European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons
Thursday 9th January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

May I welcome you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to your place? I look forward to your wisdom and benevolence.

In our age, hyperbole is commonplace. Exaggeration permeates debate and colours discourse. Superlatives litter our language. Yet there are few in this House who would disagree with my claim that it is almost impossible to exaggerate the significance of the Bill and what it facilitates—our departure from the European Union. The case I make today is that even more important than the Bill’s provisions is its purpose. Even more important than leaving is the reason that we are leaving. That is the people’s rejection of the prevailing political paradigm that the chatterati and glitterati, the denizens of the liberal elite, believed for years was beyond question. At the core of this perversity was an attachment to pan-nationalism and a consequent affection for supranational governance. This led, among the liberal establishment, to a diminished sense of meaningful place. They came to regard it as not just permissible but desirable to erode the familiar touchstones of enduring certainty.

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I won’t right at the moment; perhaps a little later. I know the hon. and learned Lady will want me to repeat that poetic phrase: the familiar touchstones of enduring certainty, epitomised by a spirit of local allegiance and a sense of national pride. The truth is that the bourgeois liberals—and at that point I give way to the hon. and learned Lady.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am not going to deny that I am a bourgeois liberal, but many people in Scotland who are not bourgeois liberals voted to remain in the European Union. Will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the situation he is describing pertains in England but not in Scotland, where 62% of the population voted to remain and where my party, which I do not think really could be described as a bourgeois liberal party but does contain some old bourgeois liberals like myself, won 48 of the 59 seats? Will he do us the courtesy of acknowledging that he is talking about England, not Scotland?

[Sir John Hayes]

I congratulate the hon. and learned Lady on her honesty. She separates herself not only from most of her party but from most of the voters. She says that she is part of the bourgeois liberal elite, but they are not.

[Joanna Cherry]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will give way just one more time.

[Joanna Cherry]

The right hon. Gentleman has made a very personal comment about me separating myself from most of my voters. Would he like to explain why, if I have separated myself from most of my voters, my majority over the Conservative and Unionist party went from 1,000 to 12,000 votes in the general election?

[Sir John Hayes]

One day, if the hon. and learned Lady continues, and maybe she will for many, many years, she just might attain the 30,000 majority that I got in South Holland and the Deepings, but I think it is very unlikely indeed.

As I say, the bourgeois liberals find it hard to stomach that hard-working British patriots do not share their affection for globalisation and their preoccupation with diversity.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

No, I won’t give way, because I want to make some progress as others want to speak.

Those hard-working patriots prefer tradition, order and established values to the politically correct, poisonous cocktail of egalitarianism and assertive individualism. This paradigm shift is at the heart of the message broadcast first in the 2016 referendum and then still more loudly in the general election at the end of last year. GK Chesterton spoke of the people who had “not spoken yet”. Well, the people have now spoken. They have spoken loudly, clearly and decisively. They have sent a message that this House had better hear. On the Conservative Benches I think we have. Indeed, not only have we heard it, we have rearticulated it and we are proud to do so.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

On that point.

[Sir John Hayes]

I have the greatest regard for the hon. Gentleman and so on that basis alone I will happily give way to him.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He is being very kind in giving way. I would not want to puncture his balloon too much, but here goes. The reality is not as he paints it. The reality is that 43% of people voting in a first-past-the-post system is why all this is happening. It is not that the great British whatever he wants to call them decided it, but that 43% in first past the post and the winner takes all. It is not the great sweep of the proletariat or the bourgeois, or whatever he wants to call it.

[Sir John Hayes]

I do not want to go off on a tangent. Despite what I described earlier as your wisdom and benevolence, Mr Deputy Speaker, you would not let me, but I will just say this to the hon. Gentleman. This Prime Minister went to the people, at some risk to himself and to others on the Conservative Benches, and put a very clear message to them. He essentially said, “I cannot make progress in the current parliamentary arrangement because of the arithmetic. Do you want me to deliver Brexit? Do you want to get Brexit done or don’t you?” The British people said, “That is exactly what we want you to do.” They have sent us here to do just that. Any further prevarication or hesitation will, frankly, ring hollow in the ears of those people. I simply advise the hon. Gentleman that in victory the test of character is humility, but in defeat the test of character is being wise enough to learn the lessons of that defeat. One or two people on the Opposition Benches have learnt those lessons and have made that clear, but others need to do so very quickly indeed.

I know that others want to contribute, so I will bring my remarks to a conclusion by saying this. The Bill is the first step not on a trip to a different place but on a return journey: a return journey for this United Kingdom to hope, to patriotism and to greatness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paterson]

No. I’m not giving way. We know where the Scottish nationalists are coming from, because they make the same point every time. Just to keep them happy, though, I will give them a little anecdote.

In the town where I was born, Whitchurch, we have six polling stations in one building, the civic centre. On referendum day, people came up to me off a building site, covered in dust, and said, “It is good to see you here, Mr Paterson, because it’s about them”. I asked, “Who’s them?” They said, “We can get rid of you, we can vote you out, but we cannot get rid of them”, and then they made the very telling point, “You can do nothing about them either”.

We had an interesting debate yesterday about this. We can do absolutely nothing about European law, which is imposed upon us. I had the honour to serve on the European Scrutiny Committee with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. One day, a Labour Member was ill and a Liberal Democrat got stuck in the lift and we managed to vote that a measure on the dairy industry—of great interest to my constituents—would be passed for a vote on the Floor of the House. It would not have been amendable, but we could have made our points. What happened? The Leader of the House at the time, the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), turned up at business questions and said, “You’re not even having a debate”. That was the amount of scrutiny we had. I find it extraordinary that people do not welcome the chance to scrutinise Ministers. From now on, they will be able to harpoon Ministers who make bad decisions. They can have Adjournment debates and criticise law. We can get law amended and repealed. None of that will apply to European law until we pass the Bill.

There are so many areas where European law has damaged this country, but the winner by a mile is still fish. In 2005, as shadow Fisheries Minister, I wrote a green paper called “A Consultation on a National Policy on Fisheries Management in UK Waters”. It is the paper on which we fought the 2005 general election. For the first time, a serious political party proposed repatriating a power. I come from North Shropshire. One of the most fascinating experiences of my 22 years here was going all around the coast of the UK—right up to Whalsay, right down to Cornwall and Dover—but above all going to the maritime nations of Norway, the Faroes, Iceland, Newfoundland in Canada and then down the east coast of the United States. I also went to the Falklands. It was extraordinary to see how modern techniques could bring thriving fishing communities—some of the most remote communities in the world—wealth, prosperity, jobs and investment.

By contrast, in this country we have utter devastation. This wonderful occupation delivered wealth and jobs for centuries until we were stupid enough to give the power to the continental level, and we now have the shameful, wicked waste of 1 million tonnes of fish thrown back dead into the sea as pollution every year, and yet Opposition Members this afternoon are defending staying in the EU and the common fisheries policy.

[Sir John Hayes]

My right hon. Friend will remember that I was shadow Fisheries Minister before him. I was very good and he was even better. The truth is—this is the question that Opposition Members in particular need to answer—that the CFP was not only disastrous for fishing communities and fishermen; it was also a conservation disaster for our oceans. Anyone who signs up to the EU signs up to the CFP and the decimation of our oceans.

[Mr Paterson]

My right hon. Friend is quite right. The opening line of my paper said:

“The Common Fisheries Policy is a biological, environmental, economic and social disaster; it is beyond reform.”

Today we are giving ourselves the power to reform it and take back this power. I would like those on the Front Bench to remember that this is a crucial, totemic issue. We have to take back full power and complete control over our exclusive economic zone and all the marine resources within it.