EU Withdrawal Agreement

James Heappey Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse]

The Secretary of State has just mentioned the political declaration last December. Clearly what was legally binding was the backstop, about which everybody is now very unhappy because the political declaration is not legally binding. The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) is absolutely right that that creates worry and uncertainty. The certainty is the backstop. The Government need to come clean and be honest with everybody—Conservative Members and the public—that the backstop is legally binding.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

At least we’re here!

[Stephen Barclay]

The hon. Lady is correct that a backstop will be required in any deal that is reached with the European Union, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) commented from a sedentary position, on an issue of such importance to the Lib Dems, it is good that the hon. Lady—unlike any of her Lib Dem colleagues—is actually in the House to make that point with such conviction.

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[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I thank the SNP for securing this debate and the Speaker’s Office for granting it.

It is obvious that we have reached an impasse. The Prime Minister spent two years negotiating a deal that she now knows cannot command the support of this House. I am not trying to make a point against the Secretary of State, but I think he acknowledged just a moment ago that he accepts that the deal currently before the House is not going to get the support of the House. That is therefore the position of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State.

But rather than confront that reality, the Prime Minister refuses to put her deal forward for a vote this week, instead kicking it into the new year. The problem for the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State is that it is accepted that this deal cannot command the support of the House, but abundantly clear from last week’s EU Council that the Government cannot renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. So the one thing the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State know needs to happen for the position to change was rebuffed last week, and, at most, only non-binding “clarifications” could be possible. That is the impasse.

The President of the EU Commission said that there is “no room whatsoever” for renegotiation. The Commission spokesperson said:

“The European Council has given the clarifications that were possible at this stage, so no further meetings with the United Kingdom are foreseen.”

I do not suppose that informal meetings cannot go on, but there will be no formal meetings. I think some of us thought that there might just be the chance, coming out of last week’s summit, that there would be a further round, or a few days, of further negotiations by the teams, but that is not going to happen. The EU Council statement made it clear that the withdrawal agreement is “not open for renegotiation”.

However much the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State—for understandable reasons, perhaps—pretend otherwise, that is now the reality that we face, and that is why the vote needs to come back to this House this week. This deal cannot be changed by the Prime Minister, new negotiations are not even taking place, and we have only three months before the 29 March deadline. The Government’s response—to delay, to play for time, and to hope somehow that the deal will look more appetising in the new year—is not going to work. The reality is that the Government are running down the clock, but running down the clock is not governing, and it is certainly not governing in the national interest. Observers sometimes say to me that the Prime Minister is resilient, but this is not resilience—it is recklessness.

[James Heappey]

It might be argued that the Government are not the only part of this House to be kicking the can down the road, and that the right hon. and learned Gentleman may well have been wanting to participate in a different debate today. Is that not happening because his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition is inept, or invertebrate?

[Keir Starmer]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for my caution in taking advice from the Government on when the Opposition should table a motion of no confidence in the Government. Last week, I heard plenty of Conservative Members say, “Bring it on.” In the role that I currently occupy, many people on both sides of the House give me their opinions all the time, and very rarely do two people agree on the way forward.

It is wholly unacceptable to delay the meaningful vote for another month in the knowledge that there is no realistic chance of delivering material changes to this deal. Yesterday, the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) said in this House that the Prime Minister is

“asking the House to accept a deferral for several weeks of the meaningful vote on the draft withdrawal agreement, on the basis that further assurances can be agreed with the European Union, but there is nothing in what she has said today or in what has been reported from the EU Council to suggest that those further assurances are likely to be given.”—[Official Report, 17 December 2018; Vol. 651, c. 540.]

That is the problem. That is why, rather than having this debate today, the Government should be putting their deal to the House, because if that deal is defeated, everybody then needs to put the national interest first. We need to confront what the achievable and available options are and decide, as a House, what happens next in a way that protects jobs and the economy.

But what we hear from the Government is the opposite: delay over a meaningful vote, and then the distraction of no deal, hence today’s headlines about £2 billion for no-deal planning. Talking up no deal has always been misguided and, in my view, deeply irresponsible. The Treasury estimates that a no-deal outcome would mean a 9.3% decline in GDP over 15 years. It would see every region of the UK worse off. It would mean 20% tariffs on agri-foods and significant tariffs on manufactured goods. It would mean no common security arrangements in place, and a hard border in Northern Ireland. It would be catastrophic for the UK. That is why no deal has never truly been a viable option. It is a political hoax, and I think that, deep down, the Government and the Prime Minister know it. I know from personal experience how seriously the Prime Minister takes the security arrangements of the United Kingdom, and to put ourselves in a position where they would be jeopardised is not, I think, something that, deep down, she thinks could possibly be acceptable for this country.

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[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the impassioned speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard).

We are having an emergency debate on matters that are presumably of great importance and urgency, otherwise it would not be an emergency. Yet, having spoken in the Standing Order No. 24 debate roughly this time last week, one has to conclude that we seem to be having exactly the same discussion today as we had last week. It is therefore rather hard to understand exactly how this is an emergency. I suppose this debate was the insurance policy. One cannot blame SNP Members for seeking it, because I suspect they had their doubts about the ability of the Labour Front Benchers to put forward the motion that we thought we were all going to be debating today.

As I asked the Secretary of State earlier—he blushed and declined to answer—it is not quite clear whether it was the ineptitude or the invertebrateness of the Leader of the Opposition that led to the SNP motion being preferred over the official Opposition’s. But here we are, effectively having exactly the same debate that we had last week—yet more time in which we are chewing over exactly the same issues as we have been for hour after hour over the recent weeks and months.

The Prime Minister and her Ministers have spent hours in this Chamber, taking questions at the Dispatch Box. The debate on the meaningful vote was three days in. I have to admit that I caught sight of the Whips’ book while I sat near them during those three days, and every single line read, “Disagree”. The mood of the House towards the deal as it stood then was absolutely obvious. Rather than proceeding to a meaningful vote last week when it was clear that the House was against it, we went away and sought something different, and when that was not immediately achieved in last week’s summit, we said, “Okay, we’ll give ourselves the Christmas period to push even harder and see if something different can be achieved.” That seems to me to be a very rational, very sensible approach by a Prime Minister and a Government acting in the national interest.

[Ian Blackford]

The hon. Gentleman is making some important points. I suggest to him that the fact that Member after Member said that they disagreed with this deal, and that the European Union presidency has made it clear that it will not negotiate on it, means that we need to vote down this deal so that we can all come together to break the impasse. That is the point of this debate.

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[James Heappey]

It is interesting logic to say that by voting down the deal we all somehow come together. As far as I can see, the deal is the best chance that we have—it is a very long shot, I grant you—at least of a majority in this House coming together in some sort of compromise.

If the deal is no longer available, we end up with no plan being offered by the Opposition; an outright—and, in fairness, unequivocal and consistent—opposition to Brexit from the right hon. Gentleman’s party; the Liberal Democrats, who in my constituency seem to say one thing on the doorstep to one household and another to another—

[Wera Hobhouse]

indicated dissent.

[James Heappey]

I would gladly take an intervention from the hon. Lady if she could confirm today that the Liberal Democrats’ official policy is an end to Brexit and that they would like to work with the Leader of the Opposition in government to bring that about.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I am happy to intervene. We have always said that our best place is in the European Union and that anybody who wants to work with us on that aim is very welcome.

[James Heappey]

I think that my constituents in Burnham-on-Sea, Cheddar, Shepton Mallet, Glastonbury, Street and Wells can see unequivocally from what the hon. Lady has just said that the Liberal Democrats are indeed seeking an exit from Brexit and would happily put the Leader of the Opposition into No. 10 to achieve that. That is somewhat at odds with what the Liberal Democrat candidate in my constituency has been telling people. I am grateful to her for clarifying that in the short time that I have available to speak today.

I find that we are having these debates again and again and again. I did not come to Parliament to talk endlessly about Brexit, yet that is what we seem to be doing. I am not going to argue that a second referendum is undemocratic. I absolutely take the point made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard)—how can it be undemocratic to keep exercising democracy? However, I see a process that would take at least a year to deliver. If it took us 348 days to take the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill through this House, there is no way that a referendum Bill would take any less time. That means a year of huge uncertainty during which time Brexit would continue to dominate the national conversation, not in any way of trying to find compromise and a solution, but with people reverting back to the binary positions that dominated the original referendum debate.

A second referendum would be a step backwards, not a step forwards. It is not an end in itself. It is not a solution to the problems that we face in this place. It is simply us saying that we are not willing to make the decision ourselves and are putting in place a process whereby others can decide because we have not got the bottle to do so. We know what are the options in front of us, and we have to make the decision. A second referendum is a soft way out that solves nothing and does nothing other than create more parliamentary process and more dominance of the Brexit debate.

We have three choices: either no Brexit, which, in fairness, many Members in this House want; no deal, which many Members in this House also want; or the Prime Minister’s deal, which at least means that we find a compromise and do not end up having to choose between two extremes.