EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I shall be accused of bias if I give way to my right hon. and learned Friend.

I urge the Liberals to proceed on that basis, and similarly, the Scottish nationalists. I agree with them—I would much prefer to stay in the European Union—but I am afraid that in trying to give this country good and stable governance by giving steers to the House of Commons, I have compromised on that, because a huge majority seems to me to have condemned us to leaving the European Union. I have tabled motions with the Scottish nationalists and have voted with them to revoke article 50 if the dread problem of no deal seems to be looming towards us by accident, and I will again. I cannot understand why the Scottish nationalists will not at least contemplate, if they cannot get their way and stay in the European Union, voting for a permanent customs union, which will benefit business and the economy in Scotland just as much as here and is not remotely incompatible with pursuing their wider aims.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Mr Clarke]

As I have mentioned the Scottish nationalists, I will of course give the hon. and learned Lady the right to reply.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am very grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. The reason that the Scottish National party cannot support his motion today is that freedom of movement is vital for the Scottish economy and we do not get freedom of movement without the single market—that is the reason we cannot support his motion.

[Mr Clarke]

I will vote for the single market, if it is presented in a proper way, and I would have voted for the motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) last week, had he not at the end added a gratuitous sentence ruling out a customs union. If we can get a majority for the single market, I will vote for it again.

I accept that if we pass a motion for the single market, or the motion for common market 2.0, which no doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) will move later, my motion will be subsumed, but I am not confident we will pass a motion for the single market, because although the Scot nats are attracted by freedom of movement, many of my right hon. and hon. Friends are provoked into voting against it for that very reason. Similarly, common market 2.0, which I would settle for, is probably too ambitious. Mine, then, is the fall-back position.

I hope that my hon. Friend votes for my motion, but I cannot understand the Scottish nationalists. Voting for my motion is no threat to their position; indeed, it is an insurance policy—this goes back to how I started—to make sure that we move forward and that the House of Commons gives the Government a mandate that we can then ensure they have to follow in mapping out this nation’s future. In the long negotiations over the next two or three years, questions of regulatory alignment and freedom of movement will start coming into the negotiations again; that we have committed ourselves to a permanent customs union will not compromise any of those discussions.

I have not the faintest idea why Members of the Democratic Unionist party are not supporting motion (C). If we pass motion (C), it will mean we have no tariffs or certificates of origin and that the Irish border question is pretty well solved—we will be 90-odd% of the way to maintaining the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. It would be of huge benefit to the Irish economy and Irish security and mean that the DUP’s objection to the Irish backstop—that Northern Ireland is being treated differently from the rest of the UK—vanished Pass motion (C) and it applies to the entire United Kingdom.

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[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), who has become a good friend during the course of this debacle, and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles).

Given the mess that the Government have got the United Kingdom into, each of us who has spoken so far today is, in our own way, trying to ensure that the Prime Minister does not go naked into the conference chamber—if I can use that phrase—when she goes to the EU Council on 10 April, which is a week on Wednesday. As the Father of the House said, we must not allow no deal to happen by accident on 12 April simply because this House has failed to find a deal that a majority can get behind. As the Government Chief Whip has himself admitted, the Prime Minister’s failure, from the beginning when she lost that general election two years ago, to try to build a consensus across the House and with the devolved Governments, means that we are highly unlikely to find a deal that the House can get behind before Friday 12 April. We therefore need some sort of backstop—some sort of insurance policy against a no deal.

We also need a way to make sure that the Prime Minister honours the promise that she gave this House at the beginning of last week: that unless this House agrees to it, no deal will not happen. That is what the Prime Minister said. As we know, and as has been said already this afternoon, one thing that definitely did happen in the indicative votes last week was that 400 Members rejected the idea of a no-deal Brexit. We know there is a majority against a no-deal Brexit.

[Neil Gray]

I commend my hon. and learned Friend for her efforts in respect of her motion. She will remember, as I do, that the Prime Minister pledged that, if Parliament voted to support no deal, that would become the Government’s policy. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that, if Parliament votes for her motion tonight, that should be the Government’s policy and there should be a backstop to make sure that no deal cannot happen?

[Joanna Cherry]

Yes, I do. That is the purpose of the motion. It is not an SNP motion, although I am absolutely delighted that all my right hon. and hon. Friends are backing it; it is a cross-party motion. It has support from members of every single party in this House, apart from the DUP. If we cannot agree a deal by 10 April, which is the date of the EU Council—everyone must see as a matter of common sense that that is highly unlikely—my motion, if it is passed tonight, will mandate the Government to ask, first, for an extension of the article 50 period. If the EU did not agree to that, the UK Government would be required immediately to table a motion asking this House to approve no deal. My motion goes on to say that, assuming the House did not approve no deal—I think that we can assume that given the many votes that there have been on the matter already—the United Kingdom Government would then be mandated to revoke article 50, before we exit the EU with no deal late on the night of 12 April.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I am very sympathetic to the idea that we need a backstop in extremis to prevent no deal from happening, but can the hon. and learned Lady explain why, later in her motion, she goes on to introduce a level of complexity and a prescriptive route? Is she really wedded to that process, or is she more flexible about how that might work?

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[Joanna Cherry]

I am keen to get this motion passed today. I was very disappointed that some hon. Members, particularly those in the official Opposition, did not feel able to support it last week but, in the spirit of cross-party working, I am trying to be respectful of the reasons why they did not feel able to support it. Coming from the city of Edinburgh, which voted 75% to remain, and the country of Scotland, which voted 62% to remain, and representing a constituency which voted 72% to remain, I understand that it is easy for me to cross this bridge, but it is more difficult for Members in English and Welsh constituencies with different mandates.

Equally, unlike the British Government, who have failed to recognise the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland voted remain, I am trying to recognise that other parts of these islands voted leave and that, for some people to support this motion, the door cannot be closed on the Brexit process by a revocation to prevent no deal. That is why, with the assistance of lawyers—including Jo Maugham QC who was my fellow petitioner when we took the case to the Court of Justice in Luxembourg to establish that article 50 can be unilaterally revoked—we have crafted the motion in this way. In that connection, I declare my interest in relation to the support of the Good Law Project.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

rose—

[Joanna Cherry]

I will give way to my fellow sponsor.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Does the hon. and learned Lady agree that nobody in this House except those who positively want a crash-out, no-deal Brexit should have any problems voting for her motion?

[Joanna Cherry]

I do agree. I appeal to Members across this House. I know that 10 Conservative Members, including two junior Ministers, voted for this last week. I appeal to anyone who cares about the people who live on these islands and the economy of these islands to prevent a no deal from happening. It is no secret that I came to this House to secure an independent Scotland. That is still my primary aim, but it is not in the interests of Scotland for the Scottish economy to go down the tube with a no-deal Brexit. It is not in the interests of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish economies to go that way, and it is not in Scotland’s interests for the English, Welsh and Northern Irish economies to go that way. Make no mistake about it: if we crash out with no deal, it will be the jobs of ordinary, decent working people that go first. They are the sort of people who vote for the SNP. They are the sort of people who vote for the Labour party and we must protect them.

[Tom Brake]

Does the hon. and learned Lady agree that what she is doing today is supported by the 6 million people who signed the revoke petition—a matter that is being debated in Westminster Hall at this very moment?

[Joanna Cherry]

It is indeed, but the difference is that many people who signed that petition would like to see us just revoke article 50 now—straightaway—and that would be an end of the matter. I would quite like to see that myself, but that is not what this motion seeks to do. The motion is about using revocation as an insurance policy. In respectful recognition of the fact that the issue of Brexit will not go away if we simply revoke to avoid no deal, the motion seeks to mandate the Government to set up a public inquiry, under the Inquiries Act 2005, within three months of revocation to establish whether a model of a future relationship with the European Union could be found that would command majority support in the United Kingdom. It also says that, if that could be done, another referendum would be held on the question of whether to retrigger article 50 and renegotiate that model.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

rose—

[Joanna Cherry]

I will give way in a moment, but I just want to knock on the head at this stage a myth that has been peddled by some people that, if this motion were passed, the EU would object to our revoking article 50. That is not the case. It is a misunderstanding of the judgment of the Court of Justice in Luxembourg in the Scottish case, which did not say that, once we revoke article 50, we can never issue an article 50 notice ever again. It categorically did not say that. If Members cannot take that from me, then please read the judgment of the court, which I put on my Twitter feed this afternoon.

[Richard Benyon]

rose—

[Mrs Main]

rose—

[Joanna Cherry]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Richard Benyon]

I am very grateful to the hon. and learned Lady. Does she agree that one of the failures of this debate, in this House and beyond, is that we do not talk about exactly what no deal is all about—what it actually means for our constituents? We talk about it in too much of a conceptual way, and we let those who are in favour of leaving with no deal get away with not going into the real details—whether on agriculture, or the 83 trade deals of which we would no longer be part.

[Joanna Cherry]

I absolutely agree. That has been one of the many failures of this process—that this House has not been afforded sufficient time to knock on the head the sort of misinformation peddled about the consequences of no deal. Fortunately, we have much independent research on the consequences of no deal and Members will find that that independent research wholly tells us that no deal would be bad for the economies of these islands, for jobs and for the living standards of people who live here. It would be to shoot ourselves in the foot and to cut off our nose to spite our face.

[Anna Soubry]

I am proud to have signed the hon. and learned Lady’s motion and I shall be voting for it tonight. My only concern is not about the motion but, if it is passed, about the consequences. Many of us, right across this House, are concerned that, whatever votes we come to and whatever majority we find, the Government will simply ignore them.

[Joanna Cherry]

We have every reason to be concerned about that. As the right hon. Lady knows, the Government have repeatedly ignored votes in this House. However, if an instruction is clear and unequivocal, as this motion is, and it is ignored by the Government, there will political consequences—we have seen that previously with a contempt motion in this House—and there could also be legal consequences. In any normal times, this Government would be long gone because of their incompetence and the multiple fiascos that we have had recently but, really, if this Government were to ignore an instruction as clear as this and plunge the nations of these islands into the economic disaster of no deal, not only would they not survive it, but the Conservative and Unionist party would not survive it.

[Mrs Main]

I am looking closely at the hon. and learned Lady’s motion. Can she confirm that, with the timelines that it outlines, voting for her motion tonight will absolutely mean voting again for European elections and having to have MEPs?

[Joanna Cherry]

We all know that, if there is any sort of a lengthy extension, there will have to be European elections. I know that there is some learned opinion to the contrary, but the weight of opinion is that there will have to be European elections. I know that that will be difficult for some people to deal with, but if that is the consequence of preventing no deal and protecting our constituents’ livelihoods—the businesses of our constituents and the jobs of our constituents—then so be it and no responsible MP could fail to support this motion tonight. There are four motions before us. I will vote for two of the other ones as well but supporting this motion does not preclude hon. Members from supporting other motions. It is not a motion about the eventual outcome; it is a motion about process and about protecting us. [Interruption.] I can see that Mr Speaker is keen to bring in other speakers. I will not take up much more time, so I will wind up to a conclusion.

For Conservative Members of Parliament, this is an opportunity to make good on the promise that the Prime Minister has already made to this House that, unless the House agrees to it, no deal will not happen. For Labour MPs, it is the opportunity to make good on the promise in their 2017 manifesto, which of course I have read, as I always do Labour manifestos, and which says:

“Labour recognises that leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ is the worst possible deal for Britain and that it would do damage to our economy and trade. We will reject ‘no deal’ as a viable option”.

This is pretty much the last chance saloon. If Labour wants to reject no deal as a viable option and put in place the insurance policy of revocation, then it really needs to do that today.

Most of all, this motion should appeal to all of us as democrats, because this decision of such importance for the United Kingdom, between revocation and no deal, ought to be one for the representatives of the people in this Parliament and not for the Prime Minister in a minority Government. That is why I have called it the parliamentary supremacy motion. Of course, in Scotland, it is the people who are sovereign and supreme, not the Parliament, but I recognise that, for all intents and purposes, this Parliament is supreme. This motion is all about taking back control and making sure that we have an insurance policy against the danger that this rather confused Government could crash us into no deal without really meaning to do so.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Keir Starmer]

I will not, because I am trying to make some progress. We will support motion (E), because at this late stage it is clear that any Brexit deal agreed in this Parliament will need further democratic approval, and that is what the motion will provide. It will put a lock around any deal that the Prime Minister forces through at the eleventh hour, or any revised deal that comes about at this very late stage. It will ensure that any Tory Brexit deal is subject to a referendum lock. In other words, it upholds the principle that any such deal must be confirmed by the public if we are to proceed.

I want to finish by dealing briefly with motion (G). I understand why it has been tabled, and I have had the opportunity to discuss it with the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) . Our focus today is on the way forward, and that is why we are supporting the three motions that I have mentioned. Motion (G) is, in a sense, a fall-back for if that exercise fails, so I understand why it has been tabled. We will not be voting in favour of it tonight, but we accept that it deals with an issue that the House will have to confront in due course.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am extremely puzzled by the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s position. We all have to compromise today. I am going to vote for motion (D), and I am on the record as having concerns about it and saying that it did not go far enough. What does he think will be the reaction of working-class voters if the Labour Front Benchers’ failure to support motion (G) means that we crash out with no deal a week on Friday?

[Keir Starmer]

As we try to find a way forward, I think it is important that we all adopt the right tone, rather than throwing around, “What will people think of this, that and the other?” We have always said that we will take whatever measures are necessary to stop no deal. The exercise that we are involved in is an attempt to break the impasse and find a way through, using the indicative process. I accept that if that fails, there will have to be an insurance exercise, but we are not at that stage yet.

[Joanna Cherry]

rose—

[Keir Starmer]

I am not going to take another intervention. I am not rejecting the principle, but I am not going to stand at this Dispatch Box and listen to Members from across the House throwing around allegations that we are not interested in this, that and the other. We are trying to have a different debate, with a grown-up tone, to find a way forward. I am prepared to engage in that, and I am prepared to accept that we will have to confront the principle, but at the moment our focus is on how we break the deadlock. If we can do that, we will be able to move on to how we progress. If we cannot do that, we will have to look at other options. That is a genuine and sincere position from someone who cares a great deal about whether we crash out without a deal.