Article 50 Extension

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I do agree with that. The reputation of the Minister for the Cabinet Office in this House is that he is someone in whom others invest assurance and confidence because of what he says and the way in which he says it. It may also have been some preparation for the meaningful vote to come back this Tuesday with the message, “If you don’t vote for it next Tuesday, then the Government will have to apply for a different extension.” There was at least that dual purpose.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

The emphasis on the word “short” is subjective, because for many people short is long and long is short—[Interruption.] It is by definition subjective. Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman is comparing one statement of “short” with another statement of “long”, but the matter is purely subjective even in that case.

[Keir Starmer]

I suppose that I accept the proposition that one person’s short may be another person’s long, but the words of the Minister for the Cabinet Office did not come in isolation or out of the blue; they came in the middle of a debate, which was quite heated at times, about what the motion meant and how we should interpret it. I do not think that anyone who was in that debate would, in all honesty, doubt what the Minister for the Cabinet Office was saying and what he meant by it, and I took

“a short and, critically, one-off extension”—[Official Report, 14 March 2019; Vol. 656, c. 566.]

to mean an extension for up to three months with a cliff-edge at the end.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Barclay]

My hon. Friend is right to say that businesses in Taunton Deane and, I am sure, elsewhere have made clear their desire to see this deal backed and to address the uncertainty that we face. People have been saying to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that she should compromise. She has compromised—she did not want to have an extension. She has listened and acted on that, but the House has to compromise.

[Mark Pritchard]

Is not the only way to avoid no deal to vote for the withdrawal agreement, and the only way to vote against a long extension is to vote for the withdrawal agreement? Is there not some intellectual inconsistency in the Opposition’s argument? They say they want to put a vote back to the people based on a deal, but they are suggesting that the Prime Minister does not really want a deal and wants no deal. That is not consistent.

[Stephen Barclay]

My hon. Friend is right that not only the Prime Minister but the EU says that the only deal on the table after over two years of negotiation is the deal that she has negotiated.