Leaving the European Union

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I thank the Petitions Committee for bringing forward this debate and allowing us to consider, with only months to go, what the impact of a no-deal Brexit would be on this country. I have to admit that, in eight years in Parliament, I have never been more worried—not just about the potential impact on this country, but about the state of British politics and our apparent inability to listen to one another, to work constructively together and to find a way out of this mess.

Although I understand the passion and sincerity with which people have conducted themselves, this debate has drawn attention to many of the reasons why we are unable to find a way through this mess: entrenched positions, more talking than listening, and the repeated use by a number of people of the word “betrayal”, which only a few years ago was reserved for people on the far right but now seems to be part of our modern lexicon, with hugely damaging results. Our political debate has become angry, divisive and violent at the exact time that we should be taking a lead in trying to calm this down.

It is in that spirit that I congratulate the young man, Ciaran O’Doherty, for the way he has put together and presented this petition, because the real human implications of what we potentially are about to do to people like him must be heard and considered by all of us. Should Parliament not reach agreement either on this withdrawal agreement or on an alternative course of action in a few months’ time, and if the Government do not sit up, listen and take action, we will leave without a deal. I share the view of many colleagues who have spoken today: that would be an absolute disaster for this country.

I am really concerned to hear—from Opposition Members as well as Government Members—the idea that a no-deal Brexit is a political hoax. I share the view of the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) that many of the people who are pushing the idea that no deal would not be a problem or that, somehow, it cannot happen are incredibly protected from the impact of those decisions. They are wealthier and more privileged, have more access to power in all its forms, and have options for what they and their families do next. I want to put on record that for the vast majority of people whom I represent, the situation is much more terrifying than that. For all the anger and bluster in Parliament, the thing I hear most from my constituents as we approach the deadline in March 2019 is genuine anxiety about what will happen to them, their jobs and their children’s future.

As this debate becomes angrier and angrier as we get closer to the deadline, and as we continue to talk past one another and to lecture one another about what is in the moral interest of this country, I say to colleagues who make a very passionate case for a second referendum that my in-box in Wigan is filling up with messages from people who tell me that they voted leave, that they want the result to be respected, and they now want no deal at all with the European Union. That is a much stronger assertion even than just a few months ago, when it felt like the debate was starting to calm down. The debate has become angrier, and those people have decided that they want to raise their voices loudly at this time and set us on a disastrous course for them, their families and my community, because they feel that that small bit of control that they exerted two and half years ago is in danger of being taken away.

To my colleagues who sincerely and passionately make the case for a second referendum, I say that that is only part of the solution. If they genuinely want to heal the divisions in this country and provide a sustainable future, this cannot be a tug of war between two groups of people who cannot co-exist. Democracy is not the tyranny of the majority; the 48% and the 52% must be heard. This is their country, and the future must belong to both groups.

[Tom Brake]

I wonder whether the hon. Lady welcomes the fact that those people involved in the people’s vote campaign, which includes Members from all political parties apart from the DUP, are actively working to draw up an offer that would address the legitimate concerns that leave voters had? Should we get into a people’s vote campaign, we can then say that these are the things that we would do to address some of the key concerns that people who voted leave had—it would not address all concerns—about things such as investment in infrastructure, skills, training and quality jobs.

[Lisa Nandy]

Having had some quite tough words for people making that case, it is right to acknowledge how positive that contribution is and how important that work is. I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that if the starting point for a campaign is that “you are wrong, and we are right”, it is very unlikely to get a hearing. I can see some hon. Members shaking their head, and I accept that there are different nuances to that campaign. I accept that there are activists and spokespeople for the campaign who do not take that approach, but some of the right hon. Gentleman’s leading advocates and spokespeople take that exact approach and have spent two and half years telling 52% of the country that they have betrayed a generation and that they are wrong.

It is with sadness rather than anger that I say that it is not going to work. It will not provide a sustainable future for this country, just as the words of the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) do not provide any comfort or reassurance to the 48% of people, including a number of her own constituents, who voted remain and who feel passionately that the future is being taken away from them and their children.

I want to turn my attention to a no-deal outcome, because it is increasingly likely that that will be the default option as we approach March 2019 and as we prove unable to agree on an alternative course of action. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on the impact that this would have, and I agree with the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) as well. The businesses in my constituency that will be most affected by this, by tariffs and by problems at borders are, like his, not the big companies—for example, the Heinz factory that employs 1,200 people in my constituency and more in the supply chain—because they have the ability to plan for what comes next and have been doing contingency planning for some time. They have political clout: should there be queues at lorry parks, they will be able to get their products through. The hardest hit will be the smaller companies that have perishable goods and do not have the clout and contingency funds, such as the Kings Quality Foods meat production company in my constituency. I agree with the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington that many of these very good companies will go under if we do not take action now to prevent a no-deal Brexit.

On the way down here last week, I was stopped at the train station in my Wigan constituency by a mum whose son has a life-limiting illness: Duchenne muscular dystrophy. That young boy, Jack, has become extremely well-known in Wigan. His parents have founded a charity called Joining Jack and have been campaigning for a cure. There is no cure as yet, but there is medication that can delay the degenerative effects of this horrible, cruel illness. She is desperately worried about what is about to happen; like many families around the country, they are discussing stockpiling medicine. Every dose that that young boy misses knocks weeks off his life. Conservative Members on the hard end of Tory Brexit are playing serious, high-stakes poker with people’s lives, and we should be concerned about how to stop it.

I am also concerned about food. Some 30% of our food comes from the EU, and many of my constituents, like those of many other hon. Members, are already accessing food banks because they cannot afford food prices. What do we do when inflation and the price of food goes up as the value of the pound falls?

Like Ciaran, I am concerned about the impact of what we are doing to Ireland and Northern Ireland. It is often called “the Ireland problem”, but as they rightly keep telling us, it is a problem that we created for them. I was serving in the shadow Cabinet in the run-up to the referendum, and I spent months going around the country, mostly in northern towns, trying to convince people that remain was the best option. Apart from the times when we raised it, the issue of Northern Ireland and the border came up only once. Here we are with just days to go until we leave the European Union, and it seems that there is a group of people who think that that is not an issue. Ciaran can tell them that it absolutely is.

There are profound questions to ask about the implications for energy and our pensions. We ought to work together to ensure we have the legal tools available to prevent the outcome of no deal.

[Dr Drew]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I was in Northern Ireland a fortnight ago talking to Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs officials, who have to implement whatever they have to implement in March. The reality is that they have nothing to implement. They cannot put a border in, and they cannot do checks because they have not taken on additional staff. They admit it is a mess. They have to make decisions, although they are very wary of making political decisions, because they are not politicians. That is the reality. I was in Newry, and I saw it. The problem is that they do not know what will happen after March.

[Lisa Nandy]

I could not agree more. As we approach Brexit, far too many people are making false promises or are being far too complacent about the potential impact of what we are going to do. I have spent time talking to our counterparts who are about to bear the brunt of it. They know the cost of it, and we should too.

Still now, given everything we know about what is about to hit us, the Government are refusing to be honest. I say this to the Minister as somebody who indicated from the outset that I was prepared to consider the Government’s withdrawal agreement—I have read every page of it and the seven-page political statement that goes alongside it. They cannot ask Members of Parliament like me, who are prepared to put the country’s interests first, to vote for a withdrawal agreement while withholding information about what its impact will be.

The Minister will not tell us what the economic impact is of the various options available—no deal, this deal or remaining in the EU. That is one of the reasons why I and almost every single Member of Parliament in this Chamber support the amendment to the Finance Bill that would force the Government to reveal that information, which we will vote on later. Why should we have to drag the Government to the House and force them to reveal information that should have been ours by right? The Government have no right to withhold that information from the people and Parliament. We are about to embark on a course of action that could be destructive to this country, so the Government have a duty and a responsibility to put that information before the House.

[Tom Brake]

Like the hon. Lady, perhaps I can speculate on the reason why the Government are seeking to withhold this information. Is it not simply because they will be extremely embarrassed when it confirms that the Prime Minister’s deal, no deal, Canada plus plus plus, Norway minus minus minus, or whatever else, is worse economically than staying in the European Union? That is why they do not want the information out there.

[Lisa Nandy]

The difficulty is that we do not know, and we should know. It is our right to know. More importantly, the people we represent have a right to know before we potentially embark on a course of action that could be deeply destructive to their lives in the ways I outlined a moment ago.

The state of this debate is an absolute disgrace. It needs to be reset with honesty and clarity. That begins with the Government setting out their plan B to avoid a no-deal Brexit if, as seems likely, the withdrawal deal does not secure the consent of the House. What legal advice have the Government had about the mechanism to revoke article 50? Without knowing that, we do not even know whether there is a clear route to prevent no deal at all. What discussions have they had with the EU about extending article 50? Is there a willingness to do so? Do they intend to do so if this deal does not succeed?

The lesson that should have been learned in the past two and a half years is not only that we should have done the referendum differently but that we need a completely different approach to the way we have done politics over the past two and a half years. We have collectively let this country down with the angry shouts of betrayal and the inability to listen to people who do not share our point of view. The only mandate that came out of that very divisive referendum was for compromise. That is what the House of Commons needs to start doing now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stringer]

My hon. Friend makes a number of points. On trade unions rights, there is no doubt that in 1988, when the President of the Commission came to the TUC, he said, “Forget Thatcher; we can look after the trade unions.” Unfortunately, we moved from a social Europe to a global, much more free-market Europe. Since then—I do not know if my hon. Friend knows—the Viking and Laval decisions have undermined minimum wage legislation throughout Europe, and have damaged trade unions because they have changed the definition of a trade dispute. I do not accept that the EU is fundamentally good for trade unions, but I must move on.

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

I was not going to talk about Northern Ireland, because there are people in this room who know a great deal more about it than I do, but I do not think there is anyone else here who was present—the Minister could have been, but I am pretty certain that no one else was —when Croatia was accepted into the European Union. There were about three or four of us in the Chamber—there clearly was not as much concern about the EU then. Croatia has one of the EU’s longest borders with the rest of Europe. Across that border there is human trafficking and sex trafficking; it is unguarded a lot of the time and it is one of the main entry points of wickedness into the EU. Croatia was accepted by the EU, but it did not have the rule of law, and it protected war criminals after the break-up of Yugoslavia. The EU wanted Croatia in, because it was expanding.

Northern Ireland has had a troubled border. The EU had nothing to do with the Good Friday agreement. The basis of the Good Friday agreement is that all parties accept peace. The EU has been weaponising that issue; the United Kingdom Government have said very clearly that they will not produce a hard border, so the only people who might are those in the EU. They have used that as a control over the UK, which unfortunately the Prime Minister has accepted.

This is a huge debate, as I am sure you know, Mr Hollobone. The continued project fear accepts that somehow the EU has been great for the United Kingdom’s growth, and that the EU’s regulatory model is economically a good thing, but for the 10 years before the referendum, all other continents apart from Antarctica grew by considerably more than the EU—it was not a particularly vital area. There are some areas where this country is strong, such as in the biological and agricultural sciences, where we are world leaders, but the regulations coming from the EU damage our economy and cause job losses regularly. I do not believe in a completely free market—quite the reverse—but we can have regulations that are appropriate to our economy, and that will help us to create jobs at the cutting edge. The only future for this country is in high technology, which is restricted by the EU.

Although there are many more points I could make, I will finish by talking about no deal. It would be better if we had a deal. It is extraordinary, when our regulatory position is completely aligned with the EU, that the EU tries to keep control of this country’s laws. It is even more extraordinary that the Prime Minister has accepted that. The majority of our trade is on World Trade Organisation rules. The EU is a signatory to the World Trade Organisation. There is no reason whatever why the disruption if we left the EU without a deal would not be minimal. Are people here who support the EU saying that if we left without a deal, the EU would stop sending medicines to this country? If they are saying that, why would we want to be part of a body that would punish the child with muscular dystrophy that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan talked about? It would not happen by accident; the EU would have to stop medicines coming to this country. It would have to stop radioactive materials needed for the health service from coming to this country.

[Lisa Nandy]

We rely on our Government being prepared to go back to the EU to seek that ongoing co-operation to prevent that from arising. I have asked the Government to provide clarity on that. It cannot be right that we are asked to back something without absolutely no idea where it may lead and what the alternatives are.

[Graham Stringer]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I hope the Government will go back. I hope that those five Members in the Cabinet who say that this deal is simply not good enough have their way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

It is a matter of record how much the UK Government spent. It is not yet a matter of record how much the leave campaign spent, and I doubt whether it will ever be a matter of record where exactly in the world that money came from. Some of it was deliberately channelled through Northern Ireland to ensure that its original source could never be made known. Interestingly, those who are so desperate to have no regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain are quite happy to have regulatory divergence when it stops the source of that half a million pound donation ever being made public.

The Brexiteers tell us—the hon. Gentleman tried to—that none of this really matters. They tell us that, somehow, if someone cheats at the Olympics and gets caught, they have to hand back their medal and lose their world record 10, 15 or 20 years later; if someone cheats at football, they are banned from the competition the next year; but if someone cheats with the very fundamentals of our democracy, “Well, that’s just what politicians do.” If that is the view of the Brexit side in this argument, it is no wonder that, as the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood mentioned, politicians are held in such low regard by the citizens of these islands. If politicians themselves are prepared to stand up and say, “Oh, yeah, somebody cheated, but it doesn’t matter because it’s only politics”—

[Lisa Nandy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

Happily.

[Lisa Nandy]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is indicative of the poor quality of that side of the argument that the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) refused to take a single intervention or to engage with any of the arguments, but is currently on Twitter calling me a betrayer of this country because I made the point that we had to calm the debate down? [Interruption.] Oh, now she seems to have found her voice. Perhaps she should have found it earlier when we were debating the actual issue facing this country.

[Peter Grant]

I agree wholeheartedly with a lot of the comments the hon. Lady made about the language of the debate—

[Andrea Jenkyns]

On a point of order, Mr Hollobone.

[Lisa Nandy]

She speaks!

[Andrea Jenkyns]

Thank you for being lovely. I have never made a point of order before. I did not take any interventions because I did not think it was right to intervene on anybody else. To be honest, Lisa, I was not calling you a betrayer; I was actually pointing to the fact, on social media, that it is fine you likening people to the far right, which is disgusting—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Ah, polling. My word; thank God the polls are always correct, eh? I wonder how well the hon. Gentleman would fare if, based on this issue, there were a people’s vote about who should be the Member of Parliament in his constituency. I am not convinced that a people’s vote is the way forward, but he did identify, quite correctly, a dilemma that many Labour Members of Parliament will recognise, especially those representing midlands and northern seats. They passionately believe that leaving the European Union is not the right thing for the country to do, but represent seats in which the vast majority of people think otherwise.

I always enjoy listening to the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield), who I think is one of the best orators in the House—he tells the story. He might have mentioned the word “betrayal” once or twice—we will not go there quite yet—but did so in a completely different way to the problem tweet that we inadvertently talked about during the debate. He represents his constituents fairly; as a believer in this being the right thing for our country, I do the same for mine. I met representatives of the timber trade recently to discuss their concerns about deal and no-deal issues.

Forgive me for choosing favourites, but my favourite speech was that of the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy).

[Lisa Nandy]

Oh God.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

You can stick that on your leaflet at the next election. Forgive my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) for that tweet. You have not betrayed the people; quite the opposite—in your speech you represented people’s views faithfully, passionately and with an understanding of the dilemma that some Members face.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I apologise if I inadvertently referred to another Member incorrectly; I was talking about the contribution of the hon. Member for Wigan. I hope I did not upset my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood; I did not mean to. I wanted to point out that the hon. Member for Wigan made the case for her constituents’ views. She said—quite rightly in my experience; my constituency is similar—that views have hardened among those who voted to leave the European Union two years ago, and she also talked about how she campaigned in the referendum, so I did not see betrayal in that at all. She also made some wise comments on democracy. We had the largest democratic turnout in our entire history for the referendum, with 33.5 million voters. To my mind, when a decision of such constitutional significance is made, it is paramount that the correct procedure be followed. The ballot paper presented us with a clearcut choice, and a very simple question:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union?”.

The hon. Lady will probably remember “pencilgate”. During the referendum, people on all sides of the debate were passionate about the way they were going to vote, and people on the leave side were worried that using the voting-booth pencils would result in some Government authority rubbing out their vote. It did not; leave won, and the Government are delivering Brexit.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am very grateful to the Minister for his kind words, and in particular for striking a better tone than his colleague, the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns). As well as making the points that he mentioned, I also asked him what the Government’s plan B would be to avoid a no-deal Brexit if the current deal were not passed by the House of Commons. I would be grateful if he responded to that in the remaining time.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

One of the points that the hon. Lady raised was about the analysis that would be presented to Parliament when the debate on the withdrawal agreement and political declaration motion takes place. Once we bring forward the vote on the final deal, Her Majesty’s Government will present Parliament with appropriate analysis to make an informed decision. Ahead of an EU Council, it would not be practical or sensible to set out the details of exactly how Her Majesty’s Government would analyse the final deal, but we will set out the assumptions and the methodology when we present the analysis to Parliament for the meaningful vote. We are conducting a comprehensive, thorough and ongoing set of analyses, so I hope that in the near future the hon. Lady will see some of the facts and figures that she wishes to see.