Lobbying of Government Committee
Lee Rowley Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
Thank you for the opportunity to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, although I am not sure exactly how to follow that. I remind the hon. Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) that I served on the Benches with both the current Member for Bolsover and the previous one, and I will take the current one—my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher)—any day, as, most importantly, will the residents of Bolsover, who determined that the 50-year tenure of the previous incumbent did not deliver the change they needed or the benefits of what he could have done since 1970.
The speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover addressed some difficult issues constructively and appropriately—something that we have struggled to see from some Labour Members today. I am disappointed in that, because I have worked with Labour Members over my two terms in this place and we have had some constructive and useful discussions about such issues, particularly on the Public Accounts Committee, on which I previously served.
I very much welcome what the Government are doing. If there is an issue, a challenge or a problem here, let us uncover it, work through it and learn from it. As the Minister said at the beginning of the debate, part of the reason we are even here to talk about this matter today is that the processes have highlighted some of these points. There is a point about due process, because Labour Members stand here today on a motion that states explicitly that they seek to understand this problem and potential issues in more detail, yet every single Labour Back-Bencher who has risen in the debate so far has made a speech that bears absolutely no relation to that motion, because they have already decided. They are the judge, jury and executioner; they know better than the inquiry that they are about to vote for, which is already being covered by a lot of other things that the Government are doing and the independent process that they have set up.
On a slightly broader point, I issue a note of caution, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover. As I have said, if there is an issue, let us uncover it and learn from it. But this should not be an excuse to say that all business is bad and to go on about Gordon Gekko and all that kind of nonsense, which is what we have just heard from north London. It should also not be an excuse for the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon)—I can almost set my watch by him—to come along and tell us that business cannot achieve anything.
On the Public Accounts Committee, I have seen that there is a huge amount of experience and skills that we need from the business community. We need to work together better with business. I have seen where it has not worked and where there have been challenges, but I have also seen the benefit that business brings to our country, to this place and fundamentally to our society—to address the point made by the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). Yes, let us find where the problems are, but let us not do what we have heard from the Opposition today; it is not an appropriate way of solving these issues.
Covid-19: NAO Report on Government Procurement
Lee Rowley Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Ms Eagle. I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) on securing this important debate. I absolutely accept that there are issues, that procurement is extremely difficult and that lessons need to be learned.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate, and for the latter-day conversion of many Opposition Members to an interest in the area in question. Having sat on the Public Accounts Committee, I did not see many of them at the time, or over the past 18 months, raising this issue. However, I accept that there are issues to be raised, and I am keen to raise them. Unfortunately, while in my view the issues need to be raised in a spirit of constructiveness, that was not evident in the hon. Gentleman’s comments. They need to be understood with an acknowledgement of the context in which we work. Failure to understand those points means we will not push forward the discussion in a useful manner.
Having listened to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton I am afraid that the selective quotations from the NAO report, which I have also read, need to be corrected. He said that action was taken without the usual Cabinet Office spending controls, whereas, on page 11, the report states that
“we recognise that these were exceptional circumstances”.
The hon. Gentleman said that things were undertaken before any processes were standardised, yet, as the report states clearly on page 32, even before standardisation occurred civil servants were able to
“research and report on financial details of companies and the background details of company directors within four hours at the peak, and produced reports rating suppliers as red, amber or green.”
Nowhere in the report does the word “mismanagement” appear—not in any of the 48 pages.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton talked about dozens of experienced local suppliers being ignored. I had similar suppliers that I was sending in, but they were not ignored. Page 8 states that
“the Department of Health & Social Care and the Cabinet Office put in place a clearance board to approve PPE contracts more than £5 million. PPE procurements were subject to normal departmental spending controls, including HM Treasury approval”.
On page 9, the report states:
“The cross-government PPE team established an eight-stage process to assess and process offers of support to supply PPE”.
The hon. Gentleman made a strong statement that the system was rigged, and yet page 9 states that both lanes, including the high-priority lane,
“used the same eight-stage process to assess and process offers.”
I was on some of the calls—with Members in this room—where we all directed statements and leads into that lane, without any expectation of favours whatsoever, but recognising that we were trying to ensure the best for our hospitals and the people on the frontline dealing with such difficult times.
In the 19 seconds I have left, the question that the hon. Gentleman failed to answer was the strategic one. In a period of emergency there is a choice: to prioritise output or process. Ideally, both would be prioritised, but if I had a choice, I would make sure that the PPE was in my hospital. I hope that some of the Opposition Members here will answer that question in the coming hour.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lee Rowley Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Amanda Milling
I want to take this opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend once again on his historic election victory in Bolsover exactly 11 months ago. I was delighted to visit him in Bolsover during the summer. I can assure him that the Government are as committed to levelling up opportunity across the UK today as we were last December.
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Johnny Mercer)
I appreciate how important medallic recognition is to so many of our veterans groups. There is an independent process that looks at the consideration of historical medal claims. That sub-committee restarted in 2018, and I know that it has received representations from nuclear test veterans. Those review recommendations will be made public as soon as possible.
Lee Rowley
I thank the Minister for his response. My constituent John Ward was one of many veterans sent there in 1957, and he has campaigned for many years for recognition of his work and also for acknowledgement through a medal. May I encourage the Minister to continue to do what he can to acknowledge the service of those veterans and to confirm that the recent Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which was passed, has no bearing or impact on their cause?
Johnny Mercer
I have for some time been a supporter of his campaign, and I would urge him to continue in that vein. When it comes to the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, there were a huge number of misunderstandings about this. It deals with people who are deployed on overseas operations. The nuclear test veterans were not deployed on overseas operations, and their ability to claim compensation for what happened to them is unaffected by this legislation.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lee Rowley Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
Absolutely; I congratulate Launch UK on what it is doing. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, the project would create 250 full-time jobs, including 130 at the facility in Forres. I am in no doubt that it will launch the UK on a path to ever greater presence in the global satellite market.
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
The Prime Minister
Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend can certainly reassure his constituents that our purpose, and the purpose of the package that carried overwhelming support in this House yesterday, is to continue to drive down the R number while keeping businesses open and pupils in school.
EU-UK Partnership: EU’s Mandate
Lee Rowley Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who has been throughout my time in this place a doughty and courageous advocate for the opportunities of leaving the European Union. I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), whose work on the European Scrutiny Committee is much appreciated: the work in its previous guise, displaying the massive amounts of legislation that came from the European Union over so many years and doing so much to create the view in the United Kingdom that we were losing control of our sovereignty; and now in terms of the overview mechanism, which it does so well.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman praises the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), whose analysis of this I thought was fairly sound. What part of that analysis would the hon. Gentleman disagree with?
Lee Rowley
The right hon. Member for East Antrim has a particular view around Northern Ireland, and we have debated that extensively in this place for a number of months, even years. Where I agree with him is that we needed to leave the European Union, and we have done that. Where I disagree with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is that he never wanted to leave the European Union in the first place, whereas we delivered on the decision of the British people in 2016.
Like so many others, I voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Leaving it in a way that works for our country—both the opportunities that it can provide and the responsibilities that it creates for us as an internationalist, outward-looking country—is incredibly important. My constituents in North East Derbyshire remain extremely committed both to having left the European Union in January—some of us at some points in the previous Parliament were not actually sure we would quite get there—and to taking the opportunities that will come as a result of that.
I would just gently say to the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), for whom I have a great deal of time and respect, that as someone who represents one of those red wall seats that she was so keen to reference in her speech, I can give her absolute assurances that the hard-working people in that red wall seat who wanted to leave the European Union still want to leave, still wish to get the clarity that is required by the end of December and do not want the double whammy of the Opposition parties, who wanted to frustrate this in the first place and continue to want an extension that would serve no purpose.
My constituents feel so strongly about this because democracy matters. After we made the decision in 2016, it took this place three years to ensure that it would occur. Now we have a great opportunity to build a future partnership, to build something that works both for us and for the European Union over the long term, but it has to be done on the basis of mutual respect, obligation and responsibilities. We cannot fall into the same inane and asinine discussion that we did in Parliament in 2019, where we said, “How can it be possible? We are not able to do it. We cannot possibly expect to be able to do it in the time.” Let us let the negotiation go through, let us allow the space and the opportunity for that to happen and then see what comes from it. I am certainly confident that it is possible. The residents of North East Derbyshire and many of the red wall seats want to ensure that it happens and I know, with confidence in the Government, that it will.
Parliamentary Constituencies Bill
Lee Rowley ExcerptsTuesday 2nd June 2020
(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 View all Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I shall try my best to fit what I have into the minute and a half or so that I have.
I welcome the Bill, and I am glad to see that it has been brought forward. It has been a long time coming, even for those of us who are relatively new in this place. It provides clarity on a national level, or will do, and it also provides clarity on a local level for constituencies and seats, such as mine, that have been moved around in the proposals over the past 10 years or so. It will be good to get a final, clear view about what is going to happen and when.
If I may, I will make two brief points before the wind-ups begin. First, I support the principle of equalisation. One person one vote is important, but so is the representation of those people being equal in this place. As competent, as capable and as excellent as my colleagues are in other parts of Derbyshire, it cannot be right that one Member of Parliament in Derbyshire has 10,000 people less than me and another Member of Parliament has nearly 9,000 people more than me. That variation does raise questions about how we represent our constituencies in this place. It is why I am not convinced by some of the arguments that have been made in this Chamber on this matter, including, unfortunately, by the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones).
Secondly, it is vital that we have up-to-date information and data on this. While the data itself came later, the processes for starting the data in the fifth periodic review, on which I was elected in December, were done before I even became eligible to vote. Since then, I have voted in six general elections, I have stood in three of them and I have had the privilege of being elected in two. It cannot be the case that we continue to use data that is that far out of date. It undermines the legitimacy of this place, and I look forward to its being corrected in the Bill when it goes through the House.
European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill
Lee Rowley ExcerptsFriday 20th December 2019
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a privilege to be returned to this place to represent my home area of North East Derbyshire, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be here again. As my constituents would expect, I rise to support the Bill and will vote with the Government this afternoon.
It is just over a year since I stood among these Benches during the initial iteration of the Bill and, with great regret, had to say that I would not support my Government. All of us who served in the previous Parliament, particularly on these Benches, regret what happened in the last year or so: wherever we stood and whatever our views, a fog descended on this place, affecting people who were otherwise rational and willing and able to look at the wider picture. It paralysed our politics.
Today marks a really important stage for many of us: we can start to move on. When that fog descended, we became paralysed and the issue stopped being the European Union, what trade deals we might do in the future and what regulation we might adopt; it became a basic question of trust. I do not say that with any triumphalism to the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), who is no longer in her place but who made an excellent speech some minutes ago; I say it with relief that we are now able to deliver on the decision of the British people. However profoundly some people in this place disagree with that, it is a basic principle that we all need to remember. That is why I will be going through the Aye Lobby today.
I also want to address something raised by some who are no longer in their places, particularly the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). There is a weird conflation in this place, which I regret hugely, that liberal values, which I share, cannot be epitomised or espoused by those of us who also believe in leaving the European Union. The European Union is not the panacea for everything in this country, but I also say that it has done many good things. I am someone who believes in the values of openness, tolerance, inclusivity, being welcoming, wanting to be internationalist and wanting to work with countries all across the world and in Europe. I am also a Brexiteer. Even if people profoundly disagree with me, I think that an intellectual case can be made for being both. What those who advocate liberalism in this place must consider is that their conflation of those values with remaining will do their cause a great disservice over the long term.
Finally, I appeal, although as one who has been here only two years, to those who have served in the Chamber for a while. The debate today has been good in many senses, but some people have already started to retreat into their comfort zones. We have already started to hear the excuses—“I would support this in principle but am unable to do so”, for some confected or real reason. The greatest speech today came from the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), who is no longer in her place. She stood up and said, “I didn’t agree with this, but I am going to vote for it.” I happen to agree with it. In time, I may disagree with something else, but if the people say it I hope that I will be enough of a democrat to recognise that.
What I really regret is that if we had spent one iota of the time we spent talking about Brexit in the past two and a half years talking instead about the things that will challenge our areas in the next 20 years—automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data—we would have been preparing our country for those coming challenges. Let us get this done, and let us talk about all the other important things that we need to do.
Debate on the Address
Lee Rowley Excerpts(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
Most Gracious Sovereign,
We, your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.
It is a great honour to move the Loyal Address, both for me and the constituency of North East Derbyshire, my home, which I am so proud and privileged to represent. First, however, I stand here this afternoon to right an historic and terrible injustice: no Member from my great county of Derbyshire has moved the Loyal Address for over 100 years. The delay has been long. It last happened in 1903, when it was moved by Colonel Gretton, representing the constituency so ably now served by my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler).
I took to reading that speech to get some inspiration for the rather terrifying job I now have. I am afraid to report that it only increased my nervousness at the task ahead. I discovered that before the good colonel even uttered a single syllable, Hansard noted, with that courteous understatement that Hansard is famous for, that he was heard “with much difficulty”. What that is an Edwardian euphemism for is lost to time. I will seek to avoid the challenge that faced my county forebear by speaking both loudly and, at least at the start, by avoiding Brexit.
Secondly, another worry arose, if not for me, for the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. The subject to which Colonel Gretton turned first was not education, health, welfare or taxes, or even his constituency, but a subject that is returned to time and again in this place: Venezuela. [Laughter.] The colonel was keen to explain that the recent policy successes in South America had been achieved without the destruction of personal property. I wonder if our Venezuelan friends will have the same pre-eminence in 2019 that they did in 1903.
Finally, I was struck by the response of the Prime Minister, Mr Balfour. His initial remarks were not focused on great matters of state. Instead he was keen not to impede the impending dinner hour of the Members present. I hope not to do so today by applying some Derbyshire common sense and knowing when to sit down.
I am relatively new to this place, having only been here since the 2017 general election. Having just turned 39, I hope that I tend—just—towards the more youthful end of the parliamentary age range. That is true not least—if he will forgive me—when I compare myself with my parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), who was in customary fine form this morning and who has been providing quips to this House since a decade before I was born. [Laughter.]
Having witnessed only one Queen’s speech, I searched for advice about how to do this, and I discovered that the definition was laid out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) in a speech in the 1990s. My joy quickly turned to horror when, having read his remarks, I found I had been given a privilege by the Treasury Bench usually accorded to
“some genial old codger on the way out”—[Official Report, 6 May 1992; Vol. 207, c. 56.]
I know that Brexit has aged us all in the last three years, but I did not realise that my right hon. Friends in the Government thought it had affected my youth so badly, nor how keen they were to get rid of me.
We meet today in troubled times, at the end of the longest parliamentary Session since the civil war. It is a time that more experienced Members tell us newer recruits is just not normal. Our precious body politic lies bloodied, poisoned by rancour and enmity, and, until the hope of the last few days, paralysed by competing legitimacies. Our politics is fought over, sometimes viciously, by us here in a way that I have never known in my lifetime. I say that as a working-class kid who grew up in the north during the miners’ strike, who is the nephew of someone who worked for the National Union of Mineworkers, and whose grandparents toiled under some of the villages I now have the privilege to represent. So I have some knowledge of challenge and tumult.
We are in a hard place, and all of us, whatever Bench or Chair we sit on, are responsible for where we end up. In the last few days, there has at least been hope that this toxic and crippling fog we have created might just be lifting, as the Prime Minister sketches an outline of a way forward. I speak as someone who has been robust in my review of previous proposals, but the House must surely see, as I do, that we have debated long enough, this is a moment for decision and we were elected to make decisions. If there is light at the end of the tunnel later this week—heaven knows, I hope there will be—we have a fundamental responsibility in this place to try to resolve this most vexed of problems, and allow our despairing and embittered country to move on. For the health of our democracy and to restore faith in this most venerable of institutions, we simply must get Brexit done.
I hope that, deep down, this place realises it is time to get back to the other priorities of our country—if it does not, this shattered Parliament will be given even shorter shrift than the residents of North East Derbyshire have already given it. They speak plainly and honestly in my 41 towns, villages and hamlets. They are good, honest, industrious men and women who are the quiet backbone of our great country. In Dronfield and Killamarsh, they seek only to get up every morning, get a fair crack of the whip and be able to get on. In Eckington and Clay Cross, they seek betterment in life for their families and their children, recognising that communities are built from the ground up, not imposed from the top down, and understanding that Governments should do some things well, not lots of things badly. They want Governments who prioritise technological advancement and innovation in healthcare, to allow people to get better quickly and to live longer; they want people who stand shoulder to shoulder with our brave officers on the frontline, through a police covenant; and they want Governments who make it their mission to deliver fast broadband to all of our nations. That is why there is so much to be welcomed in this Queen’s Speech and why we must move beyond Brexit.
My constituency sits around the towering presence of a church that has been there since the 12th century and can be seen for miles around. It is famous for a spire that twists and bends unconventionally into the sky. I am the son of that crooked spire and am so very proud to represent some of its domain today. The values of those sons and daughters of north Derbyshire are the same as those of other proud working-class northern and midlands towns across the country. They are the values that propelled me here today: hard work; aspiration; a hand up, not a handout; freedom: liberty; society; real opportunity for ourselves and for our communities; and a desire to be set free to allow our talents to let us achieve what we can, and not to be told how to live our lives.
Last Friday, I returned to my old school, St Mary’s in Chesterfield, to talk about the importance of democracy. It reminded me of the first time I came here some years ago, on a sixth-form trip, when we were welcomed by our Member of Parliament at the time, the much-respected Tony Benn. I come from a very different political tradition from Mr Benn, but he is still held in high esteem in my constituency. In the same year as he kindly showed me and my fellow students around these Benches, he stood somewhere in here and asked five questions of politicians, as he did regularly. They are as pertinent today as they were then:
“What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”—[Official Report, 22 March 2001; Vol. 365, c. 510.]
I hope we remember that in the days ahead.
As we turn the page on one of the most tumultuous parliamentary Sessions of our lives and dare to hope of new beginnings in a new one, I close by turning back to the Prime Minister, Mr Balfour, who responded to the last Derbyshire MP to propose a Loyal Address. Mr Balfour was a remarkable man, who contributed much to our civic and political life in this country. He was reputed once to have said:
“Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.”
That may or may not be true, but in this most tempestuous of times, I hope and believe that most of us in this place recognise that the coming days do matter, and that our nation is watching, anxious with hope and belief that we can move on. North East Derbyshire wants to move on and return to the priorities of the people so outlined in this programme of government—I think the country does too.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lee Rowley Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady again raises the important issue of autism. I am sure that, as constituency MPs, we all see cases where parents have found it very difficult to get support for their children who are on the autistic spectrum. It is important to ensure that there is the awareness and the ability to deal with this issue. As I said in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan), we are looking again at our autism strategy, because we want to ensure that we have in place all we need to support those with autism.
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
Last week in this Chamber, the Prime Minister said that the Leader of the Opposition is
“The biggest threat to our standing in the world, to our defence and to our economy”—[Official Report, 27 March 2019; Vol. 657, c. 313.]
In her judgment, what now qualifies him for involvement in Brexit?
The Prime Minister
Every Member of this House is involved in Brexit. I want to deliver Brexit. I want to deliver Brexit in an orderly way. I want to do it as soon as possible. I want to do it without us having to fight European parliamentary elections. To do that, we need to get an agreement through this House on the withdrawal agreement and a deal. The House has rejected every proposal that has gone before it so far, as well as a second referendum and revoking article 50. I believe that the public want us to work across the House to find a solution that delivers Brexit, delivers on the referendum and gives people faith that politicians have done what they asked and actually delivered for them.
UK’s Withdrawal from the EU
Lee Rowley Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
Eighty-four days ago I last spoke in this Chamber on Brexit and since that time nothing has fundamentally changed: the EU remains as intransigent as ever and people in this place are seeking to frustrate the will of the people, as was so eloquently outlined by the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). As the son of a milkman and the grandson of miners, I will take no lessons from him.
I and people like me who voted to leave still believe in leave. All the while, the people out there—the 17.4 million people out there—are bewildered by what goes on in this place and by what is happening. I can tell you what has changed in this place in the past 84 days: we have lost our nerve, if we ever had it in the first place. The hyperbole has gone up and the hysteria has gone up, but all the while people out there do not understand what we are doing.
What should have changed in this place in the past 84 days is that we should have got real and recognised that what has happened is only hamstringing our ability to get a deal from the European Union right now. What also should have changed in the past 84 days was that the Government should have actually tried to negotiate in a meaningful way, and taken something like the Malthouse compromise and pushed it through in a way that I am not convinced they are yet doing. We have to realise something in this place, and I hate to break it to you all, but it is not about you—[Interruption.] You outsourced this decision in 2016 to the people and you are now trying to in-source, erroneously, the implementation, and it is not working. You do not understand the democratic deficit that is coming out and that I see in my constituency, and I am sure hon. Members—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must be heard. I know that he is using the word “you”—he is using it as a rhetorical device. I do not take offence at that, but he must be heard.
Lee Rowley
Hon. Members do not understand the democratic deficit that is coming out and that is completely obvious in places like my constituency and elsewhere. This is not about us. We have a decision to make. I am happy to compromise. I will compromise on money and on timelines—if I have to—and with such things as the Malthouse compromise, but I will not take false choices and false options, which it seems are about to be presented to us.
We have a clear decision to make. If a good deal is put to this place in a few weeks’ time, I will vote for it, and vote for it happily. However, this place has already said that the deal that came here last time was a bad one. If that deal comes back and it is not materially changed I will vote against it, because it will not work for our country in the long term. I will vote against taking no deal off the table because that would hamstring our ability to negotiate, and I will vote against an extension of article 50, because there is no reason to extend it when we do not know why we are asking for that extension. We have a choice to make. The people out there are watching and they are tired of and bewildered by the games that are being played in here. We have to leave on 29 March, and I hope that people will wise up in the next few days and weeks to make sure that happens.
Several hon. Members rose—