Prorogation (Disclosure of Communications)

Debate between Keir Starmer and Jonathan Edwards

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards).

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

As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, the British Government are planning a £100 million propaganda campaign to sell the virtues of a no-deal Brexit. Could they not save a lot of taxpayers’ money by agreeing to the terms of this motion, which will see the documents published on Wednesday?

European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Debate between Keir Starmer and Jonathan Edwards

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 4th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

Of course that information should be put in the public domain, so that everybody understands the impact of no deal. The fact that the Government do not want it in the public domain speaks volumes. The mantra is that they cannot put our proposals in public because they do not negotiate in public, but they can surely put them before the partners they are supposed to be negotiating with. They just are not there.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way on that point?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Could I just make the point that there are lots of people who want to speak? There is very little time, and if there are continual interventions very large numbers of colleagues who wish to speak will not do so—simple as that.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. The Welsh Government have been provided with a copy of the original Yellowhammer document. Will he call on his colleagues to publish it?

[Keir Starmer]

I will, but I am not sure that my calling for that is enough in itself to get it published. We will see what else we can do. Mr Speaker, I will press on, because I do know there are other speakers to come.

This is a very simple Bill. It is deliberately constrained. It does not answer the question, “What else needs to happen?” It gives the Prime Minister the chance to get a deal and to get it through. It gives the Prime Minister the chance to have the courage to come to the Dispatch Box and say, “My policy is to leave without a deal. Do I have a majority for it?” If he did that, we would not need to go down this route. He will not do that, however, because he knows what the result will be. Only if there is a no deal and only if there is no approval for leaving without a deal do the provisions in the Bill requiring an extension kick in.

Mr Speaker, this is an extraordinary route, but these are extraordinary times. We have to act. We have to act now. Today is the last chance to prevent no deal, and we must seize it.

Article 50 Extension

Debate between Keir Starmer and Jonathan Edwards

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I do understand the difficulty, but I do not think it is appropriate for me to respond to or comment on what may or may not have been said by Heads of State about what may or may not be agreed tomorrow. The point I am making is about the expectation of this House as to the approach that the Prime Minister would take. There is an even greater expectation—a yearning, which I can feel across the House and which I could feel last week—that this House be given an opportunity to break the impasse for itself by finding a way forward. I am afraid the Prime Minister’s approach is the same old blinkered approach, which is, “All I’m going to do is seek time to put my deal, exactly the same, back before the House for another vote.”

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

Based on the Prime Minister’s letter, I am not entirely clear why the EU would grant an extension in the first place, but the question for us all is the length of the extension that it would grant, and for what purpose. What is the Labour party’s policy?

[Keir Starmer]

I shall come to that later, but I will make this point. The period should of course be as short as possible, but it must be long enough to determine the purpose. In other words, the purpose has to determine the length. One of the mistakes we have made in the past two years, on which we have struggled and challenged the Prime Minister, is that if we let the clock, rather than the purpose, dictate we end up exactly where we have ended up now.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Keir Starmer and Jonathan Edwards

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I am not going to give way.

It is no good us pretending about this. I have said in recent weeks and months that the future relationship document is 26 pages long and that it is thin and flimsy, and the answer that now comes back occasionally is, “It was always going to be that way. What did you expect? It’s a future relationship.” Well, I will tell Members what the Prime Minister expected. I see nods from Conservative Members, but the Prime Minister was very clear about what she expected, and she set it out in her Lancaster House speech on 17 January 2017:

“I want us to have reached an agreement about our future partnership by the time the two-year Article Fifty process has concluded.”

I repeat:

“I want us to have reached an agreement.”

She continued:

“From that point onwards, we believe a phased process of implementation, in which both Britain and the EU institutions and member states prepare for the new arrangements”.

At the time, I was proposing that that was a transition period, and the Prime Minister and various Secretaries of State for Brexit kept insisting it was not a transition period, because that would imply that we were negotiating in it; instead it was an implementation period, because—[Interruption.] No, this is what they argued. They said that the agreement would have been reached and all we would need to do was implement it—to phase it in—during the two-year period. So the idea that this is as it was always going to be—that a blind Brexit was inevitable or an inherent part of the process—is completely contradicted by the Prime Minister’s own words when she said what was going to be achieved.

There are very serious consequences to having such a flimsy document on the future relationship. First, it invites this House to vote on a blind Brexit. I and other Labour Members have very strong views on what the future relationship should look like. Given a document that does not set out whether it might end up as a distant Canada-style model of some sort, or a closed Norway-style model, how can one expect any responsible Member of this House to say, “I don’t know where this is going to end, I don’t know what it’s going to look like, it could actually turn out to be an agreement I fundamentally disagree with, but I shall vote for it”? That just cannot be right. That is the problem—it is a blind Brexit. Secondly, as I have said, because the document is so thin, nobody serious, either here or in Brussels, is suggesting for one moment that the agreement is actually going to be ready by January 2021.

That means that we are going on to either an extended transition or the backstop. That is going to happen. If anybody is intending to vote next week on the pretence or understanding that we are not going to be here arguing about this in July 2020, I genuinely think they are labouring under a misconception—they are wrong. We will either be going on to the transition or going on to the backstop if the deal goes through in this form. We cannot escape that and simply pretend it is not going to happen.

I have said a few words about the backstop. As the Secretary of State rightly said, it provides for citizens’ rights and financial obligations. I do not shy away from the commitments made under the Good Friday agreement. I certainly have no truck with those who play down the importance of the Good Friday agreement—it is not the Secretary of State, the Government or the Prime Minister—or even say that their version of hard Brexit somehow overrides it. Those commitments are serious, and they have to be kept.

I also accept that, given the lack of progress in the 26-page document that we have, at this stage, sadly, some sort of backstop is inevitable. Having got to this stage of the article 50 exercise, it is now inevitable that we cannot finish the exercise within the transition period. There are risks under the backstop, and the Attorney General’s advice, which we fought to uncover last year, set them out pretty starkly. There is the fraught question of whether the backstop would, in truth, be indefinite or temporary. We can have views on that, but we cannot avoid the fact that it is a live dispute, and the Attorney General gave his view on that.

It is also indisputable that once we are in the backstop, if that is what happens in January 2021, it will introduce barriers to trade between England, Wales and Scotland and the EU. That is spelled out in the document. We are putting up barriers to trade in January 2021 if we go into the backstop. I have already touched on the inadequacy of the proposed customs arrangements.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am sure the right hon. and learned Gentleman will have seen the article written over the weekend by Peter Hain and Paul Murphy—both former distinguished Members of this House and Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland who played an important part in the peace process—in which they made the case that the backstop is an important element that we must honour. Has he had an opportunity to reflect on that?

[Keir Starmer]

I have read the article, and I reflect on it. I used my words carefully; I said that there are risks in the backstop, which the Attorney General’s advice set out, and they are real risks.

There is a risk that we should not be blind to. The Attorney General spelled out in his advice that the backstop, as a matter of international law, may well be indefinite—he said that it is arguable either way—and that we therefore cannot get out of it unilaterally. We know that, and we have had a discussion about it. However, he went on to say that we cannot get out of it even if the negotiations completely break down and an allegation of bad faith is found. That is not just—