European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Exit Day) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2019

Matthew Pennycook Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 General Committees

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

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Lindsay. I intend to be brief. As I look at the impressive array of right hon. and hon. Members on the Government side, I think the Parliamentary Under-Secretary will have enough problems from Members of his party without me adding to them, and I will not do so.

Just as I argued when the House debated the predecessor to these regulations on 27 March, the regulations are a necessity and should be entirely uncontroversial. The agreement between the European Council and the UK further extended the article 50 process. The extension is, as a result, a matter of European law and legally binding in international law. All that the regulations do is, just as their predecessors did, to ensure that our domestic legislation aligns with what has already been agreed and, as such, to avoid creating the unnecessary and considerable legal confusion that would result from having two parallel sets of regulations: those deriving specifically and directly from EU law, which are currently in place; and those made under the 2018 Act, which would diverge from EU law.

[John Redwood]

Given that Labour campaigned on helping us to leave the European Union in 2017, why does the party now take every opportunity to delay and prevent us from leaving?

[Matthew Pennycook]

There is a simple answer to that. Yes, the manifesto we stood on rightly said that we accepted the referendum result. It also said, clearly, that we rejected a no-deal exit and the proposition on which the Tory party is trying to take us out of the EU. We will not vote for the deal as it stands, so a further extension is inevitable until other options come forward.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

I reassure the Committee that I have not crossed the Floor of the House, but as there were no seats available on the Government side of the Committee room, I am speaking from the other side. The hon. Gentleman talks about his party rejecting a no-deal Brexit, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage also mentioned no-deal Brexit, but is it not the case that that no longer exists? Michel Barnier and the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union have said that there is now sufficient regulation on both sides of the channel that if we were to leave without this withdrawal agreement deal, we would not be leaving without a deal. We would have “no deal”, surrounded by all the legislation that has been passed on both sides of the channel in the last eight months.

[Matthew Pennycook]

The hon. Gentleman can call it “no deal”, but he is essentially propagating something that Conservative Members have argued for many times: a managed no deal. Certain bilateral agreements have been put in place on the EU’s terms, and they would be revoked on the EU’s terms. He makes a good point, however: if we exited without a deal, we would be forced back to the negotiating table to conclude an arrangement of sorts. There is no pure, clean break for him and his friends on the Conservative side.

[Sir William Cash]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am going to make some progress.

As I said, these are relatively uncontroversial regulations that should be supported. That is why the Opposition take no issue with them. I do, however, have one question for the Minister. As he will know, and as the hon. Member for Stone said, the regulations differ from their predecessor in providing only for an extension until 31 October. The predecessor regulations sought to anticipate two different exit day scenarios: 22 May if the withdrawal agreement was approved before 29 March; or 12 April if it was not. By providing only for an extension until 31 October, the regulations signal a tacit acceptance of what we all suspected to be the case at the time: we would have to participate in the European elections.

More than that, however, in providing only for that single date, the regulations do not cater for the possibility that the withdrawal agreement might still be ratified before 31 October—something that, were it to occur, would mean, through the agreement between the UK and the European Council, that exit day would have to be changed to 1 June, 1 July, 1 August, 1 September or 1 October. Therefore, could the Minister tell the Committee—I do think the Committee should have an answer to this—what the Government will do or plan to do in the admittedly unlikely scenario that the withdrawal agreement is approved before 31 October? Would a further statutory instrument be introduced to change exit day yet again, or would the Government seek to use the withdrawal agreement Bill to modify more comprehensively the provisions connected with exit day? I look forward to the Minister’s answer—

[Mr Francois]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way before he finishes?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will not give way; I have just come to a conclusion.