European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Ian Murray and Peter Grant

Friday 11th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I say first to the hon. Gentleman that his Government refused point blank to give the immediate unilateral guarantees the Scottish Government asked for the day after the—[Interruption.] No, they refused point blank to do it. Nicola Sturgeon was pointing out to EU nationals in Scotland the danger of continuing to have an immigration policy that was reserved to this place. She was not stating what would happen in the event that Scotland became independent; she was warning what might happen in the event that we did not. The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the fears being expressed now by tens of thousands of people in Scotland are exactly the fears they were warned about by the then Deputy First Minister.

Let me remind the House of one of the boasts the hon. Gentleman made when he intervened on the shadow Home Secretary. Unless I am very mistaken, he boasted that he had fought to get his constituents passports. The Conservative party is proud of the fact that people who came here to live, work and contribute as a matter of right now have to seek the services of a Member of Parliament to fight to be given the passport that should be theirs as a matter of right. If the Conservatives think that is something to be proud of, that demonstrates once again how far their moral compass is from anything that could ever be accepted in Scotland.

That is only when we consider the moral and humanitarian arguments against what the British Government are seeking to impose on us. It would be bad enough for them to embark on such a regressive, socially divisive path if they thought that it would make us better off, but every one of their own analyses, of which there are quite a few—in fact, just about every credible analysis ever made of the economic impact of free movement of people—tells us that it is good for the host nations, and good for the peoples of the host nations.

The Government’s own analysis shows that, no matter what Brexit scenario we end up with, ending free movement and slashing the rights of immigrants to come here on anything like the scale that they intend will damage our economy. So even if we subscribed to the Thatcherite gospel that there is no such thing as society, but just a collection of individuals—even if we followed that creed of “Let us look after ourselves, and to hell with everyone else”—ending free movement of people would still be the wrong thing to do. To subscribe to this Government’s anti-immigration and anti-immigrant philosophy, we would not just need to be selfish; we would need to be out of oor flaming heids.

On 19 December, during the final Prime Minister’s Question Time of the year, I asked the Prime Minister to name one single tangible benefit that would compensate my constituents for the social and economic damage that we know ending free movement of people would cause. She could not give a single example. If the Home Secretary wants to listen, I will give him a chance to stand up and name one benefit to my constituents of ending free movement, but even if he were interested enough to listen, he would not be able to do so.

In fact, I will happily give way to any Conservative Member who wants to take the opportunity to answer the question that the Prime Minister dodged. None of them wants to do so. No Conservative Member can identify a single tangible benefit that my constituents will see. By their silence, the Conservatives are telling me that I cannot vote for this deal. By their silence, they are telling me that ending free movement of people is not good for my constituents—so how dare they ask me to support it?

The Prime Minister dodged the question, just as she and a succession of Ministers have dodged every difficult question that they have ever been asked during the Brexit process. Indeed, the ongoing debacle over parliamentary scrutiny of this shambles demonstrates that we have not only a Prime Minister and a Government who have lost control, but a Prime Minister and a Government who will cynically play the card of parliamentary sovereignty when it suits them, but will use every trick in the book—and quite a few tricks that are not in the book—to try and stop us doing the job that we were elected to do. They spout their creed of parliamentary sovereignty sometimes, and at other times they do everything possible to undermine it.

They Government went to court to try to prevent Parliament from having any say in the triggering of article 50. They have whipped their own MPs—although not successfully in every case—to vote against allowing this debate even to happen. I have noted on every day of the debate that those who claim that allowing it to take place was an act of treason have not exactly been backward in coming forward and asking to join in at every opportunity. The Government abuse their privileged position in respect of setting parliamentary business to try to strip the meaningful vote of any actual meaning. Like bad-loser, spoilt-brat football managers the world over, they have even resorted to ganging up on the referee to complain and accuse him of cheating every time he gives an offside decision against them—and not just during the 90 regulation minutes of points of order on Wednesday; the Leader of the House even tried to do it again during a wee bit of penalty time yesterday morning.

The Government are mounting an intense campaign of what can only be described as misinformation to frighten Parliament, to frighten our citizens, to frighten businesses, to frighten everyone, into believing that they must accept this deal because it is the only possible deal and the only alternative is no deal. That is simply and palpably not true, and the Prime Minister knows it is not true. How can I be sure that the Prime Minister knows it is not true? Because she has said so herself on at least half a dozen occasions that I can trace. She has said it at the Dispatch Box, and she has said it in television interviews. She has told us that it is not a simple choice between her deal and no deal.

In an attempt to scare the no deal brigade in her own party, the Prime Minister was forced to admit that if her deal failed, Brexit might not have to happen. When I first saw that reported on the BBC website, I thought it must be a mistake, but if it was, it is a mistake that the Prime Minister has made nearly every day since then. Her clearly stated position is that we are not faced with a simple binary choice between her deal and no deal. We still have the option of keeping the deal that we already have. Staying where we are is always an option. The status quo is always available. The best of all possible deals is the deal that we have right now, and I must say to my colleagues and good friends on the Labour Benches that it is the only possible deal that meets their six tests of an acceptable Brexit. If they could only get their act together and accept that, between us we could stop this madness with absolute certainty.

Earlier this week, the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), in what I have to say was the most shambolic appearance before a Select Committee that I have ever seen, managed to walk into a trap and make an admission that he had been trying to avoid making throughout the meeting. It was a trap set—presumably by mistake—by one of his own fellow hardline Brexiteers. He was asked:

“Minister, would you agree that, by taking no deal off the table, it weakens our hand in negotiations with the EU?”

His reply was “I would, yes.” Members should think about that for a minute—apart from the slight technical point that there are no negotiations with the EU, because the deal has been done and the negotiations have finished.

Not only the Minister, but one of those hardline Brexiteers in the European Research Group, has admitted that the Government have it in their power to take no deal off the table. Why would they leave it on the table when they know, and everyone knows, that it is the worst possible outcome? Why would they try to force a situation in which it the only alternative, which is what they want us to believe? Why, in recent weeks, have they spent so much time and money telling businesses, trade unions, voluntary organisations and everyone else something that they know is not true?

Only the Government could answer those questions, but when it is put in the context of all the other shenanigans that they have been up to, it seems obvious what they are doing. They know that the Prime Minister’s deal has absolutely no chance of getting through the House on its own merits. In fact, I think most Ministers have known for months that as soon as the Prime Minister set her stupid red lines, there was no possibility of an acceptable deal that complied with those red lines, but instead of doing the right thing—instead of persuading the Prime Minister that she had to change her approach— they set out to try and pauchle the whole process. They were determined that the only vote we would ever have—the vote, remember, that they do not want us to have at all—would be rigged. They knew that the only good thing about the Prime Minister’s deal was that it was not quite as bad as no deal, so they set out to fabricate a situation in which they tried to tell us that no deal was the only alternative. That is why we have seen the Prime Minister’s almost Damascene conversion, virtually overnight, from “No deal is better than a bad deal”—which, by the way, is in the Conservative manifesto—to “Any bad deal is better than no deal”.

That is just one example of the hypocrisy and the double standards that we have seen from this Government, but perhaps the most brazen example of their double standards—and that is saying something—appeared in a tweet earlier this week.

[Ian Murray]

May I intervene briefly on the subject of double standards? The hon. Gentleman is advancing a powerful argument, and the right argument, that it is in Scotland’s interests to remain a member of the European Union, but will he please explain to the House—and to my constituents, and to the people who are watching the debate in Scotland—how he can advance that argument while at the same time advancing the opposite argument that Scotland should pull itself out of its closest and most important Union?

[Peter Grant]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman wants a debate on independence. I suggest that he should be patient, because that debate is coming, not because I want it and not because he wants it, but because the people of Scotland are demanding it. The simple answer to his question, however, is that the nature of Scotland’s union with this place is fundamentally different from the nature of the partnership of the EU.

As I was saying, earlier this week, Glenn Campbell of the BBC—not Glen Campbell the Rhinestone Cowboy, in case Members are wondering—tweeted, after interviewing the Secretary of State for Scotland:

“Scottish secretary @DavidMundellDCT says if PM’s #Brexit deal is voted down he doesn’t see why MPs shouldn’t be asked to vote on it again once they’ve had time to reflect.”

The Secretary of State for Scotland does not see why, having asked MPs to vote on the deal once, the Government should not come back and try again once we have had time to reflect. So it is okay for Conservative MPs—that is who he is talking about—to be allowed to change their minds about the Prime Minister’s deal, and it is okay for Conservative MPs, as the Standing Orders allow them to do, at the end of this year to change their minds and have another go at removing the Prime Minister through another vote of no confidence, but it is not acceptable to allow the people to confirm whether they have changed their minds.

Returning to the intervention of the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), at the same time that this Parliament and these nations are being presented with a choice of at least two futures, the people of Scotland are faced with a choice of two futures as well. It is not a choice that they wanted to be forced into and it is not a choice that we wanted them to be forced into: there was a majority vote to stay in the Union of the United Kingdom but there was a significantly bigger percentage majority vote to stay in the union of the EU. Through no fault of the people of Scotland, and against the expressed wishes of the people of Scotland and our national Parliament, we are being forced into a position where it is no longer possible to respect the results of both referendums, so the people of Scotland are going to have to decide which future they want: which of these two unions is more important to us?

Is it to be a true partnership of equals, which, as our friends in Ireland have seen, sees all other members show solidarity and support even for relatively small members of that partnership; or is it to be the so-called partnership where the powers of our Parliament are already being stripped back unilaterally by the British Government, as confirmed by Britain’s own Supreme Court? Do they value more a union that was forged by the desire of former mortal enemies to work together to sustain peace and prosperity across a continent, or a Union that was forged through bribery and corruption for—[Interruption.] Or a Union that was forged through bribery and corruption for the sole purpose of sustaining sectarian bigotry in the appointment of high offices of state? Do they give most importance to a union that has at its core the fundamental belief that the exchange of the free movement of people, the free exchange of talents and the free exchange of ideas benefits us all or one that denounces its citizens as queue jumpers and chooses to exploit them as bargaining chips? The exploitation of migrants as bargaining chips was not the policy of the Scottish Government; it was the stated policy of the colleague of the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) in the United Kingdom Government.

This Parliament faces a choice next week, and it must be a choice not between the Prime Minister’s deal or no deal, but between the Prime Minister’s Brexit or no Brexit. That is the choice this Parliament deserves and demands; that is the choice the people of these islands deserve and demand. The time is coming—and I think it will come a lot sooner than most in here expect—when at least one of the partners of this Union, and possibly more, will see a demand from its citizens to be given a further choice: do we want to remain part of a Union that tramples on the rights of our citizens and which treats us as a second-class nation, not as a partner, at every opportunity, or do we want to remain part of the most successful trading partnership and one of the most successful partnerships for peace—a partnership that even now has numerous other candidate members desperate to get into it? Again, I will give way if anyone on either side of the House—[Interruption.] We have a lot of countries trying to get into the EU, but nobody that has left the empire of the UK has ever asked to come back—nobody that has won their independence has ever asked to come back. I wonder why that might be.

We will be opposing this rotten deal next week not because we think no deal is an option, but because we want, and we demand, the alternative: to give Parliament the choice to say, “Is this the Brexit we expected?” and if not, “Don’t do it.” We have to give that right to the people of these islands as well.

Nobody was elected to this Parliament in 2017 on a no-deal Brexit manifesto. Nobody voted for a no-deal Brexit in the referendum; that was not one of the options. This Parliament and this Government do not have the right to do anything that creates the danger of a no-deal Brexit without the explicit approval for such a course of action from the people of these islands. A Government who claim to respect the democracy of the people or the democracy of Parliament must not attempt to force the issue by effectively giving us a choice between “Would you like to voluntarily give us your money?” or “Would you like me to shoot you?” That is not an acceptable choice; it is anti-democratic. It is fundamentally wrong for the Government to seek to turn this into a choice between doing what the Prime Minister tells us or leaving without a deal.

Not leaving is still an option, and not leaving must continue to be an option, and we will continue to press the case to allow the people to decide whether they want to accept the Prime Minister’s Brexit or, having seen what it really means—having seen the disastrous impact of the deal the Prime Minister has achieved—they want to decide that the best deal we can ever get is the deal we already have.

Sewel Convention

Debate between Ian Murray and Peter Grant

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

I think that it would be constructive. If this process has shown anything, it is that the inter-governmental relationship between two Governments when they are of different colours does not work. The consequences of it not working is not that the Secretary of State cannot get what he wants, or that the First Minister cannot get what she wants, but that it is bad for the people of Scotland. We cannot have an orderly withdrawal from the EU—if that is what happens and let us not get into the issues of whether or not we will leave the EU; I have my own views—unless we have a proper structure in place where both Governments can be confident, and the people of Scotland can be confident, that both Governments can work together. It is in both Governments’ interests to fight over these particular issues, because they cannot resolve some of the major problems with regards to leaving the European Union. Therefore, a fight between flags, between the Conservatives and the Scottish National party, suits both political agendas down to the ground while every other issue ends up being on the agenda.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

rose—

[Ian Murray]

I will not give way, because we will run out of time. I would hate it if the hon. Gentleman had to walk out because he was not able to get his say in this particular debate.

I will make two other brief points. I think that we are all in the same place in this Chamber in terms of what we want to try to achieve. If we leave the European Union, we want to be able to have a legislative framework in front of us that works for the things that we need it to work for. It is quite clear from the people who speak to me that we cannot have different frameworks with regards to the movement of animals across the UK, because we need the UK internal market to work. We cannot have different food labelling or we will have a situation like I have in my constituency where we have a wonderful Mexican deli which imports all this stuff from Mexico but has to relabel it with all the different labels. We could not possibly have that situation, so we do need some UK-wide frameworks that work and operate for the UK internal market. It is not in the SNP’s interests to make that work, because it wants out of the UK internal market. That is part of the problem that we have here with the politics. It comes down to the nub of the issue, which is: are the UK Government right on this particular issue? I do not think they are. They could have gone much further and they have made a hash of it and they are architects of their own misfortune. But are the SNP Scottish Government willing to move to be able to get an agreement on this? I think the answer to that is no. In the absence of two parties that are willing to talk to each other or willing to compromise, where does it leave us in terms of the overall devolution settlement?

I will finish on this. When he set up the Sewel convention, Lord Sewel said quite clearly that it should not be used for major policy issues on which there is a major political disagreement, and we are seeing that play out now. I do not know how we can get to a place whereby the Scottish Government can give this a legislative consent motion. I suspect that if clause 15 and schedule 3 were deleted from the amended Bill, they would still not give the legislative consent motion because it is not in their interests to do so. In the absence of two Governments willing to work together, how do we get to a position where this Bill can be passed and the Scottish Government can say that they will give it legislative consent? This is no power grab and it is no powers bonanza. Both Governments should tone down the rhetoric, get back round the table and think seriously about making sure that the JMC operates properly in the future and that it is transparent about its minutes and agendas.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Ian Murray and Peter Grant

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.