Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I said two statements. [Interruption.] Oh, two Select Committees; well, whatever. If all the amendment means is that we will get similar statements to the two that we have already had, that does not give me much comfort. If we will get more than that, then we shall see.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way, and for some of the points that he has made. Will he use this opportunity to outline clearly the Labour party’s position on single market membership? Yesterday in the Evening Standard, there was a warning from the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, against a “hard Brexit”, and he has said that a departure from the single market would be “deeply irresponsible”; I agree fully. Two weeks ago, in the National Assembly for Wales, we had the Labour Government voting with the Tories and the UK Independence party against single market membership. What is the Labour party’s policy on single market membership?

[Keir Starmer]

Best access to the single market.

I was on the subject of uncertainty. There has been understandable uncertainty in business, universities, and trades unions, and among investors, including among people on both sides of the referendum divide. The head of the CBI has warned that hard Brexit could

“close the door on an open economy”.

An open letter signed by business leaders cautioned last week that

“leaving the EU without any preferential trade arrangement and defaulting to trading by…WTO rules would have significant costs for British exporters and importers”.

It is not just institutions that are concerned. So far, the Government have made broad statements on the principle of protecting the rights of EU citizens already living here. In his statement to the House on Monday, the Secretary of State suggested that the Government are doing everything possible to underwrite and guarantee the position of EU citizens resident in the UK, and at the same time seeking to do the same with British nationals living in other parts of the EU. That constructive tone is at odds with statements made by other Government Ministers, most notably the Secretary of State for International Trade. Speaking at an event at the Conservative conference in Birmingham last week, he told party members that

“we would like to be able to give a reassurance to EU nationals in the United Kingdom”,

but that that depended on the way in which other countries proceeded. He said that

“to give that away before we get into the negotiation would be to hand over one of our main cards”.

That is treating EU citizens as bargaining chips. That is not good enough: many EU citizens have been in the UK for years or even decades, and they deserve better treatment.

The Government should end this uncertainty in the market and among the people. They should set out their plans before the House at the earliest opportunity. We accept that concern about immigration and freedom of movement was an important issue in the referendum and that, in light of the result, adjustments to the freedom of movement principle have to be part of the negotiating process. We must establish fair migration rules as part of our new relationship with the EU, but no one voted on 23 June to take an axe to the economy or to destroy jobs and livelihoods.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Gethins]

If the House will forgive me mixing my cultural references, the three Brexiteers and their friends have got us into another fine mess, and cannot tell us how they are going to get us out of it.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Gethins]

I will come to the hon. Gentleman in a moment.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon raised a very significant point about the devolved Administrations that, like most points put to the Secretary of State, was not answered. Fishing and farming are not a matter of negotiation in these islands, so will responsibility for fishing and farming go straight to the Scottish Parliament after Brexit? Or is there going to be a change to schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998? There is no answer. But that is not a matter of negotiation. It is a matter of fact—and it is facts that the Secretary of State cannot give us.

The situation is extraordinarily disappointing for the devolved Administrations, who have gone from being involved to being consulted. Will the Secretary of State tell us, as the Prime Minister told us previously, whether there will be an agreed position with the devolved Administrations? Perhaps someone will take a note of that for him. What will be the formal role of the Scottish Parliament?

This place and the UK Government do not have a particularly good track record when standing up for fishermen, farmers and others. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) has raised the point, as has my right hon. Friend, that when we went into the European Union Scotland’s fishermen, and fishermen across these islands, were described as expendable.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Some colleagues have already said that it must be our duty now to try to knit our nation together, to put the heat and fury of the referendum campaign behind us and to see how together we can build a prosperous and successful future for the United Kingdom as the country leaves the European Union. I think that that will be easier than the tone of this debate so far would give people to believe, because I have great confidence in the British people. I have spent a lot of time talking to remain voters, both before and after the referendum, as well as obviously encouraging the leave voters, whose cause I helped to champion.

The good news is that the remain voters are not, on the whole, passionate advocates of the European ideal and the European project, and that is why we will be able to put this together. According to polling, around 10% of all voters in Britain really believe in the whole European project—a perfectly noble vision of integration, political union, monetary union, a borderless society and so forth—but they are a very small minority in our country. I am afraid that we cannot easily build a bridge to those who want to be part of a united Europe, because it was clearly the view of both sides in the referendum that Britain did not want to be part of the single currency, the political union, a borderless Europe and so forth.

However, this does mean that an awful lot of the remain voters—the overwhelming majority, in fact—voted remain not to join the full project but because they had genuine fears that when we came out of the union, we would leave the single market. They felt that that could be damaging to trade, investment and business prospects. It is on that narrow point that the House of Commons has to concentrate its activities over the next few months, because it is on that central issue that our discussions with our European partners need to concentrate.

I am conscious that the business community has one aim above all others, which is to reduce or eliminate uncertainty. Having been in business myself, I know that business is about managing uncertainties all the time, but it is of course good if we can get the politicians to make their contribution to lowering uncertainty rather than increasing it. It is important that we all work together to try to reduce the uncertainty and shorten the time in which that uncertainty exists.

I am also conscious that we can lower uncertainty in two ways. As we approach the negotiations, we must first show that we are going to go at a lively pace, because the longer they drag on, the more uncertainty will develop, the more obstacles and confusions will arise, and the longer will be the delays that can hurt. So we need pace. The second thing we can do to reduce the uncertainty is to say that we need only to discuss a limited number of things. We can narrow the framework of the negotiation. There are many consultants and advisers out there saying, “We must scope and chart every aspect of all our relationships with other European countries, be they technically single market or EU or wider. We must put them all on the table, then throw them up in the air and discuss which ones should change and how stable they are going to be.” That would be a disastrous way to proceed. It would take too long, and it would offer too many hostages to fortune.

The Government are right to say that in order to have a successful negotiation that lowers the scope for danger and downside, we need to take those discussions at a pace and ensure that we do not say too much in advance about any possible weaknesses in our negotiating position. We should not open up issues for negotiation that do not need to be negotiated, and we should take on board only those issues that are a genuine worry to those on the other negotiating side and that need to be taken seriously because they have some powers over them.

The United Kingdom has voted to take back control. That was what Vote Leave was all about. That was the slogan throughout the campaign, and when asked to define it more, the leave side said that we were voting to take back control of laws, money and borders. So we know what cannot be negotiated away. We also know that the main area of uncertainty is how we are going to trade with the single market when we cannot technically be part of it because it includes freedom of movement and wide-ranging law codes over things that go well beyond the conduct of trade and commerce. It is not a segregated, integrated whole within the European Union; it is a central part of it and part of a very big consolidated treaty.

[Jonathan Edwards]

The Secretary of State said something very interesting earlier when he said that he hoped to negotiate a better economic deal than membership of the single market. As a prominent Brexiteer, can the right hon. Gentleman explain how that will be possible?

[John Redwood]

I do not recall the Secretary of State saying that at all. He was saying that we could have a better relationship than simply relying on World Trade Organisation rules. I have good news, however. If we were to have to fall back on WTO rules, this country would be able to trade perfectly successfully with the rest of the EU and would be free to have much better trade deals with the rest of the world, which we have been impeded from having all the time we have been in the EU. Should there have to be tariffs, there would be many more tariffs collected on European imports into Britain, so we would have a lot of money to spend. We could give that money back to British people, so they would not actually be worse off as a result of the tariffs. Whereas, if we went the other way, the tariffs would be a great embarrassment to our European partners. I am very optimistic about our European partners. I think that they will want tariff-free trade. I do not see Germany or France queueing up to impose tariffs on us, so I hope that we will be able to get through this quite quickly and reassure them that we do not want to put tariffs on their trade either.