European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey). I agree with much of what he said about trade and parliamentary accountability.

After a great deal of thought, I have decided to vote against Second Reading tomorrow night, for a number of reasons that I would like to set out precisely. First, the Government’s behaviour since the referendum result has influenced my decision. The new Government have acted as though the vote gave them carte blanche to engineer the most extreme kind of arrangements for the UK leaving the EU, though in truth the referendum asked only whether voters wished to remain or leave and had nothing to say about the nature of the subsequent arrangements the UK should adopt.

The Government have embarked upon this approach without any kind of consultation across party or any meaningful involvement in Parliament, which, as the Supreme Court has just reaffirmed, is the sovereign power in the land. Consultation across parties should be the norm when dealing with proposals of serious constitutional change. It has not happened. We would not have this Bill before us now had not the courts, when asked, upheld our constitution and made it clear that prerogative powers cannot be used to remove the rights of individual citizens that have been conferred by statute. Yet the judges in the High Court were vilified for doing their job and attacked by a Cabinet Minister, who said that their judgment was

“an attempt to frustrate the will of the British people”

and was “unacceptable”. The Government are looking distinctly authoritarian in their demeanour and how they operate.

[Michael Gove]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Eagle]

No, I will not give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Michael Gove]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Michael Gove]

No such statement was made by any Cabinet Minister and I hope the hon. Lady will withdraw.

[Maria Eagle]

I do not intend to respond to the right hon. Gentleman. He had his chance earlier.

This authoritarian demeanour is alien to our British tradition, and the sooner the new Government realise it and mend their ways, the better. Secondly, the nature of the exit that the Government seem intent on pursuing has influenced me. I think that this extreme, right-wing exit that they are pursuing, without any authorisation from this Parliament or the people of this country, will damage the jobs and economy of the UK, undermine our standing and position in the world and hit the poorest, like many who live and work in my constituency, the hardest.

I disagree that the Prime Minister should simply give up on single market membership—something that has benefited and could continue to benefit our people as workers and consumers greatly—without even bothering to negotiate on it, even though she was elected on a manifesto in the 2015 general election that promised to stay in the single market. It said:

“We are clear about what we want from Europe. We say: yes to the Single Market.”

Why did the Prime Minister not make pursuing membership of the single market part of her negotiating position?

Thirdly, although we have recently been given vague promises of further votes in this place after the negotiations, it remains unclear to me whether they will be meaningful in any way. This Bill therefore represents the only real opportunity at present that parliamentarians have to make their concerns known and shape the kind of exit that we get. I think the Government intend it to be the only opportunity we get, and let us remind ourselves: they did not intend that we should have this one. Once article 50 is triggered, time is set running and at the expiry of two years, the UK is out of the EU, unless all 27 countries agree to some alternative arrangements for those negotiations to continue in the interim. Simply by the effluxion of time, whatever the state of the negotiations, the reality will be that we are out—over a cliff edge, over a precipice. The right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) let the cat out of the bag in his speech, and the Government themselves argued before the courts that the process is irrevocable once set in motion.

Had the Government produced a White Paper following consultations about what kind of exit we should seek to secure and had they tried to reach a consensus across parties on what was best for the country, in order to bring it together and reconcile the 48% who voted to remain in an open and meaningful way, the triggering of article 50 may not have seemed the watershed or the last possible point of parliamentary influence that it now seems. The Government have had plenty of time to undertake such a process, but they have spent it telling parliamentarians that “Brexit means Brexit”, pointlessly appealing the High Court judgment—with an entirely predictable result—and refusing to say anything of substance on the grounds that it will compromise our negotiating position. The effluxion of time is what will compromise our negotiating position. What pressure will there be on our partners to agree to anything, when by simply biding their time we will be expelled, perhaps without any of the agreements we seek?

Fourthly, I represent a city and a constituency that voted to remain, and I feel the need to represent the views of my constituents on such a momentous issue. In Liverpool, we have seen over many years the advantages of EU membership at first hand. As the Tory Government of Margaret Thatcher genuinely considered organising the “managed decline” of Liverpool in the early 1980s, when I was growing up there, it was the European Economic Community that began to send what over the years became billions of pounds of structural funds to help the regeneration of the city.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

Will my hon. Friend explain to the House precisely how important objective 1 was to the regeneration of Liverpool in those dark times?

[Maria Eagle]

It stopped the city from falling even further than it had already fallen, and it gave us a real boost in starting the regeneration of the city. That is perhaps why Liverpool voted to remain.

If we leave the EU in the way in which the current Government want, it will be people such as my constituents, who have had almost seven years of coalition and Tory Government public spending cuts, who will be hit again and hit disproportionately. I fear that the extreme exit that the Prime Minister has decided we are to pursue will, over a few years, destroy our industrial base and our manufacturing industry. Of course, with such a divisive, irreconcilable and irreversible vote, some of my constituents will not like what I do whatever I do, but as their MP, I owe them my sincere judgment, and that is what I am giving them tonight.

I accept that the Government will get their way tomorrow night, and if they do, I expect to support the many excellent amendments being put forward by my Front-Bench team and others to try to improve the Bill, but I hope that the Government will, even now, see the benefit of accepting some of the amendments and try at this late stage to proceed in a way designed to bring the country together and not to ride roughshod over those with whom they disagree.