European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas).

I was planning to deliver this speech on 10 December last year, when, three days into the debate on the withdrawal agreement, the Prime Minister suddenly announced that she was going to defer the meaningful vote and seek reassurances from Europe over the issue of the Irish border backstop. So here we are, one month later, and what has changed? It would appear very little. The Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister on 10 December if she would be bringing

“back the same botched deal…in January”,

which

“will not change its fundamental flaws or the deeply held objections right across this House, which go far wider than the backstop alone.”—[Official Report, 10 December 2018; Vol. 651, c. 26.]

It would seem that she has done just that. Nothing has changed and the Government have just wasted 30 days.

Nevertheless, in my constituency of Heywood and Middleton, the Prime Minister appears to have achieved what seemed impossible two and a half years ago: she has united both sides of the referendum debate in opposition to her botched deal. Although 60% of my constituents voted to leave, both leavers and remainers in my constituency are urging me to vote against this deal. Of the hundreds of messages I have received, the majority are asking me to vote against, with only around 20% being in favour.

The British people were promised at the time of the referendum that Brexit would deliver a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU; the exact same benefits we currently have as members of the single market and customs union; fair management of migration; rights and protections defended and maintained; national security protected and cross-border crime tackled; and that it would work for all regions and nations of the UK. Those are Labour’s six tests, which are routinely mocked by the Prime Minister and the Conservative party. Those six tests merely set out what the electorate were promised during the referendum campaign. People were told that life in the UK would be vastly improved by leaving the EU, so our six tests actually set a pretty low bar in just asking that the British people be given what was promised—no more and no less. So when the Tories mock our six tests, are they really pouring scorn on the electorate for being so gullible as to fall for the promises of the leave campaign?

EU nationals living and working in my constituency have voiced to me their concerns about their future in the UK. My constituent Regine May, who has worked as an academic for the last 20 years educating our students, expressed her outrage to me at being described by the Prime Minister as a “queue-jumper”, and a staff member at Middleton library asked me whether she would still be able to travel to and from the UK using her German passport. The withdrawal agreement provides no clarity and no reassurance, and nor does the invitation issued over the Christmas period to EU nationals to “pay to stay” under the EU settlement scheme. The Government try to dismiss those and other concerns as “Project Fear”, but they need to wake up to Project Reality.

We have seen unseemly jostling for the Tory leadership as a result of the chaos that has been caused. The Prime Minister has survived a leadership challenge, and the Government have survived being found in contempt of Parliament. It seems that the Government’s policy is to carry on regardless. Over the last month the media have been full of possible scenarios that would result from the deal’s being voted down, and the Prime Minister has supposedly been on a charm offensive to persuade people to back it, but the message seems to be that we should accept a deal that is known to be flawed and that there is no plan B. Last month one of her Brexit Ministers, the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), asserted that

“a responsible Government plans for everything.”—[Official Report, 6 December 2018; Vol. 650, c. 1051.]

However, this Government are saying, “Accept this deal: it’s the only game in town.” It would seem that the oft-repeated mantra of no deal being better than a bad deal has morphed into “Any old deal, no matter how flawed, is better than no deal.”

In December the all-party Exiting the European Union Committee published a unanimous and scathing report on the Prime Minister’s deal, saying that many of the most important questions about the UK’s future relations with the EU had been left unanswered. The Chairman of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), said that the deal lacked clarity and represented a huge step into the unknown, and nothing has changed since then. The Committee concluded:

“There are no realistic, long-term proposals from the Government to reconcile maintaining an open border on the island of Ireland with leaving the Single Market and Customs Union.”

The deal does not protect rights at work, and only one paragraph in the political declaration refers to protecting rights and standards, which demonstrates the low priority that the Government have given to that throughout the negotiations. The TUC has declared that it cannot support a deal that fails to protect rights at work, jobs, and peace in Northern Ireland. It has drawn attention to the weakness of the political declaration, and the fact that it is not even legally binding. Working people have no way of knowing what the UK’s future relationship with the EU will really look like, and what impact it will have on their lives. The only certainty seems to be that this Brexit deal will make the country poorer, as is shown by the Government’s own economic analysis, with GDP falling by about 3.9% and every region in the UK being worse off.

The UK’s overseas territories—places such as The Falklands—did not have a vote, but they will feel the impact of decisions made here in Parliament. They are very concerned about the prospect of crashing out with no deal. Paying tariffs on their trade with the EU will have a major impact on their economies. It would be an act of gross irresponsibility for a Government even to countenance the possibility of no deal, but rejecting this Brexit deal does not give the Government licence to crash out without a deal. It is high time that the Prime Minister stopped threatening such an irresponsible act, which is definitely not in the national interest.

This deal pleases no one. In December I believed that it would be irresponsible of me to endorse it and that I should not support it, and nothing has changed since then. I will not be bullied into accepting this botched deal, because the issue is too important: our country’s future, workers’ rights, jobs, the economy, security and our international standing are at stake.