Gurkha Pensions

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Thank you, Dr Huq. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, and I am grateful to speak in this very important debate. In the time available to me, I would like to make three points: to add my support to the points made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) to pay tribute to the Gurkhas and their service to this country over nearly two centuries; to point out the high level of local support in Reading and Woodley for this community and their valued service; and to call on the Minister, to whose speech I am looking forward, to respond in detail to the issues raised.

First, I would like to spend a few moments paying tribute to the Gurkhas. They have given long and loyal service to this country, and it is worth mentioning some of the military history in a brief form. They were vital in world war one. That is less well known than their service in world war two, in which they played a crucial role in the defence of India. And they have taken part in many recent conflicts, defending this country and our interests overseas. Those include, obviously, the Falklands, Afghanistan and many others in between. We owe a debt of honour to these brave soldiers, and I hope that the Minister, who I obviously know is a gallant gentleman, will respond in an appropriate way.

I would like to point out, as colleagues have, the very high level of support in my community and to dwell on some examples of its support for the Gurkhas. I want to add that I was privileged some years ago to visit Nepal, where I was overwhelmed by the generosity of the local people and the wonderful support that they give to foreign visitors to their beautiful country.

Reading has a population of nearly 3,000 Gurkha and Nepalese people. As the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) mentioned, that is common in our part of southern England, close to Aldershot. Many are retired Gurkhas, although not all; we have some highly skilled migrants from Nepal as well. Many of them live on relatively modest incomes. We have a number of pre-1997 pensioners, living on very modest incomes in what is a high-cost area in the south-east of England. Many work in crucial local public services—as colleagues have said—such as in the NHS at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, for Reading Buses, where many serve as bus drivers, and in many other forms of public service, and indeed in local businesses. We are proud to have many small local businesses linked to the Gurkha community.

I would like to pay a very special tribute to one particular former soldier, Warrant Officer Gyanraj Rai, who has played a crucial part in this campaign, as colleagues will have mentioned; indeed, many colleagues here today will have met Gyanraj Rai because he has been on hunger strike not once but twice in the last 10 years. I first met him in 2013, when I was the Labour parliamentary candidate for the Reading East constituency, and I have to say that he is the most gallant gentleman. I pay tribute to him and all the other local people who have taken part in this campaign. Our hearts are with them and we wish them well in their endeavours. Gyanraj Rai has conducted himself with the utmost gallantry and dignity in this very difficult period. I should add that that obviously includes the recent hunger strike, when he was outside No. 10 Downing Street for a number of days, suffering greatly, as were the other hunger strikers.

I hope that the Government will now hear this plea and do what local communities, in their own way, have done to support our British Gurkhas. In Reading, we have excellent support from Reading Borough Council: it has given veterans priority in the council house waiting list. We have had other support from charities and from the community. There has been a wide range of forms of help, such as helping elderly veterans and particularly their families to learn English; there have been a number of other forms of support. There is huge support and appetite for continuing that and helping people to integrate into society in this country. I hope the Minister will reflect on that when he speaks later.

In conclusion, I want to ask the Minister to address these difficult issues. I appreciate the matter is hugely difficult and technical, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North mentioned, but it is high time the Government investigate further and begin a dialogue with the Nepalese Government, and continue and deepen their dialogue with the veterans. I look forward to the Minister’s speech.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

We have made good time. We have come to the last of the Back Benchers, but we will have to suspend at 7 o’clock. Let us see how far we get. I call Jim Shannon.

COP26

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that, but we are going beyond hydrocarbons faster than virtually any other country in the world and she should be proud of that.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the COP President for his work. Will the Prime Minister now indicate how he is going to put pressure on the major coal producers and importers, and indeed how he will use UK trade policy to achieve that?

[The Prime Minister]

We will hold all coal producers, importers and mining countries around the world to their commitments to reduce our global dependence on coal. They have made them in black and white in the Glasgow climate pact and we will hold them to account.

Judicial Review and Courts Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright). As someone with no legal training, I always enjoy listening to people with legal training who make clear what the issues are. I hope the Government listen carefully to the concerns that he has raised about part 1 of the Bill. As always, the Government are putting forward perfectly reasonable proposals and mixing them up with something that is very controversial. On the Opposition side of the House, we are not at all convinced that this Bill is anything other than an attack on the most vulnerable and most marginalised in our society, and we want to protect them.

The Government claim that this Bill will hand additional tools to judges. What the Bill actually does is restrict judicial review. Judicial review is working well in this country. Although these proposals might not go as far as many feared, I remind colleagues of Lord Neuberger’s words that judicial review

“is what ensures that the executive arm of government keeps to the law and that individual rights are protected”.

Government accountability is fundamental to our democratic society. That is the principle on which Liberal Democrats oppose this Bill.

Taken against the Government’s broader programme of constitutional reform, it is difficult to see this Bill as anything other than part of a concerted effort to take power away from individuals and to stop them holding Governments to account. In the past year, we have seen: the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which restricts people’s rights to peaceful assembly and protest; voter ID proposals under the Elections Bill that stop people from vulnerable and marginalised backgrounds from exercising their democratic right to vote; and attempts to weaken the Human Rights Act 1998 and the UK’s commitment to the European convention on human rights. Now we have a Bill that limits people’s ability to hold Governments to account through the courts.

Key elements within the Bill are particularly concerning. Clause 2 permits the courts to abolish Cart judicial reviews and imposes de facto ouster clauses. That removes a vital safeguard in situations where tribunals make mistakes. We have heard about that several times already this afternoon. The vast majority—92%—of Cart judicial reviews are immigration and asylum cases. Many of the remaining cases concern access to benefits for disabled people and other people facing destitution. Those are all situations where the stakes are incredibly high for the people involved.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making a fascinating speech and some very strong points. Does she agree that there is now an established body of judicial review going back a number of years that seems to demonstrate that this particular area of law has allowed the Executive to be held to account by the most vulnerable and weakest in our society? Does she also agree that an additional benefit, as mentioned by the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), is that it focuses the minds of those working in Government—in particular those in the civil service and Ministers—to provide better quality decision making in the first place?

[Wera Hobhouse]

This issue absolutely is about that particular section of society who seem to be under attack in this case. Decisions have been made where those people should have been supported in the first place, and then they do not even have a comeback under the law, and that is just wrong.

What is more, the low success rate, which the Government are using to defend their plans, massively understates the number of Cart judicial reviews that secure a positive outcome for the claimant. Scrapping Cart judicial reviews goes against everything that a fair-minded liberal democracy stands for. We Liberal Democrats will never cease to stand up for such rights.

The Government state in their press release that

“it is expected that the legal text that removes the Cart judgment will serve as a framework that can be replicated in other legislation.”

In other words, they are admitting that the Bill is the thin end of the wedge and that it could open the door to more ouster clauses in the future, which would create whole areas of Government action that could not be judicially reviewed, making them immune from accountability through the courts.

Liberty has described the Bill as

“part of this Government’s bid to make itself…untouchable.”

The Law Society warns that the Bill

“should ring alarm bells for people who come up against the might of the state.”

There can be no justification for such a Bill in a democratic society. I urge colleagues across the House to vote against it.

Afghanistan

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton). I echo her tribute to her four colleagues and, indeed, I will pay my own tribute to armed forces personnel later in my speech.

I appreciate that time is brief, so I want to address the key points and raise three issues. First, I thank colleagues across the House for the generous and sensible way in which we have debated these important matters with one another, and I associate myself with the remarks by the Leader of the Opposition, by the former Prime Minister, and by the Chairs of the Select Committees on Defence and on Foreign Affairs and, indeed, by colleagues across the House who served in Afghanistan.

First, I pay tribute to the forces; secondly, I want to highlight some key outstanding humanitarian issues, as other colleagues have done; and, thirdly, I will touch briefly on some of the possible lessons, although we are in the early stages of assessing those. Paying tribute to those who served, I want to make it clear that from my perspective—I believe that this is felt across the House and the country—those who gave their life and paid the ultimate price did not do so in vain. We have had 20 years in which terrorism in Afghanistan has been kept under control. The threat of spectacular attacks on the west such as the twin towers attack has been removed from that country. We now face a new situation that we must address, and I will come on to that.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about the threat of terrorism now that the Taliban are back in power. Does he share my concern about the fact that the Taliban are the world’s biggest drug cartel, producing 85% of the world’s heroin, which is something that will have an impact on our communities, as production is set to soar under their control?

[Matt Rodda]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point, and I agree with her concern, which I share deeply.

On the benefits of the 20 years of intervention, it is important to recognise—this has been recognised across the House—the significant benefits in Afghanistan of our commitment to that country, and to consider and reflect on that, as well as the huge achievements that were made in that time. We should not lose sight of that. It is vital that we support our veterans, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and many other speakers have said. It is crucial that we support them as we go through the next, very difficult phase.

I am grateful for the time I have for this speech, and I shall quickly address the other points I wish to make. Turning to the humanitarian crisis, we were all deeply shocked by the scenes at the airport. I am pleased that the Government have made further commitments today. I would like further detail, and I hope that there will not be any backsliding. It is really important that we live up to our international obligations. As many colleagues have said, we need to find ways of smoothing out and removing unnecessary bureaucracy so that we can live up to our obligations to people who have served this country and key members of civil society who are highly likely targets of the Taliban regime.

Finally, let me turn briefly to the lessons. It is far too early to address them in any detail whatever, but I would like to raise some poignant questions that I hope we can all reflect on. The strategy quite clearly needs to be re-examined, as many other people have mentioned. That is an international matter, but it is also a matter for the British Government as the key ally of the US. We also need to consider the immediate period running up to this crisis and reflect on the management of key Government Departments, and, indeed, the role of Prime Minister at that time.

His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is an honour to have the opportunity to speak in the debate and add my tribute to those made by Members across the House. I think we have all been moved by the warm and touching tributes made today, and I hope that the Queen and the royal family will be able to take some comfort from the deep affection for Prince Philip in this House.

I have particularly enjoyed listening to some of the anecdotes about visits and meetings spanning many years of the Duke’s service. Service was, indeed, a great theme of the Duke of Edinburgh’s life. It was a constant in all our lives and an example that I believe will live on into the future. It was public service rooted in a profound sense of duty typical of the wartime generation—the Duke had served with great bravery and distinction in world war two—and for Prince Philip, that deep sense of public service was expressed in many ways. First and foremost, he served the Queen. He was, as she said, her “strength and stay” throughout their life together. He also played an important role in supporting his children and the royal family as a whole, and I have been deeply moved by many of the tributes about his role, which has been spelled out in some detail in the media over the weekend.

It is also worth remembering that he used his role to support a wide range of very important causes, and I would like to focus on two examples. The first is Prince Philip’s work to protect the environment and encourage conservation, which was and continues to be hugely important. It is worth remembering that he helped to establish the World Wide Fund for Nature and then served as its president for 20 years. He championed environmentalism before it achieved the prominence it has today.

The second very important area, which has been drawn out by some Members, is the importance of young people to him. That was demonstrated quite simply by the time he spent putting young people at ease on visits—a skill that showed real empathy and an understanding of younger people—but it is probably best summed up by the lasting contribution he made through establishing the Duke of Edinburgh’s award. I hope that the award and many other aspects of his work, particularly his work to protect the environment, will thrive and provide a fitting legacy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) said.

He was a unique public servant. For British people, the Commonwealth and across the world, Prince Philip made an incredible contribution. He was, for many of us, a constant throughout our lives. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak today, and on behalf of my constituents, I would like to offer our deepest condolences to the Queen and the entire royal family at this difficult time.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

A few months after 9/11, I went to a service in New York where one of our Ministers, Jack Straw, was representing the Government, and he read those poignant words on behalf of the Queen:

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

Anybody who has lost someone knows how poignant those words are, and we all stand along with the Queen, the country and the Commonwealth in grieving the loss of His Royal Highness.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I am glad that there is a deal and I will vote for the Bill to implement it, because a deal is far better than no deal. That is the right thing to do. But to pretend that the deal is not what it is is not being honest, and nor is it a base from which we can go forward. To pretend that there are no non-tariff barriers when there are is just not true. The Prime Minister will not just get up and say, “I got it wrong. I didn’t tell the truth when I was addressing the public.” [Interruption.] The Prime Minister says I do not know what I am talking about. His words were that there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade. Will there be no non-tariff barriers to trade, Prime Minister? Yes or no? The ox is now on his tongue, I see.

Whatever the Prime Minister says, there is very little protection for our services. That is a gaping hole in this deal. Ours is primarily a services economy. Services account for 80% of our economic output, and we have a trade surplus with the EU in services, but what we have in this text does not go beyond what was agreed with Canada or Japan. The lack of ambition is striking, and the result is no mutual recognition of professional qualifications. Talk to doctors, nurses, dentists, accountants, pharmacists, vets, engineers and architects about how they will practise now in other EU states, where they will have to have their qualifications agreed with each state separately with different terms and conditions. Anybody who thinks that that is an improvement really does need to look again at the deal.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Keir Starmer]

In just one minute.

The deal will make it harder to sell services into the EU and will create a huge disincentive for businesses to invest.

The very thin agreement on short business travel will make things much harder for artists and musicians, for example. Prime Minister, they want to hear what the answers to these questions are, not just comments from the Front Bench.

On financial services, even the Prime Minister himself has accepted—I do not know whether he will stick to this, or if it is one that he will not own now—that the deal does not go as far as we would have liked, so pretending that it is a brilliant deal just is not on. We have to rely on the bare bones of equivalence arrangements, many of which are not even in place, that could be unilaterally withdrawn at short notice. That is the reality of the situation. We are left to wonder: either the Prime Minister did not try to get a strong deal to protect our service economy, or he tried and failed. Which is it?

Let me turn to security. The treaty offers important protections when compared with the utter chaos of no deal, such as on DNA and fingerprints. There are third-party arrangements to continue working with Europol and Eurojust. I worked with Europol and Eurojust, so I know how important that is, but the treaty does not provide what was promised: a security partnership of unprecedented breadth and depth. It does not, and anybody today who thinks that it does has not read the deal. We will no longer have access to EU databases that allow for the sharing of real-time data, such as the Schengen information system for missing persons and objects. Anybody who thinks that that is not important needs to bear in mind that it is used on a daily basis. In 2019, it was accessed and consulted 600 million times by the UK police—600 million times. That is how vital it is to them. That is a massive gap in the deal, and the Prime Minister needs to explain how it will be plugged.

Let me turn to tariffs and quotas. The Prime Minister has made much of the deal delivering zero tariffs and zero quotas. It does—

Public Health

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be able to contribute this afternoon.

We undoubtedly face a very difficult and, indeed, challenging situation, and I support the Government’s approach. Cases of the virus are doubling every few days and, given the sheer pace of growth now, it is quite clear that they will outstrip the capacity of the NHS to respond. We cannot ignore the very serious position that we now face. These measures, however difficult, are necessary and, indeed, other options, such as the tiered system, have quite clearly now failed.

I pay tribute to all those who are contributing so bravely in the NHS and other services: our care workers, NHS workers, key workers, volunteers, and, indeed, other members of the community. This bravery and determination is impressive and it is being demonstrated by people who have been through this once already this year and, in some cases, during the summer and the early autumn as well.

I wish to raise a series of very specific points, to which I hope the Minister will be able to respond later. First and foremost, it would have been so much better had the Government acted sooner. The numbers were quite clear. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) mentioned earlier from the Dispatch Box, had this action been taken sooner, lives would have been saved and the economy protected. It is worth reflecting on that and I do hope that Ministers will reflect quite deeply on this issue and on the delay, which has been so unfortunate.

I hope the Secretary of State for Health will look into fixing the test and trace system. It is quite apparent that it is currently failing. There is a low rate of test and trace going on compared with what is needed. In my own area, we have seen some very serious problems, including delays in facilities coming to Reading and Woodley. We have also seen a very unfortunate incident in a care home, and I ask him to look again at whether it is possible to have a much greater capacity for testing in care homes, as people are particularly vulnerable at this time. I also ask him to look at the scope for far greater testing across the health and care system, perhaps looking in much greater detail at the scope for testing home visiting staff. Constituents have raised that with me with great concern. Elderly vulnerable residents would be reassured if there were more capacity for testing visitors coming into their homes.

There are a number of other measures, mainly economic and social measures, that I hope the Government as a whole will look into and that other Members have raised today. In particular, I mention the concerns of many self-employed people. I realise that Members across the House share this issue. Someone said to me only today, “I have paid in all my life through taxes and the national insurance system, and now—at a time of great need—I am not able to get anything back.” I hope that the Government look at the loopholes in the current measures, reconsider them and understand that there are people who may be missing out on support at this difficult time; I do appreciate that they are reviewing some of the measures.

I urge the Government also to look across sectors in the economy, not just at the most visible end of them. For example, measures have been put in place in the hospitality sector to support pubs, and it is right that they should be supported. Across the supply chain and other dependent businesses, though, there has been much less support. It is important that Ministers remember that and take further action to look at whole supply chains and sectors, and to understand that a wide range of businesses are under pressure at this difficult time.

Finally, I agree wholeheartedly with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras and others across the House about the importance of people being able to worship, and I hope that the restriction will be reviewed. I also hope that the contribution and value of sport to our society, to children and to people’s mental health is reconsidered.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 14th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood]

I think my constituents will expect a little bit better than that. They will expect the Government to get on with the job that they promised to do. The Government said they were going to deliver a Brexit deal, they said they had it ready, and my constituents do not expect them now to say that they made a mistake—that somehow it was not what they expected.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

At the heart of it, is not the issue that this whole thing comes across as a giant piece of bluff and bluster by a failing Prime Minister? As my hon. Friend rightly hints at, this is a means to distract the public from other immediate pressures. To make matters worse, it damages our reputation in the eyes of the world at a time, as Members have correctly pointed out, when we need to seek a trade agreement not only with the EU but with a number of other countries.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The timing is very interesting. We are at a point when many people are looking at the Government and are extremely worried about their incompetence and the way they are dealing with the current health crisis. With today’s debate and the Prime Minister’s position, well, people will wonder what is going on.

People will be baffled because every time they have listened to the news, watched politics on TV or opened a paper in recent days, they will have seen a senior Conservative MP, or a former Tory Attorney General, Prime Minister or Chancellor of the Exchequer, expressing grave concerns about the content of this Bill. Those concerns are not just from those who might be called “the usual suspects”—those who were remainers—because this is not about whether we leave the European Union. We have left. That argument is over. Their concern is that the Bill deliberately breaks international law, will prevent us from completing a deal with the EU in the very short time available to do so, and will have much wider ramifications for the future of our country. They are risking the UK’s reputation across the globe.

Many hon. Members have already asked how other countries, with whom we want and need to make trade deals, will trust a Prime Minister who, just a few short months after he negotiated and signed an agreement, now says that he intends to break its terms. We do not have to guess what they will think; we can see for ourselves the reaction from our friends and allies, including, as has already been said, from the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. If the Prime Minister really considers that this deal contains serious problems that could break up our country, why did he sign it? Why did he claim it was a great success? Had he not read it, or did he not understand it?

Of course, the dangers of the Bill are not just about the UK’s ability to negotiate trade deals; they are about the UK’s reputation and its moral authority. How can our Government seek to uphold the rule of law if we break it ourselves? How can we hold other nations to account on their treaty obligations on international standards when we disregard our own?

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I commend what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) and what has been said by many other Members, particularly the Leader of the Opposition. Let me also pause for a moment to convey my sincere tribute and deepest sympathies to the families who have been through the most appalling, absolutely dreadful experience over the past two years.

I want to reinforce some of the points made by colleagues from London, but also to make the point that this is a national problem, and a very serious one. It affects towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom. In my own area, Reading, several thousand people live in blocks of flats, some of which are very tall, and there is a significant expansion in the number of towers in the town. Those who travel there by train will see that a huge new tower block is being built right next to the station. There are plans for another enormous tower block on top of the Butts Centre, and the process is continuing as we rapidly urbanise and become more like an outer-London borough. Yet at the same time we face significant problems with cladding, and other fire safety issues which have not been fully discussed here today.

Immediately after Grenfell, four blocks with the unsafe cladding Members have been describing were identified in our town. Some of that is being rectified only now, two years after the disaster. Is it not awful that, in the fifth wealthiest country in the world, we cannot get our act together to solve such problems in a medium-sized, wealthy town?

To make matters worse, new problems are being discovered all the time. In the past few weeks, in a development that was finished in the late 2000s or perhaps 2013, a block containing 200 to 300 people was identified as having dangerous cladding of a different type from the kind we have been discussing today. There is also a series of other problems. I was briefed about this by Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service, to whom I pay tribute along with other colleagues in the fire service around the country. It was deeply worried about a whole series of related and interconnected problems in building safety that are not being addressed by central Government. The fire brigade felt that it did not have the resources or the powers to intervene, and it was unable to get the necessary support from building control because the regulations had been stripped away. This is very serious.

I can give examples of poor conversions in which builders have unwittingly knocked through partition walls, allowing the potential for fire to spread through large blocks without any interruption. There was a case of that in Slough that the fire service was deeply concerned about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North said, fire services are also concerned about the cladding on a whole range of other buildings, including commercial buildings, schools and health buildings. They are also worried about the serious problems of houses in multiple occupation, including conversions over chip shops or takeaway premises. Some of these are deeply unsatisfactory, because a fire could easily be caused by the business premises. There are also examples of Victorian buildings in densely populated areas being wrongly converted. [Interruption.] I appreciate the pressure on time, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you so much for letting me make these points. I call on the Government to act urgently.

Early Parliamentary General Election Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr McFadden]

I would like to proceed.

Secondly, what is the right way to reach a resolution on an issue that has been so difficult for us and for the country? Surely the right way to reach a resolution on Brexit, and on the proposals before us, is to properly and fully consider them—not to have the pre-cooked, pre-prepared tantrums of the Prime Minister. The withdrawal agreement Bill is a hugely important piece of legislation—perhaps the most important that this House has considered for many years—and it deserved proper scrutiny.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is simply a dreadful deal, that the attack on workers’ rights, environmental protections and consumer protections is simply appalling, and that we need time to discuss these important matters?

[Mr McFadden]

I do. There are many other points about this deal that we should properly explore, not least because for the first time, the proposal before us is to have two Brexits, not one—one Brexit for one part of the country and another Brexit for the rest of the United Kingdom.

There are those who will say, “You have been discussing all this for three years; you have had plenty of time,” but as others have said in this debate, much of that time was taken up by an internal negotiation within the Conservative party and the Cabinet, with multiple Cabinet resignations, and the specific proposals before us were published only a couple of weeks ago. They are different from the proposals in the past.