European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Ian Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. It is always a daunting prospect to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), although I am grateful to him on this occasion for warming up the audience a wee bit.

I do not often go along with the tradition of spending the first part of a speech being enormously grateful for getting the chance to speak in this place. After all, speaking here on behalf of our constituents is the absolute right of all Members. Today, however, it is appropriate for me to acknowledge that I am one of the privileged few because I will get to speak today and, who knows, perhaps even tomorrow, whereas the vast majority of elected Members in this place will not have a chance to speak at all.

If we all got an equal say over the next couple of days, every MP would speak for about 10 seconds—and no, I am not going to call time on myself just yet. Each of the amendments, many of them vital for the future, would be debated for about three minutes. In reality, most MPs will not be called and we will be asked to vote on amendments that have never been before this House and that will literally not even be mentioned by name, rank or serial number in the debate because there will not be time. Anybody who believes that that is an example of participative democracy at its best needs to get out of here and spend some time reconnecting with the real world.

The programme motion that the Government got through today is an absolute travesty of democracy, following days and days on which the business collapsed and the Government were inventing things to talk about because they did not have the political courage to bring this Bill or umpteen other Brexit-related Bills before the House. The idea that we can give proper consideration to 160 or 170 amendments in effectively nine or 10 hours of debate is utterly laughable. It is an indication of how far the hard Brexiteer propagandists and sloganisers have parted company from any kind of rational logic that they and, indeed, many in the Government denounced the Lords for approving 15 amendments that the Government did not like, while welcoming the fact that those self-same Lords approved 166 amendments that the Government asked them to approve. One hundred and sixty-six amendments were requested by the Government, and 15 by the rest of the world, and it is the rest of the world who are the villains and the enemies of democracy in this.

It was inevitable but deeply disturbing to see how the battle lines have been drawn on the front pages of some so-called newspapers, and I know that there was a point of order on this exact point earlier today. Their lordships are the “traitors in ermine”, the “enemies of the people”, as, indeed, are judges in the Supreme Court, for daring to do the job that they are there to do. I am not a fan of the unelected House of Lords, but they are there for a purpose and, whether we agree or disagree with the way in which they have discharged their purpose, the abuse that has been heaped on them in the past few weeks is utterly uncalled for and has no place in any kind of civilised debate.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that, rather than deriding the House of Lords, we should be thanking them for introducing 15 sensible amendments and that the Government should also be thanking them for making hundreds of their own amendments because they made such a Horlicks of the Bill in this place in the first place.

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. It seems like the definition of an enemy of the people is not based on where they take the decisions but on whether the decision finds favour or disfavour with Her Majesty’s Government. That is not democracy, Mr Speaker. We are heading to dictatorship if someone’s integrity or patriotism is judged on whether or not they agree with the minority of people who sit on the Government Front Bench.

As I have said, and I shall come back to this later, I am not a fan of the House of Lords. I do not think that it is a democratic institution, but it is not the real threat to our democracy. The real threat to such democracy as we have in these islands does not come from people who disagree with what I say or with what the Government say but from those who use terms such as “traitor” or “enemy” to denounce anybody who holds or expresses a view that differs from their own.

This weekend, we will mark the second anniversary of the murder of one of our colleagues. Possibly the last words she heard in this life were “death to traitors”. Surely, in the name of God, we should know that, when we allow the language of hatred to become normalised, the actions of hatred will follow. Today, someone has pleaded guilty to planning to murder another of our colleagues. I say to colleagues on all sides that we can disagree passionately and fervently with each other, but please get the language of violence out of the vocabulary of this debate and of all debates, not just in the few days before we remember Jo’s sacrifice but every day thereafter, so that Jo and others did not die in vain.

As I have mentioned, the SNP are not fans of the House of Lords, but when the House of Lords has passed amendments to turn a bad Bill into a slightly less bad Bill, we will seek to retain those amendments. Let us be clear that, even with those amendments, this is still a bad thing. It will be damaging to all our interests, but if we can make it the least bad thing that we possibly can, we will have achieved something.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lidington]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding the House that we should bear in mind, when listening to the criticisms of the allocation of time here, that it is sometimes a question of people living in a glass house flinging rocks around. I say to him, too, that of course Scottish business has been very clear that we need UK-wide frameworks to protect a single UK market that brings great benefits both to Scottish business and Scottish consumers. It is only a few weeks since the Scottish Retail Consortium, the Scottish Food and Drink Federation and the Scottish Bakers said in terms in public that the maintenance of United Kingdom-wide frameworks on such matters as food standards and food labelling was of vital importance to the future wellbeing of their member companies and the customers whom they serve.

[Ian Murray]

While Government MPs and the SNP fight over flags, I would rather fight for my constituents, so can the Minister tell the House when I will be able to debate this particular clause on behalf of my constituents, because this elected House has had no time either to debate that clause or the very important issues in Northern Ireland and in Wales?

[Mr Lidington]

I say to the hon. Gentleman, who I suspect does not share the views of the Labour party at Holyrood on this matter, that he should address his concerns and criticisms to his own Front-Bench team. It was their decision to divide, but it was approaching the ridiculous for us to have three separate Divisions on whether the word “necessary” should replace the word “appropriate”. It was open to the Opposition to accept a single vote grouping those three amendments, but they chose not to, and that has used up a significant amount of our time.

We have ensured that no existing power will be taken from the devolved institutions and have provided for a significant increase in the decision-making powers of the devolved Administrations after exit. In doing so, however, we have also made sure that we do not compromise on those important common approaches we have to safeguard our internal market, manage our common resources and allow us to be an open and competitive trading nation as we develop new arrangements to replace the EU frameworks.