Mark Francois
Main Page: Mark Francois (Conservative - Rayleigh and Wickford)Department Debates - View all Mark Francois's debates with the Cabinet Office
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Nick Thomas-Symonds
I absolutely respect the referendum result. If the hon. Gentleman bothered to read our manifesto, he would discover that there are red lines: we will not go back to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement. Let me say to the Conservative party that delivering on our manifesto promises will unlock huge benefits for the United Kingdom, reduce barriers to trade and accelerate economic growth. In an uncertain world, it will keep us safer, more secure and more prosperous. That is what this Government are working towards.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
The Minister has referred to the Labour manifesto several times in a few minutes. Did it say anything at all about accepting dynamic alignment or becoming a rule taker—yes or no?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The objective of negotiating a sanitary and phytosanitary veterinary agreement, so that agricultural products, food and drink can be traded more cheaply between the UK and the EU, is in the Labour manifesto, and we have a mandate for that. The Government will put more money in the pockets of working people and create greater long-term stability and security for the British people. Apparently, the Opposition are against that, and so, I hear, is Reform. To be fair, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) says that he thinks the current deal with the EU can be improved, but he has never told us exactly how, and we wait to find out.
Since last July, this Government have been getting on with the job of resetting our relationship with the European Union in a number of important areas.
James MacCleary
Not at the moment, no.
By contrast, the much-vaunted trade deal signed with India last week is worth just a fraction of our former deal with the European Union. It is around 20 times smaller than the economic boost that we gain simply by aligning with the EU on goods and services.
Mr Francois
The whole House will have noted that the hon. Member clearly failed to rule out a second referendum, because he did not much like the result of the first one. May I ask him this directly? Like the Government, as is obvious from their evasion this afternoon, are the Liberal Democrats prepared to accept a process of dynamic alignment, whereby we effectively become a passive rule-taker from the European Union? Yes or no?
James MacCleary
The right hon. Member makes two points. First, he mentioned a second referendum. I find this a fascinating contention. Elections happen every four years. At the last election, we returned a Labour Government. This argument that the result of that referendum in 2016 must be held in perpetuity—no matter what the British people think of it—suggests to me that everybody should join the Labour party, because now we will have a Labour Government in perpetuity, too. Perhaps Conservative Members might want to give some consideration to that.
Secondly, the right hon. Member used the term “rule-taker”. I find that fascinating, too. It was quite noticeable that in the negotiations on Brexit, Conservative Members became enthralled by the philosophy of cakeism to the extent that it became their mantra that we could have our cake and eat it, and that, apparently, modern trade deals do not require any give and take. The recent India trade deal, which has been so trumpeted by Labour Members and, which, of course, was started by Conservative Members, does involve the UK having to take some things as well. That is what a trade deal looks like, and it certainly looks like that when we are talking with the largest trading bloc on the planet. The key question that the right hon. Member should be asking is what benefit would it bring to British people. That, ultimately, is the job of any Government and any politician: what will benefit us?
James MacCleary
I am pleased that the right hon. Member agrees with himself.
By contrast, my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) tells me of an engineering firm in his constituency that, due to the mountains of Brexit red tape, now finds it far easier to trade with South Korea than with Europe. This is not just damaging, but frankly absurd. The one thing that the Government will not do that is guaranteed to deliver growth is negotiate a bespoke customs union with the EU, yet they are hiking national insurance for businesses, stifling investment and refusing to support the most vulnerable in our society by not scrapping the two-child benefit cap or safeguarding personal independence payments.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I agree with my right hon. Friend, and that is why it was an extremely ominous portent that the Minister at the Dispatch Box refused to answer him on the question of whether there would be alignment or subjection to the European Court of Justice. If the referendum was about one thing, it was about taking back control of our laws. In fact, many of us in the leave campaign at the time argued that the British people do understand sovereignty—they certainly did by the end of the referendum—and getting into permanent alignment of regulation or subjecting the meaning of laws applied in the United Kingdom to the scrutiny and jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice is giving back control. It is a dangerous thing for a Government elected on the principle of honouring the referendum result, and one who are now playing dog-whistle politics with immigration, to be backsliding in secret, with a sleight of hand, into allowing jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and permanent alignment back into our law while pretending that is not happening. That is exactly what the Minister did at the Dispatch Box.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I will give way to my right hon. Friend, but I have another point that I wish to make.
Mr Francois
My hon. Friend will well remember that during the referendum a booklet was circulated to every household in the United Kingdom, which famously said:
“This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.”
The people decided to leave, and some in this place spent three years trying to frustrate their decision. In that context, is he concerned that today the Minister blatantly refused three times to answer a straight question about whether the Government would concede dynamic alignment at the summit? Is that not the sort of duplicitous behaviour that made the public so angry in the first place?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I agree. But there is another dangerous game being played by another political party: the Liberal Democrats. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) pressed the hon. Member for Lewes (James MacCleary), who wants to rejoin the European Union, on whether there would be another referendum, and he did not say that there would be. That we would have a referendum to leave the European Union but not require a new referendum to rejoin it would be incendiary politics for this country.
Why have people become disillusioned with their politicians? It is because politicians seem to agree to one proposition and then do something completely different from what was voted for. I hope we can all agree on one proposition: that there could be no possibility of a proposal to rejoin the European Union or to accept dynamic alignment or the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice—except over its current limited areas, which will eventually expire—without a further referendum. That is a serious matter.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he has a little while to go before he stands at the Dispatch Box. I am after the Minister, not him, but we will get to that in due course. The reality is that the Government could agree to dynamic alignment—there was no denial of that. Essentially, the Government are going into this negotiation knowing full well that they are so desperate on phytosanitary matters that they will give way on dynamic alignment. That is exactly what the EU wants.
My real worry in all of this, however, is that we know what is going on—I will just move on to another topic, and then I will sit down and give other Members a chance to speak. Most of all, I am worried about bad faith. When we talked about improvements—which, to be fair to the Government, they did with the European Union—what did France do almost immediately? The Prime Minister is showing some leadership over Ukraine, trying to galvanise the other nations, which is his role. His role is to haul America and keep it with us, and he has been doing that. I do not have any criticism of that, but when the Prime Minister got involved, saying that Europe should form a coalition of the willing and that he wanted to drive that further forward and get some kind of agreement on it, what did France immediately say? “Not before you give us access to fishing.” That was it. In no world does fishing have anything to do with defence, yet France weaponised fishing to block off the UK, which had taken the—I think—generous position of saying that it wanted to galvanise Europe to do more.
The problem here is that if we take out the countries that joined since the Ukraine war, Europe across the board spends half of what the United States does on defence in dollar terms. We have more people and more industry in Europe, yet we spend half of what America does on weaponry and defence. That is a shocking position for a member of NATO to be in. We have not stood up. We have done better—still not good enough—but what the rest of Europe has done has been shocking. By the way, the country that just told us that we will not get any discussions unless fishing is on the agenda has been one of the worst spenders on defence in the European Union, let alone in global terms.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
Way less than us, and less than most of the others—it is at the bottom of the scale. I simply say to the Government that the Prime Minister is right to press on defence, to get the European nations to step up, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) said earlier, we have a mechanism for that. The Prime Minister is right to do it through NATO, and we must not allow Europe to slide away from NATO as its means of defence.
I watched, as did many of its leaders, when Vice-President Vance lectured the European Union in Munich. What he said shocked the European leaders, as it was meant to—he laid into Europe quite vindictively—but fair enough. However, where we are now heading, towards somehow encouraging those countries peculiarly to form some kind of European Union defence organisation, is exactly what will give the American Administration permission to say, “Well, you can do this yourself.” We are already halfway there, by the way, because we are forming a coalition of the willing but America is not willing, and we are at odds with it over its relationship with Ukraine. We agreed about the ceasefire, but America has now changed its position and will now be holding negotiations before a ceasefire. I think that that is wrong, by the way. Although I am personally a big supporter of America, I think it is mistaken on that particular point and the Government are right.
My point is that we are putting the whole of NATO at risk for a phytosanitary and fishing deal. In what world does anyone do that? What are we doing it for? The answer, it seems to me, is that we are too desperate to curry favour with an organisation that, when push comes to shove and when it comes to defence, needs us more than we need it. It needs the UK to be locked into this because we are the key to so much of what it needs to do with defence. I say to the Government, “You have much stronger tools in your hand than you may think.” We have key persuasive powers on defence, and we should not sell them on the basis that they should become European and we should destroy NATO, or damage NATO, simply because we want to make some kind of adjustment or improvement which includes dynamic alignment and the loss of the possibility of future trade negotiation.
Stephen Gethins
Seventeen billion is less than half the amount lost from the public finances. Those are not my figures, but the Labour Mayor of London’s figures. That is money lost without getting anything back in return, and the Scottish Government has lost £300 million in money that has not come from regional structural funds.
Let me turn to devolution and sovereignty. The EU is a Union fit for the 21st century. The UK is barely a Union fit for the 18th century, because it has not been modernised since. We have a Brexit deal that ripped up the devolution settlement, which Scottish Labour and others spoke out against but which has now been imposed on the devolved Administrations in a way that the EU could never do to its member states. I remind Members that not one of the 27 independent, sovereign member states of the EU consider themselves any less independent or sovereign for being a member of the European Union—not one of them. Just one did, and it is this British nationalist exceptionalism that is so utterly damaging to everybody in the UK.
The most sovereign country in the world is North Korea, because we give up a tiny bit of sovereignty with deals. All these other states that see themselves as sovereign—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) talks of Ukraine. Ukraine wants to join the EU. He talks of democracy. The democrats in Georgia and Moldova drape themselves in European flags because they see that as the future of the rule of law, democracy and greater wealth for their country. Every country that has joined the EU got better off. The one country that left got worse off, and its citizens had fewer rights.
We all have to recognise that the EU is a security actor, and a majority of European states now see the EU and NATO as the twin pillars of security. Those sovereign states see that. While I welcome the UK Government’s steadfast support for Ukraine—both the current and previous Administrations—we are not realistic about the challenges we face. Putin’s Russia fears the EU. That is why we saw the initial war in Ukraine in 2014, because of the EU accession agreement. We know that, and everyone else gets it except those in the United Kingdom. The EU provides food security and energy security for its members, and sitting outside leaves us more isolated and less secure. Why is the UK so exceptional? What makes the UK so special? How is it that everybody else has got it wrong, but the UK has somehow got it right? It is a piece of nonsense that is damaging us all.
Turning to young people, I am getting tired of hearing Labour talk about youth mobility schemes. I would like the Minister to tell me whether a youth mobility scheme will be put in place, and then say how it will compare with the free movement we all enjoyed when we were in the EU. We are leaving younger generations with fewer rights and opportunities than we ourselves enjoyed, and that is a failure of our political generation—an abject failure.
I am sorry to say that the Prime Minister’s rhetoric yesterday feeds into that. That he was called out by Lord Dubs, a Labour Member of the House of Lords, and yet praised by the leader of Alternative for Germany should surely give Labour Members some cause for reflection—some cause to reflect on how others are seeing them right now. I would expect such rhetoric from Reform and others, but I did not expect it from the Labour party and I say to Labour Members, “I’m sorry, I oppose you sometimes and you stood against me, but I did not expect that from the Labour party.”
The worst part of this is that we are getting it from a Labour Government who do not really believe in what they are doing. I know that from working with them over the years. They do not believe in the damage this is doing. What is damaging us in politics right now is that people are standing up for things they do not really believe in. They do not say what they believe in. They might say, “I believe in leaving the European Union”—(Interruption.) The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) talks about Parliament—I just heard that—in a Parliament where we do not have an idea of British sovereignty. The definition of Scottish sovereignty—I would encourage him to read MacCormick v. Lord Advocate—is different from the idea of English sovereignty, because the supremacy of Parliament does not exist.
Mr Francois
I think it is fair to say that in the years I have been here generally most people have known what I believed in, but is the reason the hon. Gentleman is so incredibly angry this afternoon because, from his point of view, he lost not only one referendum, but two: on Scottish independence and then on the European Union?
Stephen Gethins
I will concede the point. I know what the right hon. Gentleman believes in. I was not surprised that he wanted to take me on not on the substance of what I said but rather on some of the semantics, because as the Secretary of State for Scotland said, a democracy ceases to be a democracy when it ceases to have the ability to change its mind.
My appeal would be this: yes, I believe in independence; I believe that the European Union provides a model that the UK Union does not. That is something I believe in, and some Members disagree with me and I respect them for that, and I know that Scottish Labour Members disagree with me on that, and I respect them for that as well. What I struggle with is that we know this is a bad deal with Europe. We know that staying outside the customs union and the single market is making us poorer every day. I would encourage Members to stand up and put the case of what they believe in, because that is the way to return respect back into politics—not repeat what has been said in the past, but truly look to the future.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to contribute to this important debate on the forthcoming UK-EU summit next Monday. As someone who has, I hope the House will concede, followed these matters reasonably closely for a number of years, I will focus on three broad areas. I will say something about the summit itself, make some points about the very worrying suggestion that we are about to waive a large part of our fishing rights, and raise my concerns and those of many others about the potential for so-called dynamic alignment by which the United Kingdom effectively would become a passive rule taker, despite voting peacefully and democratically to leave the European Union in the first place.
Before I do that, I pay a personal tribute to Sir Roy Stone, who has tragically passed away. He was a constituent of mine and lived just a few minutes away from me. I once inadvertently canvassed him some years ago during the local elections. As a highly professional public servant, he was completely inscrutable about his voting intentions. I subsequently worked with him closely for two years in the coalition Whips Office between 2010 and 2012. He was always very patient, especially with me. When I was the Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, he always gave well-informed and canny advice. He believed passionately in the institution of Parliament and the principle of representative democracy, which he served so well. Our thoughts and prayers are with his widow, Dawn, and her family. May he rest in peace and always be warmly remembered.
A crucial summit will take place between the leaders of the UK and the EU in London next month. I recall being told repeatedly during the referendum campaign that if we left the EU, we would be isolated and friendless. All the meetings that have taken place in London recently, including one with virtually every EU leader at Lancaster House regarding the so-called coalition of the willing, show how absolutely ludicrous that assertion was. However, according to multiple media reports, it seems as if this summit could involve some kind of defence pact between ourselves in the UK and the European Union. As I have Front-Bench responsibility for defence, I shall not dwell at length on those matters, but hopefully we will have a lot more to say on them next week once the details of any such agreement have been made public and, crucially, we have had an opportunity to read the small print.
Nevertheless, I am sure that the Government’s tactic will be to try to talk almost exclusively about defence as a form of camouflage to mask likely concessions both on our fishing rights and, potentially, relating to our food. When the British people voted democratically to leave the European Union some nine years ago, they did so in order to decide their destiny for themselves. It would be completely against the spirit of the referendum, under the guise of some kind of reset with the EU, to surrender that principle next week. Moreover, after the absolute chaos of the Labour Government’s proposed Chagos deal, the Spanish Foreign Minister asserted only yesterday that the UK should make concessions over the sovereignty of Gibraltar as part of our reset at the summit. This is despite the fact that the Gibraltarians themselves voted by a majority of 99% to maintain the current position in their own referendum on the subject, a margin so emphatic that even the SNP would have to accept it.
On fishing, in early 2020 during Boris Johnson’s premiership, the United Kingdom agreed what was known as the trade and co-operation agreement between the UK and the EU. While there has been much recent talk of trade deals, including with India and now the US, the TCA was in effect a major, comprehensive trade deal with the EU, negotiated in the context of having left the European Union. For the benefit of the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), who is no longer in his place, that agreement was 1,245 pages long—I know, because I read it. In essence, the TCA guaranteed virtually tariff-free trade between the UK and the EU. Moreover, the fact that we had left the EU, including the customs union, meant that we were able to negotiate unilateral trade deals of our own around the world.
Mr Francois
In a moment.
While we were in the customs union, it was possible to negotiate those agreements only collectively via the auspices of the EU. That is a fundamental difference. It is important to note that by using this critical Brexit freedom, we have been able to negotiate almost 80 independent trade deals with nations around the world since we left the EU, including important Commonwealth partners such as Australia, New Zealand, and now India. We have also joined the trans-Pacific partnership, which materially improves our access to Asian markets worth trillions of dollars. Moreover—
Mr Francois
If the hon. Lady will let me finish this point, I promise I will do so, but I want to enjoy this bit.
We now have the delightful visage of our ambassador to the United States, one Lord Mandelson, having to acknowledge through metaphorically gritted teeth that we have been able to negotiate a trade deal with the United States—albeit one that is limited in scope—only because we left his beloved European Union. I think our Peter is struggling with that.
I will give way to the hon. Lady, who has been patient.
Catherine Fookes
If those trade deals were such sunlit uplands and such wonderful deals, can the right hon. Member explain to me why our seafood exports to the EU plummeted by 80% since the Brexit deal? Why did that happen on his watch, if that deal was so good?
Mr Francois
The hon. Lady pre-empts me. If she will give me a moment, I will get to fishing very shortly.
The TCA—part 2, heading 5—contains transition arrangements relating to fishing. In essence, the TCA allowed for a period of over five years during which there would be temporary arrangements on access to UK waters by EU fishing fleets. After that, under international maritime arrangements, the United Kingdom would become solely responsible for its own territorial waters, out to 200 nautical miles in some places. As this transition period is now approaching its expiration in 2026, the EU is pushing very hard to maintain its access to our fishing waters and—it would seem—even to expand its access in certain cases, were we naive enough to give in. It would be a complete betrayal of our fishermen if the United Kingdom Labour Government were now to grant major concessions to the EU in what will become indisputably our own sovereign waters once again come 2026.
Mr Francois
In a second—the bourgeoisie will have to wait. While our sovereign rights are enshrined in both the TCA itself and wider maritime law, we have yet to see the final details of whatever Faustian pact the Government have agreed with the EU on fishing. However, our fishermen and those of us on the Opposition Benches —although not Reform Members, who are not here—will be watching the Government very closely, and will be highly alert to the prospect of a sell-out on fish.
We then come to veterinary matters and SPS—and ultimately, therefore, food—which would involve the United Kingdom in a process known as dynamic alignment. In essence, this means that if the EU were in any way to change or modify its rules in those areas, we would in turn be compelled to follow the EU, regardless of the wishes of our own Parliament. In other words, we would become a “rule taker” in those areas, even though we have left the European Union. Moreover, it seems that these arrangements would apply throughout the United Kingdom, and in the event of a dispute, that would be arbitrated by the European Court of Justice rather than the UK Supreme Court or even an international tribunal.
Mr Francois
In a moment.
To have left the EU but submit to becoming a passive rule taker would be entirely contrary to the spirit of the 2016 referendum. That is why, time and again today, no Minister will admit that the Government are going to do it next week.
Mr Francois
No.
When Labour talked about a “reset” in its general election manifesto, there was absolutely no reference to rule taking as part of any such accommodation. Labour would therefore be giving away our rights, entirely without the consent of the British people. That must be fiercely resisted and, if necessary, overturned. Moreover, there is the prospect of additional concessions over everything from so-called youth mobility schemes—a euphemism for a return to freedom of movement in another guise—to capitulation over net zero mechanisms and, specifically, the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM, which would make our remaining industries even more internationally uncompetitive than the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband) has achieved to date.
As someone who sat here during the last Parliament—as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) kindly mentioned—and witnessed, night after night and week after week, the then Labour shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, now the Prime Minister, pulling every procedural trick from the depths of Erskine May in order to try to keep the United Kingdom in the European Union at almost any price and despite the referendum, I am in no way surprised that his Government are now attempting this act of capitulation. Our Prime Minister has always been a passionate Europhile; in short, he remains a remainer in his heart of hearts, and he always will.
What the Labour Government are up to—and I say again that they will try to use a defence pact in order to hide it—is beginning a process of gradually taking us back towards and even back into the European Union, if they think they can get away with it. They will never risk another referendum, because in 2016, almost up to the last minute, the polls were showing that remain might win, but when it came to it, the British people had the temerity to vote to govern themselves, despite the best efforts of the British Establishment and “Project Fear”. What they will do is try to take us back in very gradually, via a process of grandmother’s footsteps, or, to make another analogy, trying to boil a frog slowly. If they get away with submission next week, despite their manifesto commitments, they will eventually try to take us back into the single market—although, no doubt, under some other name—and if they can get away with that, they will suggest that we might as well rejoin the customs union. They will put the argument to the British people that we are so far back into the blooming thing that we might as well go the whole hog and rejoin it entirely—all without a vote or the consent of the people of the United Kingdom, at any stage, whatsoever.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I just want to draw something out. Dynamic alignment is not a small thing; it is huge, because it is rule taking. Can my right hon. Friend imagine our engaging in any other trade arrangement—with the United States or Australia, for instance, or the trans-Pacific partnership—and being in a position where we had to say, “We will accept your rules and your adjudication”?
Mr Francois
It would be far better to do this via a process of mutual enforcement, of which my right hon. Friend has always been a staunch advocate. When the Minister sums up the debate, we will ask him if he will rule out, very clearly, any prospect of dynamic alignment at the summit next week.
Mr Francois
In a moment.
This is a yes or no question. Perhaps the Minister, at that time—because he would not answer my right hon. Friend’s question yesterday—will give us an honest answer to an honest question. In fact, if he wants to do it now I will give way to him. A stunning silence! Well, as he has not the guts to get up, I will give way to his Back Bencher.
Ben Coleman
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his nomenclature, and I am most grateful to my Jacobin friend for taking my intervention. I did not want him to finish without having the opportunity to answer the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) put to him. Exports of UK seafood to the European Union have fallen by 80% since Brexit, and there have been lots of new checks, and there is lots of new paperwork and bureaucracy. What does he put that down to? Exports of seafood have collapsed. Does he put that down to Brexit, or to something else?
Mr Francois
People have made market choices, but under the common fisheries policy, we had the absurdity of so-called discards. Our fishermen had to throw fish, many of which were already dead, back into the sea in order to comply with the absurdities of the CFP. Hopefully, we will never return to that.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
This is something that I have looked at quite closely. The reason for the collapse is that the United Kingdom is not in the internal market, so we do not give direct applicability and direct effect to EU SPS laws. The EU procedure is to check every consignment of shellfish coming into the EU to see if it complies with EU standards, even though the provisions in EU law on clean rivers, clean beaches and clean water all exist in the United Kingdom, and our provisions are probably of a superior standard to those that apply in much of the EU.
Mr Francois
I defer to my hon. Friend, who is clearly a subject matter expert.
I will conclude, because others want a chance to speak. The Labour Government will go for dynamic alignment. They will sign us up as a passive rule-taker at the behest of the EU, despite the British people voting in 2016 to take back control of their laws. I have absolutely no doubt that if the Labour Government get away with this surrender summit early next week, that is precisely what they will do. It is therefore very important that we alert the British people, and the media that serve them, to exactly what Labour is up to, in an attempt to expose the situation and prevent it getting any worse.
In summary, we will not allow our obsessively Europhile Prime Minister—in this context, our “white flag” man—to surrender our right to govern ourselves. This surrender to the EU has absolutely no democratic mandate, and we will oppose it tooth and nail. If necessary, we will eventually overturn it. Remember what the booklet in the referendum said:
“This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.”
The British people decided to take back control of their own laws. It is not for Labour to give them away.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
In human affairs, there is a persistent fascination with novelty. It is curious that people clamour for what is different—for the other, whatever that other might look like. It is this fascination that leads to the similar interest in—indeed, preoccupation with—internationalism, even to the point where that means giving up power to someone beyond these shores. It is a damaging preoccupation. At its most curious, it leads to the peculiarity of—I am sorry the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins) is not here, because he made a remarkably articulate speech, as I told him afterwards—a representative of a nationalist party making the case against nationalism, and a Member who believes in sovereignty making the argument that sovereignty does not really matter, although he did qualify that by saying that sovereignty in Scotland meant something different. He and I will no doubt have an opportunity to debate that at some length in future.
That fascination fuelled the sentiment that, after the referendum, pervaded the Labour Benches and the Liberals; it is a matter of record that I do not have a liberal bone in my body of any kind, whether socially, culturally, politically or economically, and I shall make the case against free trade in a few moments. As a result of that fascination, the cadre of people who populate a good deal of the establishment—the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) will know this, because a lot of the establishment live in his constituency; it is not surprising that they picked one of their own, really—could not bear to come to terms with the result of the referendum. For the people had spoken! And of course, the people’s will directly contradicted the assumptions—the presumptions—of that establishment, which they had foisted on the people for donkeys’ years.
I do not say, by the way, that all the guilt lies on the other side of the Chamber. This began with Harold Macmillan, and then was carried on by Ted Heath, who sold out our fishermen. It went on and on; the gallery of villains is almost endless. One thinks of Roy Jenkins. There were noble exceptions, including Labour’s Peter Shore, and Tony Benn, who made the case for national self-government in what my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) told me was one of the best speeches he has heard in this Chamber in his years here. On our side, there were noble exceptions, too. Enoch Powell stands proud among those, but there were many others. [Interruption.] There was Michael Foot, of course, on the other side. I will not go into the whole list, Madam Deputy Speaker, just in case you thought I was going to. I was thinking of our lamented friend Sir Bill Cash, who gave such great service. He was seen as a bit of an outsider for the great bulk of his career, and then, in the last part of it, was proved right. My goodness, what is better than that in politics? They say all political careers end in failure, but Bill Cash’s didn’t; his political career ended in success.
Mr Francois
It has not ended yet. Sir Bill is a sprightly 83, and he has been texting some of us throughout the debate. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that Sir Bill’s great success was the sovereignty clause, which finally said, after years of campaigning, that this Parliament is sovereign? That is on the statute book because of Bill.
Sir John Hayes
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right; Sir Bill’s political career has not ended; his parliamentary one has. I can, like my right hon. Friend, acknowledge that Sir Bill has texted me this afternoon, along with no doubt many others—[Interruption.]—including my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, I just gathered. This tension—between the will of the people as expressed in the 2016 referendum, and the prevailing assumptions of what I described earlier as the liberal establishment—underpins this debate.
In the spirit of generosity, which I tend to employ—there are exceptions, by the way; Members can intervene on me, if they like—I note that there are those on the Government Benches, such as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), who acknowledge, albeit grudgingly, that the referendum result cannot be reversed and that we cannot go back into the EU. That was not what those people said immediately after the referendum, of course. They fought hard for ages to try to frustrate the outcome. They used every parliamentary technique they could conjure, as well as extra-parliamentary techniques, including well-funded legal cases, to try to derail Brexit.
The scepticism personified by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), who said she was doubtful about the Government’s intent, is well founded. I know that the Minister will want to reassure us, when he rises at the end of the debate, that that scepticism—in his case, at least—will not prove to be a prediction of what might happen next. Scepticism is well founded, though, because of the history. It was a Labour politician who said, “You don’t need a crystal ball when you’ve got the record book”—Aneurin Bevan, of course. We have the record book when it comes to Labour, and, worse still, when it comes to the Liberal Democrats.
I hope the Minister will be crystal clear, as he has been invited to be throughout the debate, on dynamic alignment, or, as I think it would be better described, dynamic realignment: realigning our relationship with the EU. Such alignment would bring us closer not to our friends and neighbours in Europe—of course, co-operation and collaboration is a natural part of mature policies—but to the EU, in terms of governance, regulation, law, interference in our affairs and, crucially, jurisdiction. It is the exercise of authority that we are really debating here—not the ability or, indeed, the willingness to share, but the danger of succumbing to a power that takes authority further and further from the British people.
The hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) talked about some of the challenges the world faces and the answers to those global challenges. He was right to do so, by the way; I thought the first half of his speech was very good, although it got worse as it went on. The answer to those challenges is not to become more globalist or to give in to the forces he described that exert power in an unaccountable way, but to bring power back to the people.
When those of us who advocated Brexit spoke of taking back control, we did so partly because we wanted power to be vested in this Parliament, which is accountable to the people whom that power affects. You, Madam Deputy Speaker, are almost a model for this, and others would do well to follow your model. We are answerable to and known by our constituents; they understand that we make decisions on their behalf. New Members of the House will be coming to terms with what that means and its relentlessness. I do not mind it myself, but I can see how it could wear down souls less forceful and robust than me. It is that constant interaction with our constituents that is the lifeblood of democracy.
Whoever knew who their Member of the European Parliament was? I could not remember who the Tories were, let alone the Members from the other parties. People certainly did not enjoy that kind of intimate relationship and sense of mutual ownership when we were members of the EU. We feel as though we own our constituencies and they feel as though they own us, and quite right too. [Interruption.] I am being chided, Madam Deputy Speaker. I first heard of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) when he arrived here—I never knew who he was before then. I say that without disrespect.
