Leaving the EU: Extension Period Negotiations

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) on securing this timely and important debate. I would particularly congratulate her on the timing if I thought that she had had any knowledge of what would happen yesterday, but given that I do not think that my Government had any knowledge of it, I am not sure that I can accord her that credit.

I welcome the Minister to his place. I have a huge amount of time for him; he is an amazing man who has done great things in our party, and I am sorry for him, because he is a good man about to defend a bad deal. None of my remarks will be directed against him personally.

Here we go again. Twenty-four hours after the latest catastrophe—the latest stupidity—we are being asked to manage down, mitigate away, split the difference and trample over our manifestos yet again, as if that has worked so well over the past year or so. It is absolutely outrageous that we are even having this conversation, and it is inappropriate that we are not out of the European Union. I am tired of standing up and expressing the frustration of my constituents in North East Derbyshire about the abject failure of this Government to do anything about their core manifesto commitment. We should not be here.

Two years ago, I made a series of commitments to my constituents, and I will not break those commitments even if the Prime Minister breaks hers. I said that we would leave on 29 March; I voted to leave on 29 March. It was because of the Prime Minister’s choice, not the highly inappropriate meaningful vote 3 that was scheduled for that date to embarrass people like me, that we did not leave on 29 March. I said that I would not support a customs union; now my own Government seek to put a customs union to the country. I said that I would not support a European election; tomorrow there will be a European election that should not happen. I said that no deal was better than a bad deal; I will continue to believe that, even if my Prime Minister no longer does. Fundamentally, I said “No second referendum”—and what did I see yesterday? I saw a Prime Minister who is willing to chuck every single principle out of the window to push forward a deal that just will not get the support of this place and, more important, that does not have support outside it.

Every single principle is being put on the fire to get the deal through. It is absolutely outrageous—it is a fundamental misreading of what the people think. The Government are paralysed by inaction, every principle is being shredded, trust is shattered, and what is the apparent answer? Some kind of pick-and-mix, choose-your-own, go-your-own-way Brexit? Some kind of smorgasbord of stupidity? Some kind of Brexit of the shadows, where we push anything through and then let it get amended in Committee, where we think our constituents will not see it, will not comprehend that it is not Brexit, or will not understand that they have been lied to?

I am being asked to endorse something—anything, whatever—as Brexit, simply becomes somebody stands in front of a lectern and tells me it is so. I am being asked to coalesce—to unify—around a cult of stamina that goes nowhere and uses that Protestant work ethic to drive us off a cliff. I am being asked to look a fourth time at a deal that I have already rejected three times, when it has absolutely no coherence, absolutely no understanding and does not respect the will of the people.

We are not a parish council. We are not arguing for 20 years about where a bench should go in the local park. We have a unique responsibility to deliver what people have told us to deliver. I will keep that deal. I will ensure that the residents of North East Derbyshire understand that I am going to deliver my promises even if the leader of my party has decided to break hers. Where do we go from here? The deal will not pass—that is blatantly obvious. The frustration will not go away. The difference will not be split.

Each of us is charged with a unique responsibility as an elected official to ask ourselves a series of deeply personal questions. How long will we allow this tragedy to persist in our name? How long can we look at a wreckage of a Government decaying before our eyes, when the principles that I came into politics for—those good Conservative principles—need to be used to make the constituency of North East Derbyshire and my country better? What will we say in a few years’ time, when it becomes painfully obvious that the abject failure of leadership over the past year was never going to get us anywhere?

My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster highlighted a statement that Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, made a few months ago. He said to us:

“Please do not waste this time.”

I agree with him. It is a Conservative Government—a Conservative Government!—who are wasting this time, failing to demonstrate leadership on the most important thing that we promised the people, and allowing trust in the entire democratic system to be shredded.

There is no dignity in this impasse. There is no honour in the abdication of this responsibility. There is no thanks for what we are doing. Wake up! Wake up before it is too late, and deliver what our country told us to do three years ago.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

Before I call the SNP spokesperson, I remind the Chamber that I would like to leave two minutes for the mover of the motion to wind-up at the end. I call Peter Grant.

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[Peter Grant]

Sadly, it is not imaginative that British Steel has cited Brexit-related issues as one of the reasons why, as of about half an hour ago, it is now in insolvency and 25,000 direct and indirect jobs are under threat. That is not something anyone can celebrate or be happy about. Surely it is time for everyone who continues to push us towards the possibility of a no-deal Brexit to stop and ask the question: would the 66% of people in and around Scunthorpe who voted to leave in 2016 have done so if they had understood what it might mean for their town’s biggest employer? I do not know the answer to whether they would have voted the same way, but I would like to give them the chance to answer the question again.

Comments have been made in this debate and others about the 80%-plus of the electorate who voted for pro-Brexit parties in 2017. Some 80%-plus of the electorate voted for pro-remain parties in 2015, because Labour and the Tories were both remain parties in 2015. We are saying that in the space of two years, 60% of the electorate changed from voting for remain to voting for Brexit, but three years after the referendum, we are not allowed to consider the possibility that 5% of the electorate might have changed their minds between remain and leave. It simply does not add up.

[Lee Rowley]

The hon. Gentleman has said that surely it is time for us to understand the consequences of the issue. Surely it is also time for him to acknowledge that he should not use business examples to extrapolate, as he did with Thomas Cook. He will know as well as I do that it has had a massive debt pile for a number of years, that most of its operations are external, that it was previously a German company and that it is seeking to sell off its German airline as much as its British one. These are wide trends and it is just not correct to use these debates to try to extrapolate things that are not directly linked.

[Peter Grant]

Again, I hope that nobody would suggest that the problems in the UK travel industry are completely unrelated to Brexit or that the problems in the British steel industry are completely unrelated to Brexit. It is not the only problem—in manufacturing, we have not kept up with the advances in productivity of our European neighbours, for example—but anyone who would suggest that this catalogue of company failures is not in any way related to the damaging Brexit that the Conservatives are leading us through really needs to face up to reality.

I understand the desire to respect the result of the referendum. I want the 62% result in my country to be respected as well. My national Government put forward a compromise as long ago as December 2016, which was laughed out of court at the time—to the extent that the Prime Minister has actually forgotten that it ever existed. When we are talking about negotiations that might happen now, after the March deadline, is it not a pity that there was not proper negotiation before the red lines were painted?

We have an electoral system in these islands that is deliberately rigged to turn minority popular support into majority Government. When the people choose not to give a big majority Government, the system cannot cope. The Prime Minister came back in 2017 and acted as if she had a huge majority in Parliament, when most of the time she has struggled to maintain a majority within her own party, and that is why she has never been able to get any kind of deal through.

It is not just about trade. Most of the contributions we have heard today have been about trade deals. World Trade Organisation terms—assuming we are allowed in to the WTO, which is not automatic—do nothing about Horizon, Erasmus, the European Medicines Agency, security co-operation, the rights of 4.5 million citizens, the ability to share data to cloud storage in the European Union, or about a million and one other things that the European Union brings us as benefits that have hardly, if at all, been mentioned in the debate this morning. The European Union is not simply a trading organisation. Membership has brought massive economic, social, cultural and educational benefits to our people and it is a tragedy that in the lead-up to the referendum, so few politicians in this place had the courage to stand up and say that.

I was asked about my holiday plans. I will be holidaying in the country that, according to “Rough Guides”, is the most beautiful country in the world, and I would encourage lots of other people to do the same.

As far as what will happen if and when the withdrawal agreement Bill comes back, the position of the Scottish National party is as it has always been. We will oppose any Brexit that takes away the rights of our citizens. We will oppose any Brexit that makes our people poorer. We will oppose any Brexit that takes us further away from the Scotland that we want to be and that our people have told us they want us to help to build.

While tomorrow it is quite possible that the far-right Brexit party will secure a significant victory in other parts of the United Kingdom, the polls suggest that even after 12 years in Government, the Scottish National party will have its most successful European election ever. That is what happens if a party of Government is prepared to show leadership and to face up to the myths, lies and misinformation that Mr Farage and his party and his previous parties have spread for so long.

If tomorrow the results in the rest of the United Kingdom are taken as a message about discontentment with the European Union among the population of some partners in this Union, the results north of the border will give a clear statement about the dissatisfaction of the citizens of my country with the Union that we have been part of for 300 years too long.

Brexit Deal: Referendum

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies]

What I said stands. Obviously, scenario plans were done in terms of the aggregate impact, and no forecast is perfect, but what we do know about the impact of Brexit was that, overnight, the hon. Gentleman’s salary and assets were devalued by something like 15%, because the financial markets took their own view that this was crazy. We are all worse off for it. People living in Britain have not really seen it, but gradually the impact of that devaluation is coming through in inflation, on top of low wages. People were told, and sadly it has happened: the poor have been made poorer. The leave campaigners said, “The reason you are poor is foreign people from the EU,” when in fact the average person from the EU contributes 35% more in tax than they consume in public services. The poor—and all of us—will become even poorer without them, and we have seen this awful devaluation.

The evaluations were not good enough, but there were dire predictions. Let us take as an example a Japanese car company. I know there have been lots of under the table, secret negotiations with car companies, but the reason they are here is that we are a stable democracy and economy, and provide an English-speaking platform to the biggest market in the world. Once we are not in that market, they and other investors will move. The economic impact on Britain, from an intuitive, a priori point of view, is wholly predictable.

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain what is dire, catastrophic and crazy about five consecutive quarters of economic growth?

[Geraint Davies]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we have got the lowest growth in the G7—it is absolutely appalling.

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[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the debate. We have a veritable smorgasbord of e-petitions before us, so all of us can probably choose at least one of them to support and push forward.

I have been listening to the debate since it started and I have to say that I find Brexit debates, both in this place and in the other place, relatively dispiriting. Of course, I am not seeking to cast aspersions on colleagues here, but I find the debate dispiriting. We start from the principle of trying to debate something, and I came here today thinking that we would have a wonderful theoretical debate on the value of representative versus participative or direct democracy, the utility of referendums versus parliamentary democracy, and how the inherent tension between those concepts has caused such theoretical and practical problems in the past 18 months or so. What immediately happens, however, is that we all go back into our tribes depending on whether we like or dislike Brexit. Many of the speeches that I have heard, which have been heartfelt and have clearly come from a place of real principle, have fallen back on to whether people support Brexit or do not support it.

We have to be more careful about these kinds of discussion. I have heard massive misuse of polling in just the past hour and a half. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) talked about how we should have some kind of independent arbiter to judge the correctness or otherwise of what politicians say. I think that that is a terrible idea, but if we are going to do it, I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that we might start by banning politicians from using one poll to prove that something is suddenly a comprehensive, complete and totally true statement. If we want to play that game, a poll carried out by Opinium says exactly the opposite. I understand that the Survation poll, which has been quoted so extensively in this place already, also gives the Labour party an eight-point lead. I know that Opposition Members are delighted about that, but I do not believe that 45% of the people in my country believe in neo-Marxism and I hope that it will not happen. I will not go down the party political route, other than to say that.

I have heard a number of different comments today and I want to take up a few of them. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who is no longer in his place, talked at one point about how, if we are honest as Members of Parliament, most of us know that ultimately Brexit is a bad idea. I think it was Elizabeth I who said, “Don’t seek windows into men’s souls.” I do not subscribe to that view. I genuinely understand why people in my constituency voted 63% to leave; I understand why I voted to leave. It was not because of a hatred of the European Union or because of the caricature of how we are that some people try to propose. It was not because of the lies that certain people have talked about in here, which I absolutely disagree with. It was actually because we happen fundamentally to believe that the future of our country can be better served in a different way from what has happened in the past 40 years. I ask those people on the opposite side of the debate just to think carefully about some of the comments that they make, because I do not believe in the depths of my soul that Brexit is a bad idea. I think it is a good idea, but I also understand the challenges that those people are putting forward. We should not enter binary discussions or make assertions.

[Julia Lopez]

I followed the speech by the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) as closely as I could, and he seemed to be saying not only that we need Parliament to protect the British people from their decision, but that we need the EU to protect the British people from our own Parliament. I wonder whether my hon. Friend has a little more faith in this place and its people.

[Lee Rowley]

I absolutely hope that that would be the case. It is utterly important that we ensure that there is a wide debate about the issues, but ultimately we start from the principle that a large number of people—the largest number of people ever—have made a decision and we should seek to honour that.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I believe, from the bottom of my heart, that we will be worse off if we leave the European Union. The more we talk about how we appreciate European workers and how they support our economy and local services, and the more we talk about regulatory alignment and the fact that we do not want new borders, the more we are describing what the EU actually is, so why are we leaving?

[Lee Rowley]

The hon. Lady has expounded my point perfectly. I do not doubt her resolve, her willingness or her absolute belief; I just happen to disagree with her. I hope that Opposition Members—I am not suggesting that this applies to the hon. Lady—understand and recognise that we have deeply held views as well.

I also heard earlier that if we had a second referendum, it would be a different sort of referendum, as if the first one was invalid or incomprehensive or there was not sufficient discussion. Again, the conversation tended toward the emotional and the lies. Just from the emotion that I have heard expressed in this Chamber today, the conversations that have occurred and the use of terms such as catastrophe, exodus, dire, crisis, lies, death row and malicious, I do not believe that there would be anything less than the kind of emotional discussion that we had two years ago, so we should be very careful what we wish for.

I have heard conversations about multi-options. Even though I understand in principle the point made by the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), and I know that one of the e-petitions under discussion suggests multi-options, I wonder whether, if we proposed a second referendum with multi-options, we would all be here in three or four years’ time talking about one option that got 42% of the vote and the other two options that got a smaller proportion of the vote, and then delegitimising the 42% of the vote option because it did not manage 50 plus one, which is the usual yardstick for success.

Then we get into the slightly more absurd discussions, which I know were not entirely serious on the part of some people who have commented, about vote weighting or the fact that some people are dying and therefore their vote is less valid. I just think we have to be much more careful. I agree with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) that we need to be much more careful about how we debate and discuss this matter, because my constituency is a constituency of honourable people who understand the challenges and have researched the issue and watched the television, but who still voted 63% leave. They and I voted to leave because we legitimately think that that decision means that our country will be better in the long term.

I want to talk briefly about the idea perpetuated by some that people did not know what they were voting for. We have to accept the principle that people vote for many different reasons. I would not like to suggest that that is not the case, but I know that the thing that was closest to what people understood was happening on the day was the leaflet the Government sent out to every household in this country. When I reread that this morning in preparation for this discussion, it was pretty clear to me what was happening. Nothing in the leaflet mentioned a second referendum. It stated:

“On Thursday, 23 June there will be a referendum”—

singular. “It’s your opportunity”—there was no multitude of opportunities. “It’s a big decision”—singular. It is “One” decision, not decisions plural. The leaflet goes on to say that it is a

“once in a generation decision”—

not a twice in a generation—and:

“The government will implement what you decide.”

That leaflet came through my letterbox in north Derbyshire and the proposition was absolutely clear to me and to all of my residents in Dronfield, Cutthorpe, Eckington and Killamarsh. It is incumbent on hon. Members that we recognise and honour that. I reject totally and completely the notion that people did not understand what they were voting for. They understood what they were voting for. They understood the propositions that were on the table. They understood, if I am honest, the things on both sides of the argument that went too far. I will not talk about them individually, but I was unhappy, as a leave voter, with some of the suggestions from the remain camp, which are also in the leaflet, about how there would be almost an economic collapse. We have to be very careful about how we discuss this matter, where we are going with it and what we want the outcome to be.

[Susan Elan Jones]

I am reluctant to intervene, having made the opening speech, but I would like to ask the hon. Gentleman one question. I am talking not about my personal view on this issue, but about the points raised by Ross Clark in The Spectator. His view is that what is being implemented by the Government is not what he voted for, and that was the fear, because it was not as simple as a binary choice. He is a very traditional conservative with a certain view that is very much against further association with the European Union. What would the hon. Gentleman say to people such as him?

[Lee Rowley]

I have not read the article the hon. Lady is referring to, but I will address the principle. What she outlines explains beautifully why the sorts of intellectual contortions that we have heard in this debate over the past hour and a half, and elsewhere, will ultimately not work. We can make an assessment about why some people voted one way and others voted another way, but there are 30 million different reasons that people voted for it. We can make an assessment about whether the voting system was correct, or whether the right people voted, and we can make an assessment about whether the debate—before, during and after the vote—was appropriate, but ultimately those are our assessments, not facts. Assumptions have been bandied around far too much over the past year; the whole discussion has been about assumptions. When we get into the amorphous mass that we have arrived at, an hour and a half into this discussion, it is not possible to get much further, so we have to boil it down to the simple point: people voted and made a decision, and ultimately we have to implement what the people decided.

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[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Certainly, if there was enough time to ask our negotiators to go back to the table, I would have no problem with having that option. However, the real worry at the moment is this: we heard what the Secretary of State for Brexit said on the Sunday television programmes yesterday, and he is talking about having a whole year for negotiations, so the idea that we would then be able to come back and have a serious discussion, if they have not properly negotiated a transition period, is yet another thing that is in doubt. It is clear that people should have the option, if they wish, to remain in the EU. The Prime Minister has pledged that MPs will have the final say on any deal, but I simply want to widen that franchise. The British people should have the final say. That is not denying democracy; it is enhancing it.

It is also important to stress that a ratification referendum is not a silver bullet. We owe it to ourselves to acknowledge that when people voted to leave, many of them did so because of very legitimate concerns. In my view, from the people I have spoken to, not many of those concerns actually relate to the EU per se, but those people were persuaded that their very legitimate concerns about housing, jobs and the NHS were somehow linked either to our membership of the EU or to the presence of immigrants in this country. What we also need to do, at the same time as campaigning for a ratification referendum, is campaign for changes in this country, as well as changes in the EU.

I am not talking about some kind of reversion to the status quo ante—the status quo before the referendum happened. We are not pretending that it did not happen or trying to go back to 22 June last year. It did happen, people are very angry and many of the reasons for their anger are legitimate. However, the irony is that by leaving the EU, the problems that they were most concerned about—their future prospects at work, their kids’ future prospects, whether they could access the NHS and whether they could get affordable housing—are all going to get 100 times worse. Believe me, we have not yet even begun to imagine the anger of those people when they realise that.

It is absolutely crucial that, alongside campaigning for the ratification referendum, we look at the way in which the deep social divides in this country have been exploited by many of the leaders of the leave campaign. They have used them as a wedge to drive home their long-standing ideological hatred of the EU, even though those problems are likely to be made worse by leaving the EU.

[Lee Rowley]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point, even though I do not agree with it, and powerfully expands her position on a second referendum. May I ask her how many referendums she proposes to accept in this discussion? Will we be going to 20, 40 or 135, until we get the right answer?

[Caroline Lucas]

I was about to thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but that was such a ludicrous and frankly dishonourable one. It is very clear that I am talking about the idea that people should be able to look at the facts, which are not present right now, and were certainly not present on 23 June last year.

I am also making some serious points about the very real grievances that the referendum result laid bare. Frankly, it is cynical and shocking how those grievances are being manipulated by the leave campaign for its own political ends. I believe that one of the things that the referendum tells us is that we need to look at the way in which people are governed in this country. That involves looking at a voting system that systematically takes power away from people. It is such an irony that the party that is in the lead in calling for Brexit and bringing back control does not want people to have control when it comes to their own electoral system. That party does not want them to have a real say. At the last election 68% of the votes cast made no difference to the outcome, because they were piling up in constituencies where, because of first past the post, they were not necessary.

Let us look at the way the UK is governed. Let us look at issues such as more devolution to the regions and electoral reform for more widespread proportional representation. Where the case is to be made to the “left behind”—those people were left behind not in some kind of casual accident, but as a deliberate and predictable outcome of the process of neo-liberal globalisation, which systematically marginalises them—it will take a long time to turn around some of those impacts at the root of why so many people voted to leave the EU, but we have to start now by finding genuine solutions to people’s worries about jobs, pay, schools and housing. Ultimately, things will only shift once trust is built and people see with their own eyes that their lives are getting better and that being inside the EU was never the cause of their problems.

In conclusion, a ratification referendum would give the British people more democracy, not less. This time around, I hope, the necessarily short referendum campaign will be conducted in a more open, honest and transparent way.