Article 50 Extension Procedure

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Anna Soubry

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: Northern Ireland is at the front and centre of this current debate, and the Government’s intention is absolutely that Stormont, if and when it is reconstituted as a Government, will have a complete role in moving forward both the deal and further Brexit discussions.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Ind)]

May I congratulate the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) on securing this question? As you know, Mr Speaker, it had widespread cross-party support, and rightly so.

I gently say to the Minister that it might help if he actually were to take a note of questions when they are asked of him, and if he had done that he might have been able to answer the question that I think has been asked by a number of hon. Members. The Minister has told us that he thinks the deal might somehow go through by Thursday and in that event a short extension would be sought to cross the t’s and dot the i’s—those are my words—but in the extremely likely event that it will not go through by Thursday, the Government’s plan is to ask for a longer extension, and the question we are all asking is this: what will the purpose of that extension be? So the Minister understands: we have got to give the EU a reason, so what will the Government’s reason be—the purpose—for the long extension, please?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I must say that, being relatively new to the Government Front Bench, it is a new experience for me to be utterly patronised by a former right hon. Friend, and with respect, Mr Speaker, I will answer the questions in the way I see fit. [Interruption.] If that does not satisfy the right hon. Lady—[Interruption.]

Windrush

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

It is no secret that the issue of immigration has been a matter of huge debate within the Conservative party. There is a wide range of opinions on the issue on the Government side of the House, just as there is on the Opposition side of the House. It is an issue on which both sides of the House are divided. Some Government Members want a very open, comprehensive, almost laissez-faire approach to immigration; others want to be more restrictive.

[Anna Soubry]

It should be put on the record that many of us who were elected in 2010, with the change of government, noticed that under the previous Government there had also been big problems in the Home Office in getting on and doing the right thing in relation to all manner of things—visas, applications and so on. This was nothing new under the Conservative Government.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Both sides of the House were complicit in this issue. Members have mentioned the Labour Government and a former Labour Prime Minister who suggested that British jobs should be restricted to British workers. If he had been a Conservative Prime Minister, that comment would have caused outrage and would have been widely regarded as a disgraceful comment. That was the environment in which many of us operated when we were elected in 2010. All of us have to take some degree of responsibility for this.

In my closing remarks, I want to talk about something that has been mentioned: illegal immigration. Many Opposition Members have suggested that Conservative Members were trying to conflate illegal immigration with legal immigration. We were doing the opposite; everyone said, categorically, that the Windrush generation had an incontestable right to stay in Britain, as they are British. No one on this side of the House has ever questioned their legal status. What we have said is that we need a strong policy on illegal immigration—after all, it is against the law. It is a principal job of Government to uphold the law, so any Government, of whatever stripe, would need robust and strong policies to counter illegal immigration. People should not be embarrassed about that, as we are talking about the job of Government. Many millions of people who live in this country—probably the vast majority of our constituents—would expect a rules-based system to regulate how one comes into the country.

Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I start by saying that I wholly endorse and support the wise words of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan). I also wholly endorse and support the wise words of my new friend, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). Before anybody listening to this speech or reading about it elsewhere has a problem with that, I should also agree with the short intervention made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve).

Get real. We are living in extraordinary times, and incredible things have happened. Who would have believed a year ago that we would be here having this debate after all that has taken place? Increasingly, and rightly, many of us will now be taking a cross-party approach to these issues. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield said, as we leave the EU—I accept the verdict, the referendum result—we face difficult, dangerous times. Putting our country and the interests of all our constituents first transcends everything, and that includes the normal party political divide.

I pay handsome tribute also to the wise speech—except for when it got partisan—made by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). I agree with him. We are in difficult, dangerous times and we tread with great care. As he rightly said, there was one question on that ballot paper and it is wrong to assume that a whole series of mandates flow from that one simple and straightforward question. With great respect to the Prime Minister, her Cabinet and all those in government, we are using the answer to that question as an excuse for other mandates. That is simply wrong.

I am concerned about the extrapolation—a new buzzword, perhaps—that involves our just saying, “Oh well—52% of the British people apparently voted for controls on immigration.” The hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) mentioned people concerned about immigration. She should tread carefully. When people said they were concerned about immigration, I suspect that what they were really asking for was not control—that might make it go up—but less immigration.

I gently say to the hon. Lady that we have to be true to what we believe in. It is so important that, in the debate now unfolding about immigration, we are brave and true to what we believe in and take people on. My right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough and I stood in Loughborough market on the day of the referendum and had that debate, but the tragedy was that by that time it was too late. The British people at heart are good and tolerant; if we make the debate, they will understand the huge benefit that migration has brought to our country for centuries.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I agree with many of the things my right hon. Friend has said about immigration, but did she not stand in 2015 and, I believe, in 2010 on a clear Conservative party manifesto commitment to reduce net immigration to tens of thousands?

[Anna Soubry]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I accept what he says, but let me say here and now that we have to abandon that target; we cannot keep it. We know the reality: people come here to work. In simple terms, Sir, who is going to do the jobs of those people who come here? There seems to be some nonsensical idea that, with a bit of upskilling here and a bit of upskilling there, we will replace the millions and millions of people who come and work not just in those low-skilled jobs, but right the way through to the highest levels of research and development—the great entrepreneurs. We should be singing out about this great country of ours; we should be making it clear that we are open for business and that we are open to people, as we always have been, because they contribute to our country in not only economic but cultural terms. We are in grave danger if we extrapolate in a way that I believe is not at the core of being British.