United Kingdom’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Lady Hermon Excerpts

Friday 29th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. That is why I have just asked the Attorney General for an assurance—he did not answer my question—that if the withdrawal agreement is not approved today, the Government will bring in the Bill anyway. A lot of people are telling me, as Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee—I am pleased to see the Leader of the House shake her head—that if this agreement is rejected, it will not be followed by a Bill. Is that crystal clear? I look to the Leader of the House for confirmation. Is it quite clear that there will be no Bill if this agreement is rejected? She does not answer.

The European Council decision is yet another example of the manner in which this great country has effectively capitulated to the demands of the European Council. That is one of my greatest objections to the motion. Last March—a whole year ago—the European Scrutiny Committee produced a report stating that we should never have accepted the sequencing or the terms of reference laid down by the European Union. That was capitulation, not compromise. It is so important that the House recognises that in the vote today.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

I am enormously grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way—my patience has paid off. Let me take him back to his remarks about Northern Ireland. May I gently remind him that the DUP does not speak for the majority of people in Northern Ireland? May I also reflect on the fact that the Prime Minister cares deeply about the United Kingdom? She cares so deeply about the United Kingdom that the Good Friday Belfast agreement and the consent principle are protected in black and white in her withdrawal deal, and therefore the constitutional status of Northern Ireland remains the same: it remains in the hands of the people of Northern Ireland voting in a border poll.

[Sir William Cash]

I have great respect for the hon. Lady. I will only say that we have had this debate before and we differ on the matter. Of course I want to see the Good Friday agreement retained, because it has been a tremendous triumph, and I in no way wish to disparage that. However, there are very serious questions about the constitutional status of Northern Ireland as a result of the backstop. I have heard hon. Friends—good friends of mine—who themselves may have changed their minds on whether to support the withdrawal agreement, repeatedly objecting to the backstop. We have had the distinguished Attorney General and Solicitor General opining on the subject. We have had some very interesting outcomes. However, the reality is that the backstop is an insuperable impediment to the House agreeing to the withdrawal agreement.

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[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I do not intend to spend a long time referring to or looking at the political and parliamentary skulduggery and chicanery that we have had to go through to get this motion here today. Suffice it to say that we are breaking and ignoring the legislation that this House passed, to comply—on the day when we are meant to be leaving the European Union—with a deadline that has been imposed on us by the European Union. There is certain irony in that.

As far as the withdrawal agreement and motion before us are concerned, our position has not changed. Over the past number of weeks, we have sought to work with the Government, to try to find a way of getting either legal assurances or legislative changes that would enable us to move this process on. Of course, we want to see a deal because we want out of the European Union and we want a clear path to how we do that, but that has not been possible because the withdrawal agreement itself so ties the hands of the Government that it is impossible to find a way to secure the kind of assurances required to make sure, first, that the United Kingdom is not broken up and, secondly, that we have a clear way to ensure that the Brexit that many of us expected to see delivered will be delivered. It is our regret that that process has reached an end.

In the Alice in Wonderland world in which we now live, the Attorney General said today that this was not a meaningful vote. It is a meaningful vote to many people who want the delivery of our exit from the EU. It is meaningful to the people of Northern Ireland, because if this goes through, the people of Northern Ireland will find themselves stuck with a legally binding agreement that puts Northern Ireland outside the United Kingdom, and it could be there forever at the insistence of Brussels.

[Lady Hermon]

rose—

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[Mr Paterson]

Other Members want to speak, so I must push on.

The issue is live. Those people are out there and they believe that it should happen and that we should deliver it. It is not going back. It cannot be put back in the bottle, with the top screwed on, and then hidden in a cupboard or put in the fridge. That huge vote will continue to dominate our politics. The issue is not going away.

It is extraordinary that the fifth largest economy in the world is proposing to have laws imposed on it by 27 other countries, many of which are competitors that have no incentive to pass law in our interest. We will not be present when the law is made and we will not be able to amend or repeal it, and if we do not apply it to the satisfaction of the European Commission and, ultimately, the European Court of Justice, we will be subject, as we heard during last week’s urgent question, to unlimited fines—“disallowance”, in EU-speak.

We have the horror facing Northern Ireland. The whole basis of getting the Unionist population to vote for the Belfast agreement was the principle of consent. There was an extraordinarily successful campaign by Lord Trimble; it was an amazing effort to get Unionists to vote for it. The basis was trust that the status of Northern Ireland could not be changed, yet we are going to have something horrible called UKNI, which is actually in breach of the Acts of Union of 1801.

[Lady Hermon]

rose—

[Mr Paterson]

I am sorry, but others want to speak. This is about trust and democracy.

Finally, the absolute key point is that what we are seeing today does not deliver. It does not deliver on the referendum, the manifesto commitments or the promises made throughout all the debates. When it comes to trust, I represent a leave constituency and I was clear to my constituents about what I was going to do. Given that I have voted twice against this agreement, they all think it would be perverse if I, under pressure, changed my mind today. Why on earth would I do that? I will maintain my integrity and reputation, with the intention of continuing to campaign. We may lose this battle, but ultimately, we will get back the sovereignty of this country so that people can make decisions.

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[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The Government have run down the clock in an attempt to blackmail MPs at every turn. The Government are in chaos, the country is in chaos, and the responsibility is the Government’s, and the Government’s alone. The Prime Minister pulled the meaningful vote in December because she knew it would fail. Since then, in more than three months, nothing has changed—not one single word in the 600 pages of the withdrawal agreement, not one single word in the 26 pages of the political declaration.

Today, the Government are trying to bounce the House into voting for a damaging deal that we have twice rejected, but, as ever, the Prime Minister refuses to listen. Today’s vote—third time lucky, she hopes—is an affront to democracy and this country. She has separated the withdrawal agreement from the future relationship, despite having told us that the two were indivisible. On 14 January, she told the House that

“the link between them means that the commitments of one cannot be banked without the commitments of the other.”——[Official Report, 14 January 2019; Vol. 652, c. 826.]

Today, she is asking us to take a punt on the withdrawal agreement and hope for the best for the political declaration. It is not good enough; the two are linked.

Nothing demonstrates that linkage better than the backstop. The political declaration is incredibly vague, containing as it does a spectrum of possible outcomes, and nothing is even close to being resolved. That makes it even more likely that the UK would fall into the backstop, which would create regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, as the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said. We also know that it endures indefinitely, thanks to this Parliament prizing the Attorney General’s legal advice out of a very reluctant Government. Labour will not vote for a blindfold Brexit, and passing the withdrawal agreement today without the political declaration would be just that.

The Prime Minister said at the end of November, when she signed off the deal, that

“we won’t agree the leaving part, the withdrawal agreement, until we’ve got what we want in the future because these two go together”.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) said, it would be like selling your house without knowing where you are moving to, although, unlike me, I am not sure he is old enough to have watched “Monty Python”.

[Lady Hermon]

The Leader of the Opposition should be enormously proud of the achievement of the Labour party in the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, and I am extremely upset and disappointed that the Labour party today will vote against the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, which protects the Good Friday agreement and the consent principle.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

We in the Labour party are very proud of the Good Friday agreement and the peace achieved in Northern Ireland as a result, and nobody in the Labour party wants to do anything to undermine this great achievement.

As the shadow Solicitor General, my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), said, article 184 of the withdrawal agreement commits the Government to negotiate expeditiously on the terms of the political declaration. That would be a deal based on a very wide range of potential outcomes for the country, and who would decide which direction we go in? Now that the Prime Minister has announced her own departure, we do not know if the future is to be chosen by the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), or maybe even the jobbing Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). The Labour party will not play roulette with this country’s future, especially when the roulette wheel is rigged by the Conservative party.

Labour respects the result of the referendum—we reiterated that in our manifesto and again in our party conference last year—but the Prime Minister’s approach to Brexit has been nothing short of a shambles. The choices facing our country post Brexit have been decided solely by what is in the interests of the Conservative party, not the country. The Prime Minister announced her red lines and went to negotiate without any consultation with the House, without any attempt to build consensus. Those red lines were opposed by the representative bodies of workers, businesses and industry, who are now tearing their hair out in exasperation at the Government’s incompetence and the uncertainty that they face.

The first Brexit Secretary said that he would get a deal that would deliver the exact same benefits as now. The current Brexit Secretary obviously felt that that was far too good for the country because, only two weeks ago, he went into the Lobby to back no deal and oppose an extension. That would leave the UK crashing out in just 10 days with no preparations and chaos at our ports and airports, leading to a crisis in factories, shops and hospitals.

What did the Government forecasts say about the Brexit Secretary’s preferred no-deal option? That it would make the economy not 4% worse off, but nearly 10% worse off. So it is no wonder that, faced with a choice between the Prime Minister’s bad deal and a disastrous no deal, this House has given a clear no to both, repeatedly. The Government suffered the largest defeat by any Government ever in parliamentary history in January. The Prime Minister said then:

“It is clear that the House does not support this deal.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2019; Vol. 652, c. 1125.]

So what was the Government’s response? They tried begging, bullying and bribery, and still they were defeated by the fourth largest majority in parliamentary history.

The Prime Minister told us that we must leave on 29 March, and even wrote it into primary legislation. She herself then voted against leaving on 29 March. She then went to Brussels to negotiate an extension and, almost unbelievably, even turned that into another negotiating failure. This Government’s Brexit negotiations have been a litany of failure, culminating today with a Prime Minister who has been forced to announce her own departure tabling only half the deal she has negotiated. This really is a half-baked Brexit.

When she became Prime Minister two and a half years ago, she said that it was her mission to deliver Brexit. She has failed. She also stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised that her Government would tackle burning injustices. Since then, she has failed on every test. Homelessness is up. Life expectancy is falling. Infant mortality is rising. Crime is rising. Police numbers have fallen. This year, the NHS had its worst ever month—people waiting longer in A&E, for an operation and to start cancer treatment—and just yesterday, we learned that more children are in poverty and the scourge of pensioner poverty is increasing again.

The job of Government is to make people’s lives better, and this Government have failed. A botched and half-baked Brexit deal like the one before us today would compound that failure. On Wednesday, the House sought to find an alternative—a new negotiating deal for the Government. Labour’s plan, I believe, provides the best compromise for a deeply divided country and a deeply divided House. It is backed in large part by major organisations in industry and business and by trade unions. It is based around the certainty of a permanent customs union, close alignment with the single market and a dynamic alignment on rights and protections.

Labour urged support for four of the options tabled by members of different parties on different sides of the House. We did so not because we would be equally happy with each of those outcomes but because we recognise that we have to compromise to get this resolved. The whole House knows that the current uncertainty is damaging businesses, reducing investment and costing jobs now and in the future. The stress of people in work is palpable as we travel around the country and talk to people in all parts of the country.

I hope that on Monday, when the House retakes control, parties and Members on both sides will enter into those debates and votes in the spirit of trying to find an acceptable compromise. We need to get a better deal, the country deserves a better deal, and I am convinced that a better deal can be negotiated and, if Members decide, a chance for people to have a final say. If we cannot do that on Monday, I will say—and many others will agree with me—that ultimately there will be no alternative other than to have a general election to decide who rules this country in the future.

To enable the Prime Minister to have sufficient time to respond to the debate, I say this in conclusion. I urge Members to act in the best interests of their constituents and to vote down this unacceptable deal. There are many people who fear for their jobs, for their industry and for whether they and their friends have a future in this country. That is causing immense stress to many people. However they voted in the 2016 referendum, they are united in their stress and concern about their future and that of their communities.

We need to rebuild our country and invest in our communities, too many of which have been neglected, ignored and underfunded for years. A botched and half-baked Brexit deal such as the one before us today would only deepen those problems and divisions. This deal, even the half of it that we have before us today, is bad for our democracy, bad for our economy and bad for this country. I urge the House not to be cajoled by this “third time lucky” strategy and to vote it down today.