Exiting the EU: Sectoral Impact Assessments

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I will give way in a minute. As I have said, we are open to hearing from the Government if they have alternative mechanisms or procedures to allow publication in an appropriate fashion. We are not wedded to the form we have put forward. We are wedded to challenging the blanket approach that the Government have taken.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I am one Member of this House who welcomes the use of a 19th century procedure to hold the Government to account. I have one question for the right hon. and learned Gentleman: why is he asking for this information for the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union without a formal motion having been passed by that Committee to request these papers?

[Keir Starmer]

Because that is not necessary and this is an important motion, and because in recent weeks we have seen contempt for motions in this House—week after week on Opposition day motions—from a Government who are too weak to turn up or too weak to accept the outcome. Therefore we have chosen a procedure that is binding on this Government.

Only a weak Government push Parliament away and ignore the facts. It should not require an arcane parliamentary procedure to force the Government to release these documents, but after 10 months of trying that is what Parliament now has to do. The current impasse prevents Parliament doing its job, undermines accountability and is inconsistent with transparency. The Government should support the motion before the House today.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The House will be aware that the motion before us is a Humble Address to be presented to Her Majesty. That is the motion before the House. We are currently debating that motion and it is absolutely correct that there should be differences of opinion about the effect of the motion, the way in which it should be debated and what should happen to it. At this stage, I would say only that a motion of this kind has in the past been seen as effective or binding. That does not mean that I am making a ruling at this point about the nature of the motion before us today.

I will reiterate what I said before. While it is correct for the Chair to make a ruling on what happens here in the Chamber, it is for the Government to decide how they will proceed, having considered the opinions of the House. It would, of course, be quite wrong for the Government not to pay any attention to a decision taken by the House, but the way in which the Minister interprets what he and his colleagues should do after the House has expressed an opinion is a matter not for the Chair but for the Minister.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wondered if it might be helpful to refer hon. Members to page 819 of “Erskine May”, which points out that in a recent case the Canadian House of Commons, in not entirely dissimilar circumstances, viewed it as a breach of privilege for the Government to fail to provide information when asked for it by the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for directing me to page 819 of “Erskine May”, which I will look at as soon as I have an opportunity so to do, but he will be aware of the rules on privilege, as I am, and the way in which those rules can be interpreted. Like him, not long ago I served for many weeks on a Committee considering the way in which privilege can be applied. If I were to say that it is a grey area, that would not be an exaggeration. There is no black and white in the way in which privilege is applied. But I thank the hon. Gentleman for drawing to my attention to that particular point in “Erskine May”.

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

“Erskine May” does indeed not say “binding”, but it does say:

“Each House has the power to call for the production of papers by means of a motion for a return.”

Power is something pretty forceful, and is much more than just an expression of will.

[Mr Jenkin]

My hon. Friend takes me to the very next point, which is that it would be unconscionable for any Government to ignore a motion. But I heard the Minister very clearly saying that he does not intend to ignore the motion. In fact, he made it clear that the Government will respond to the motion. This echoes what the Leader of the House said recently in business questions about Opposition day motions. She said that there should be a standard, and that the Government will respond to a motion in the House within, at most, 12 weeks of the will of the House being expressed in such a way.

The very fact that we are having a debate about exactly what would be released means that it is a matter for the Government and Ministers to interpret. If the House is then still not satisfied with what has been released, the House can come back to it. Let us not get in a paddy that there is some great constitutional principle. Parliament is sovereign not because it passes motions, but because, in the Diceyan sense, Parliament can make or unmake any law; and I reiterate that in this matter, we are not making law—at least, not law that is statute law and enforceable through the courts.

It is worth repeating to the House what the Minister reminded us during his opening remarks, which is that the House has previously voted, by a large majority, to protect sensitive information that is relevant to the negotiations. That is why I invite the official Opposition to think very carefully before repeating this exercise. These documents may not be very serious and there may not be very much in them, but this is a power to call for papers that should be used sparingly, precisely because these are the negotiations of a generation.

Unless the Government have the freedom to conduct the negotiations with the necessary confidentiality, the Opposition will undermine the ability of the Government to produce the better terms of settlement that the Opposition say they want. This is potentially extremely disruptive and irresponsible, and the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) knows it. This is more about party politics and exploiting the situation for party advantage than it is about supporting the national interest. There may be a great sea of Opposition colleagues jeering at that point, but they are jeering at the national interest when they jeer in that fashion.

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[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) on his motion. The Opposition are absolutely right to table motions on Opposition days that force the Government to do things. It has been a general waste of this House’s time to have motions on motherhood and apple pie, which has been the tendency in recent years. To ensure that we have a serious, substantial matter on which to vote is a very encouraging trend and one that I hope will continue.

I have no doubt that the motion is, in all senses, binding. It is not parliamentary wallpaper. It is exercising one of our most ancient rights, to demand papers. It is interesting that in the instructions given to Select Committees they are given the right to send for people and papers, but that is the right of this House delegated to those Select Committees. It is not something inherent in Select Committees, and it is therefore something clearly that this House can, at any time, call back to itself, as, quite rightly, the Opposition have proposed today.

As to the papers themselves, I have no particular view—this is, in normal circumstances, a matter for the Government—and I would have gone along with the Government had they wished to oppose the motion. But in the event that they do not, they must publish these papers to the Brexit Committee in full. The motion does not allow for redaction, and a happy chat across the Dispatch Box between the shadow spokesmen and the Ministers does not reduce the right of this House to see the papers.

However, it may well be that the Select Committee, of which I happen to be a member, may decide not to publish large sections of those papers, for confidentiality reasons, but on the basis of the motion, unless a further motion is passed to amend it at some stage, that right must be with this House, not with Her Majesty’s Government.

My one criticism of the motion is that I think it a marginal discourtesy to the Select Committee not to have asked it in the first place whether it wanted this motion to be tabled, but in the grander scheme of things that is a minor complaint.

The Canadian example is important, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) criticised me for referring to the Canadian Parliament, but it is in a way a sister Parliament of this one.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful to give my hon. Friend an extra minute and say, “Hear, hear!” to everything he says.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful, because I have always campaigned—this is one reason I was so keen to leave the EU—for the rights of this House. One of the great rights of this House is to hold the Government to account and to use the procedures and facilities open to it to do that in a powerful and real way. That is something the motion does.

The Canadian example—over Afghanistan—shows that failure to meet the requirements of this House is a breach of privilege, and there is no protection for any information that the Government have received from outside sources on the grounds of confidentiality once it is required by this House. Any agreement the Government have made is superseded by the powers of this House and cannot be challenged in any court because it is a fundamental privilege of this House that it should be guided by its own rules.

I have no particular view on whether it is right or wrong to publish these papers—I would trust the Government on that—but I am pleased that the House of Commons is exercising its historic power, albeit from a 19th century precedent, and I welcome the Government’s response.

[Several hon. Members rose—]