European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Lady Hermon Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to address that point a little later in my speech, but it is very clear. We have already had a vote in this House that said no to no deal, and those who want genuinely to deliver Brexit need to recognise that if this deal does not go through tonight, the House risks no Brexit at all.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

The Prime Minister should spell it out to the House that if we do not agree a deal tonight, all the arguments that we have heard, including the Attorney General’s advice on the backstop, become academic. We will not even enter into the implementation period and begin work on the alternative arrangements to deal with the backstop if we do not get a deal. We have to get a deal to go into the implementation period and discuss alternative arrangements until Christmas next year before we even contemplate a backstop. Will she confirm that we need a deal tonight?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady. She has set it out very clearly for the House, and I am sure every Member of this House will have heard what she has said about that.

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[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

I wish the Prime Minister well, and I hope she recovers her voice in a speedy manner.

When standing for election for the Highlands and Islands in the European elections, Winifred Ewing said the following:

“This vast area—the largest seat in Europe—really must have a Scottish voice to speak up for it, with no priorities like the London parties and no diktats from London, just simply to speak up for the vast area and all the industries, all of which are under threat”.

Madame Ecosse—our trailblazer for Scotland’s voice being heard in Europe—strengthened our cultural ties and our communities’ opportunities by fighting for a strong voice for Scotland in the European Union. Winnie Ewing used her voice in Europe to attract funding to the highlands and islands that benefited local transport hubs and infrastructure. Winnie also chaired the European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education when the Erasmus programme was established in the late 1980s, which is why Scotland cherishes the opportunities that it brings to our students and to our country. To stand here today, with only 17 days to go until we exit the EU, and know that Scotland’s historical place in Europe is under threat is devastating.

“United in diversity” is the motto of the European Union, and it first came into use in 2000. It signifies how independent states came together in common endeavour to work for peace and prosperity. The beauty of the European project is that it has allowed us to work together while being enriched by the continent’s many different cultures, traditions and languages. We have been enriched by cultural diversity while the single market has granted economic opportunities to our citizens. We have only gained, not lost. In Europe, we learn from each other. Just last month, the Irish Seanad debated following in Scotland’s footsteps by introducing the baby box, which is a progressive policy that is benefiting the lives of citizens in Scotland. That is what the European Union has always been about: partnership to improve the lives of our nations and advance the opportunities for our citizens and our communities. Standing together, we have worked to protect our values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights. Our shared endeavour has been to build a society in which inclusion, tolerance, justice, solidarity and non-discrimination prevail.

[Lady Hermon]

I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman’s wonderfully poetic prose, but will he look at the wider country of the United Kingdom and explain to this House, before we vote tonight, the consequences of leaving the EU without a deal, particularly for Northern Ireland? The Leader of the Opposition could not take an intervention from me, and we need to spell out the consequences for the people of Northern Ireland, the majority of whom are not represented by the DUP.

The DUP has 10 duly elected Members, but it does not speak for the majority of people in Northern Ireland. Many businesses, many farmers, many fishermen, many people and many community leaders support the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal. What does the right hon. Gentleman think of the consequences not just for Scotland but for Northern Ireland? I respect his views on Scotland, but I need him to spell out the SNP’s thinking on the consequences for Northern Ireland of remaining within the United Kingdom, which I want it to do. I do not want dissident republican violence back on the border.

[Ian Blackford]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I must say that the UK is not a country but a state—some would say it is some state. Scotland is a country, and we wish to have our rights as EU citizens protected.

I hope this House overwhelmingly rejects the Prime Minister’s deal tonight, but tomorrow we must take our responsibilities and vote down no deal, which would be catastrophic. The Prime Minister could have done that months ago, and it is regrettable that we have had to wait until just over two weeks before we are supposed to leave before we can vote down no deal.

[Lady Hermon]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Blackford]

No, I must make some progress.

Once again, we listen to Conservative voices argue that we must leave our European destiny behind. I cannot countenance why we would leave behind those shared values and common endeavours. Our countries have come out of conflict and war and have come together. Our communities have thrived in times of peace. Collaboration and co-operation with our neighbours is delivering a new world of opportunity for all our citizens.

Despite the theatre of this place, where we poke and jar at each other, in truth today is painful, and I am deeply sad that we have reached this point of complete crisis. In homes across the United Kingdom our families, friends and communities are watching. In Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Madrid, Dublin and Paris—I could go on—our friends and neighbours are watching. What must they be thinking? The historic achievement of the European project is unravelling, and for what? To replace partnership and stability with isolation and chaos.

Let us not beat about the bush: this battle began in the Tory party, and there it should have stayed. Euro- scepticism festered and consumed Tory Members and their party for decades until David Cameron rolled the dice, and where is he now? After he opened the box and spilled the Tory war on to the streets across the country, he abdicated all responsibility. The historical internal Conservative divisions have now divided the United Kingdom, and today Members must decide whether they will also abdicate responsibility and roll the dice, or whether they will act in the interests of their constituents by stopping the greatest act of self-harm to our economy.

We on the SNP Benches know our responsibilities, and we will not follow those who started the fire into the flames.

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[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), although I have drawn a different conclusion about the choice we have to make this evening.

I am tempted to say, “Here we go again.” After the flurry of activity and effort—I pay tribute to Ministers who have been working hard over the past couple of months—some people may have had their minds changed by the documents produced last night, but it seems that many others have not.

The one thing I want to say on the documents is this: the withdrawal agreement remains in place, the backstop remains in place, there is no unilateral exit mechanism for the United Kingdom and there is no time limit. While it may be possible to suspend the backstop, in order to do that the United Kingdom has to persuade the arbitration panel that we have a case. If the arbitration panel is then to turn suspension into disapplication, we have to persuade it that the reason for the problem is that there is a lack of good faith on the part of the European Union.

It is pretty safe to say that the EU would say, “No, it’s not a lack of good faith; we just don’t think your alternative arrangements work. We think they would undermine the integrity of the single market and the customs union.” The moment it says that, that engages questions of the application of EU law, at which point the panel has to refer the matter to the Court of Justice of the European Union, whose judgment on these questions will be binding on everyone, including the United Kingdom.

Frankly, proving bad faith, in my view as a non-lawyer, is going to be pretty darn difficult, so we are left with paragraph 19 of the Attorney General’s letter to the Prime Minister today, which says that if we cannot reach agreement because of intractable differences,

“no internationally lawful means of exiting the Protocol’s arrangements”

will exist.

If the deal is defeated tonight, tomorrow will be another day. I have little doubt that the House of Commons will vote against leaving the European Union with no deal—we can debate all those matters tomorrow. I still do not know how the Prime Minister is going to vote. Can I just offer her some advice? She used to say that no deal is better than a bad deal, but she now argues that her deal is in fact a good deal. Well, if it is in fact a good deal, it cannot be a bad deal, so, by definition, no deal is now worse than her deal. Therefore, if logic means anything, the Prime Minister ought to come through the Lobby with me and many others tomorrow to vote against no deal. No deal would be the worst possible outcome for the country.

If leaving with no deal is defeated, we will come on to the question of an extension, which will be the subject of Thursday’s debate. However, we have to use an extension for a purpose—that is very clear. For me, the purpose must be, first, to see whether it is possible for the House of Commons to reach agreement on an alternative way of leaving the European Union. Is there support for a customs union? Is there support for a Norway-style arrangement?

[Lady Hermon]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I have enormous regard for him, so I just ask him to confirm whether the Labour party actually supports the backstop. He will know why the Government have argued, and been consistent on the need, for the backstop: to protect the peace process and to protect Northern Ireland and, indeed, the United Kingdom from the consequences of a hard border. Will he therefore confirm that progress has been made? The Prime Minister has been able to get agreement that alternative arrangements will be fast-tracked—my words, not hers—before the end of the transition period.

[Hilary Benn]

I am happy to confirm that I have heard my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) say that he does not have a problem with the backstop. I do not have a problem with the backstop, because it is an essential insurance policy to protect the integrity of the Good Friday agreement and trade across that border. All that I would say about the alternative arrangements is that all those provisions are already in the withdrawal agreement that the Prime Minister signed up to in November. All that we have had added today is interpretation of what already existed—

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[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

I shall keep my speech short to allow other Members to speak.

Here we go again. It is groundhog day. We are faced with the same bad deal for our country’s future. In February, we provided the Prime Minister with guidance on what was needed to gain the support of the House. The Malthouse compromise was just that—a compromise to find the middle ground and secure a deal. I respect the Prime Minister’s attempts to improve the deal, but it has been a failure, and since the EU is refusing to improve it, we need to just leave. We need to leave the European Union on 29 March and deliver on the referendum promise.

After weeks of negotiations, all that we have is an agreement that has not changed the working of the backstop, but simply supplements it. These changes only limit the risks posed by the backstop; they do not remove those risks entirely. As a sovereign country, we need the ability to leave the backstop unilaterally. We should not have to ask the EU for permission to forge our own future. The agreement is not about taking back control of our own destiny; it is about surrendering control. As the Attorney General has said,

“the legal risk remains unchanged”,

and if the legal risk remains unchanged, the bad deal remains unchanged.

So what next? Where do we go from here? It may seem strange to some, but I propose that we keep our promises and leave the European Union without a bad deal. According to Hansard, the Prime Minister has said more than 120 times that the UK should leave the EU on 29 March. When today’s vote is defeated, the best option left for the UK is to go to WTO rules, just as the Prime Minister has indicated previously.

This deal remains a bad deal for the reasons that I have mentioned, but let us not forget the other issues. If this deal were to pass in its current form, we would still be subject to decisions from the ECJ—decisions that would directly impact on our laws and subsequently our sovereignty. Additionally, we must still pay the European Union the £39 billion just for the right to leave; no, that is not good enough. The Prime Minister has been right all along that no deal is better than a bad deal, and if this place considers her deal to be a bad deal today then we need to leave without a deal.

We need to invest the £39 billion in our own country.

[Lady Hermon]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Andrea Jenkyns]

I will carry on, thank you.

We need to invest in skills and the new cutting-edge industries of tomorrow. We need to reinvigorate our fishing industries and allow our hard-working fishermen to keep their catch. We need to invest in education and the next generation, invest in policing so that we have safer communities, and invest in our businesses to help them during the transition. It is time we had confidence in our people and in our country and invested in its future, and it is time to deliver what the British people voted for.

Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair. Let us stick to our word: let us keep our promises and deliver on the referendum result. Let us build faith, not tear it down. Let us look beyond the borders of the EU and trade globally. And let us finally take back control.

This withdrawal agreement sets the blueprint for our country’s final deal with the EU. We have given far too many concessions, and it is time to stand up and say “No more.” We must deliver what we promised, and this evening I will be voting against this withdrawal agreement. We need to send a strong message to the EU that Britain deserves better.

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[Mr Paterson]

It is utterly bizarre that Cabinet Ministers have written articles in the popular prints attacking Government policy and the manifesto on which they were elected. There is an issue of reputation and integrity here, and those of us who will regretfully be voting against the Government tonight will be representing the 17.4 million. This argument is not going away. It cannot be put back in the bottle and stuck in the fridge if this agreement goes through.

This is a bad agreement. Laws will be cooked up by 27 nations, and we will not be present. When I was Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I worked closely with the EU on common agricultural policy reform. We worked closely with allies, whether Germany, Hungary, Italy or whatever, but this time laws will be imposed on us, and if we do not impose those laws to the satisfaction of the European Commission, we can get taken to the ECJ and fined. If the deal goes through and if I come to this House in a year’s time to discuss an issue of great concern to my constituency, such as agriculture or food, and to complain about a law, the Minister will have every right to say, “The right hon. Gentleman voted for that. What is he complaining about?”

[Lady Hermon]

The right hon. Gentleman is a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, so will he explain to the many businesses, the farmers, the fishermen, the community leaders and the people of Northern Ireland who support the Prime Minister’s deal why their views do not count?

[Mr Paterson]

Their views do count. I remember going to an Ulster Farmers Union debate at Balmoral Park during the referendum campaign and leave won that debate. There are varied views in Northern Ireland, as we know from the DUP. The hon. Lady does not have an exclusive right on this. There is a clear role for Members to represent the leave view because this argument will not go away. It would be highly unsatisfactory for this deal to go through. Laws would be imposed on us by 27 nations, and we would not be involved. We would be paying £39 billion for the privilege of having the right to talk about the next phase, which is £64 million per constituency. There is not a single Member listening to this debate who could not spend that money well. It is purely an entry ticket to allow us the right to talk about a trade deal.

The hon. Lady comes from Northern Ireland, and it is extraordinary that we have allowed a section of the UK to be hived off into a new entity called “UK(NI).” The most fundamental principle of the Belfast agreement, as she well knows, is the principle of consent. We have huge admiration for the noble Lord Trimble, one of the co-architects who received the Nobel prize for the extraordinary achievement of getting Unionists to vote for the Belfast agreement, which was very much based on trust that the principle of consent would be respected and that the status of Northern Ireland could never be changed without the consent of the people. At the stroke of a pen, something called “UK(NI)” will be created, which is a clear breach of the Belfast agreement and of the Acts of Union of 1801.

We are promised the right to do trade deals. I was at the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington twice in the autumn, and the USTR is clear that we will not be allowed to do trade deals so long as we do not control our tariff regime or our regulatory regime. Under this proposal, we will not have control of either.

There are huge advantages to trading with the outside world. I do not agree with the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable), because the European Union itself says that 90% of world growth will be outside the European Union. We have drawn down from 61% of our trade being with the EU to about 45%, and we are heading to 35%. The future is phenomenal, and it is about trading with the growing economies outside the European Union—we also have the best possible relations with countries inside the European Union—and we can do it by triggering article 24 of the general agreement on tariffs and trade and showing a serious intent to do a free trade deal down the road. If there is a proper exchange of documentation, paragraph 5(c) of article 24 would give us a “reasonable length of time”—that could be up to 10 years—to negotiate.

All the “Project Fear” spookery about tariffs is for the birds. We can go ahead on the basis of article 24. Outside this place, people come up to me time and again to say, “We want to see the vote delivered. Why don’t you just get on with it?” It is now for the Government to deliver rapidly and make sure that we leave on 29 March by using article 24.

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[Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). I have known him for many years and I do not doubt his sincerity in this matter at all. I myself had sincerely hoped that the Government would be able to make the wholly modest changes that this House urged them to make, and that there would be no risk that this country would find itself trapped in the backstop or that we would lose our democratic right to make laws for this country and pass them to a foreign entity for all time, as we are in danger of doing.

But whatever the Government tried to do, they have not, I am afraid, succeeded. Though I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Attorney General on their efforts, the result is that, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they have sewed an apron of fig leaves that does nothing to conceal the embarrassment and indignity of the UK. As the Attorney General confirmed in his admirably honest advice, the backstop does not just divide our country in fundamental ways—it ties our hands for the future and sets us on a path to a subordinate relationship with the EU that is still, despite what we were told yesterday, clearly based on the customs union and on large parts of the single market.

[Lady Hermon]

rose—

[Boris Johnson]

I give way with pleasure to the hon. Lady.

[Lady Hermon]

I am very grateful indeed to the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene, because it gives me an opportunity to remind him of the many opportunities that he took during the EU referendum campaign to assert that this country was going to take back control of its borders. May I just ask him whether he has ever visited South Armagh or Crossmaglen? How, with the greatest respect, does he think he is going to take back control of the border without the backstop arrangement?

[Boris Johnson]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. I have certainly visited the places that she mentions—indeed, at the times of the troubles—and I can say that nobody wants those types of border controls to come back, least of all the Governments in Dublin or in London, or indeed those in Brussels; and, by the way, nobody thinks it necessary, under any circumstances, for hard border controls to return in Northern Ireland. But what I think her constituents will want is for this country to have the unilateral right of exit from the backstop, and that is not what the British people are getting out of this deal.

[Lady Hermon]

rose—

[Boris Johnson]

If the hon. Lady will allow me, I will make some progress.

I want to stress this point. I really cannot accept the repeated assertion by the Attorney General in his very powerful speech this afternoon that there is a minimal legal risk of us being trapped in the prison of the backstop, because it is now more than a year since I stood in Downing Street—in No. 10—and was told that there was a minimal legal risk that we would even have to enter the backstop. That is not a view that I believe could now be plausibly defended by the Government.

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[Joanna Cherry]

I am not going to waste what little time I have dignifying that intervention with a reply, other than simply to say that it shows the great ignorance of many members of the Labour party about the situation in Scotland, and why Labour is nose-diving into third position in Scotland, having once been in the lead.

To return to my point: when the Prime Minister says her aim is to bring the country back together, I do wonder which country she is talking about. The United Kingdom is a union of three nations—Scotland, England and Wales—and the Province of Northern Ireland. It is not one nation; it is a union of three nations and one province. Yet, the Prime Minister has taken no steps whatever—

[Lady Hermon]

Will the hon. and learned Lady give way?

[Joanna Cherry]

I am not going to take any more interventions, because I do not have much time left, and I will not get any more time for them.

The Prime Minister has taken no steps whatever to try to bring Scotland into the tent in her discussions on Brexit. Instead, she has repeatedly disrespected the will of the Scottish people, as expressed through their Parliament —most recently last week when, together with the Welsh Senedd, it overwhelmingly rejected this deal.

The Prime Minister likes to sit laughing, rolling her eyes, pulling faces and encouraging others to do so when my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) speaks, but she needs to remember that he speaks as the leader of the biggest party in Scotland—the party in this House that has more seats there than all the other parties put together. However, most importantly, when he speaks, he is articulating the majority view in Scotland, which is clear opposition to this deal and a desire to remain. [Interruption.] People can chunter away from a sedentary position as much as they like, but that is the reality.

The other reality is that, two years ago, in March 2017, by a majority of 69 to 59, the Scottish Parliament voted to hold another independence referendum in the event that Scotland was taken out of the EU against her will. I have no doubt that that will happen, and I have no doubt that this time we will win, because now people know the truth: they know that Scotland is not an equal partner in the UK, they know that Scotland is not treated with respect in the UK and they know that this deal is rotten.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), my colleague on the Brexit Committee. She and I agree on some things; we disagree profoundly on others.

I will be brief. I rise to say that I will be supporting the deal this evening. I supported the deal the last time we voted on it, and I supported it for a number of reasons. Parts of it represented compromises for me and did not reflect fully what I would have wanted at this stage of the Brexit process. However, overall, it represented a reasonable, pragmatic approach to the article 50 process.

The other reason I supported the deal last time was that I supported the original backstop. I did not support the subsequent vote on the so-called Brady amendment—I did not support the strategy of trying to knock the backstop out of the withdrawal agreement. I actually think that the backstop is there for good and right reasons, which reflect noble purposes. I am sorry, but colleagues on whichever side of the House who say that Brexit has nothing whatever to do with the Good Friday agreement and the peace process in Northern Ireland display an ignorance about what has been achieved in Northern Ireland in the last 20 years. Peace in Northern Ireland is simply the biggest achievement of our politics in the United Kingdom in the last 50 years, and it should be incumbent on all of us to defend it. I am afraid that, back in 2016, the way in which Brexit would affect Northern Ireland and the difficult, complicated border issue there was an afterthought; we did not invest enough time in thinking that through and coming up with a solution. The backstop is there for a very good reason.

I never accepted the narrative that has grown in recent months on the Government side of the House and among some on the Opposition Benches that the backstop is some kind of entrapment mechanism. I regard that as a conspiracy theory. I tested this view with Ministers in Europe when I visited with the Exiting the European Union Committee, as well as on individual visits. I talked to independent trade and legal experts here in the UK who also reject the conspiracy theory that the backstop has been cooked up as an entrapment mechanism between a tricky Irish Government and a malevolent EU Commission to somehow lock the UK long term into an arrangement that we do not want.

[Lady Hermon]

I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for taking an intervention. Will he take a moment to reflect on the advice given by the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who has asked for over 300 additional police officers? Quite rightly, the Government have acceded to his request. He has also taken off the market three unused border police stations that were up for sale, because he knows the dangers of a hard border in the event that we leave without a deal. Will the right hon. Gentleman reflect on that warning?

[Stephen Crabb]

I agree 100% with the hon. Lady. The Select Committee took evidence from the PSNI and visited the communities affected. Anyone who tries to belittle or downplay these issues has, I am afraid, a completely wrong reading of the very serious and sensitive issues we are discussing.

The proper way of seeing the backstop is as a concession. The backstop in the withdrawal agreement reflected an ask that we made. It did not reflect the original form of the backstop. We wanted it to be a UK-wide backstop, rather than Northern Ireland-specific. We were granted that, and that is how people view it on the other side of the channel: they see it as a concession that they made to us. In effect, it was an achievement of our diplomacy and our negotiating that the final version of the backstop reflected something that we asked for. Rather than being defended as the fruit of our efforts, however, it has been trashed with the conspiracy theory that it was some kind of entrapment mechanism. There are two golden rules when one is a Minister: do not trash your civil servants, and do not trash your own achievements and homework. It does feel that we have rather done that to the withdrawal agreement we negotiated.

I say to my colleagues who have still not been convinced to support the deal that all of us on the Government Benches shared in the joint responsibility of triggering article 50 to begin the process that would lead to a negotiated outcome. What did we think was going to emerge from that process? An agreement that looks very much like the one that is in front of us. It would not have mattered who else was in Downing Street. With the greatest respect, whether it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) or any Opposition Member, it would not have changed the fundamental shape and form of the withdrawal agreement that emerged at the other end of the article 50 process. It is not the personality in Downing Street—whether they are a true believer or not—that has shaped this withdrawal agreement. The withdrawal agreement has been shaped by our red lines, but also by a number of fixed variables that we cannot escape from when discussing Brexit.

The Northern Irish border is one of those fixed variables. Another is the hard choices and compromises that need to be made on trade: the level of market access and whether we have pure frictionless trade, balanced against the extent of the obligations we are willing to take on. One of the failings on our side, collectively, since the referendum is that we have not properly explained to the British public some of those choices and compromises, so there is still fantasy swirling around that Brexit can deliver all the benefits and none of the obligations. But the fantasy is not on offer. What is on offer is just a set of very difficult and unattractive choices. I genuinely believe that the deal in front of us represents the very best of those choices. There are strengths and merit to the deal in front of us. I encourage and implore my colleagues, on the Government Benches and on the Opposition Benches, who genuinely believe in delivering a responsible Brexit to support the deal.