European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Matthew Pennycook Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to wind up this Second Reading debate. I pay tribute at the outset to all those who have contributed to it. Sadly, it is not possible to recognise all the impressive contributions that have been made over the course of this two-day debate, but I would like to single out and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith) on the birth of his son, and my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) on her excellent maiden speech. She brought home to the House not only her love for her constituency, but how much it benefits from economic and cultural exchange with our partners in Europe.

A large number of contributors have stressed the historic nature of this debate, and they were right to do so. The Bill before us is one of the most constitutionally significant pieces of legislation in our country’s history and, in practical terms, will facilitate one of the largest legislative projects ever undertaken by Parliament. The maturity and seriousness of much of the debate that has taken place has rightly reflected the significance of the issues at stake.

The Opposition accept that the Brexit process requires legislation to disentangle the UK from the European Union’s legal structures and to ensure that we have a functioning statute book on the day we leave. Indeed, we acknowledge that this is an essential step if we are to avoid the most chaotic of departures, and as such the Secretary of State is absolutely right to argue that every hon. Member has a shared interest in getting the legislation right.

As many hon. Members have rightly argued, the Bill is not about whether Brexit will take place. As the Secretary of State made clear in his opening remarks last week, the Bill in itself will not determine whether we leave the European Union. That decision was taken on 23 June 2016 in the referendum and was given effect by the triggering of article 50, an act of notification that was itself only possible because this House, including Labour Members, overwhelming backed the Government’s European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. What is at issue is how we leave, the role of Parliament in that process and the precedents we set. As the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) argued in a characteristically incisive speech on the first day, the question is not whether a Bill such as this is necessary but whether this particular form of the Bill is remotely acceptable. Quite simply, we do not believe it is.

Of the significant number of speakers in this debate, only the most cavalier have failed to remark upon the flawed nature of the Bill. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) so forensically exposed last week, those flaws are not just serious; they are fundamental. The deficiencies in our delegated legislation system have been remarked upon by many Members, not least in the powerful contributions by my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) and for High Peak (Ruth George), but the delegated powers conferred on Ministers in clauses 7, 8 and 9 are extraordinary in their constitutional potency and scope. As several hon. Members have mentioned, clause 9 could theoretically be used to amend the Act itself, with only the most basic restrictions acting as safeguards against an overweening Executive. Given that clause 9 allows for the use of sweeping powers over the implementation of the withdrawal agreement, the Bill would allow all aspects of such an agreement, including the divorce bill, to be agreed by Ministers with the least possible scrutiny in this place.

Clause 17 is a power so extensive in its potential application that it could extend to every facet of our national life, and as a consequence opens up the possibility of changes to vast areas of law without full parliamentary process. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) put it in her passionate contribution, these are powers that would make a Tudor monarch proud.

To those who believe that we can merely correct those powers—that we can put through enhanced scrutiny in Committee and the Bill will be fixed—I say that the sweeping powers in the Bill are not its only weakness. Provisions in the Bill rule out a sensible transitional arrangement. Far from delivering clarity on the status and nature of EU-derived law, the Bill is riddled with ambiguities that will create deep uncertainty about how this body of law will apply after incorporation. In ruling out the charter of fundamental rights for purely ideological reasons, the Bill could mean that individuals and businesses cannot assert the rights that it elsewhere seeks to maintain. And in its treatment of the devolved institutions, the Bill risks further destabilising the Union between the four nations of the UK. In short, it is a fundamentally flawed Bill, and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) was right to refer to it in his contribution as an “astonishing monstrosity”. As he put it in an article in the Evening Standard on Thursday, it

“seeks to confer powers on the Government to carry out Brexit in breach of our constitutional principles, in a manner that no sovereign Parliament should allow.”

The central questions before each Member are whether they truly believe the Government accept just how deficient the Bill is, whether they trust Ministers to co-operate in rectifying its many deficiencies and whether, as a consequence, they are confident that it can be made watertight in the eight days that the programme motion allocates for the Committee stage. In short, the question is whether hon. Members believe that it is feasible and probable that the breathtaking tapestry of sweeping delegated powers woven into the Bill can be unpicked and the Bill made good, or whether it is so deeply flawed that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) put it in a brilliant speech, the Government should go away and do their homework again.

We do not need to legislate in this fashion to achieve the necessary aims that lie behind the Bill, and if we are all honest, we will agree that the Government should not have put hon. Members on both sides of the House in this position. Ministers have known for a considerable time of the real and genuinely held concerns about the approach that the Bill takes. The Opposition raised concerns following the publication of the White Paper; we reiterated those concerns when the Bill was first published; and, in a letter to the Secretary of State at the start of the month, we called again for constructive engagement. While many Conservative Members will no doubt all too readily dismiss the concerns that we have raised, those concerns have been echoed for some time by voices from the Government Benches, as well as by parliamentary Committees and numerous non-parliamentary organisations.

In short, the Government have had ample time to make it clear that they are willing to correct the flaws in the Bill and to table amendments which show that they mean it, but only now are we being told that Ministers are in listening mode and are open to ideas for constructive improvements to the Bill. As many Members have noted, we are being asked, in a sense, to take it on trust that conversations will be held, and that we will have assurances down the line about how Ministers will use the powers in the Bill. Yet the Secretary of State, in his opening remarks, defended the wording of the Bill as it stands, and offered no concrete concessions that might reassure Members on both sides of the House. Given the Government’s track record, which a number of my hon. Friends have highlighted, we need proof of real movement. We need more than vague offers to talk during Committee stage.

Many of us remain utterly bewildered about why the Bill has been drafted in this form, and why Ministers felt it that it was wise to ignore the Exiting the European Union Committee’s call for the Bill to be published in draft so that its flaws could be addressed before we reached this point. The unique challenge of disentangling the UK from the EU’s legal structures and ensuring that we have a functioning statute book on the day we leave required a Bill that created consensus across this House, not one that undermines it. It required a Bill that restored power to the House of Commons, not one that concentrates unparalleled power in the hands of the Executive.

All of us—all Members, throughout the House—agree that a Bill of this kind is necessary, but that does not mean that Parliament should accept this fundamentally flawed Bill. It is for that reason, and that reason alone, that the Opposition will vote against it tonight.