European Affairs

Ian Murray Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

I welcome this debate, but I do not welcome the fact that the Government continually duck having votes in this House on these matters, or that they continue to do everything they can to withhold appropriate information so that we can come to an informed view on behalf of our constituents. My view is that when we are asked to vote on the withdrawal agreement that the Prime Minister is supposed to return to this House with in the autumn, we should be granted a free vote given the magnitude of the agreement and what we are dealing with and its importance for future generations in this country.

As we can see every single day, it is clear that the Brexit process has been a total and utter mess. Article 50 should never have been invoked at the time that it was invoked; we should have had the debate we are having now before it was invoked. It is extraordinary that we have only been given serious detail by the Prime Minister this month, more than a year and a half after she took office and when we are halfway through these Brexit negotiations. Only now do we seem to have more clarity from the Government on the direction in which they wish to take this country in these Brexit negotiations.

I give the Prime Minister this: her speech was significant because for the first time it officially acknowledged what we know to be true, which is that the Government are voluntarily choosing to pursue a policy that they have admitted is going to make this country poorer. She made it clear in her speech that we were going to get less access and that we would not have a frictionless border. She talked about achieving as frictionless a border as possible—[Interruption.] It is no use Ministers shaking their heads. We know from the impact assessments that they commissioned from their own civil servants that the options they are choosing to pursue will make this country poorer. Let us be clear about this. We hear all this talk about our EU friends seeking to bully our country and to punish us, but they are not doing that. At the outset, they put a range of options on the table, including remaining a member of the single market and the customs union, and it was this Prime Minister who took those options off the table.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right. Our European partners have said clearly that the red lines that this Government have set themselves mean that the goals they wish to achieve are impossible. We cannot blame our EU partners for that, because they are the Government’s own red lines.

[Chuka Umunna]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is the Prime Minister who is dictating the kind of agreement that we will reach with the European Union.

Let us be clear about what has happened since 2016. In March 2016, the Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting that our economy would grow by 2.1% this year, next year and the year after. However, because of the judgments and decisions that this Government have made, the OBR is now forecasting that our economy will grow by a paltry 1.5% this year, 1.3% next year and 1.3% the year after. The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) is chuntering in his place, but I say to him that I cannot remember a time since the war when a GDP forecast was coming in at under 2% for every year. This forecast is a result of the policy decisions that he is making.