European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

As always, it is an honour to speak after the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty).

We are debating the Second Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, and I will be supporting it, but of course it is only half the story. The Government quite rightly want a smooth exit in terms of the laws that we will have on day one after leaving the EU, but the other side is that we need a smooth transition into the state that we will be in after EU withdrawal. We are nowhere near that at the moment, and the Government need to do some rethinking.

As many people have said, this Bill needs improving. It is certainly not perfect. I will not go into the details, but clearly clauses 7 and 9 are going to need much more circumscription around their powers. In particular, with regard to clause 9, we need a reference to approval of the final deal by Parliament.

I agree with all the colleagues on both sides of the House who have talked about the need to have some kind of efficient mechanism for dealing with the vast volume of legislation that is going to come forward, whether it is called triage or some other such name. This House is going to have to get used to debating an awful lot of legislation in future. We rightly say that we are repatriating the discussion, debating and approval of legislation from Europe in future, but after we leave we will still have to take note of, and in some cases bring into our own law, European legislation. Otherwise, we will simply not be able to trade in certain extremely important areas such as financial services, to name but one.

Therefore, we might as well get used to such detailed scrutiny of legislation as we go through this Bill. That is why I believe that eight days may not be enough. I am prepared to vote for the programme motion, but I echo very many colleagues in saying that we may need to revise that if the Government see that there is not enough time to scrutinise the Bill within those eight days of eight hours each.

I cannot understand why the Government have decided to make an exception for the charter of fundamental rights in clause 5. If we are going to take over legislation in full and have a smooth exit, let us take it all over. If we want to revise it or get rid of it later, we have said that we will do that. There are many ways in which we can make the charter of fundamental rights fit for purpose. Indeed, I remember working closely with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to frustrate a previous Government’s attempts to pull out of a different Bill of Rights, the European convention on human rights, so I hope that he will have great sympathy with what I have to say.

Finally, let me return to the question of withdrawal. We are trying to leave in as smooth a way as possible, and we have to try to accede to the post-EU situation in as smooth a way as possible. I thought about this long and hard as a member of the Exiting the European Union Committee in the last Parliament; I am honoured to be on that Committee in this Parliament as well. I can see very little alternative to—in fact, I would welcome—accession to the European Free Trade Association. I think that that would be an extremely good and smooth way to transition out of the EU and into what we will have afterwards. The Government are rightly concerned about having a smooth exit with all the law in place when we leave, so they have an equal responsibility to ensure that our entry into the post EU membership situation is as smooth as possible. I urge them to make that their No. 1 priority, and to say that joining the EFTA, which has numerous forms of membership, is the best way.