Leaving the EU: Negotiations
Layla Moran Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Sir Vince Cable
Yes. There is a whole series of well-known instances relating to beef hormones, genetically modified foods and chlorinated chickens. I do not know how well based the arguments are scientifically, but clearly that will demand a repudiation of those European standards. The Government’s stance—again, this is a positive—makes it clear that concessions cannot now be given on those items and that it will be impossible to reach a trade agreement with the Trump Administration in practice, if not in theory.
The negatives are even clearer than the positives. One of them is the sheer workability of the arrangements. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden has said quite categorically that the arrangements he has been involved in designing for months are simply unworkable, and it is very clear why that is the case. If we have a differential tariff system, it is very cumbersome to enforce. There is an obvious temptation to smuggle. A company producing within the European Union but not in the UK will import through the UK at a lower tariff, and it would be necessary to have a sophisticated tracking system to identify where the product has gone. In complex supply chains with hundreds of widgets flying backwards and forwards, it is impossible to see how that could be done in practice. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden was well aware of that, and the European Commission is well aware of it, which is why it almost certainly will not pass to the next stage.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I sit on the Public Accounts Committee, and last February we went to Washington, where we had private briefings with State Department representatives about the trade deal. They were very clear that we must be absolutely clear about, for example, country of origin rules and that they do not want a part of a small trade deal—they will not “do skinny”, in their words. If that was their case last February, what does my right hon. Friend think they are making of the chaos of this Government now?
Sir Vince Cable
The European Union over many years has developed a sophisticated rules of origin system in order to develop an answer to precisely the problems presented by the complex nature of modern trade. They are quite right to say that in an environment of uncertainty, there is very little merit in pursuing an agreement.
The other major disadvantage of what the Government are proposing is, as several Members pointed out yesterday, the complete neglect of the services sector. It is not just 80% of the British economy, but includes extremely important industries—notably financial services, but also creative industries, the digital sector and entertainment, and of course much manufacturing happens through services exports. Rolls-Royce earns as much from its maintenance contracts as it does from selling its engines. When we send cars to the European Union, we sell them with a package attached to financial services. It is not at all clear how the Government propose to unscramble those very complicated relationships.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
Like each and every one of the Liberal Democrats, I did not get the referendum result that I wanted in 2016. I campaigned and voted for the United Kingdom to remain part of the European Union. In the early hours of 24 June, I looked on in a state of disbelief as the results came in, and it took weeks, if not months, for the implications of the vote properly to sink in. In Scotland, the uncertainty and disbelief were compounded by the new calls from the SNP and the nationalists for a second referendum to break up the United Kingdom.
Neither my personal view ahead of the referendum nor my personal reaction to the vote really matters. What matters is that the voters made their decision, and our job as parliamentarians is to ensure that we respect that decision and implement it in the best way possible. I find it impossible to ignore the blatant hypocrisy and incoherence of the Liberal Democrats’ position on this matter—hypocrisy, because they want to re-run a once-in-a-generation vote across the United Kingdom, but claim to oppose a rerun of another once-in-a-generation vote north of the border in Scotland. Their party leader, Willie Rennie MSP, says,
“With the Scottish economy teetering on the edge of a recession…the last thing our country needs is another divisive and distracting independence debate.”
I agree with Willie Rennie.
Layla Moran
Will the hon. Gentleman explain how the first referendum held after all the facts have been presented to us would count as a rerun, given that there would be new facts? In my constituency, for example, BMW has now come out and said that businesses would be harmed, and that would mean that my constituents would lose their jobs. Why should they not have the right to change their minds?
Steve Double
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the turnout was very high. I observed that the more “Project Fear” turned up the heat and told people that they were wrong to think of voting to leave, the more people were driven to vote leave. It was very much a reaction against being told by the establishment, “We know best. You should do what we tell you.”
My second point is that to have a second referendum now would undermine our negotiating position. The point has been made many times, but it needs to be made again: if the EU knows that whatever deal is agreed will be put to a vote of the British people, it will make sure that it is the worst possible deal that it can provide, in the hope that we will reject it, reverse the decision to leave and remain in the EU. For that reason, we cannot allow a second referendum to take place.
My third point is that any second referendum would cause further delay and uncertainty. People want us to get on with it. Business wants certainty: it wants to know what the end state is going to be. Any second referendum would delay that and create even more uncertainty, because even when we had agreed a deal with the EU, we would not know whether the British people were going to support it. British business would not know whether it was going to be the final outcome. If it was rejected, that would create further delay and uncertainty. Right now, more than anything, business wants to know what the state of play is going to be when we leave. Business wants certainty and to know what the circumstances are going to be. Any second referendum would cause further delay and create even more uncertainty.
Steve Double
I am going to wind up now.
In the best interests of our country, we simply need to get on with it and deliver the best Brexit that we possibly can. We need to deliver what the British people gave us the instruction to do. They gave us that instruction and we need to respect it and deliver on it.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I find myself in an odd position. I was elected last year. I overcame a Tory majority of more than 9,500 votes, and yet in the debate since my election people seem to have completely forgotten that that election ever happened. We speak frequently about the will of the people in the referendum. That is true, but there was then a further asking of the people what they wanted. The Tory version of Brexit—the version that the Tories have been trying to deliver, badly, up until this last weekend, and look at how that has unravelled—was rejected.
Oxford West and Abingdon voted 62% to remain and, although 62% does not perhaps sound a lot, it is worth saying that the remainers in my constituency are so strongly remain that they put EU flags proudly on their doors, and the leavers are more, “Oh, on balance I want to leave”. As new facts have come to light, they are changing their minds in their swathes. There are plenty of emails in my inbox and, I am sure, in many inboxes.
Just this morning, I met a young activist who used to be a Tory party member and voted to leave in 2016. When he realised that he was not going to get the Norway/Switzerland-style Brexit that had been spoken about by many front-and-centre Brexiteers, he decided to leave the Tories and to join the Lib Dems. I did not know that, but he has done so because our position is absolutely clear.
In 2017, the electorate did make a choice. In the referendum, the will of the people was the will of the 52%—48% have been completely ignored, however. There was a whole other way this could have gone. Rather than the Prime Minister standing up and saying, “We are going to go for the hardest possible Brexit; we are going to leave the customs union; we are going to leave the single market; we are not going to involve Parliament; we are not going to release impact assessments”, there is another version of the past. Every step along the way, as a new Member of Parliament, I have felt that this Government do not really care about our opinions; all they want to do is to hold themselves together. The other version would have been for a Prime Minister to stand up, reach out across the House and say, “I am going to go the middle way and deliver that Norway/Switzerland soft Brexit.” That was the compromise position. That is not what has happened and that is why we are in the position we are in now.
Bob Stewart
I respectfully point out to the hon. Lady that the Conservatives got 43% of the vote at the last general election. That is a huge number—a very large percentage of the people, and larger than normal. The Conservative party got endorsement from the people beyond the referendum for its mandate to carry out Brexit.
Layla Moran
It was 43% but it was not enough to deliver sufficient numbers of Members of Parliament. In my constituency, I was elected on an extremely clear mandate to stop a hard Brexit. The Green party stood down, and swathes of Labour voters came over to me. In fact, many remainer Conservatives—this is what my in-box is stuffed with—are saying that they will never vote Tory again because of what this Government are doing to all sorts of sectors, business being one of them.
Steve Double
I am listening to the hon. Lady with great interest. Is she aware that many findings after the last general election showed that for the majority of British people, Brexit was not a big issue that drove their vote? They were far more concerned about domestic policy issues. A lot of people thought that Brexit was done with in the last election, and there is clear evidence that actually it did not drive many people’s votes last year—they were far more concerned about other matters.
Layla Moran
Indeed. That is why it is so striking that people do not now want to ask them what they think of this new settlement. The point of this debate is to ask the people and to trust the people. The people of Oxford West and Abingdon put me here to make the case on how Brexit is going to affect them and their families.
Layla Moran
Real people’s voices have been missing from this debate, so I am going to introduce some after taking this intervention.
Gareth Snell
The hon. Lady says that she was sent here to stop a hard Brexit, but the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) said that he was here to get an exit from Brexit. Is she opposed to a hard Brexit and therefore wanting a softer form of Brexit, or is she opposed to Brexit in its entirety?
Layla Moran
I personally feel that there is no deal better than the deal we already have. That is what we had in our manifesto and that is our clear mandate. As I said, I achieved an enormous swing, so I can only assume that my constituents understood that. The Conservatives were proposing a possible World Trade Organisation-style Brexit—much harder, I dare say, than what Labour is suggesting now. However, I would still categorise Labour’s position as also being for a hard Brexit, because at the time, soft Brexit was defined as staying in the single market and the customs union, and somehow the rhetoric has changed over time.
It would be interesting now to turn to Ross from Kidlington. I care about what people—my constituents—think rather than just what this House thinks. Ross said:
“We are beside ourselves with how this government is behaving: squabbling in its ranks, only interested in keeping their own nests feathered, telling outright lies to those who voted for Brexit…Why are MPs in the in the Labour party not following their own consciences and voting for what they really believe?”
I find fascinating the number of conversations we have outside this Chamber where MPs from across the House recognise how damaging Brexit is going to be. I do not understand how they can look their constituents in the eye knowing that their jobs may well go and knowing the effect on the economy. In Oxford West and Abingdon, we have one of the most buoyant economies in the country, but if we leave the single market, even we will face a medium-term depression. I cannot stand by and watch that happen.
I loved what Jonathan from Abingdon had to say:
“How, now two years post referendum, do the government have no plan to implement and it scares me more than anything else. Even though every expert opinion is that it will damage the country, including the governments own experts, they are still ploughing ahead with it seems the full support of the Labour party…Please continue to fight this crazy act of self-harm the government is proposing with everything you can.”
I intend to do that. These are my constituents and I am standing up for them today.
The point about a further referendum is that new facts have come to light. We are not just talking about the Northern Irish border, although that is one of the most alarming aspects.
Ryan, a Gibraltarian student at Keble College, said that Brexit
“poses an existential threat to my homeland…The fate of my country is out of the hands of Gibraltarians, and is being decided behind closed doors. I fear the Government may negotiate something of ours away without our consent.”
Then there are the universities—Oxford and Oxford Brookes—and Erasmus, Horizon 2020 and the science sectors. The first question I ever asked in this House was on Euratom. At the time, someone sidled up and said, “What’s that?” We did not entirely appreciate the full consequences of Brexit, and now we do. I am pleased to say that the House has taken that on very positively, but new facts have come to light, and business is what I am most concerned about.
It is not just about BMW, which is in Oxford. Fabulous Flowers wrote to me and said:
“We need to ensure a stable workforce with labour from other EU member states and all sectors of horticulture and flower growing, harvesting etc in the UK. We have to question the UK’s capability in terms of infrastructure and resources at points of entry to handle the level of import controls. A longer wait at the border could bring a disadvantage to flower imports in future as it could impact on quality or vase life. Flowers could end up more expensive.”
It is not just about big business; it is also about the little guys, and they matter too.
As a science teacher—that is what I did before I came to this place—I believe in evidence, and it is not just me. I know that because some of the kids I taught are now adults, and they believe in evidence too. It is only fair that if new evidence comes to light, people should be allowed to change their mind. If it is a deal that they did not vote for and is not what they expected, what could be any more democratic than going back to the people and making sure it was what they wanted in the first place?
Oral Answers to Questions
Layla Moran Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I praise the work of DeafKidz International, which has also received UK aid funding. We are doing many things. Through the Girls’ Education Challenge, we supported 46,000 girls with disabilities, including deaf girls, to access education.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
It has never been more important to make the positive case for overseas aid. However, delivery of the global learning programme in schools ends in July. May we have an assurance that it will be replaced in time for September?
Penny Mordaunt
We are doing a refresh of some of those programmes. Clearly, programmes such as Connecting Classrooms will carry on and we are doing a refresh of the International Citizenship Service. We think these are important ways in which we can deliver on the global goals and help young people in our country to learn more about the rest of the world.
Military Action Overseas: Parliamentary Approval
Layla Moran Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is important to have that freedom and flexibility. May I say how striking that comment is coming from him, as I believe he has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan?
The Prime Minister
No, I am going to make progress. Quite a few Members wish to speak in the debate, and I have taken a lot of interventions.
The second reason is the nature of the information that I see as Prime Minister, along with the National Security Council and the Cabinet. The Government make use of a wide range of sources of information, both those in the public domain and secret intelligence. In this case, drawing on the lessons of the past, we made a rigorous assessment of the available open-source material and intelligence about the Douma attack. Indeed, when my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) looked me in the eye and asked me to tell him that it was the Syrian regime that was responsible, I could do so in part because of the intelligence and assessment I had seen, and because I had discussed that intelligence and assessment with senior security and military officials, the National Security Council and Cabinet.
In the post-Iraq era, it is natural for people to ask questions about the evidence base for our military actions, including when we cite intelligence. They want to see all the information themselves. But we have an obligation to protect the safety and security of our sources. We must maintain secrecy if our intelligence is to be effective now and in the future. We have obligations to our partners to protect the intelligence they share with us, just as they protect intelligence we share with them, and we have to be judicious even in explaining the types of intelligence we use in any given case, or risk giving our adversaries vital clues about where our information comes from.
The Prime Minister
No, I am going to make some more progress.
The Government have access to all that information, but Parliament does not and cannot. This is not a question of whether we take Parliament into our confidence. It is a question of whether we take our adversaries into our confidence by sharing that material in a public forum. Officials have briefed Opposition leaders on Privy Council terms, and I have set out to the House elements underpinning our assessment, but our intelligence and assessment cannot be shared in full with Parliament. It is my responsibility to decide the way forward based on all the intelligence and information available to Government. I should make the decision as Prime Minister with the support of the Cabinet, and Parliament should hold me to account for that decision.
Layla Moran
I am extremely grateful to the Prime Minister for giving way. I found the statement on the evidence for it being Assad’s regime that carried out the chemical attack, on the type of helicopter and the movements, very compelling. Would she have been able to share just that evidence prior to the attack?
The Prime Minister
I was able to share more evidence with the House after the attack than I would have been able to share before the attack, and it is not possible to share with the House all the intelligence on which we base our judgments.
Oral Answers to Questions
Layla Moran Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Oliver Dowden
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Cyber-security is a major priority for the whole of this Government, and our world-leading national cyber security strategy is supported by almost £2 billion of investment. It sets out measures to ensure that the public sector, and the wider economy, is cyber-secure.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
Mr Lidington
These matters are always the subject of keen discussion between the business managers of all political parties. I am sure that the hon. Lady will encourage her party’s spokesman to make those representations.
EU Referendum: Electoral Law
Layla Moran Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Tom Brake
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that equally helpful intervention. I hope that during this debate Members who heard that evidence will be able to contribute and update the House on what was said there, although I suspect that a lot of that information will have been contained in the papers this weekend, which I am sure many Members have spent hours assessing over the weekend and since.
I want to focus briefly on the Electoral Commission. This is how its website describes its role in relation to referendums:
“Our focus is on voters and on putting their interests first. Our objectives for referendums are that:…they should be well-run and produce results that are accepted…there should be integrity and transparency of campaign funding and expenditure”.
It is safe to say that neither of those objectives was met with respect to the EU referendum campaign—I am not blaming the Electoral Commission but others involved in the campaign.
What action has the Electoral Commission taken to date? The allegations we read about this weekend were new allegations, but there were existing allegations working their way through the system. I thank WhatDoTheyKnow, openDemocracy and FairVote for their work on this issue. They obtained internal emails from the Electoral Commission that described Darren Grimes’ spending as “unusual”. I think we can all agree it was remarkable that someone whose organisation in the first 10 weeks of its existence apparently managed to raise £107 was given £625,000 to spend in a completely uncontrolled manner. It is remarkable that such confidence was placed in that organisation and the one or two people behind it.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I spoke to some people in the industry about this, and they told me that unless there was collusion it would have been impossible to mine such big data in the timeframe the money was given to BeLeave. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is suspicious indeed?
Tom Brake
I do not want to comment directly on that, but clearly it is a very serious allegation that I am sure will be a subject of the Electoral Commission and police inquiries. The commission has confirmed that there is a live investigation under way and that therefore it cannot confirm what progress has been made, but it is under way, and I welcome that.
In the internal emails, the Electoral Commission described Grimes’ spending as “unusual” and found that he broke some of its rules, but it decided to take the matter no further as there were “no reasonable grounds” to believe that Vote Leave and Grimes had been working together.
I must say that the Electoral Commission will have to have very clear reasons if it does not believe this to be the case now, following those new allegations from three whistleblowers at the heart of the Vote Leave-BeLeave machine. It is worth underlining that they are new allegations. What we have heard from the supporters of Vote Leave is “All this has been investigated. There is nothing new here”, but these allegations from three whistleblowers at the centre of the organisation are completely new. These are matters that have not been investigated. Anyone who supported Vote Leave and is now saying, “Don’t bother, it has been done” is wrong.
Caroline Lucas
I recognise that the Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has been doing some incredibly important work this morning. Notwithstanding that, I still make the case that there is staggering hypocrisy among a large number of MPs who promised to enhance democracy by leaving the EU, but who cannot even be bothered to turn up to talk about the potential radical undermining of our democratic processes. I find that genuinely quite breathtaking.
I start by paying tribute to the dedicated, fearless journalism of Carol Cadwalladr over the past year. She has led us to the extraordinary revelations that we are debating this afternoon.
Much of the discussion so far has been about the validity of the referendum vote itself, but I want to argue that this goes much deeper and wider than that single vote, vastly important though it is. The revelations by The Guardian, Channel 4 and others over the past few days go right to the heart of the kind of country we think we are living in. I argue that they demonstrate that current electoral law is woefully inadequate. I think they show that the regulation governing our democratic processes urgently needs to be updated and reformed. They show, I believe, that something is rotten in the state of our democracy.
The combination of big money and big data is overwhelming the chronically weak structures that are supposed to protect us against cheating and fraud. As others have said, we are trying to apply laws from the analogue era to the very different reality of the digital age, and it simply is not working. It took the Information Commissioner almost a week to get authorisation to get through the front door of Cambridge Analytica, during which time presumably the delete button had been pressed a great many times. The Electoral Commission, meanwhile, has been investigating claims of the misuse of electoral funds for almost a year. Why on earth do we not have rules that require donations to be reported in real time, and the same for spending? Why do we not have a body with more resources and real teeth? Things urgently need to change.
Electoral law is based on two fundamental principles. The first principle is that parties and candidates compete on what should be a level playing field in terms of resources, which is presumably why we have national and local spending limits in elections. The second principle is that elections are open and transparent, so parties and candidates have to be transparent in their communications with the voters and it is unlawful to make false claims in those communications. The allegations about the true nature of the relationship between Vote Leave and BeLeave suggest that there may well have been cheating when it comes to the first principle, and the investigations into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, and the spending of huge sums of money on micro-targeted political advertising based on data harvested from voters’ social media profiles, suggest that the second of these two principles is also under great strain in the digital age.
Frankly, Facebook’s desperate adverts on the back pages of Sunday’s newspapers, just a couple of days ago, suggest to me that it knows that its bubble is bursting. We now need to update the law to ensure that people are protected from this social media mega-monopoly. Just because the chief executives of Facebook and Google wear T-shirts to work and turn up on skateboards does not mean that they are not aggressive capitalists, and we need to get a bit wiser to that fact.
The law regulating campaign activity and finance—the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000—was drawn up almost 20 years ago, long before Facebook or Twitter even existed, let alone had any role in political campaigns. It is considerably more difficult to ensure the compliance of adverts on social media than the compliance of adverts in newspapers or on billboards. Voters simply do not know what is being done with their data by a company that, ultimately, wants to make as much money as possible from the information it has on each of us. Not surprisingly, the regulators struggle to regulate.
This undoubtedly presents a complex challenge to all politicians, as social media platforms overtake the national and local press and media through which we have traditionally communicated with our electorate, but without the same level of transparency and scrutiny. However, it is a challenge that we must meet. The need for a reprogramming of the way parties and campaigns are funded could not be greater. Whether it is donations from Russian oligarchs on one side of the House or from former Formula 1 bosses on the other side, people are sick and tired of a politics that is awash with big money without proper oversight. I argue that the case for state funding for political parties could scarcely be stronger.
Layla Moran
Does the hon. Lady share my concern that the House voted for the Democratic Unionist party’s donation not to be scrutinised before 2017, so that massive donation now cannot be scrutinised in the proper way? We do not know the origin of that cash.
Caroline Lucas
I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s concern; she is right that that should have been looked into at the time, rather than pushed into the long grass. It is yet another reason why I am calling for urgent cross-party talks on updating our online campaign regulations and reforming the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, including consultation with the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner on what new powers and resources they need in order to fulfil their role in safeguarding our democracy.
The revelations by Shahmir Sanni about Vote Leave and BeLeave raise related but somewhat different questions, some of which need to be addressed to, and answered by, certain Members on the Government side of the House, for they strongly suggest that some of those who worked for the official Brexit campaign during the 2016 referendum, some of whom now work for the Prime Minister in Downing Street, committed criminal breaches of electoral law on overspending and collusion. Vote Leave, whose leading members included the current Foreign Secretary and Environment Secretary, formally declared it had spent £6.77 million during the 2016 campaign—this was within the £7 million limit. But that sum does not include a £625,000 donation that Vote Leave gave to BeLeave, the Brexit campaign aimed at students and young people, which BeLeave spent on the very same digital marketing company, Aggregate IQ, used by Vote Leave. As the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) set out powerfully, there is substantial evidence of constant communication between Vote Leave and BeLeave, which were based in the same office, shared the same computer drive and seem to have had advice going between them as to the setting up of their constitution, their bank account and so on. It is insulting to suggest that these two organisations were not co-ordinating very, very closely.
So it is simply not good enough for the Prime Minister to have airily dismissed the questions that were raised by these revelations as she did in the House yesterday. I might add that her attempts to brush off complaints about the disgraceful outing of Shahmir Sanni were beneath her and bring shame on her office. If the laws were broken, those involved need to be brought to justice, because if they are not, and if we do not fix the shortcomings of our electoral law and its regulation, this Government will go down in history as the one who sat and watched while the very lifeblood of our democracy drained away, and voters will have taken back control for nothing. That is why I also think we need an independent public inquiry to establish, as a matter of urgency, whether electoral law was broken by any of those working for Vote Leave and BeLeave, and, crucially, what current Ministers knew at the time.
Tommy Sheppard
The right hon. Gentleman is ahead of me. I was going to say that I have had cause over recent weeks to wonder: what if we had done it differently? What if the designated campaign organisation had come to me and said, “We would like you to do this activity, and the best way to do it, because we do not want it in our budget, is if we set up a separate organisation. Just to make it easier for you, our lawyers have done the paperwork to set up the organisation. Just to make it easier for you, you can have our staff and you can work out of our office. Just to make it even easier for you, you don’t need to bother about writing the cheques, because we will book and pay for the hall and the production”? What would have happened if we had done that, I wonder? I am in no doubt about what would have happened: the Electoral Commission would have investigated. It would have found me and Yes Scotland in breach of the regulations. We would have been fined and we would have been reported to the procurator fiscal for prosecution on criminal charges.
I say that because that lived experience frames my opinion of the events we are talking about today, and my opinion is that this stinks to high heaven. In preparation for this debate, I looked at the original investigation and judgments of the Electoral Commission with regard to these complaints, and—I recommend hon. Members do this—at the High Court judgment on the application for judicial review of that decision. What it comes down to—what is absolutely central to this debate—is not whether different campaign organisations were arguing for Vote Leave, but whether they colluded to breach the expenditure limits that were set down. That is central.
Looking at the High Court judgment and other documents, it is clear that the most important thing is whether or not a common plan was in existence between Vote Leave and BeLeave, as defined under the 2000 Act. I have to say, in a situation where Vote Leave sets up a subsidiary organisation called BeLeave, uses its own personnel to establish it, manages to send it its lawyers and all sorts of support, and provides offices, computers and drives on the server for the same people, it is very difficult indeed to escape the conclusion that there was collusion and organisation between the two.
We are being asked to believe that Darren Grimes took a £600,000 contract and went to a data analytics firm in Canada, completely independently of people in Vote Leave, who had already spent £2.7 million with the very same company. It is literally unbelievable and we need to support the Electoral Commission and others in investigating this to the bottom.
Layla Moran
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that what would be even worse than any of this would be if the Electoral Commission came to the conclusion that it cannot prove it? That would say to me that there is something fundamentally wrong with the laws under which the organisations are operating. That is what this debate is about: how do we stop this happening again, should they not be found to have been colluding?
Tommy Sheppard
Indeed, and we will have to await the outcome of the Electoral Commission’s investigation before we consider whether the legal framework and the support that is provided for the Electoral Commission are in fact adequate for this task.
We have this new evidence. The Electoral Commission, by the way, had already reopened the investigation before the whistleblowing information came out in the last seven days, but we are surely indebted to Shahmir Sanni for what he has done in the service of democracy in this country. I have watched his video recordings and it is clear that we do not share the same point of view. We did not share the same point of view on Brexit during the campaign, and we do not share it now, but I do not think that anyone who watches those interviews can fail to be moved by the decency, integrity and bravery of that young man in coming forward and putting himself at risk. We owe him a great debt.
The response of our Government to the whistleblowing allegations therefore worries me. Others have mentioned this, but the Prime Minister’s explanation yesterday that this was a personal statement by Stephen Parkinson just does not hold water. How can it be a personal statement when someone is at a desk in No. 10 Downing Street, at the heart of Government—when they are on the payroll, issuing a statement from No. 10 Downing Street? This must be the first occasion in history, certainly that I can remember, when the Government have decided to attack a whistleblower by outing them as gay, causing them the possibility of actual harm to themselves and their family, and it is a disgrace.
UK/EU Future Economic Partnership
Layla Moran Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend that the continuity Bills are unnecessary. What everybody needs to do—and certainly what we as a Government are doing—is focus on getting the arrangements right, particularly in relation to clause 11, and carry on negotiating to make sure we get it right for the future.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
Staying in Euratom is vital for jobs and ground-breaking scientific research throughout the United Kingdom. Given that the Prime Minister now wants us to remain a member of EU agencies, and has accepted a role for the European Court of Justice, will she listen to those in the industry and ensure that we stay in Euratom?
The Prime Minister
I have referred to the interests that both the UK and the European Union have in our maintaining a close relationship with Euratom in the future. Membership of Euratom is an integral part of membership of the European Union, and we are coming out of Euratom as we are coming out of the EU, but, as the hon. Lady will know, we are making arrangements to ensure that we can maintain that close relationship.
Overseas Electors Bill
Layla Moran ExcerptsFriday 23rd February 2018
(6 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Overseas Electors Bill 2017-19 View all Overseas Electors Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) on this Bill, which I wholeheartedly support. The core of it is not just about enfranchisement but about identity, and that, I am afraid, is the point that the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) has not entirely appreciated.
I am an example of someone who comes from a family that has been affected by the 15-year limit. My father went to work for the European Commission when I was one. We left this country at that point, as proud Brits, at a time when, if one wanted to change the world, one went to work for one of these great organisations—that is what one did. Over the years, we were lucky enough to be able to come back so that my father could proudly vote for me to become a Member of Parliament. However, for so many of his colleagues in Brussels and across the world, whom we have met as expats moving from country to country while my father pursued his role as an ambassador, they are every bit as British as the people in this Chamber. They have made incredible contributions as Brits across the world, and so many of them have lost their voice because they have lost their vote as a result of this outdated notion that we need to be sitting on a piece of land in order to love it. We know full well that that is not what it means to be British, and, at its heart, that is what this Bill is about.
Let me take a moment to give voice to some of my electors and constituents who are abroad, but also to a few who are about to not be abroad and who, hopefully, will once again become electors in Oxford West and Abingdon, which, incidentally, is probably one of the constituencies with tiny majorities that the hon. Member for Ipswich was talking about where these people do make a difference—and boy, were they happy to be able to do so.
Ruth in Spain says:
“I have lived in Spain for 14 years and so am lucky enough to still (just!) be entitled to vote in the UK.”
Here she makes an important point, and highlights where I think this Bill could have gone further. I understand—I am happy to accept an intervention if I am wrong—that this Bill would not extend the franchise to referendums. It is clear that many have registered to vote from abroad as a result of the Brexit turmoil. Every single email that I have had from constituents has been about this point. I would be interested to know from the Minister today whether that is part of the plan.
Chris Skidmore
Having briefly been a Minister for the constitution with responsibility for the franchise, I would like to enlighten the hon. Lady. When it comes to referendums, the franchise is set individually by a referendum Act. Each referendum is described and detailed by its own separate piece of legislation. Even if my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) wanted to add this to his Bill, he would not be able to because referendums are discretely contained in how they define the franchise, which is why the franchise was slightly different for the Scottish referendum in 2014.
Layla Moran
I am very grateful for that intervention. I was not aware of that. I would also have presumed that, had they not been on the register at all, we certainly could not have included them. At least this perhaps gives us the constitutional option.
Mike Gapes
For the hon. Lady’s information, some of us tried to extend the franchise for the European referendum to the local government base, but we were defeated. Unfortunately, it was therefore simply based on those eligible to vote in a general election.
Layla Moran
I am grateful for that intervention. As the hon. Gentleman is probably aware, the Liberal Democrats would have supported that, because we believe that European citizens, as this affected them, should have had a say in that referendum.
Ruth in Spain goes on to say:
“Recent events obviously highlighted the injustice of the current situation, in that many were denied a vote in the EU referendum—and also last year’s general election (an election largely based around Brexit)—the outcome having life-changing ramifications for British citizens who had chosen to move from one part of the EU to another on the basis that their rights to freedom of movement and all that this entailed were guaranteed.”
That was the basis of so many emails, but it is not just that.
Julian, who is a foreign correspondent, has lived in many countries as a Brit, and the soft power mentioned by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire is very clear in his career. Julian contacted me some months ago, saying:
“Expatriates are not all pensioners sipping cocktails on the Costa del Sol. Many of them are useful contributors to the British economy and to the image of Britain abroad. Only this month, for example, a French food magazine chose a rural bistro in the Auvergne owned and run by a British chef as its cafe of the year. Britons abroad are often popular and useful members of their adopted communities.”
I agree that expatriates should be allowed to vote in some elections in their current countries of residence, just as it is right for us to continue to allow EU citizens to vote in local elections here.
We live in an increasingly globalised world. It is ridiculous to suggest that some families even have a choice to move back. House prices in some parts of the UK are expensive not just for the UK, but compared with house prices across the world. Ian in Canada says:
“Sadly, I’m retraining as an MD after a career as a neuroscientist, and have been out of the UK since 2004. I say ‘sadly’, because as you’ll be aware, that means the period under which I’m able to cast votes in UK elections is drawing to a close under the current 15 year rule…I may not have been able to afford to continue living in the UK on a post-doctoral scientist’s salary”—
that is why he had to move—
“but I haven’t given up on the old country yet, and would like to continue trying to shape things for the better.”
Sandy Martin
Does the hon. Lady accept that, although the case she mentions is clearly of somebody who has contributed immensely—not only to this country, but to the world—it must be quite difficult for her to be able to make decisions in Oxford West and Abingdon that affect his life in Canada?
Layla Moran
I do not quite understand. If Ian wanted to affect his life in Canada, he would be able to find ways of doing so there. I also think he would very much be able to affect some decisions made at this level of politics. I do not think that this provision should necessarily be extended to local elections and issues, such as bin collections in Oxford West and Abingdon. However, the recent general elections have been about major issues such as the direction of this country and the flavour that this country puts out to the rest of the world. It is entirely right that people who feel British, are British and are born into a British family have the right to vote on such matters.
I am half Palestinian and I regret that I am not at all able to engage with the country in which my mother grew up—she was actually born in Tripoli, but grew up in Jerusalem. I very keenly feel that just because I have never lived in Palestine does not make me any less Palestinian. Equally, those who have spent a lot of their life abroad have a lot to say about being British. Being British is more than just being on this land. It is loving this land and feeling that we are from this land.
I will soon draw my remarks to a close because I am keen to hear the next Bill, of which I am a sponsor. I just want to ask why we have not really considered having a constituency of overseas electors in the way that France does. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether the Government will look into that. One reason that people do not register to vote from abroad is that it is incredibly bureaucratic and hard, and they might well live in countries where the postal system does not work very well. I therefore wholeheartedly agree with finding a way to make it much easier. As the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) mentioned, it would be an excellent idea to give people the ability to return their vote to the embassy or the consulate, rather than having to get it back to the local authority.
It is an extraordinary privilege to be British. As a new Member of Parliament, it strikes me how much Members across the House all love this country. This Bill demonstrates—as is also shown by the numerous constituents who I am sure have contacted us all from abroad—that people do not have to be on this land to love it. The Liberal Democrats and I wholeheartedly back this Bill. I sincerely hope that the House votes in favour of it today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Layla Moran Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The national formula, which is the basis for calculating the funding for clinical commissioning groups, takes into account a large number of factors, including rurality and demographics, which are the factors that my hon. Friend suggests need to be considered. NHS Kernow did see an increase in its funding this year and it will see a further increase next year, taking its funding to more than £760 million. That is part of our commitment to ensuring that we put extra funding into the NHS, but of course we continue to look at ensuring that the distribution of that funding takes account of all the factors that it needs to.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The Prime Minister
We recognise that we need to take action in relation to rough sleeping, which is why we are putting more money into projects to reduce rough sleeping. That includes projects such as Housing First, which are being established in a number of places to ensure that we can provide for those who are rough sleeping. None of us wants to see anybody rough sleeping on our streets, which is why the Government are taking action.
Race Disparity Audit
Layla Moran Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Damian Green
I have not had a chance to welcome the hon. Gentleman back to the House; the last time I met him he was a police and crime commissioner, and PCCs have a key role to play in making this audit practical. I suggest he looks at it, because one fascinating thing I found when I looked at the audit before it was publicly available is the precise level of analysis that can be done of individual communities. He will be able to see that certain similar communities require different solutions. Different problems are at different levels in neighbouring towns that otherwise look very similar. I have looked at a lot of the towns in the north-west in and around Manchester and I can only suggest that he has a look at the evidence. He will find that there will be different policy prescriptions for what would otherwise be similar towns.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I welcome the focus in the audit on educational attainment and many Members have already spoken about the subject. That shows how stubbornly the gap persists between pupil premium children and others. If the Government are serious about addressing this burning injustice, should they not allocate the money to schools to tackle the problem rather than forcing them to make damaging cuts, which the poorest families are least able to mitigate?