Debates between John Redwood and William Cash during the 2019 Parliament

Tue 16th Jan 2024
Wed 24th May 2023
Tue 7th Dec 2021
Nationality and Borders Bill
Commons Chamber

Report stage & Report stage & Report stage
Tue 15th Dec 2020
Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill
Commons Chamber

3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & 3rd reading
Tue 8th Dec 2020
Taxation (Post-transition Period) (Ways and Means)
Commons Chamber

Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between John Redwood and William Cash
William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
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We want the Bill to succeed. We want it to work and to do what our voters want, but at present it does not. Clause 2, as it stands, does not work, which is why I shall press my amendment 10 to a vote, supported as it is by well over 60 Members of Parliament. Clause 2 needs to be amended with clear and unambiguous words, and with a full “notwithstanding” formula, not the one currently on offer. This formula has been used throughout our legislative history, for hundreds of years, but most recently it has been enacted in our most important domestic constitutional legislation, without opposition—namely, in section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020.

The sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament is democracy, and it is described in a leading case by the great Lord Bingham, our greatest modern jurist, as the “bedrock of our constitution”. Democracy delivers the wishes of the voters who elect us through the legislation that we pass as Acts of Parliament, and it is this democracy for which people fought and died. Nothing can be more important to their daily lives, including illegal immigration, and that is why this issue is so important.

However, it is also important to stress that genuine refugees are fairly protected—this country has always done that—as in the case of Afghanistan, Hong Kong and so forth. Yesterday’s YouGov poll makes it clear how strongly people feel about all this. It is a legal and constitutional, and therefore also essentially political, problem.

The reason why sovereignty is so fundamental is that the courts recognise that they have a duty to interpret, adjudicate on and obey the laws made under that parliamentary sovereignty, where legislative words are clear, express, explicit and unambiguous. Therefore, the use of a comprehensive “notwithstanding” formula, as in my amendment, would ensure that we make the Bill work in line with its intended purposes, and that it would not be frustrated by claims of international law or other contrary law.

The Bill in its current form will not prevent, as everyone knows, further ingenious individual claims, followed by further Supreme Court decisions. The recent Supreme Court judgment on 15 November 2023, as I pointed out in an intervention, makes my very point. It shows that the words in the immigration and asylum Acts at that point in time were not clear and unambiguous. However, and this is vital, it seems to have escaped many people’s notice that one of the claimants—ASM, an Iraqi—had his claim dismissed in that very judgment because, in the words of Lord Reed, the President of the Supreme Court himself,

“in any event, the principle of legality does not permit a court to disregard an unambiguous expression of Parliament’s intention such as that”—

I say this to the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on the Opposition Front Bench—

“with which we are concerned in the present case.”

This was emphatically because the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 and related immigration legislation was so clear and unambiguous in that case as to require the Court to dismiss the claim of the Iraqi precisely as a matter of parliamentary sovereignty.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
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My hon. Friend is doing a wonderful job, as always. Did he see the recent briefings, which seemed to come from the Government, that they are expecting a lot of cases under their law and are going to provide a lot more judges for them? Are they not telling us that this is not going to work?

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I am afraid to say that does appear to be the inevitable inference to be drawn from the statements that have been made. The worry is that, unless the law is completely clear and unambiguous, there is going to be more trouble, and if the Bill was to be passed with clear and unambiguous words, the Government would not need the judges that they seem to want to employ—and nor, for that matter, all the fees that the lawyers will accumulate as a result of taking part in some very spurious cases.

As I have said, the Rwanda judgment is in line with all previous judgments by pre-eminent jurists in recent generations, such as—I mention but a few—Lord Denning, Lord Reid, Lord Hoffmann, Lord Bingham and others. Months ago, I sent the Prime Minister a seven-page memorandum, each line of which set out breaches of international law in almost every jurisdiction in the world, including even the EU itself, the United States, France and Germany, where clearly apparent breaches of international law have occurred without international sanctions. As for the Vienna convention, what really matters is whether the internal domestic law is of fundamental importance in the national interest, and this illegal immigration law manifestly is.

In the UK, we have a dualist system of law in which the sovereignty of Parliament is fundamental to our rule of law and cannot be trumped by international law, the opinions or conventions of the Government Legal Service or—speaking as a former shadow Attorney General—if this be the case, even by an Attorney General. We have a dualistic approach to these matters in which domestic law and international law are seen as independent of one another. The recent Miller 1 judgment states, at paragraph 57, that our

“dualist system is a necessary corollary of Parliamentary sovereignty…it exists to protect Parliament not ministers.”

Furthermore, as Lord Hoffmann made so clear in R v. Lyons in 2002, the courts will have regard to the words of the statute, not the treaty. This is because we have no written constitution defining the internal status of international law within the United Kingdom. As Lord Bingham has said, international law is

“complementary to the national laws of individual states and in no way antagonistic to them”.

International law is not supranational, unlike European law.

British courts cannot deem a statute unconstitutional. Under our constitution, it is the King in Parliament who legislates, not His Majesty’s Government—I thought they had learned that in the civil war of the 1640s. The court does not require to have regard to functions of Government when interpreting the law. A statute, even when arising from an international treaty, will always prevail over a rule of international law. Lord Hoffmann, in the case of R v. Lyons in 2002—I will quote what he says, as I cannot improve on it—stated that

“it is firmly established that international treaties do not form part of English law and that English courts have no jurisdiction to interpret or apply them… It is not the treaty but the statute which forms part of English law. And English courts will not (unless the statute expressly so provides) be bound to give effect to interpretations of the treaty by an international court, even though the United Kingdom is bound by international law to do so... The sovereign legislator in the United Kingdom is Parliament. If Parliament has plainly laid down the law, it is the duty of the courts to apply it, whether that would involve the Crown in breach of an international treaty or not.”

Nothing could be clearer.

In Bradley and Ewing’s authoritative book “Constitutional and Administrative Law”, it is clearly stated that the legislative supremacy of Parliament is not limited by international law. The courts may not hold an Act void on the grounds that it contravenes general principles of international law. Indeed, the Labour Government in 1998 specifically reaffirmed the sovereignty of Parliament in relation to their Human Rights Act, saying that they would not seek to transfer power from future Parliaments to the courts because that would confer on the judiciary a general power over the decisions of Parliament and would draw the judiciary into serious conflict with Parliament. Their own White Paper stated of the judiciary:

“There is no evidence to suggest that they desire this power, nor that the public wish them to have it.”

I do wish the hon. Member for Aberavon was listening to this, because it is about the Labour party, and this still applies today.

Indeed, under paragraph 53 of the House of Lords Constitution Committee’s report of 18 January 2023, the Committee accepts that UK domestic law can

“diverge from obligations agreed by the Government under an international treaty, and ratified following the CRAG”—

Constitutional Reform and Governance Act—

“procedures... And parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament could legislate to ensure that domestic law differed from the requirements of a treaty.”

Paragraph 54 states:

“Parliament having enacted legislation that is not compliant with the UK’s international obligations, the courts are bound to apply that law.”

Paragraph 58 goes on to state:

“Parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament can legislate contrary to the UK’s obligations under international law.”

There we have it. And I should add that many members of that Committee, such as Lord Falconer of Thoroton, are certainly not Conservatives or Brexiteers. So there we are—we are all agreed.

In our unique unwritten constitution, our sovereignty patently prevails over international law, which is, for example, in contrast with that of Germany. What happens there? Article 25 of its written constitution, which I have taken from an established work on public international law, states as follows—these are the words of the very constitution in Germany:

“The general rules of public international law are an integral part of federal law. They shall take precedence over the laws, and shall directly create rights and duties for the inhabitants of the federal territory.”

Similar provisions apply under the Dutch constitution, in articles 65 and 66. That tells us that there is a dualist system, and some countries take a view that is different from ours. We just happen to be on the right side of the fence. Similar provisions may be applied by specialist international lawyers, and they may seek to make out that international law in this country prevails over clearly explicit words in Acts of Parliament and parliamentary sovereignty. But no House of Lords or Supreme Court case supports that proposition.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between John Redwood and William Cash
William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
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I will speak to my very short amendment to the very short new clause in Lords amendment 16, on the retained EU law dashboard and report. The new clause requires the Government to report on their plan to revoke and reform, while my amendment seeks for that report to include a list of EU provisions to be revoked or reformed. In other words, it adds to the benefits of the new clause and to the Government’s proposals. The new clause was adopted as a Government amendment in the House of Lords a couple of days ago.

I am very grateful to colleagues who signed my amendment, and I know that many more want to do so. I am also glad that the Secretary of State has agreed—no doubt having received some good advice from my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General and others, unnamed—to put her name to the amendment. That means, I am glad to say, that it is now Government amendment (a). Procedurally, that is a very great prize, because if the amendment had not received Government support it would almost certainly not have been selected for debate and we would not have been able to vote on it. I mention that as a matter of significance. I am deeply grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for attending meetings with me and for the dedicated way in which he goes about his job.

We need to make sure that this new structure actually works so that we can put the painful recent past behind us and get on with the job in hand of getting rid of EU supremacy and insisting on the freedom to deregulate. We also need to get to the bottom of which laws should be reformed or revoked. That process is in hand, but it is moving far too slowly and not being done with the degree of experience and skill that needs to be applied to it.

I am also very glad to report that, after a few refusals—but I do not want to dwell on that—the Secretary of State will appear before the European Scrutiny Committee in the week beginning 5 June. That is a very important step forward.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
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I am grateful to my hon. Friend for all the work he does, and I am glad that the Secretary of State will at last appear before Parliament on this crucial change of policy. Has he had any assurances that the many ideas that I and others have put to the Government on repeal and improvement of EU law will be not only read but implemented? What is the delay?

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
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I agree very much with and share the sentiment expressed by my right hon. Friend. We need to move forward and have a proper list and the opportunity to examine the manner in which that list is prepared. The important matters to which he specifically refers include economic freedoms and the ability to reduce taxation where necessary. If they are not on that new list, there will be a lot of people asking for them to be included. That is the next step. It has unfortunately taken a long time to get to this point, but I think that we are now beginning to get there.

The new clause prescribes arrangements for Parliament to be properly informed as to the need for a full and hopefully, at last, accurate and relevant list of retained EU law along the lines of economic freedom and competitiveness and many other things. I and many colleagues, including those on the European Scrutiny Committee, have been severely pressing, for a long time, for a full and accurate list. We have invited the Secretary of State to come before our Committee many times without success, but she is now coming, and we are glad of it. We asked for progress in relation to all EU retained law. We did not get it, but we are now going to.

I also proposed to the Secretary of State that there needs to be an experienced tsar, or commander in chief, of the operations, because by the sound of it there has been something of a problem inside the civil service and it has led to difficulty in getting the job done. This person would need to know and understand the process of European scrutiny, what to do and how to go about it. I have written to other Ministers as well, and explained to them that there are archives in Kew that will be part of the list, not to mention individual Government departmental archives, parliamentary counsel office archives and, of course, our own very special European Scrutiny Committee archives, which date back to 1973 and are extremely comprehensive, including the explanatory notes that were produced to my Committee as individual regulations and laws were being negotiated. They also explained the Government’s position on particular points, but I will come on to that in a moment.

When I hear people suggest that they have not had the time to do all this and get the job done properly, I despair at their lack of drive, energy, commitment and, perhaps, unawareness of the Conservative manifesto. The new clause will provide an obligatory framework for the completion of the task.

It was profoundly disturbing to look at the schedule attached to the new Bill. It restructures the Bill in radical ways, but this debate is not the time to go into the history of all that. We have had a lot of discussion about it, so I am not going to do so. This Bill, as it has come from the House of Lords, is a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly. The good is the ending of the supremacy of EU law and methods of interpretation, and also the provisions relating to deregulation. The ugly lies in the reformed structure and the manner in which we only heard about that at very short notice on 10 May. But, as I have said, we now have to move on. The bad lies in the amendments by the House of Lords, which if passed would have profound consequences undermining our national interest. We also need a coherent statute book. We cannot have two statute books, with one dealing with laws passed during our time in the European Union, pre Brexit, and the other dealing with laws passed afterwards. That would be most peculiar, and it would not work. It would be incoherent and create great legal uncertainty.

The new clause that the Government have adopted requires the Secretary of State to update, within specified periods, the EU law dashboard and publish a report on the revocation and reform of retained EU law. This report must provide a summary of the dashboard, set out progress already made in revoking and reforming, and set out the Government’s plans to revoke and reform those laws. In effect, it sets obligations and a timetable.

It is always interesting to know what people’s “plans” are, but having a plan does not mean that we know what is in it before we see it, and nor does it mean that it will ever happen. What does matter is that it is listed, and that is the point of my amendment. The list can be examined to see what modifications or revocations are required under clause 14. Only then can we decide their relevance in the national interest. It also makes the Secretary of State properly accountable to do the job properly within the framework of our parliamentary and scrutiny procedures, including my Committee; I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for the assurance he has given on the Floor of the House to work with my Committee. It also creates a deadline and pressure to get on with the job.

I have written separately to the Government not only about the tsar but about the efficient delivery by external sources, in a comprehensive manner, by May next year. That is doable, but it requires political will, and diligence on the part of the civil service. That is why my amendment states that the plan must specifically include in a list those provisions of retained EU law that the Government intend to revoke or reform. On the face of it, this is a simple amendment, but it carries with it the need to do the job properly. I assure the House that the European Scrutiny Committee will examine the content of that list and its implications with an eagle eye. It is an enormous shame—in fact, I would almost call it a disgrace—that the current schedule to the Bill consists of what could politely be described as junk, with very few exceptions. I have been through the list; actually, I did so during the Eurovision song contest. I turned to my wife and said, “I really cannot tell which is worse: this schedule or the Eurovision song contest.”

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William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I think it is perfectly reasonable to do it now, because it has not been done before: that is where the problem lies. I would also slightly correct my hon. Friend regarding the relevance of, for example, fishery arrangements between the EU and the Government of the Cook Islands—they are administered by New Zealand, I believe. Such arrangements have nothing at all to do with us, and could not conceivably be included in a list that was intended to demonstrate relevant revocation and reform of these laws.

Expunging EU laws from our statute book frees our voters, our businesses, our Parliament, our sovereignty and our democracy from their subjugation to the EU for 50 years. Those laws were made and engineered by the European Union, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers behind closed doors by qualified majority voting—without even a transcript, as I have said so many times—but usually came about by way of consensus. The veto was promised and guaranteed in the 1971 White Paper, which hon. Members can look up for themselves, but it was whittled away. When EU laws came to be discussed behind those doors, we generally ended up with consensus; they certainly were not our own laws passed by our own Parliament. That operation has been described by a famous economist as “regulatory collusion”.

The making of all those laws, as I said earlier, was accompanied by an explanatory memorandum, which is a useful reference point for determining what mattered at the time. Not one single piece of EU legislation was ever rejected or amended during the entire course of our membership. Interestingly, one of the five provisions that I have mentioned that are relevant to this debate is the port services directive, which was opposed by every single one of the port employers, by every single one of the trade unions, and by the Government. What could they do about it? Nothing. That is the point, and that almost summarises the reasons for the exercise that has been conducted under the Bill.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
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Does my hon. Friend recall that—certainly when I was single market Minister some years ago—quite often we did not want the regulation or law at all, but the Government then decided that it did not look good because we did not have a veto to enforce our wish, and we ended up trying to negotiate the version that was least damaging? Why is it that collective memory has forgotten all this, and why do people only recall the laws they want to keep? Why can they not recall the laws we never wanted?

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
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Fortunately, the collective memory includes me, because I was first put on the European Scrutiny Committee in 1985. I have been on it ever since, and I have been Chair for 10 years. However, I totally agree with my right hon. Friend. The question of whether these laws mattered and whether they were going to go by consensus was driven by the fact that the people sitting around the table knew beforehand whether there was going to be a majority vote, and whether they would lose. As it was a dead certainty that the UK was going to lose, they entered into that consensus.

The real objective of the European Union in all this was to harmonise laws across Europe, creating a fundamental shift to European integration. That is one of the reasons why I tabled a sovereignty clause to the Single European Act 1986, which eventually found its way on to the statute book in 2020. Essentially, all these laws lack the kind of democratic legitimacy that we would expect in our traditional, constitutional, common-law system. We must therefore judge the laws that are now in the list, as set out in my amendment. Where they are capable of being modified, let them be modified, but as I have said, many of them were passed by majority vote and were certainly not in the UK’s national interest. Indeed, the chief negotiator for our entry to the EU under Edward Heath, Sir Con O’Neill, stated of his own failure to understand the system that

“I am sorry to say we probably also thought that it was not fundamentally important.”

Tragically, it was important, and the thousands of laws that now need to be reformed and revoked were the product of his and the then Government’s failure, and those who persisted in it until we left the European Union.

Sadly, for decades after our entry to the EU, the passing of laws in the European Council of Ministers continued to churn out thousands that did not have democratic legitimacy, and which we now have to modify or revoke. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said on Monday that

“it is crucial that Parliament and the public are able to hold the Government’s feet to the fire and ensure that our momentum continues”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 May 2023; Vol. 830, c. 609.]

It is also important that the Brexit Opportunities Unit has discussions with the European Scrutiny Committee about methods and co-ordination, including the tsar I have mentioned alongside a team of external experts. Resources will be needed, yes, but the need is absolutely vital. I am therefore glad that the Government and the Secretary of State have agreed to adopt the amendment that stands in my name and those of many colleagues. I believe that the clause, when amended by this and other amendments, will be one of the main levers for making a success of this entire operation.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between John Redwood and William Cash
William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
- Parliament Live - Hansard - - - Excerpts

My amendment 150 to clause 28, using the “notwithstanding” formula, would exclude the Human Rights Act 1998, the European convention on human rights, EU and retained law and the United Nations refugee convention from judicial authority and judgment. This is all about tackling illegal immigration, which our 2019 manifesto made clear that we intended to and must resolve.

The amendment is not against genuine persecuted refugees; this is about economic migrants who claim that they are within the legal framework of protected refugees. The illegal traffickers convince them to use our human rights laws to come over to our shores in the certain knowledge that they will be protected by our judicial system. Illegal immigrants have no right to enter our borders. Despite the difficult journey that they have made to the French coast, they have no greater right to come here than any other illegal immigrant. When they come, as the traffickers have promised them, they are almost all allowed to stay under Home Office guidance and are protected by the judiciary. They then bring their families across and, with the benefits that they claim—not to mention education and housing—they enter what they believe to be the land of milk and honey. The returns are negligible because of the human rights legislation, as it stands.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
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I strongly support my hon. Friend’s amendment. Did he note that when I asked the Minister for an assurance that the legislation, unamended, would be proof against human rights legislation distorting the intent, he was not able to give me that assurance?

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Parliament Live - Hansard - - - Excerpts

Not only was the Minister not able to, but he did not want to.

This year alone, 26,000 have entered and, unless the legal loopholes are effectively stopped, they will continue to come in a tsunami of numbers next year. The Government have provided a remedy partially in this Bill but not yet regarding the full legal framework of the Human Rights Act, the European convention on human rights, EU retained law and the refugee convention of 1951, as amended with universal application in 1967 by a protocol. On EU retained law alone, I have found on the Government’s website in the National Archives that this amounts to as many as 123 directives and regulations, spelling out masses of laws relating to asylum and immigration that originated in EU law and are now on our statute book, although a few have been revoked.

The official Home Office policy guidance for asylum screening is still essentially based on the same law, and it makes for dismal reading. It is essential that that is changed. At present, an asylum claim must be registered where an individual fears persecution or serious harm of persecution for any given reason on return to their country. How to evaluate a fear varies with every individual and can in many cases be deliberately exaggerated.

To be recognised as a refugee under the UN refugee convention, the claimant can assert that they have a well-founded fear of persecution and be not only unable, but unwilling, to go back to their country of origin or habitual residence. That can be invoked on grounds which include mere political opinions. Furthermore, they can claim that they are within the judicial sphere of “the humanitarian protection policy”, and the discretion as to whether an asylum claim should be accepted is heavily weighted in favour of asylum, even if the claimants do not even use the term “asylum” when they arrive on our shores.

A paper by the highly distinguished former professor of law at Oxford, John Finnis, and Simon Murray explains in graphic terms the law and case law in more than 100 pages of detailed analysis. They conclude that the European Court of Human Rights has wrongly circumvented fundamental principles originated in the European convention on human rights and the 1951 refugee convention. They also argue that, properly interpreted, the UK and other signatory states have no obligation to let in refugees arriving at our borders en masse, have no legal or treaty obligation to accept refuges at all, and have no obligation to provide asylum for dangerous refugees, such as criminals and terrorists.

The European Court, by radical and unwarranted interpretation, has used the article 3 provisions on torture and inhuman treatment and the article 8 provisions on the right to private and family life to extend the ambit of claimants to encourage them to engage in unlawful immigration. That has been done through the formula of so-called living instruments and recent UK judicial rulings that have continuously expanded claimants’ rights within the judicial system. Claimants are granted repetitive appeals that bring the immigration system under intense pressure at monumental expense to the taxpayer, with grave political consequences on the doorstep.

We need to pull the rug from under the traffickers’ feet, save the lives of those who are exploited by them, and protect our own manifesto promises. Despite the Government’s good intentions in aspects of the Bill, we must solve the fundamental problems presented by the human rights legislation and the legal framework of the provisions that I have mentioned. We cannot continue, with unwarranted interpretation and judgments by the judiciary, to allow illegal immigration.

I seek robust assurances today from the Government to resolve the matter by legislation, and I will press my amendment unless I get them. We cannot go on kicking the can down the yellow brick road. The journey has begun, but the question is where it ends. The yellow brick road is not only in disrepair, as it was in “The Wizard of Oz”, but littered with political precipices.

Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill

Debate between John Redwood and William Cash
William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

The clauses before us are directly related to what was originally in the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, and they were there for a very good reason. They were there because it is absolutely essential that we maintain our sovereignty, and the decisions must be taken by Parliament, and should not be taken by the House of Lords, whose Members are unelected. We are the House of Commons, and that part of the House of Commons which is elected has a Government who were elected in December 2019, almost exactly one year ago. In that general election, it was made quite clear that the decision before the British people was effectively to be decided in line with what was decided in the referendum. There are therefore two things joining together, in conjunction with one another: the referendum in 2016, followed by a whole series of enactments of Parliament. That includes the decision on the notification of withdrawal, which was accepted by the Labour party and was voted through in the House of Commons by 499 to around 120. It is not as if anybody could say that the supremacy of Parliament was not made manifest in the light of the referendum.

There was then a series of other enactments, and we eventually ended up with a confirmation of Acts of Parliament, including the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, which was passed after the general election. Section 38 of that Act made it abundantly clear that we had the right to insist—as a matter of constitutional principle and through the enactment of an Act of Parliament—that the United Kingdom was sovereign, and, furthermore, that we would be allowed to override the withdrawal agreement. That was contained in section 38(2)(b), which specifically refers to section 7A and in turn therefore directly relates, through the use of the word “notwithstanding”, to the overriding direct effect. That is a very important point—a point that is conveniently overlooked by some people, who continually assert that somehow or other the Government have been out of order, breaking international law or breaking constitutional principles. But they never come forward with any arguments; as I said in a recent speech in the House regarding the attitude of the House of Lords, they were basically strong on assertion and empty in argument.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
- Hansard - -

Does my hon. Friend agree that those of us who could only vote for the withdrawal legislation because it contained clause 38 understood fully that it was a conditional agreement to the withdrawal agreement, because the EU always said that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and we wished to see the full package before deciding whether to allow it to be untrammelled?

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Yes, indeed. I sometimes find that Lewis Carroll has some very useful ways of putting things. There was the famous exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty, in which Humpty Dumpty says: “Words mean what you choose them to mean. The question is who is to be master, that is all.” Words can be used in all kinds of different ways to try to justify propositions that are unsustainable.

I say with respect, but none the less very firmly, that in this particular case it is absolutely clear that when the decision has been taken by the British people—the voters—in the referendum and has then been endorsed by an Act of Parliament and a whole series of other Acts of Parliament, including section 38, it really is not down to the unelected House of Lords to resist it on the scale that they have, and to claim that they can override the House of Commons. We have just had a whole series of agreements and disagreements going backwards and forwards on the UKIM Bill alone.

As Lord Bingham made absolutely and abundantly clear in chapter 12 of his magisterial book “The Rule of Law”, it is for Parliament to make law and pass Acts of Parliament; it is not for the judges to intervene, to seek to make law and to impugn the sovereignty of Parliament. Anyone who wants to get the full flavour of it should read chapter 12 of “The Rule of Law”, because it is the most explicit and clear statement that one could possibly imagine.

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William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Interestingly, I made some reference to the principles that are under discussion in the current negotiations. Of course, we do not know the outcome of those negotiations as we speak—as I said in the previous debate, I wish them well—but it has to be made clear that, certainly as far as I and those of my friends who agree with me are concerned, one of the most crucial questions is that of state aid, because that issue is right at the heart of the discussions and negotiations this week. I asked the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to assure the House that nothing in any treaty text or subsequent Act of Parliament will prevent the UK from having its own sovereign state aid rules, including on energy, so that we are not subjugated to EU state aid rules, nor to the European Court, given that the EU intends, as it has stated over the past week or two—in very bad faith, in my opinion—to impose and enforce its rules against us. Ultimately, of course, that would be done by a majority vote in the Council of Ministers, behind closed doors, without our even being at the table after 31 December. The fact is that we have to assert our sovereignty in the negotiations so that any treaty that emerges from them—if one does—must comply with the assertion of the sovereignty of this House, this country and this Parliament, and must at the same time apply whether in respect of direct or indirect effect.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
- Hansard - -

Is it not also the case that the agreement with the European Union is muddled and contradictory? The EU has always said that it understands that the UK is going to be sovereign, so if this House simply asserts our sovereignty, as it can do, that is, in a way, our fair interpretation of the agreement.

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Yes, absolutely. Sovereignty is also a question of fact. I do not want to get into the intricacies of 15th century history, but there was a chap called Henry VII who made it abundantly clear that as far as he was concerned he won the battle of Bosworth and that was it. I do not think we need to pursue that one too much, because sovereignty is quite a simple thing when it comes down to it: it is called political will and legal arguments of the kind I am addressing.

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John Redwood Portrait John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
- Hansard - -

I have declared my business interests in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I rise to support what may be an amendment that we are going to vote on or may be a probing amendment from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), because I think there has been a deliberate misunderstanding by the EU and its friends over what Brexit is about and what we need to do in order to achieve a proper Brexit. A proper Brexit is taking back control; it is recreating the sovereignty of the people of the United Kingdom through their Parliament.

My hon. Friend has a distinguished career in this place trying to rebuild that sovereignty and watching, year after year, more and more of our powers taken away by successive treaties, by successive directives and regulations, many of them automatic ones over which the UK had little or no influence, and by court judgments which, again, we had precious little ability to shape. He is right that, as we come to legislate for our new arrangements as a sovereign country from 1 January next year, we need to make quite sure that we have back under the control of people and Parliament all those powers that we need to regulate, to govern and to take wise decisions on behalf of the United Kingdom.

I am very worried about some elements of the withdrawal agreement. I was told, as we were all told, that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed, and that that meant the future relationship as well as the withdrawal agreement. The EU decided for its own convenience to sequence things and say, “You have to sign the withdrawal agreement first and then the future relationship agreement will follow.” A bit of flesh was put on the bones of the future relationship in the so-called political declaration, which one would have thought there was a lot of moral pressure to go along with even if it was not as strictly legally binding as they hoped the withdrawal agreement would be.

I now think there has been a lot of bad faith, because, according to both sides, the central feature of the future relationship was always going to be a free trade agreement, and where is the free trade agreement? We now discover that the EU wishes to take all sorts of other powers away from us as the price for the free trade agreement, which we have already overpaid for in the withdrawal agreement and which one would have thought, in good faith, the EU would now grant. It is very much in its interests—even more than it is in our interests—given the huge imbalance in trade, and above all in the trade that would attract tariffs if we had no free trade agreement: the trade in food.

That is really what we are talking about: are there going to be tariffs on food or not? We, the United Kingdom, run a colossal £20 billion trade deficit with the EU on food. We have to impose pretty high tariffs on food from the rest of the world—that makes absolutely no sense where we could not grow any of it ourselves; it may have some benefit for some of our farmers some of the time—but we are not allowed to put any similar tariffs on EU-sourced produce where we could produce it ourselves.

The EU system is to try to use tariffs to buttress domestic production, but it has not worked for the United Kingdom; it has worked the other way. The tariffs have been taken off in order to benefit the Dutch, Spanish, French or Irish suppliers of our market with food at zero tariffs. The EU already has rather more interest in tariff withdrawal than we do, because we could have a range of tariffs that would probably achieve the aims both of cutting food prices by having a lower average tariff and of having a bit more protection on the things that we really could make and grow for ourselves here, which we are not allowed to protect against continental products at the moment.

I therefore think that the Bill could be improved by reminding the EU that we will not be pushed around and we will not suffer too much bad faith from those original negotiations or from the withdrawal agreement itself. I think it was a very imperfect agreement. It is pretty ambiguous in places; it is imprecise in places. I have never felt that anything the Government have done, or thought of doing, was in any way illegal. Lawyers could make a perfectly good case under the withdrawal agreement treaty terms themselves, and anyway, we have the protection of my hon. Friend’s section 38, which made it very clear that this Parliament’s acceptance of the withdrawal agreement was conditional. Why else would anyone have put section 38 in the withdrawal agreement Act unless they were making a point?

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that it was the Prime Minister who, after an eight-hour meeting I had in No. 10 that day—17 October 2019—insisted that section 38 was necessary and appropriate?

If we go back to the previous Administration, just imagine where we would be when we consider the Chequers arrangements, and then imagine what it would have been like if we had not decided to vote against that dreadful withdrawal agreement in its original shape. There were provisions that needed to be rectified, and section 38 provides the mechanism that enables us to do that.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
- Hansard - -

Indeed. I think my hon. Friend has confirmed that under the previous Prime Minister, when those of us who could not vote for her agreement said that we needed a sovereignty escape clause, we were told that that would not be permissible because it would not be effective implementation of the agreement; which was then reassuring to us, not liking the withdrawal agreement very much and realising that it was a provisional agreement and would be completed only were there to be a satisfactory outcome to the total range of talks. It was a totally artificial constraint that the EU invented that it had to be sequenced, when up until that point everybody had always rightly said that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed.

I would like to hear from the Minister a little more explanation on the detail of the Bill. As I understand it, the Northern Ireland protocol would apply only to goods that are passing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and then on to the Republic of Ireland, or the reverse—goods coming from the Republic to Northern Ireland and then passing on to Great Britain. Am I right in thinking that that is a very small proportion of the total trade? In what ways will the Government ensure that it is properly defined, so that we do not catch up most goods in those more elaborate procedures? The bulk of the trade will be GB to Northern Ireland and back, or Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland and back, and it should not in any way be caught up in any of these proposals. I am not sure that we do have a de minimis way of dealing with the so-called things at risk.

It is not clear how the system will work for items at risk where we agree that they are at risk—and I hope it is a UK decision about what is a risk, not some other kind of decision with EU inspectors. It would be helpful to me and the wider community interested in this debate to know how a business would proceed if it had such a good at risk, to whom it would answer, and what decisions would be made about such a good in Excise, because it sounds a rather complicated and difficult arrangement, both for the business concerned and for those who are trying to enforce.

I am trying to tease out from the Minister, in pursuit of the interests of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and myself on sovereignty, whether we are really in control if the trade has started off from GB and is going to Northern Ireland. What kind of external intervention can the EU or the Republic of Ireland engineer—how is that fair, and how will it be determined? I think that is what we are most worried about in this piece of legislation, and we would be more reassured if there were the override that my hon. Friend proposes. I should be grateful for some explanation.

Taxation (Post-transition Period) (Ways and Means)

Debate between John Redwood and William Cash
Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th December 2020

(3 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Taxation (Post-transition Period) Act 2020 View all Taxation (Post-transition Period) Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I have already made a number of comments to the Minister in charge of this motion, also in respect of the Bill that we have not yet seen. It seems quite extraordinary, if I may say so, that we are being asked to give such blanket agreement to the Ways and Means resolution, which is the manner in which the money is raised to deal with the questions that arise in respect of the Bill, when we have not actually seen a copy of the Bill itself and therefore do not know what the provisions refer to.

I see, for example, that the motion includes reference to amending section 9A of the Value Added Tax Act 1994, part 3 of the Value Added Tax (Place of Supply of Goods) Order 2004, schedule 4B to that Act, which relates to call-off stock arrangements, section 18A of that Act, which affects fiscal warehousing, and paragraph 114(2) of schedule 8 to the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018. It also includes proposals relating to the rate of fuel duty on aviation gasoline, amending section 6(1A)(aa) of the Hydrocarbon Oil Duties Act 1979. It also deals with value added tax questions relating to such matters, and makes provision regarding value added tax in cases involving

“supplies of goods by persons established outside the United Kingdom that are facilitated by online marketplaces”,

or

“the importation into the United Kingdom of goods of a low value.”

There are also provisions relating to the insurance premium tax in respect of the liability of the insured, amending section 65 of the Finance Act 1994, and matters relating to the recovery of unlawful state aid in respect of controlled foreign companies, in particular dealing with the Commission decision of 2019 relating to state aid

“concerning the CFC Group Financing Exemption.”

That gives some indication of the breadth, and also the depth, of these matters. It is very difficult, to put it bluntly, to dissect, comment on and make what I would describe as a full analysis of a provision that we have not yet seen, and as I had not actually seen these—nor did I know that they were going to be included until I got notice of them just now—I am not in a position to be able to do more than to say that I regard the whole question of these provisions as something that will obviously have to be dealt with when we actually see the Bill. What we have not seen, we cannot really comment on. It is really almost Alice in Wonderland, isn’t it? The fact remains that there are important issues of principle in relation to all this, and the notes that I have received raise some interesting questions. I do not know whether those notes have been made generally available.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
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Will my hon. Friend comment on the sovereignty issue, which is at the heart of all this? I was not satisfied by the Minister’s reply, when my hon. Friend was asking very good questions. Does he share my worry that we have not solved the sovereignty issue over Northern Ireland in this provision, and that we are making it worse?

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

My right hon. Friend might have anticipated that I would raise this very question with the Minister, as I did when he was in mid-flow at the beginning of these proceedings. That was the question I asked, and my right hon. Friend has now referred to it. I am extremely supportive of the Government in relation to Brexit and to the statements that have repeatedly been made not only by the Prime Minister but by other members of the Cabinet, including the Paymaster General in the statement that she made yesterday, in which the word “sovereignty” was completely reaffirmed and stated over and over again, and I take the Government at their word. But of course issues of the kind that we are dealing with do get somewhat obscured sometimes by provisions of legislation, particularly when we have not seen the legislation but are asked to comment on it. That makes life quite difficult in being able to identify with precision exactly what effect this would have on the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, save only to say that yesterday the House of Commons, by a majority of something like 90, passed provisions in the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, and one would therefore have expected the Bill that is under consideration now—which must have been prepared yesterday when we were debating the other one, because otherwise it could not have been printed—to have contained similar provisions.

I am left in a bit of quandary until we can see that this Bill does not contain the notwithstanding provisions that were put in yesterday, which the House decided on, in principle, in the interests of sovereignty. I know a bit about that. I was also responsible for section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, which was passed by a majority of 120 with notwithstanding provisions in it at the beginning of the year. So for practical purposes, the principle of whether notwithstanding provisions are needed has already been established.

I repeat that I am very supportive of the Government and very supportive of the Prime Minister, and I make that absolutely crystal clear, but that makes it absolutely essential for us to have a very clear understanding about the reasons for withdrawing the provisions that were passed in respect of this Bill and were passed in respect of the other Bill yesterday, on the same principles of sovereignty as would need to be put forward under section 38 of the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Act, which, by the way, is still in statute and can still be used —and will be, I hope, as we move forward.

The Government are withdrawing these provisions of the Bill, which is presumably done for some reason that I cannot quite get but is to do with managing to assuage some of the hostility in the House of the Lords and the hostility that has led the European Union and the Commission to threaten legal proceedings unless we withdraw them. No doubt all this is being done in an attempt to arrive at some sensible or other kind of conclusion and settlement.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
- Hansard - -

rose

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

But I reserve judgment on that until I have heard what my right hon. Friend says.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
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Is it not up to Parliament to withdraw the provisions that we were asked to support, and did support, yesterday? Was there not a long debate in which my hon. Friend made a contribution, while I was arguing the case elsewhere? Were we wasting our time? It seems to me that Parliament needs to be asked again if Ministers have changed their minds.

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Indeed.

It is extremely important to point out that these notwithstanding provisions are directly related to the issue of sovereignty, but also related to the substance of our leaving the European Union. Not until we see a copy of the Bill will we be able to make the judgment about the extent to which they would impair or affect that sovereignty. We will have to wait until tomorrow to see exactly what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster presents to the House. We have an outline, but no more than that. The question of sovereignty will no doubt be much discussed tomorrow during his statement.

I heard the Opposition spokesman declaiming, in line with the amendment that they have tabled, that this is all about breaches of international law. I have to say to the hon. Lady that in the context of the continuous provisions on a whole range of matters, including Finance Bills that the Labour party was responsible for bringing in when it was in government, there are stacks—hosts—of treaty overrides. As I said in my contribution yesterday, such overrides have been passed as Labour party proposals when it was in government, by the coalition in 2010 and the years following that when the Liberal Democrats were involved, and also in some Conservative measures that have been passed that are overrides of international law. I pointed out yesterday that it has been done in the past for very good reasons of national interest, including economic national interests, as they clearly have been in the past. Some of them were hugely important constitutional issues—for example, affecting the independence of India and Pakistan—and there were other provisions that I will not go into in detail now, but I have put them all out there on the record.

The extraordinary thing is putting down this amendment based on so-called breach of international law, when actually the Labour party itself has done exactly the same in consistency with—not inconsistent with, but in consistency with—international law. Article 46 makes this abundantly clear. I was very glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) conceded that point on the Floor of the House yesterday when he said, at last, that he was going to support the Government on this question. Lord Judge, a very distinguished judge in the House of Lords—the ex-Lord Chief Justice—who has been leading the argument on the question of international law, has said, in effect, that in principle he knew there was a moment at which there were circumstances whereby a given Government would be entitled to take such steps as were necessary in order to protect the national interest.

Nothing could be more important than protecting our sovereignty. That is what this whole Brexit is about. It is about being able to ensure our having left the European Union lawfully by having passed all the Acts of Parliament—and the House of Lords having passed all those Acts of Parliament as well—and in addition to that, having had a referendum on the votes of the people of this country, which itself was based on the authorisation by Parliament that the referendum should be allowed to take place. That was passed in the House of Lords and the House of Commons—in the House of Commons, incidentally, by six to one—and it was followed, as I have said, by a series of other enactments.

The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 was passed by 499 to 120, including by the Labour party, so there should not be any question about that, and I do not believe that the Labour party has anything to gain by trying to argue that somehow or other we have unlawfully left the European Union, which is what it seems to be implying in its amendment. Then we move on to the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, which, as I pointed out in an intervention, was passed by 120 in this House on Second Reading. It contained the notwithstanding provisions, in section 38, that I had proposed to the Government on 17 October last year. For all these reasons, we have not only lawfully left, but lawfully left on the basis of our sovereignty, which has been endorsed not only by the referendum and by the voters of this country, but by their representatives in this House as the House of Commons. They are elected, unlike the House of Lords, and in the House of Commons they have endorsed these provisions by massive majorities. So what on earth would be the purpose of removing provisions that ensure that our sovereignty can be maintained?

I can almost hear somebody on the Government Benches perhaps thinking to themselves, “Well, they’re not needed because, actually, the situation has now been firmly dealt with in the Joint Committee”. Of that we know nothing, more or less, because I have asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster three times to appear in front of our European Scrutiny Committee, and thus far he has not come on these matters. He knows that, and I have had some very diligent, shall we say, correspondence with him on his not attending, although he did allow the Paymaster General to come and she did appear before us a few weeks ago.

The point I am making is that this is a critical time in our history. This is the moment when we regain our sovereignty. It is not just a philosophical statement or a constitutional theory; it is actually about the practicality of how this country is governed. It is as simple as that. We are governed by a constitutional arrangement under which, through parliamentary government, the Members of Parliament who are who are elected by the voters pass laws that are imposed upon the people by the consent of those representatives. It is as simple as that.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
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Will my hon. Friend confirm that when his admirable clause 38 was tried on the previous Prime Minister, she rejected it on the grounds that it would mean that Parliament could unilaterally override the withdrawal agreement if it wished, and she did not want that?

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Absolutely, which was precisely why I brought it forward. It solved a lot of problems.

I must say that the reasons for the notwithstanding provisions in the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill were based on the same principle of sovereignty, and the same applies to the taxation Bill, in which it was understood that the notwithstanding provisions would be included. I have not seen the Bill yet—I wait to see it with interest—but I am assuming that the adjustment will not appear. Therefore, I reserve my position with respect to the question of the notwithstanding arrangements, because I need to be satisfied that there is no impugnment of our sovereignty by virtue of the removal of those provisions in this Bill. It is as simple as that. I could say much more, but I do not think it will be strictly speaking necessary for me to do so, because I have dealt with all the matters of principle that arise.

I am not quite sure how authoritative the material I have been supplied with is, only because it was given to me by somebody associated with the Government and I am not at all sure whether it is in the Library of the House of Commons; all I can say that it is quite extensive and that it deals with a lot of matters that the Minister has already dealt with and that no doubt will be further examined when we get to see the Bill itself. However, I notice that it does include such matters as the fact that, whatever the outcome of the FTA and joint committee negotiations,

“we have an obligation to the people of Northern Ireland to make sure that they continue to have unfettered access to the UK under all circumstances, to ensure that there are no tariffs on goods remaining within the UK customs territory and to ensure that there is no legal confusion about the fact that, while Northern Ireland will remain subject to EU state aid rules for the duration of the protocol, Great Britain will not be subject to EU rules in this area. That is the Government’s overriding priority.”

I have heard that said before, in one form or another, but I think we need to note that that is what this Bill does. There are other provisions relating to Northern Ireland customs and Northern Ireland VAT and excise on goods, and a provision that says:

“VAT will be accounted for the same way as it is today, with Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK’s VAT and excise system”—

we will check that when we see the Bill.

“HMRC will continue to be responsible for the operation and collection of the revenues, which will not be passed on to the EU”—

a-ha!—

“while Parliament will remain responsible for setting VAT and excise rates across the UK.”

I am not going to be entirely negative about all this; I never am. I rely with confidence on what the Government have said with respect to sovereignty and with respect to tax.

These are important questions. I have confidence in the Prime Minister. I have confidence in the fact that we have had a general election and that the manifesto made the whole of the Brexit question quite clear to the people who voted, giving us a majority of around 80 and, in my own case, as much as 63% of the vote in my constituency, for which I am deeply grateful to my constituents. All I can say is that we will be watching all these matters with great diligence and with a constructive approach, because we hope and trust that, when we have been through the full proceedings on this Bill and, indeed, finalised the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, that confidence will be entirely justified and there will be no impairment of our sovereignty as the United Kingdom, which is what this is all about.

I will conclude simply by saying this. Not since 1688 have we been faced with a situation of such historic importance, other than when we went into the European Union under the false pretences of a White Paper that turned out, unfortunately, to be misleading the British people. There have been two world wars where people have tried to take over this country by force of arms—in particular Germany—and I simply say this: this is the most important moment in our history in the last 250 years, whereby we have regained the sovereignty that was embedded in the arrangements after 1688-89.

By gradual evolution, we developed parliamentary government and representative government. We are described as the mother of Parliaments, as John Bright put it. This is our sovereignty, and we have absolute, total determination—as I understand it, so does the Prime Minister—to maintain that. It is about democracy; it is about freedom. It is what Churchill was proud of; it is what Margaret Thatcher was proud of; it is what we are proud of. I simply make this final point: we will maintain our sovereignty at any price.

--- Later in debate ---
John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
- Hansard - -

I do not agree, and nor did Scottish voters when they were asked this question. We do have a great democratic country and I was a great enthusiast for the people of Scotland deciding whether they liked our Union or not. They said, yes, they liked our Union. Then the people of the United Kingdom were asked whether they liked the European Union and they said they did not. So I found myself in the happy position of agreeing in two big referendums with the winning side. It is such a pity that the Scottish National party lost both and has never understood the democratic principle that it then has to accept the verdict. I was on the losing side in a former referendum; like my whole party, I was against the principle of Scottish devolution, and we got that wrong. We lost that referendum and from the day after that we did not fight it, delay it or dilute it. We said, “Yes, devolution is the wish of the Scottish people.” We got on and implemented it.

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I do not know whether my right hon. Friend can recall this, but when that Bill was introduced by the late Donald Dewar in 1997 I put forward a proposal that the devolution settlement should be decided by a referendum of the entire UK. Perhaps it is some encouragement for him to know that despite a three-line Whip half the Conservative Back Benchers went through the Lobby behind me on that question of having a referendum for the whole UK on this devolution issue, about which he is being so extremely articulate.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood
- Hansard - -

We are probably straying a little away from the resolutions before us, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not try your patience any more. I have made my two main points, but just to summarise: we need more vision from the Government to use our power to tax in our own way, because our current tax system is ill fitting and not yet geared to promoting that recovery we want —we need greater simplicity, lower taxes and a lower incidence of taxes to get that recovery going; and we need reassurances from the Government that sovereignty is not something one can bargain away or compromise over, but is fundamental. We either have a free trade agreement between an independent UK and the EU, which is our preferred model, or we have no deal. It is as simple as that. The choice is theirs.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between John Redwood and William Cash
Tuesday 15th September 2020

(3 years, 6 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Just a minute. We have proposed in this Bill that monitoring and advice regarding the UK’s internal market should be provided on a non-binding basis by the OIM. That will support the development and monitoring of regulation across the UK.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
- Hansard - -

Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Bill says that these reports, which are not in themselves binding, are made to the Scottish Parliament as well as to the United Kingdom Parliament? Because of course, the Scottish Parliament will have enhanced powers as a result of our leaving the EU just as the Union Parliament will.

William Cash Portrait Sir William Cash
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

That is absolutely right. In fact, I argue that the provisions of the Bill as a whole maintain the Union, which is absolutely essential to the future of our competitiveness internationally. I do not expect SNP Members to agree with me, but what I am saying is that I actually believe that they should reflect very carefully on the advantages that come from being part of a Union. There are so many people—our friends and relations—who come from different parts of the United Kingdom and who work in different parts of the United Kingdom. When they are doing is contributing to the welfare of the Union as a whole.