UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Lady Hermon Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I have given way many times and I will now make some progress.

This debate is absolutely necessary, but it is not welcome. Applying for an extension of article 50 with 15 days to go is a hopeless end to two years of negotiation. The fault lies squarely at the Government’s door, not with civil servants and not with the House.

I touched on this point yesterday, but I want to repeat it, because it is extremely important. It is no good the Prime Minister and the Government blaming everyone but themselves for the position in which we find ourselves. To be in government is to govern, to lead, to think through what deal might secure majority support, to realise that consensus will be needed, to have a two-year strategy to ensure that that consensus is reached, and to understand that, given the deep divisions on the Government side, meaningful engagement with the Opposition from the start would have been better than blinkered intransigence. All that has been missing. I have lost track of the number of times I have complained that the Prime Minister and the Government have pushed Parliament to one side, and this week is the culmination of that failed strategy.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman, ever so gently, to reflect on the fact that what he and the Labour party are proposing to do today is causing considerable anxiety among many businesses in Northern Ireland, because they want certainty? It is also, I believe, causing considerable anxiety among the border communities. I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman cares about that. How can he offer reassurance to businesses in Northern Ireland, and to the border communities, about what the Labour party is proposing in its amendment?

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful, as ever, for the hon. Lady’s intervention. There is great anxiety about uncertainty, and the uncertainty exists because the Government, after two years, have come back with a deal that they cannot get through Parliament. I think that that is because the red lines were wrong in the first place, because the Prime Minister never engaged Parliament in the negotiating objectives so that she could have the majority, and because of her blinkered approach, which says, “I am going to keep ramming my deal time and again without listening to other people.” We have reached an impasse. That does create uncertainty, and it is causing anxiety both in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom.

The question was, what is the Labour party trying to do? This is what we are trying to do, and we are not alone: our aim is clearly shared across the House. Given the current impasse—and there is no point in anyone pretending that it is not an impasse; once you have lost by 230 votes and 149 votes, you cannot pretend that you are not facing an impasse—we are asking the Government to say, “We realise that this is an impasse, and we will now find a way in which to establish what the majority view is, so that we can move forward.” But they will not do it, so what we are proposing—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir William Cash]

I entirely agree. I was concerned by what I heard, and I will add that I have always believed, since the backstop’s origin on 8 December 2017, that the bottom line here was that the door would be opened to the prospect of the Taoiseach being able to hold a border poll and to maintain the aspiration for a united Ireland.

Secondly, the Prime Minister has assured me on the Floor of the House that the express repeal of the European Communities Act 1972 contained in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 would be restated in the withdrawal and implementation Bill, as enacted, including therefore the exit date of 29 March. In respect of any disapplication by the courts under article 4 of the withdrawal agreement, combined with sections 5 and 6 of the 2018 Act, the Bill would need to contain an express exclusion of the power of the courts to disapply the repeal of the 1972 Act and other related Acts. It is dangerous that, according to article 4 of the withdrawal agreement, we have been given an arrangement under the withdrawal and implementation Bill whereby the courts would be able to disapply enactments, even potentially including the 2018 Act itself or aspects of it. The repeal of the 1972 Act is the statutory anchor of the referendum vote.

There are also issues of international law with respect to the compliance of international obligations arising from the withdrawal agreement, which includes the fact in international law that the agreement, as yet unsigned even now, was negotiated in the certain and understood knowledge in the European Union that we had enacted the repeal of the 1972 Act, subject only to the question of exit day, which we are now considering. The repeal itself is paramount, and it also applies to the backstop and the constitutional status of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. It is essential that the repeal is maintained within the framework of the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom, as I have repeatedly stated with respect to the question of control over laws. To repeat what I said to the Prime Minister two days ago, she said at Lancaster House—this is a fact and it is law—that we will not have truly left the European Union if we are not in control of our own laws.

[Lady Hermon]

May I correct the record? I want to make it absolutely clear that the Brexit deal that the Prime Minister has signed actually protects the Good Friday/Belfast agreement on page 307, and it protects the consent principle. The constitutional status of Northern Ireland remains unchanged by the Brexit deal and the political declaration, and it would remain in the hands of the people of Northern Ireland voting in a border poll.

[Sir William Cash]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that point, but I will say in addition that we do not know what the withdrawal and implementation Bill will contain. That is the problem. That is why my European Scrutiny Committee insisted on seeing a draft of it. It is one thing to have a treaty arrangement that is still uncompleted and unsigned, but it is another thing then to know how the draftsman will attempt to implement it in a Bill that we have not even seen. That is a serious problem, and we have almost no time, as the hon. Lady will understand as a lawyer herself, to examine the significant provisions that will be in that Bill.

[Lady Hermon]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for taking a second intervention so promptly. I just want to repeat to him that the political declaration on the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU says in black and white—I have not invented this—that it protects the Good Friday Belfast agreement in all its parts. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the Prime Minister and this Government do not mean and will not keep their word? I will be very concerned if that is what he is suggesting.

[Sir William Cash]

Well, I have to say that on the Chequers deal, for example, we went through the whole ramifications of enacting the 2018 Act including the date of 29 March, but then, on 6 July, we had it completely overturned. That is why I said in a previous debate I had lost trust in the Government and the Prime Minister. That is my point. I am asking a lot of big questions simply because I have grave doubts as to what we will be confronted with. The Bill that will enact into domestic law the arrangements that are supposed to be included in the withdrawal agreement, to which I have been so vehemently opposed because it undermines the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, Parliament and the vote, is my reason for stating now that I retain my concern and my distrust.