be brave about making the arguments. We should say to the country, “The EU referendum delivered a result and, yes, we will be leaving the European Union, but let’s just pause, look at the arguments being put to the country and see whether this is what people actually want.”

If we distil down all the arguments about the customs union and the single market, the only solution we can come to that does not damage this country in any way—in relation to jobs, the cost to business, or the future aspirations of students or of our children—is to stay in the best possible platform for free trade and regulatory alignment, which is the single market and the customs union. No one will forgive this Government, or anyone else who argues against that, when the first person leaves a financial services company in my constituency with their P45 in their hand. I will take no pleasure in saying “I told you so,” but the Government can pull back now, can sort out the Bill, can agree to some of these amendments in principle and come back on Report and put on the table, at the very least, a negotiation about keeping the UK in the single market and the customs union. To do anything less, with the red lines that they have drawn and the aspirations that they have, is pulling the wool over the eyes of the public, and they should be brave enough to admit it.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I shall be brief because I support amendments 381 and 400, advocated by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox). I congratulate them on arriving at quite sensible arrangements. I know others want to speak, so I will not be drawn into the wider debate that the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) initiated with his new clause, and took some pleasure in pursuing—as others have done, too. A lot of today’s debate has been about rerunning the arguments around the referendum and coming to a different conclusion. People are welcome to do that as much as they like, but when they say that the British people have not been consulted, I think they were consulted, and they voted and that vote was binding, and we are now getting on with it.

I congratulate Ministers on their persistence on the Front Bench over the past eight days of debate on the Bill. I believe that they listened carefully to those with different opinions and made many, many changes. I say to many of my right hon. and hon. Friends who have disagreed with the Government over this issue on a number of occasions—and even voted against them, where necessary, as I have done in the past—that I am just a touch jealous of them. When I voted against the Government on Maastricht, I knew I did not have a hope in hell of getting anything changed. I was always told, “You can’t change any of this because we have just signed an agreement.” I am jealous because they have actually managed to get some change, so I congratulate them on achieving something that I was never able to achieve 25 years ago. None the less, I hope that tonight they do not necessarily choose to pursue that course of action with the amendments before us.

I say so because I think, in congratulating Ministers and others on signing up to the amendments, they do tidy up something that has been a concern—not just a concern felt by right hon. and hon. Friends who were in a strongly opposed position, but many others. I feel it is right to put the date of our departure in the Bill. I think it is quite right because it makes a statement of reality, which is that we are bound under article 50. The Bill, which is a process, should have the same provision in it. But we have to retain some flexibility within that. Following clause 1, which essentially says that we are repealing the European Communities Act 1972, we do not want to get into a mess where we end up having one set of dates for the repeal of that Act and another set of dates for a final conclusion of any arrangements we make with the European Union.

That conflict of law would have created a bigger problem, and I am sure we would have had to return to the matter on Third Reading, or even after the Bill came back from the other place. I therefore think that this way of doing things is neater and more flexible than the alternative, which would have been to pass a set of primary legislation to modify this Bill, as and when we reach agreements. I think that would have been a bit of a nightmare for my right hon. and hon. Friends. To that extent, I believe that this is a better way to do things.

The words in article 50 are pretty clear. I have read them on a number of occasions—I do read other things as well. Article 50 states quite clearly—it has always been clear—that the treaties shall cease to apply

“from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification…unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.”

Article 50 has always been clear that, should there be a requirement for an extension for practical reasons or whatever, it is up to the 28 countries to agree unanimously. To that extent, the amendment achieves that rather succinctly, but I stand by the fact that it was right for the Government to have been firm in wanting to put the date in the Bill. It would have been an anomaly not to have a date in the Bill and they would have had to come back at some stage to put it in. To provide that flexibility now makes it worthwhile.

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[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

We have no concerns at all here.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Is my hon. Friend asking me to give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

No, no.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Excellent. It is always good to take a sedentary intervention from my hon. Friend.

I said I would be brief, so I will bring my remarks to a conclusion. I support the amendments and I congratulate those who drafted them. I want the Government to get through this as best they can. They should listen carefully where there are changes to be made but, if we have to return to this matter on Report, they will certainly have my support in making whatever changes are necessary to accommodate concerns so that we get a Bill that is reasonable, feasible and puts the power back into the House.

I would make one small point, however, to those who opened up this massive debate about what happened during the referendum and the idea that we can guess what was in people’s minds. It was said again and again, as I recall, by the then Prime Minister, by the then Chancellor, by Lord Mandelson and also by many in the vote leave campaign, that voting to leave meant leaving the customs union and the single market. Now, I understand and accept that people might not want to do that—they advance all sorts of reasons for not doing it—but it was said again and again. On the idea that the British people were too stupid to understand what they were voting for, I say that they were right in their decision and made a decision that was a lot more intelligent than people give them credit for.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

When that was said—it probably was said by one or two campaigners on the remain side during the referendum campaign—it was used as an argument against voting to leave. The reaction of leave campaigners was to dismiss it, saying it was the politics of fear, that people were being alarmist in talking about leaving the single market and that in fact our trading arrangements would remain absolutely unchanged, because the Germans had to sell us their Mercedes. That was the role it played in the referendum campaign.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I always like to take an intervention from my right hon. and learned Friend. We agree on many things, but not on this, it has to be said. He will remember that, when he was Lord Chancellor, I supported him in getting through his very good and far-reaching reforms—I wish they had all been put through, but they were not, as he knows. To that extent, I have long supported him, but on this I do not fully agree with him. I think it was clear. It is no good saying that “some” people on the remain side said it. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor were the leaders of the remain campaign, certainly on the Government Benches, but also from the stand point of the country, and they were very clear on this. I do not recall anyone—I certainly did not—saying, “No, no, we’ll stay in the single market and customs union.” I have always made the point that leaving means leaving the Court of Justice, the customs union and the single market. Voters were, I believe, clear about that, but we can all debate and rerun the arguments.

[Anna Soubry]

I will undertake to send to my right hon. Friend a list of the various quotes from leading members of the leave campaign who told the British people, “There will be no change in our trading arrangements”, “We’ll do deals in a day and a half”, “We can be like Norway”, “We might want to be like Switzerland”, and so on and so forth. It was made very clear to the British people that the trading arrangements and economic benefits of the EU would remain the same. Does he honestly think that in his constituency of an evening in the Dog and Duck people sat there and said, “I tell you what, you know this single market, well I’m all for out of that”? Does he honestly think they really understood the issue, when there are obviously right hon. and hon. Members in this House who still do not understand what the single market and the customs union are?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That may be. I do not know of the Dog and Duck, unless they have moved a new building into my constituency, but I say to my right hon. Friend that people made a decision to leave, and that argument was debated extensively: it was on television, the Prime Minister was questioned endlessly and others such as Lord Mandelson said categorically that if people voted to leave, we would be leaving these institutions.

[Peter Kyle]

We are debating what was said to the electorate during that period, but none of us are talking about what the electorate are thinking now. That is the most important thing. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, as we enter the most crucial part of this stage of the negotiations, the Government should put far more energy into understanding what the public actually think and aspire to for our future relationship with the single market, the customs union and the EU in general and take that into account?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am all for consulting the British people. That is what we are here for as MPs, right? It is what we do when we go back to our constituencies and talk to people. The honest truth, however, is that we can consult them as much as we like, and we will get different opinions all the time, depending on the question. The biggest consultation I have ever seen took place in 2016: it was called a referendum. The difference between my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and the rest of the House is that he has been opposed to referendums throughout his political life and has never voted for them, whereas most other Members did vote for a referendum. When Members vote for a referendum, they are bound by the decisions that the British people make, and in this instance the British people asked us to leave the European Union.

Much of the debate has been about rerunning the referendum. I fully understand that some people will never be reconciled to the idea of departure or of leaving the customs union and the single market, but what we are talking about today is getting out of the European Union. It is not a question of the date, but a question of the process. We are leaving anyway. I support the Government because I believe that leaving the customs union and the single market and taking back control of our laws is exactly the right thing to do, and I do not think they should listen to the siren voices that tell them otherwise.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Anna Soubry]

I rise to support new clauses 54 and 13, both of which, if put to the vote, I shall vote for.

I made it clear to the people of Broxtowe when I stood back in June that I would continue to make the case and vote for the single market, the customs union and, indeed, the positive benefits of immigration. We are on day eight of our Committee proceedings, and, goodness me, if only we had had all this quality debate—this exposition of all the arguments—before the referendum, we perhaps would have had a different result.

My constituents might not have changed their minds, but they overwhelmingly say to me now, “I didn’t know it was going to be so complicated; I didn’t know what it would be like.” I have to say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) that customers in the Nelson and Railway pub in Kimberley— a fine pub, and I will take him there one day—did not sit there talking about the customs union.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Of course they didn’t.

[Anna Soubry]

Exactly, of course they didn’t. They did not talk about the single market. They did talk about immigration, however, and they thought they pretty much did not like it, even though in Kimberley there have probably been about four immigrants over the course of about 200 years.

We have had that part of the debate, but there is a grave danger in looking at the result of the referendum and saying, “The British people have definitely said they don’t want the single market and the customs union and all the rest of it”. We are leaving the EU, so I have voted to trigger article 50—I have taken that big step against everything I have ever believed in, and I accept we are leaving the EU—but I am not going to stay silent, and I am not going to stop making the case for us to do the right thing as we leave. I gently say to those who stand up and bang on about the devilment of the single market and the customs union that that is gravely insulting to British business.

What have we seen in this peculiar debate? It has been peculiar. I endorse everything my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) have said; it must be a Nottingham thing that there is this agreement between the three of us about the merits of the customs union and the arguments made about the Florence speech and why it should be on the face of the Bill.

I also observe that the Government have not really conceded very much at all. They have accepted that there was a real problem with the Henry VIII powers and they have accepted amendments that they pretty much drafted themselves, and they now accept the amendment of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), but we must be honest about that: it was an amendment rightly put forward by him, but to solve a problem of the Government’s creation, because they lost the vote on amendment 7. It might be a very good fudge, but we must not make any mistake about it: if it had not come as an idea from the Government, it would not be before us as an amendment—I say that with no disrespect to my right hon. Friend.

The Government have not actually conceded anything at all. They have gone away and said some warm words, but I am now worried and concerned. Last week, 11 very honourable and brave people on this side of the House had to face what some of my colleagues think is just a bit of intimidation. We have seen national newspapers hurling abuse, and putting up photographs almost like “Wanted” posters. In the face of all that and of a lot of strong-arm tactics—I will not go into that here, but those responsible for them know exactly what was going on behind the scenes; let us not pretend otherwise—they voted, in some cases for the first time ever, and in others for the first time in more than 20 years of honourable and loyal service to their party, in accordance with their conscience when they voted for amendment 7.

Today, however, our Prime Minister appears to be rowing back on that, and the Minister is unable to give us an unequivocal statement at the Dispatch Box that the Government will honour amendment 7. Let me make it very clear that if there is any attempt by the Government to go back on amendment 7, the rebellion will be even greater and have even bigger consequences.