Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

It is an enormous pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher).

It is obvious to absolutely everybody that this debate has absolutely nothing to do with covid and its impact on any EU negotiations and everything to do with the SNP which, true to form, just wants to do everything to stop Brexit happening. It must be galling for all Labour voters in Dudley and beyond to see not a single Labour Back-Bench MP stand up to speak on this matter. Not even the current Labour leader, one of the main architects of Labour’s remain stance, is present.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Where is he hiding?

[Marco Longhi]

He is indeed hiding.

As a new Member of Parliament, I have watched this place tear itself apart. I have watched it become an object of derision and despair. I have watched it lose the most fundamental element that differentiates our democracy from other Governments: this place acts on the will of its people.

Some Opposition Members might have more in common with people like the MEP Guy Verhofstadt. Just a couple of days ago he tweeted, with a delicate irony that so distinguishes his style and his deprecation of anything democratic:

“In 1988, Margaret Thatcher proudly declared that the barriers to trade in Europe were coming down”,

but, he thinks, with our leaving the EU, that the Conservative party—my party—

“is putting the barriers back up.”

So let us educate Mr Verhofstadt, shall we? We are quite happy to have a free trade agreement with the EU, just as the EU has with other non-EU member countries, and consequently there will be no border checks if that were to happen. However, we all know that the truth is that he, his European colleagues—and, it would seem, Opposition colleagues—want to make it as difficult as possible for us to leave and respect the democratic will of our people. He knows the truth, Mr Verhofstadt does, but he can’t handle the truth. As we forge free trade agreements worldwide, trade barriers will only continue to fall, whatever other patronising statements he might decide to make.

I should probably refer to the effect of covid on the negotiations, even though we know that that is nothing to do with the real merits of this debate. If we are to react quickly to the economic downturn caused by this pandemic, we must keep as much regulatory freedom as possible. We need to turbo-charge our free trade agreements and we need the ability to deliver services at pace. Adopting the so-called level playing field, or even continuing with the European Court’s jurisdiction in the UK, would put the brakes on our recovery as well as being utterly unacceptable, from a democratic perspective, to the people who voted. The people in my constituency of Dudley North overwhelmingly voted to leave the European Union. The general election in December last year proved yet again, at the fourth time of asking, that the United Kingdom wants to leave. Leave we shall, whatever agreement is reached, so let us just get on with it.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi), and indeed, before that, my hon. Friends the Members for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) and for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones). I thought it was supposed to be an Opposition day debate, but here we are with the last hour taken up by speeches from the Conservative Benches, mostly from new MPs—and MPs who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover pointed out, took seats from the Opposition.

But I do thank the SNP for putting on this debate. Naively, I assumed that we would be talking about the European Union’s openness to extend the transition period for negotiations, but it seems that most of the day has instead been spent talking about Scottish independence—plus ça change. To be fair to SNP Members, I enjoy debating with them because they believe in something: they know where they stand. They know where they stand on Brexit and they know where they stand on Scottish independence. They will not let a referendum get in the way of that, but it is an honest position. Whereas, as many colleagues have said, where are Labour Members? I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) is there on the Opposition Front Bench. In fact, he made a good point when he informed the SNP, with regard to today’s motion, that that ship has sailed, as indeed it has. There is no possibility of extending the transition period under the terms that were available because we chose not to do that, because, as the Paymaster General said, we enshrined in law our intention to leave on 31 December. We were elected on that mandate. Why would we go against that? Why would we prolong the uncertainty and hinder our recovery?

Covid makes it even more important that we get things sorted out and leave on 31 December. Businesses are already facing a huge amount of uncertainty as we come out of this terrible pandemic, with all the economic carnage it is causing. We must resolve our situation, one way or the other, with the European Union at the same time, rather than asking businesses to go back to work—putting the people of this nation back to work—and then having further disruption at whatever point we extend the transition period to. It is really very important that we resolve this.

That brings me to my next point about the tactics for negotiation and why this motion is fundamentally misconceived. We saw again and again in the previous Parliament the consequences of Parliament trying to usurp the Executive’s authority to negotiate, and what an awful mess that made. We allowed a situation to develop where the EU chose to pursue parallel negotiations with other Members, including the new Leader of the Opposition. Where is he on this?

[Jonathan Gullis]

We are still looking.

[Aaron Bell]

We are still looking not just for him but for his position. We all remember him standing up at the Labour party conference going against his leader at the time and inserting a line in his speech about an option to remain. We will not forget, and neither will the voters of Newcastle-under-Lyme.

I have never been a no-dealer—I would much rather we get a positive relationship with the EU going forward, and I would like a comprehensive free trade agreement—but I will support leaving without one if one cannot be negotiated. It takes two to tango, but we will have to leave on 31 December. We will take back control of our laws, our borders and our money, as we promised.

As we all know, whether we have been Members here for a long time or only for six months, EU deals happen at the 11th hour. What is the point of creating a new 11th hour six months down the line, and then perhaps another one six months down the line after that? That way lies more and more uncertainty. It is resolution we seek, and it is resolution that the Opposition are trying to avoid for the purposes of trying to bind us closer to Europe, even as the people of this country have had their say again and again.

I represent Newcastle-under-Lyme and 63% of the constituency voted to leave, but the areas that people would characterise as left behind—the former mining communities in places such as Silverdale, Knutton and Chesterton—voted even more heavily to leave. They used to be Labour areas and they voted for me in December. I am sure it was partly my campaign, but it was mostly the fact that they felt so disrespected by everything that had gone on since the vote.

We voted to leave in June 2016, more than four years ago—SNP Members would call that at least a generation. The good people of Newcastle-under-Lyme have put up with endless delay, wrecking tactics and, regrettably, a Government who were not able to pursue their agenda, partly because of the tactics employed by people on the Opposition side and, regrettably, by the internal opposition on this side. No more: they put up with this with great good humour, but no more.

We will vote against this motion today. I assume SNP Members will divide the House. I am glad to go through the No Lobby. I am sure they will be glad to go through the Aye Lobby. I have no idea what the Labour party is going to do. I cannot wait to find out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith). Let me be clear that it is because of our United Kingdom that, by the end of June, nearly 900,000 jobs across Scotland had been protected by the UK Government’s unprecedented support, and the Scottish Government have been allocated an extra £4.6 billion for coronavirus funding.

However, today’s debate is really about revisiting two questions that have been answered: Scotland leaving the UK, which was rejected in 2014, to join, if allowed, the European Union, which the UK collectively voted to leave in 2016. Both referendums were once-in-a-generation votes, and it is our duty to respect the people’s voices. The nationalist obsession with separating themselves from our United Kingdom risks at least half a million jobs, throwing Scottish business into chaos with dither and delay while they wait to see whether they are allowed into the protectionist racket, and the opportunity to export the best of Scotland around the world could be lost. The SNP is desperate to rejoin the European Union and would do so at the cost of its own workers and industries, and fishermen and women are a prime example. Remaining in the common fisheries policy would be detrimental to the health and success of the Scottish fishing industry, and we know that the European Union’s oppressive one-size-fits-all approach simply does not work.

The SNP could have talked about topics that are more pressing to the people of Scotland. In January this year, Scotland had the joint biggest fall in the social and economic wellbeing index. Why the decline? Education is one major part of the fall. Since 2006, PISA—the programme for international student assessment—shows that Scotland has dropped from 11th to 23rd in reading, 11th to 24th in maths, and 10th to 19th in science. Teacher numbers are lower today than when the SNP took power.

However, it is not just PISA that points out the failure of the nationalists in Holyrood. A survey on literacy and numeracy, which the SNP set up, came out with damning figures about what is happening, so what was the First Minister’s response? It was to close it down, dismiss it, and tell the professional statisticians they were wrong. Instead of a data-driven approach, they asked teachers what they thought about every pupil relative to a test that may have been taken at any point in the year. That does not allow proper moderation and applies unfair pressure on teachers, causing impartiality to be thrown into doubt. The SNP choose to play party politics over helping to improve the educational outcomes and destinations of the youth in Scotland.

However, before the SNP tells me that positive destinations have increased, let me point out that it happened because the Scottish Government chose to include zero-hour contracts in their figures—a system that SNP Members regularly lambast. The Scottish Government will also praise their flagship curriculum for excellence, but it is to be investigated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—failure after failure after failure. Let us talk about these issues instead, rather than revisiting the same old arguments that the public of the United Kingdom wish to move on from.

On top of educational failure, let us not forget the new children’s hospital in Edinburgh that was meant to be delivered in 2012 and is now mothballed for the remainder of 2020, costing the taxpayer £1.4 million a month. Let us not forget the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, which tragically saw two children die due to water contamination in 2017, and which saw NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde placed into special measures. Scotland is also now the worst place in Europe for drug deaths, after the highest ever rise in fatalities following an 80% reduction in rehabilitation beds since the SNP came to power.

Let me offer something that Members from the Scottish National party and we on the Government Benches can agree on: where is the Labour party? Rather than showing that it has learned the lessons of December 2019, its Members are hiding. Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge—they try to avoid discussing Brexit, because in private they want to stop it. It is one of the many reasons that people of Stoke-on-Trent North, of Kidsgrove and of Talke rejected them at the ballot box. My constituents overwhelmingly asked to leave the EU in 2016, but they were ignored time and again by the Labour party.

Let us not forget that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the architect of Labour’s disastrous Brexit policy, said to Labour members in Dudley in March that he wants to campaign to go back in. Then he told the media in May that he wants to stay out of the EU, yet he cannot walk through the Division Lobbies with us this evening to reject an extension. Time and again, Labour is failing the people of Stoke-on-Trent and the United Kingdom. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

No clapping, please.