Leaving the EU: Customs

Ivan Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Ind)]

I have to say to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) that it was never a good idea to attack Labour’s former Chief Whip.

As a remainer, but also a democrat, my view following the referendum was that we had to respect the will of the people. That meant supporting the Government to trigger article 50, allowing the process of negotiations to begin as soon as possible and offering support to the Government on Brexit if they were acting in the national interest. Any Government post referendum would have had to begin the negotiating process to leave the EU quickly, and any Government would not have found those negotiations easy. However, what we have seen so far from this Government is a shambles that has made this country a laughing stock and damaged business and public confidence in our future.

As hon. Members have said, the specific issue that is the subject of today’s debate highlights the daily farce that we now experience. The Prime Minister has been unable to persuade her own Cabinet to support her preferred customs model and the Brexiteers have united around their own alternative. She sought to resolve this by setting up Cabinet working parties to assess the veracity of each option. Presumably, our future customs arrangements will be decided by a kind of “Dragons’ Den”.

When the Foreign Secretary briefs a newspaper that the Prime Minister’s preferred model is “crazy”, he is not sacked. Instead, the Health Secretary is sent on the airwaves to tell the Foreign Secretary, via the media, to shut up. The Prime Minister claims that stability in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement must be protected by ensuring that there is no hard border. Her allies are then sent out to threaten a border poll if the Cabinet does not support her preferred option—so much for the Conservative and Unionist party. Now we hear that the Government intend to produce a Brexit White Paper, setting out their position on the key issues. Surely, other than in this incompetent Government, this White Paper should have been published at the beginning of the process, not halfway through.

The truth is that, with the referendum commitment, none of this is about the national interest. It is about party management within the Conservative party. The Prime Minister is permanently conflicted between keeping the Brexiteers happy and saving her job, and acting in the national interest on the customs union and the single market to ensure that she does not lose a fragile parliamentary majority. I accept that many Brexiteers believe that they are acting in the country’s interests, but some judge every decision through the prism of their political ambitions to lead a party with a ferociously anti-European membership.

The decisions that we are taking now are probably the most important in peacetime. They are far too important to be left to a Government paralysed by weakness, division and personal ambition. That is why Parliament must now fill the vacuum being left, step up to the plate and build a coalition around the national interest. This means adopting negotiating positions that will do the least damage to United Kingdom businesses’ trade with the European Union, being part of a comprehensive customs union and doing nothing that will undermine stability in Northern Ireland. Of course, ultimately, the decisions of the Commons must prevail, but it is right that the House of Lords fulfils its scrutiny role. It is frankly laughable to hear right-wing Conservatives who were always opposed to modernisation now calling for the Lords to do what they are told or run the risk of abolition. They simply do not have any sense of irony.

We face the biggest peacetime challenge, other than post war, in our history. More than ever we need politicians who can provide the leadership that this country needs. The Government have failed, so Parliament must now step up to the plate. It is true that the majority voted to leave the European Union, but this did not give any of us a mandate to allow ideological extremism to consign this country to decades of slow growth, wasted potential and permanent instability.