UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

From memory, I think that my right hon. Friend repeated this from the Dispatch Box last night, so I am happy to record again that undertaking by the Prime Minister and the Government. The exact timing for the introduction of legislation will have to await a decision by the European Council. If we are talking about an extension for a specific time period, the Government’s commitment was to do that once this had been agreed not just by the House but by the Council. There is little point in our introducing legislation for a particular duration only to find that that does not fly at European Union level.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

A while ago, before my right hon. Friend got drawn into this arcane debate about the minutiae of the European Union’s peculiar practices, he fleetingly mentioned the public. Our legitimacy is built on public faith and bolstered by public trust. The Government chose to specify a date in the legislation and thereby created an expectation. Frustrating that expectation would be seen by the public as a breach of faith, which might not worry unreconstructed remainers who regard the public not, as I do, with reverence, but with disdain. Such a breach would do the Government and the House immense damage.

[Mr Lidington]

I do not disagree with my right hon. Friend, but the remedy for the House is to rally behind an actual deal that allows our exit from the EU to take place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend will know that, as shipping Minister, I fought the port services regulation tooth and nail but, because of the limits on my competence, I could not stop it happening. He is making an interesting suggestion about the role of his Committee during the transition period. Would the Committee be recommending to the Executive that they implement the veto? He would not expect his Committee to assume the role of the Government.

[Sir William Cash]

That is absolutely right, and I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend, because he was the Minister responsible for ports regulation, and he has just reconfirmed that there was nothing he could do about it. It will be even worse during the transition period and thereafter. The reality therefore is that, as set out in the proposals I have discussed, the manner in which the veto would be expressed is perhaps on a recommendation by my Committee, because it would be of such legal and political importance, but obviously it would then have to go to the Government and to the Floor of the House to decide. The exact mechanism would have to be worked out, but to suggest that it would not be a matter of immense and urgent importance to the House is to assume that we in this House are a bunch of fools. It is unthinkable that the EU could impose laws on us by qualified majority voting on any matter within the corpus and range of the European treaties without our having some means of blocking it.

Having repealed the 1972 Act, we must not find ourselves in a customs union or single market, which are themselves within the framework of the Act, not only because our manifesto is the basis on which we were elected, but because leaving the EU includes the repeal of the Act. We must therefore also protect Northern Ireland within the constitutional framework of the UK, whose Parliament—some may find this surprising in the light of what we hear from other sources—includes Northern Ireland. It is represented here as a member of the UK and helps to pass the laws repealing the Act, including section 1 of the EU withdrawal Act.

In conclusion, I can say, without prejudice to any further discussions, that we might shortly be in a position not merely to check out of the Hotel California, but to take the bus to the airport and fly out of the EU altogether.

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[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Above all else, Brexit is about reclaiming power from the globalist elite. We owe a great debt to the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit. Not only did they bravely risk taking back control of our sovereign governance; our laws, our borders and our economy, but they exposed an arrogant self-serving elite in this nation, some of whom sit in this Chamber. As the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) spoke about her day out on the march for a people’s vote, I could just imagine it: Glyndebourne, the Henley regatta, and the people’s vote march—it is all part of the season for certain kinds of people. Following their democratic defeat in the biggest vote—

[Anna Soubry]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will just make a little progress. I want to flesh out my case against the elite—[Interruption.] Not quite yet. I may give way later when I have finished fleshing out my case against the elite, which the right hon. Lady has decided to join. I say join, because she was not born to it.

Following that democratic defeat in the biggest vote for anything in British history, much of the liberal establishment has responded with stunned entitlement and deafening hysteria. The essence of the reason for that hysterical reaction is that these people are not used to be being told that they are not right. They are not used to having their sense of entitlement challenged. That sense of entitlement is not just a material thing—an advantage in terms of place and progress—it is also the self-serving entitlement that prohibits views other than their own and wants to delegitimise the opinion of the vast majority of law-abiding, patriotic, decent British people who voted for Brexit. That is the truth of it, and it needs to be said in this Chamber.

[Anna Soubry]

rose—

[Chuka Umunna]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

I will happily give way to the right hon. Lady, as she was first and as a matter of chivalry.

[Anna Soubry]

Fascinating. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman—a knight of the realm, of course, and perhaps a member of a new elite—whether he understands that across the length and breadth of this country, in places like Redcar, where the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) is more than able to make the case, as I know she does, people are supporting a people’s vote? Is he saying that the people of Nottingham, a city with which he is well familiar, are an elite? In Nottingham, in Redcar, in Sunderland, in south Yorkshire and indeed in Streatham—are they elites?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

I will tell the right hon. Lady what happened in Redcar the last time we had a people’s vote—for we have had a people’s vote in this country; it was called the referendum—since she draws attention to Redcar: 66.2% of the people who voted there voted to leave the European Union. In Middlesbrough, Redcar, Bassetlaw, Ashfield, Mansfield, Hartlepool, Stoke-on-Trent, Barnsley, Kingston upon Hull and Blackpool—I could go on—more than 65% of the population who voted in the biggest ever reference to the people voted to leave the European Union. They expect this House to deliver on that.

When this House chose to delegate its authority to the people—I do not say that that should be done lightly; I am not a great fan of referendums, frankly, because they create binary choices about what are very complicated arguments—we, by nature, invested our faith in what the people decided. To breach that faith now, to break that promise, would undermine confidence in the democratic process in a way that scarcely anything has done before.

[Heidi Allen]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

Speaking of the democratic process, I will happily give way to the hon. Lady, who was elected as a Conservative and has now chosen not to be one.

[Heidi Allen]

I feel fortunate that I did not actually hear what the right hon. Gentleman called me. Regardless, I just wanted to check whether it was an act of chivalry not to allow the good people of Redcar, Barnsley and Nottingham to have their voice again. Is it an act of chivalry not to allow them to say how they feel today?

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady must understand that once you have agreed to have a referendum, which is what this House did by an overwhelming majority, and once you have stood on a manifesto that pledged—as both Labour Members and she did, by the way—to honour the result of that referendum, if you then choose to delay, defer, obfuscate or dilute that commitment, you will be seen to have breached the trust in which people deserve to hold those they choose to speak for them in this mother of Parliaments.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I am not going to give way again, because I am conscious that others want to speak, I have a short time limit, and it is interrupting my lovely flow.

The truth is that there are people here who campaigned for remain—many Opposition Members and many Government Members—who respect the result of the referendum, who want to honour the pledge that we made, who want to do the right thing by the people and who want to leave the European Union, but there is a minority who are unreconciled to the result of the referendum and who are using every means at their disposal, fair and foul, to frustrate its result. They are hiding behind all kinds of improbable and incredible excuses for so doing, and frankly, the people’s vote campaign is among them.

You need to know, Mr Speaker, and I am sure the House needs to know too, that some of us stand resolute in opposition to this further reference to the people—as if we’ve not had a people’s vote. If we were to agree to it, what if, on a lower turnout, people voted to remain? What if it was a marginal decision once again, by a smaller margin than last time? Would we have a third referendum to settle the matter? Is it going to be the best of three, the best of five, or perhaps the best of seven? How many referendums must we have before the settled will of the people is established?

I stand for the people, of the people and by the people. I am proud to have got to this place from where I began, but unlike some hon. Members, I have not forgotten my origins and will stick by the people, and the people want to leave the European Union on time, lock, stock and barrel.