EU Membership: Second Referendum

Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). Like him, I came here expecting to listen and learn, rather than contribute. I am a Bradford City supporter—they are in the second division at the moment. It feels like a night when we are playing at home and Manchester United are also playing at home in the premier league, not too far away. To continue the football analogy, sometimes the chance arises to come off the bench when all the stars are elsewhere. I feel that it is right that a slightly different view be given during this debate.

I want to say why the Labour party is right not to rule out a second referendum; I hope we will go further than that in coming days. I hope our leader will come back energised from Mexico, where he has been at the very important inauguration of the new President over the weekend, and that he will then join our deputy leader and our shadow Chancellor in beginning to talk up the prospects of a second referendum.

I am not one of those who has ever said that people did not understand what they were voting for. I was a remainer, but it is ridiculous to say that people did not understand what they voted for in the referendum. Generally, they thought long and hard about it. Rather unfashionably, I also think that in 40 or 50 years’ time we may look back at this time in British history—in a short period, we have had two referendums, on Scotland and the European Union, that challenged the whole nature of the British state—and find that, although families and communities were riven, it all showed the strength of British democracy. There was high turnout in both referendums and they have energised a whole new generation into politics.

Obviously, the story is not yet finished and we all have a responsibility over the coming months to make sure that the outcome is good for our nation. I do not believe that our greatness depends on whether we are in or out of the European Union; I believe that we are a great country in any regard and a strong enough democracy. Should this House decide to go down the lines of a second referendum, I do not think there would be riots in the street—we would take it in our stride in a phlegmatic, British way, and there would be strong debates.

I was at the Unison political conference in the great county of Yorkshire on Saturday, and a couple of delegates were pointing out that it is quite common in trade union practice to decide on a course of action, go and negotiate with the employer and then come back to the membership and ask whether they support the precise deal that has been agreed or not. I think that is the stage we are at now.

I want briefly to say why I cannot support the deal that is before Parliament. It creates too much uncertainty for businesses and unions on jobs, and so on, and it kicks into the long grass all the difficult problems about the precise nature of our relationship to the customs union and single market. I hope we would be close to both those institutions, but the issue is left in doubt, and uncertain, which means the nation will have a weak negotiating hand. Once we are out, any trade agreement that we reach with the European nations depends on unanimity, whereas at the moment that is not the case. Once we are out, anything we agree depends on every nation agreeing the precise details. We would be far better off coming to agreement before we are out on important issues such as the single market and the customs union. Uncertainty on the economy and a weak negotiating hand in the future are the reasons why I shall vote against the deal.

If the deal goes down—and it looks very much as if it will—someone will have to do something. There will be a plan B. I suspect that the shadow Minister will know what is going on in the Government—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

I am not the shadow Minister.

[John Grogan]

I am sorry. I meant the Minister—I was looking at him. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), probably does not know precisely what is going on in the Government, but I am sure the Minister, to whom I apologise, will be in the know; the shadow Minister is nodding his head.

I have great respect for the Minister. He will be one of the few people who know exactly what plan B is—among a number of possible ones. I understand that the Trade Bill is coming back the day after the meaningful vote and some people say the Government will adopt the Labour party policy of pretty well staying in the customs union, and possibly a close relationship with the single market. If not, a referendum is one of the only options open to Her Majesty’s Government. There are practical difficulties, of course, but if there was a request to the European Union from Her Majesty’s Ministers to hold a further referendum and remain was to be one of the options, I think we would undoubtedly get the time necessary.

Incidentally, unlike some, I think that if there was a second referendum there would have to be three main options. One would have to be no deal. My constituency was split, as many were—about 53% to come out and roughly 47% to stay in; the different wards ranged from 63% to 32% for those who wanted to stay in, so it is a split constituency. People should be able to say, “No deal”. It would be a disaster for our nation and economy, but it should be one option. How do we do it? We ask two questions.

There is a precedent in Scotland. I understand that the Scottish referendum had two questions—whether people wanted devolution, and about whether they wanted the Parliament to have tax-raising powers. The second Brexit referendum would obviously be a two-question referendum—possibly, “Do you want to stay in or come out?” and, if people wanted to come out, “Is it the deal negotiated by the Prime Minister or not?”—the deal or no deal, in effect. It could be done and would be a way to bring things to a conclusion if there were a complete impasse in Parliament.

We have asked the people once. If Parliament cannot come to a clear conclusion, the second referendum must be something we consider. Mr Speaker will, I think, ensure that there is a vote on it, if the deal goes down. The crucial vote will not be on the amendments to the meaningful vote, but afterwards. If Her Majesty’s Government do not agree that that is their plan B, they will quickly have to come back with proposals on the customs union and single market, to try to get on side a broad range of people in this Parliament who would favour a close relationship with both those institutions.

The one thing that could persuade me to vote for the deal is the situation in Ireland. I shall not vote for the deal next Tuesday, but the one thing I am torn about is the fact that many people—other than the Democratic Unionist party—are writing to me. The Labour party’s sister party, the Social Democratic and Labour party, and business and trade unions in Northern Ireland, say that they want to support the deal because of the consequences in Ireland.

I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton on the issue. The Prime Minister is to be commended on the backstop arrangements. Ironically, they would put Northern Ireland in the best position economically of any part of the United Kingdom, because it would be linked to the single markets of the United Kingdom and of the European Union.

Whatever decision we take, we must be cognisant of the fact that possibly the greatest political achievement of my lifetime, which I have observed and in which I was a bit-part player, is peace in Ireland. Whatever the House does in the coming weeks, it must not by any decision jeopardise that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

I am delighted to stand here, on my first outing as a Minister to represent the Government and make the Government’s case, under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone; I am very pleased about that. This has been a very interesting debate. As has been observed, more right hon. and hon. Members could have participated, but I think that quality is better than quantity. That has always been a principle of mine, and I was delighted to hear as many speeches as I did.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I also thank all those who participated in the debate. The petition brings up a very important question—the idea that we should have a second referendum. I want to make it as categorically clear as possible that this Government will respect the result of the referendum and we will not—I repeat, we will not—hold a second referendum. Let me go into some of the reasons why we do not want to do that.

The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) made a very good point when he referred to the levels of condescension and the idea that people were too stupid to understand what membership of the EU meant and what leaving it would mean. It is ridiculous to assume or to think that people in this country, who have been debating this issue for 45 years—it has been an issue ever since we joined the EU—were too stupid to understand the question on the ballot paper. It is also offensive—it is ridiculous and offensive.

Then we heard the other idea. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) said, “Well, people weren’t stupid, but they were conned.” That is like me saying to a friend, “When you lost your money, you weren’t stupid, but you were conned.” Essentially, it is saying that, for whatever reason, people were misled; they were gulled into making a choice, which they actually knew perfectly well about. They simply did not want, as an electorate, to stay in the EU, and it is the job of the Government, as it always has been, to deliver on the vote.

Let me give my personal point of view. I was in the Vote Leave campaign. I represent a constituency that voted 60% to leave the EU. My sense, as a constituency MP talking to people, is this. A large number of remainers are very quiet. They voted remain for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps some of them believed that the fear and uncertainty were too great. But now that the electorate as a whole have embarked on this course, many of those remainers want to see it through.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East suggested, “Oh, the polls have changed wildly.” They have not. If we look at the polls a week before the campaign started in 2016, we see that they were exactly where they are now. Remain, as I recall, had a 10-point lead and, in the course of the campaign, its lead was reversed.

[Tommy Sheppard]

I take the Minister’s point, but does he not accept that there is a considerable difference between the result in June 2016 of 52:48 and the average of polls now, which is 55:45 against?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My very point was that the hon. Gentleman should not place too much credence in the polls. If the polls had been right, this would never have happened. If the polls four months before the actual result had been right, remain would have won by a huge margin. I question the notion that because the polls are essentially saying exactly the same thing as they did four months before the last referendum, that means that the public have changed their mind; I dispute that. The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to suggest that we cannot simply relitigate this issue year after year. The previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, made it very clear that the result would be respected. It was a close result, but a clear and authoritative one.

I was musing on this question during the hon. Gentleman’s speech. If, by some misfortune, the Scottish National party had got its wish and won the independence referendum in 2014, how enthusiastic would it be about another referendum on that question? It would simply have shut down the issue.

[Tommy Sheppard]

That is a good debating point, but let us be clear: the 2014 Scottish referendum was conducted, as has been said, on the basis of a campaign and discussion that lasted more than two years, a vast debate and a 670-page White Paper that spelled out exactly what the proposition was. Surely the Minister is not drawing a comparison between that and something that was based on a slogan on the side of a bus?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I will absolutely make the comparison and I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Economic Community and now the EU had been a top-line issue for 45 years. If it had not been, why was there a referendum in 1975, the year I was born? This issue has gone on for two generations, so I suggest respectfully to the hon. Gentleman that the electorate did have a sense of what they wanted.

We cannot go down the route of simply relitigating referendums when we do not like the result, because that essentially is what this boils down to. That is essentially what is driving the call for a second vote—the so-called people’s vote. Former Prime Minister Mr Blair has said as much. He makes no bones about the fact that he thinks that Brexit is a disaster and the way to reverse Brexit is by means of a second referendum. It is an instrument by which one can reject the will of the people as expressed in June 2016. Let us not be fastidious or naive about this. The people who generally are driving for a people’s vote and a second referendum want to reverse the result. They think—mistakenly, in my view—that the way to reverse the result is to get a second referendum, which will confirm or reconfirm our membership of the EU. I think they are wrong and, as I have said, the Government have made a clear undertaking that we will not have a second referendum.

The question on 23 June 2016 was clear; it was absolutely unequivocal. The question was simply:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”

Many of us in the Chamber took part in the referendum campaign—some with Vote Leave and some with the Stronger In or remain campaign. It was a very hard-fought and widely trailed discussion. Some people have said that the quality of the debate was not good enough or that some pieces of information were withheld, but generally it was an extraordinary exercise in democracy. As has been said many times, it was the single biggest vote that this country had ever seen in a general election or any other kind of election. And as we all know, 17.4 million votes were cast to leave the EU. That was the highest number of votes cast for anything in UK electoral history.

What those calling for a second vote—the so-called people’s vote—are saying is that the people should think again. Essentially, they are saying, metaphorically, to the electorate, “Your homework was not good enough. Please do it again.” As the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton suggested, the electorate—certainly in my constituency—are quite a cussed lot. I do not see the floods of support for remain described by others. I strongly suspect—this is my personal view—that a second referendum would not deliver a different result.

That is irrelevant, however, because the Government are tasked to enact the will of the majority of the people, as expressed in the 2016 referendum. All major political parties were committed to respect the outcome. We fought a general election on the basis that we would leave the EU. As has been said, 499 Members of this House voted to invoke article 50, which we all knew would involve a two-year process, at the end of which we would leave the EU. All of that is in the public record and everyone understood the consequences of it. Furthermore, the Labour party committed in its 2017 manifesto to leave the EU and the customs union. More than 80% of the British people voted either Conservative or Labour in the general election. They voted for parties that were absolutely committed to respect the 2016 referendum result. That is exactly what the British people expect us to do.

I fully understand the emotional impetus behind the call for a second referendum, but I think it is a ruse by which people seek to stay in the EU. We are pledged to leave the EU. The full democratic process of the referendum delivered a clear directive, which this Government hope to deliver. The call for a second referendum opens up a huge question about the levels of trust in our Government and our democracy. We have to respect the will of the people. To do otherwise and say, “We will have a second referendum and try to reverse the result of the first referendum, because you got the wrong answer first time,” is not only an abnegation of democracy, but profoundly disrespectful of the electorate. As a Minister, I would not want to see that.

We have to look at the nature of the referendum itself. It was a long, four-month campaign, but we cannot just think of the referendum as those four months in 2016, because this debate had been going on for decades, not only in my party but in the Labour party. I am old enough—just—to remember the 1983 general election, in which the Labour party was pledged to leave the EEC. That created great divisions and caused great debate within the Labour party. My own party has been a scene of great discussion and lively debate on this issue. It is not right to say that those four months of the referendum campaign in 2016 encapsulated the whole debate, because it has been ongoing for 45 years and more.

I sense that I am in a room of clairvoyants, because everyone has told me that the Government will lose the vote on Tuesday. I have been in the House long enough—let us see what happens. People have asked, “What about plan B?” If I knew plan B, I would not divulge it in this Chamber—I assure hon. Members of that—so the question is redundant. I remind hon. Members that the choice is between a deal and no deal, because, as others have suggested, the hourglass is running quickly. We are running out of time. Article 50 was invoked on 29 March 2017. It does not take a mathematician to work out that 29 March 2019 will be the end of our formal membership of the EU. Nor does one have to be mathematically gifted to work out that there are fewer than four months between today and exit day. In that timeframe, the notion that the Government will throw off their policy of the last two and half years and then bring in some parliamentary device for a second referendum to take place before the exit day is, frankly, ridiculous. We do not have the time to do it and people would feel that it would be extremely irresponsible to do so.

I could spend the next hour and three quarters trying to convince hon. Members of the merits of the deal. I do not want to do that, because they probably want to do other things. However, I will say that the deal does precisely what the electorate voted for. On immigration, we have heard about restrictions to freedom of movement.

[Paul Blomfield]

Given that the Minister has raised the question of immigration, does he agree that it is incumbent on the Government to do as they previously promised and publish the immigration White Paper before we vote on the deal?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The shadow Minister is trying to tempt me down paths I do not want to go down. We will have a plan. At the moment, the Government are focused on winning the vote on Tuesday and getting on with Brexit, as so many of our constituents want them to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam said that someone was bored of Brexit. I have used that phrase myself—not of me: I love Brexit and am fascinated by it, but a lot of my constituents want to get the ball rolling. They want to get on with wider political debate and to get on with their lives. They see that the deal is a way of getting to the finishing post of 29 March. Anything we do to jeopardise that would not only frustrate Brexit, but be a great abnegation of democracy.

The debate about our relationship with Europe will not end with our formal exit from the EU. There will be all sorts of ongoing discussions and debates about bits of the EU that we might want to pay into and others that we might not. That is the nature of democracy: we can debate it. It will not be set in stone, but we will have an evolving and, I hope, co-operative and fruitful relationship with the EU. However, we seek to close the question of membership of the EU and we will formally end it on 29 March.

People have talked about the money—the £39 billion. The figure of £35 billion to £39 billion has been quoted as a divorce payment. That is actually a small fraction of the £100 billion that we saw in the newspapers and the other huge amounts that were trailed across the media. Looking at our 46-year commitment to the EU, we see that £39 billion works out as four years of net payments to the EU—what I call the annual subscription.

The annual subscription in the 2014 to 2020 budget period was about £10 billion a year net, depending on how it is calculated. After the payment and the implementation period, we will not have to pay a penny piece. The golf club subscription, as one of my constituents once referred to it, will be over. We will not be paying into the common kitty to the tune of £10 billion a year. We will secure—we hope and confidently expect—a free trade deal. We will be able to co-operate with the EU, but our formal membership and the annual tribute or payment that we used to make will be over.

My last point is about sovereignty, which was raised by the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton. People wanted to have a sense that they were electing to this Parliament Members who would exercise the sovereign will of the British people and make our own laws. That is a fundamental point that cannot be captured in trade deals, money or economics; it is about fundamental independence and sovereignty. That was a big driver of the vote and this deal delivers it. I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Government in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam on introducing it and I look forward to his concluding remarks.