The Government's Plan for Brexit

Matt Warman Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Over the past few days, Mr Speaker, I have not seen as much of you as I might have liked, partly because I have had the privilege of being up in my own constituency and partly because I have been in the neighbouring seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham. Until that seat is represented again in this place—I very much hope that the excellent Conservative candidate, Caroline Johnson, will have that privilege—I hope that you will permit me to report what is being said on the doorsteps of Lincolnshire. Whether it is in Boston, where 77% voted to leave the EU, or in Branston, which is in Sleaford and North Hykeham, where 62% did so, there is a single line that honest, decent voters use again and again: they doubt that the Government will deliver on their word and trigger article 50 by the end of March. They say firmly that the Prime Minister is the right person to do it, but the Lincolnshire public doubt that politicians in the House are on their side.

I hope that, through this debate, the message goes back loud and clear, both to Boston and Skegness and to Sleaford and North Hykeham, that Parliament will not seek to set the Government up to deliver anything other than the best possible deal for the UK by asking them to put all their cards on the table and that we will trigger article 50 by the end of March. We on the Conservative Benches know that that is the right thing to do, and Members on other Benches or those in the Supreme Court seeking to make a different case should accept that to take another view is to go further than questioning Brexit: it is playing with the fundamental principle of democracy that the people must decide.

Some remainers say that that is not what they seek to do, but I would say this to them, in line with what the people of Lincolnshire have been saying to me. The argument that was lost in June was not lost in six weeks. It was lost over years and decades. We in the House govern with the consent of the people. To maintain that consent all of us must bear in mind the fact that we laid out a case in June. Now we must make sure, unused as some of us are to doing so, that we do as we are told. Not doing so risks far more than our relationship with Europe.