European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

Thank you, Sir David. Your timing is perfect.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). It enables me to remind him of the promises that were made during the referendum about the £350 million a week that would be available to the NHS post-Brexit. I am as imbued with the good spirit of Christmas as others, Sir David, and I will therefore seek to limit my comments to the five minutes that you have specified.

A number of Members referred to what the Prime Minister said to the Liaison Committee in connection with amendment 7. I understand that she was asked no fewer than five times to confirm that she would provide a meaningful vote, by which I mean a vote that would take place on a Bill that will be amendable and would allow the debate to take place at a time when the Government could be instructed to go back and negotiate some more.

Let me briefly comment on new clauses 13 and 54. New clause 13 would ensure that we stayed in the customs union. That, I think, remains the only solution to the Ireland-Northern Ireland border issue apart from a border in the Irish Sea, which I do not think the Democratic Unionist party would support.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Never.

[Tom Brake]

As for new clause 54, it would be strange if Ministers did not want to support the Prime Minister’s words. I suspect that, if they did not support them in tonight’s vote, that would amount to a rebellion. We know that had the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs been here, they might have led such a rebellion, but I doubt whether junior Ministers would want to be responsible for a rebellion that would set aside what the Prime Minister said in her Florence speech.

My main purpose is to refer to amendment 120, tabled by the Liberal Democrats, which amounts to a request for a vote on the deal. I am sure that, if there were time, I would give way to a great many interventions about the will of the people, but the will of the people as expressed on 23 June last year is not necessarily the will of the people as expressed today. It is because I respect the will of the people that I believe that the people should be given the chance to vote on the final deal that the Prime Minister secures. There is absolutely no doubt that the final deal will look very different from the deal that they were offered on 23 June last year.

I promise not to refer too often to the £350 million that was offered on the side of the bus, but people will remember that pledge, and it is not going to be honoured. They will also remember a pledge about a significant cut in immigration. There has, in fact, been a drop in immigration, but I think that it has happened because the UK economy has shrunk rather than for any other reason. It has certainly not happened in respect of non-EU citizens coming to the United Kingdom, because over many years the level of non-EU immigration has remained consistently high—and, of course, every Member will know that that is something of which our Government are in complete control.

Finally, there were the threats made about the 5 million people who were supposedly going to arrive in the UK as a result of our membership of the EU, and our Foreign Secretary who talked about opening the borders to Turkey and the claim that there would be marauding gangs of armed criminals out and about threatening people in our towns and villages.

I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) used conciliatory language in describing his position on the idea of having a vote on the deal, but I recommend to him, and perhaps others, that the Liberal Democrats are first adopters of this policy, with the Green party, and I hope he will develop an appetite for it—and, indeed, that some Labour Members might as well. It would require legislation, followed by a three-month election campaign, and then a vote that would have to take place before we finally leave the EU, but that is perfectly possible.

I conclude by saying that that would enable the UK population to have a vote on the deal; they would be able to express their views on whether they still want to accept now what they were offered on 23 June last year.