European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 4th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the Bill and the tone with which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) introduced it. It reminded me of the famous book, “Profiles in Courage”, by John F. Kennedy, in which he said that

“there are few if any issues where all the truth and all the right and all the angels are on one side.”

We would do well to remember that in this House. Coherent, persuasive and passionate arguments and points have been made by people with every single type of view on Brexit, and we ought to respect one another and conduct the debate in that spirit.

This is not an easy thing for me to vote for, because I have spent the last few years arguing passionately that delay has consequences, that companies in my constituency need certainty and that the public cannot take much more of this. They want to see us come together, compromise and respect the 48% of people who came out and said that they wanted close ties with the EU.

[Simon Hoare]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lisa Nandy]

I will not, because of time. They also want to see us respect the fact that 52% of those who voted wanted to leave the EU. We said it was their choice, and we have a duty to try to enact it.

But the truth is this Bill is the right thing to do. There are many people in my constituency—a third—who voted remain and want us to stop this process altogether. There are others—I would say the most significant group—who want to cut all ties and leave the EU altogether. They shout louder than the others and often drown out the voices calling for consensus, but it is my job to make sure they do not, because they do not have the right to put food manufacturing companies in my constituency out of business. We lived through the closure of the mines in Wigan and we live with the consequences still. It was a tragedy for many families from which some never recovered. I will not let those small and medium-sized employers in my constituency, which make up the bulk of employment, be put out of business because we cannot get our act together as a House, because we cannot stop this reckless Prime Minister, because we cannot work together to achieve the deal we have promised the people.

People do not have the right to say to the child in my constituency waiting for a potentially life-saving clinical trial, “You will not get it”. A mum stopped me at the train station to say she was stockpiling medicine. They do not have the right to keep her up at night because she does not know if her child will survive. That is why this matters. After years of saying that no deal was a hoax, that it was a bluff, that it would not happen, we in this House have woken up to the reality of it, and now we have to make sure it does not happen. We have to go out and win that argument with the public, so that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) so rightly and eloquently said, we can walk out of here looking at the sky, not at our shoes.