European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Monday 4th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman]

I encourage Ministers to listen very carefully to what my hon. Friend says. Like me, he has a deep concern about what clause 11 may mean for the devolved Administrations. We watch with alarm the statements being made today. We hope the position is clarified very quickly.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend refers to Donald Dewar. The basis for the devolution process came about via referendums in Scotland, Wales and both parts of Ireland to agree the frameworks under which we now operate. Is it therefore not a contempt, an insult, to the people as a whole—not just this House—for the Government to undermine the Good Friday agreement and the devolution settlement, which was endorsed by the people in referendums?

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend is right. People voted for these powers to be devolved and it is wrong for the Government to attempt to use Brexit as an excuse to bring them back to London.

The historian Professor Tom Devine called Scottish devolution and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament

“the most significant development in Scottish political history since the union of 1707.”

The Conservative party may have been opposed to devolution in the 1990s, and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Administrations may not have been conceived of in the early ’70s, but they are now an important and respected integral part of the constitutional architecture of our country.

The Good Friday agreement could never have succeeded without devolution to Northern Ireland, and, in the view of many of those involved at that time, the fact that devolution to Scotland and Wales took place at the same time as the Good Friday negotiations helped to ease some misgivings about the process.

Two nations of our Union voted to remain in the EU and two voted to leave. Our nations are run by different parties with different views about what Britain should look like after Brexit. The challenge for the Government therefore is significant. Just because it is challenging, however, does not mean the Government should attempt to take shortcuts that undermine the credibility, autonomy or sharing of decision making that are now an accepted feature of our democracy.

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[David T. C. Davies]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is for the Scots to decide, and they decided that, for the time being, ultimate sovereignty rests within a United Kingdom Parliament in which the Scots are heavily and well represented, if I may say so. I totally respect that, and I hope he does, too.

A few weeks ago, Scottish National party Members were telling us that we should all support and recognise the referendum result in Catalonia, where a nation decided that it wanted to break out of a union with Spain. I find it ironic that the SNP is saying that we have to recognise referendum results when it happens to agree with the policy but that we should completely ignore referendum results when it does not agree with the policy.

[Mike Gapes]

The hon. Gentleman cannot compare an unconstitutional referendum in Catalonia, in which only 2 million people took part, with a constitutional referendum in Scotland and Wales organised according to legal procedures.

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[Ian Murray]

I think the hon. Gentleman has just demonstrated that he will be voting with the UK Government Whips this evening against the wishes of the Scottish people and against the will of the Scottish people expressed in the referendum. When Ruth Davidson is asked about the 13 Scottish MPs, she always says that they are here to fight Scotland’s corner, but it is quite clear that they are not going to fight Scotland’s corner on these clauses.

I wish briefly to mention new clause 65, which relates to the Joint Ministerial Committee. I have long tried in the House to strengthen the case for the JMC. One of the key aspects of the original Smith commission, which was established on a cross-party basis following the independence referendum in 2014, was to strengthen intergovernmental relationships so that such issues could not occur. I was disappointed, however, during our 2015 deliberations on what became the Scotland Act 2016, when the Government rejected our amendments aimed at strengthening that relationship. The conclusion of many commentators is that weak intergovernmental and inter-parliamentary working is causing some of these problems.

In his final report, back in 2014, Lord Smith of Kelvin said:

“Throughout the course of the Commission, the issue of weak inter-governmental working was repeatedly raised as a problem.”

That has been a common thread throughout many of the documents we have seen. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which produced a report on clause 11, mentioned at great length how impenetrable and difficult it was even to determine what the JMC was discussing, what its final conclusions were, and when it was meeting. Its meetings are sporadic, and when a committee is private and produces minutes that are very sparse, the politics take over. It is clear that the UK and Scottish Governments, being different colours—blue and yellow—will never agree in the political sphere, so the JMC is diluted to a political argument and unable to achieve what it is trying to achieve.

I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), during her wonderful speech to talk about the minutes of the JMC. The October minute from the JMC was two pages long. One and a half pages dealt with who attended and who provided apologies, and there was then a skeletal explanation of what was discussed and no real conclusions. The JMC has to be put on a statutory footing along with the parameters required to make it transparent to the public and this House. That is why we should support new clause 65, as it would give us some understanding of the processes of the JMC.

We are heading for a constitutional crisis. We have a Conservative party threatening the very fabric of the United Kingdom just after the people of Scotland decided that the UK should stay together. We have the farce of today’s events: first the Prime Minister and the Downing Street spinning that a deal is close; then, with the Prime Minister barely through her soup with Donald Tusk, Downing Street backtracking as quickly as possible from those briefings; and then, with one phone call, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, who controls the Government—the de facto Prime Minister—pulling the rug from underneath the feet of the Prime Minister, who then turns her back on something that it was thought had been negotiated and agreed.

[Mike Gapes]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has said:

“I am surprised and disappointed that the British government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier”—

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman might be making an interesting point, but it is not directly relevant to the new clause.

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[Ross Thomson]

This has been a very interesting debate. It has been quite extraordinary to hear some of the rhetoric from Opposition Members about power grabs. I do not care where that phrase originated. Whether it was Gordon Brown, Kezia in the jungle, or Patrick Harvie, the fact is that it is simply not true.

It is amazing that Opposition Members have found this new belief in sovereignty. Let us go back to some basic facts. For the past 40 years, the UK has ceded its sovereignty to the EU and its institutions, with literally thousands of pieces of legislation being imposed on the UK and all its nations, and our Parliament having no ability to scrutinise them—

[Mike Gapes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ross Thomson]

No, I am just getting started.

There has been no ability to scrutinise them, amend them, or even reject them. Now, on the day that we leave the EU in March 2019, powers will be returned to the UK and the Scottish Parliament will become more powerful than it already is.

[Mike Gapes]

rose—

[Jo Stevens]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

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[Mike Gapes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ross Thomson]

No.

[Mike Gapes]

rose—

[The Temporary Chair (Sir David Amess)]

Order. We cannot have two Members standing at the same time. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is giving way.

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[Chris Skidmore]

I have listened for six hours to the concerns of Members, but outside this Chamber there is an entire process that I want to touch on later in my speech, and which I hope the hon. Gentleman will reflect upon. There might be hostility in this Chamber from those who say that the Government are somehow taking clause 11 and ripping up the devolution settlement, but that is hyperbole. Clause 11 is a temporary competence limit that is being applied simply by taking EU law and it becoming EU retained law.

[Mike Gapes]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Skidmore]

No, not at the moment.

There are no powers that the devolved Administrations currently have that they will be losing. We have therefore had tremendous engagement on the framework that we are delivering, and I will touch on that engagement shortly. In particular, in the JMC (EN) process there has been huge good will from the colleagues of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) in the Scottish Government, and his officials, above all, working tirelessly behind the scenes, trying to deliver on what we need to do.

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman points to the word “temporary”, and I repeat that this is a temporary competence limit—[Interruption.] He wants to know how long temporary is. It is as long as it takes to ensure that we have a complete statute book that is in the interests of continuity, certainty and control for UK businesses. We want to ensure that we have time to be able to correct the statute book and ensure that this is done properly. To create an artificial time limit would be unhelpful to this process. As he knows, the First Minister of Wales is going forward with the JMC (EN) process. That engagement is taking place, and I will talk about that later in my speech. This means that when it comes to ensuring that we have the temporary competence limit on the face of the Bill, the Order in Council process gives new—

[Mike Gapes]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Skidmore]

No, I have given way a lot—[Interruption.] I am going to carry on with my speech; otherwise I will not get through it. Other Members want to speak, and although I could stand here and take up all the rest of the time, I think it would be inappropriate to do so.

The Order in Council procedure will provide an opportunity for those powers to be returned to the devolved Administrations. This highlights a well-established procedure for adapting the parameters of the devolved competence, which requires debate and approval in the UK Parliament and the relevant devolved legislatures. It is absolutely right that the devolved legislatures are able to debate and consider any additional areas of competence being released to them through this mechanism. Of course we acknowledge that the Scottish and Welsh Governments have taken a different view on the mechanism to provide the necessary certainty, but we are in agreement that common frameworks will be needed in some areas. In some cases, legislative frameworks might be required, and we hope to continue working closely with our counterparts in the devolved Administrations to establish exactly what those will look like.

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[Chris Skidmore]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) now.

[Mike Gapes]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Clause 11(3) refers to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Is the position for Scotland and Wales the same in the Bill as it is for Northern Ireland, given that the Good Friday agreement is underpinned by an international treaty between two countries and that it explicitly mentions the European Union?

[Chris Skidmore]

We are moving on to some of the clause 10 issues around international obligations, but when it comes to schedule 3, which I had hoped to touch upon later in my speech, we are determined to ensure that we obtain legislative consent from all the relevant devolved Administrations. Although the Assembly is absent, we are already working with officials in Northern Ireland to ensure that their perspective is reflected, but we are determined to move forward as the United Kingdom, which includes Northern Ireland.

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[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. As colleagues will see, a number of hon. Members still want to speak. If interventions are kept to a minimum and speeches are kept under about eight minutes, everybody will get in.

[Mike Gapes]

Having listened to this debate for seven hours and been in the Chamber for most of it, I can say that occasionally it was like watching paint dry. I want to comment on something that the Minister just said: that the Government cannot accept changes that would undermine the UK internal market or businesses. That seems a little ironic on the day the Prime Minister has shown how strong and stable she is and when we are in such a crisis over Northern Ireland and the issues relating to the Good Friday agreement.

Sadly, Democratic Unionist party Members seem to have gone AWOL; I assume that they are out discussing how to spend £1 billion. They, of course, were not part of the negotiations that led to the Good Friday agreement and were not happy when we brought in the institutional frameworks established as a result of the 1998 legislation. I had the pleasure of being in Mo Mowlam’s team during those negotiations. I was a very minor person in the process—as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Political Development Minister, my good friend Paul Murphy—but it was a great achievement of our Labour Government.

As Tony Blair has so eloquently put it and John Major has also said, today the Good Friday agreement is in danger. Those of us who have looked at these issues understand that the agreement has three strands. One is the internal political situation in Northern Ireland, which is clearly not going well. The Assembly and Executive are not functioning and the civic forum that was supposed to be established under the Good Friday agreement does not exist.

Then there is strand 2, which is the Irish dimension, the North South Ministerial Council and the implementation bodies; it is supposed to cover agriculture, education, transport, the environment, health and EU programmes. Strand 2 is going to be undermined by the decision to leave the single market and the customs union.

Then there is strand 3, which is the east-west British-Irish Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. We now understand that the Irish Government are right to express concerns about the position we face. I was in Dublin three weeks ago with the Foreign Affairs Committee. We also went to County Cavan. We drove along the road that goes from one side of the border to the other, and back across, through County Monaghan. The only way anyone knows they are in Northern Ireland is that there is a building with a “Fireworks for sale” sign. Fireworks cannot be sold in the Irish Republic, but they can be bought in Northern Ireland—that is a bit ironic, but we will not go there.

The reality is that we have fields on both sides of the border, cows that move backwards and forwards, farmhouses that are divided and institutional structures such as the veterinary organisations. We have the milk that is taken from cows in the south and cows in the north, put together in the same factory, mixed together with whiskey, and comes out as Baileys, which is then marketed as an Irish whiskey derivative, and there is an all-Ireland trade arrangement on that basis. Similarly, with tourism, Northern Ireland and the Republic are promoted together globally.

We are putting all this in jeopardy—putting it all at risk. We have to understand how difficult it was to get the Good Friday agreement and how not necessarily just the reality of the economics but the symbolism of the politics will come back, and people will have to think about their differences rather than what unites them. At the moment, there are many Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland because one can have either a British passport or an Irish passport—it does not matter. Will the European Court of Justice apply to those people living in Northern Ireland? Will they have protection even though they are living in the UK? These are interesting and complicated issues.

The Mayor of London, the Welsh Government and the Scottish Government have all said that we need to stay in the single market and the customs union, but above all we need to listen to the voices of the people of Northern Ireland, who want us to stay in the single market and the customs union. Although they claim the contrary, Democratic Unionist party Members do not speak for Northern Ireland—they speak only for one part of Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland voted to remain. Northern Ireland wants to be in the single market. Northern Ireland, collectively, wants to keep the institutions of the Good Friday agreement.

It is fundamentally important that we recognise in this Bill that there are special circumstances relating to Northern Ireland. When I intervened on the Minister—eventually he gave way to me—he did not respond to my point, which was that there is no specific understanding of the differences in Northern Ireland. The all-Irish Good Friday agreement—Belfast agreement—institutional framework is crucial and fundamental, and we have to preserve it and keep it. We will break up the United Kingdom and we will cause dangers and conflict again on the island of Ireland. We will damage relations with our closest neighbour and best friend. We have such a good British-Irish relationship, as we saw when Her Majesty the Queen went to Croke Park, and as Mary McAleese told us when she was the Irish President at the time. That is at risk, and we must not let it happen. Please, please support the continuation of the Good Friday agreement.

[Alison Thewliss]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), because that was an absolutely perfect speech. It had to be made and I am glad that he did it.

We have talked in general terms today about lots of the things to do with the new clause and what it might mean, about clause 11, and about the 111 things that require some attention. I want to look at how issues of waste are dealt with within the EU. The EU waste framework directive flows into the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012. The European landfill directive, the European packaging and packaging waste directive, and various other EU directives are currently implemented by the Scottish Government. The EU sets the rules within those frameworks and directives, and the Scottish Government have flexibility, as do the other devolved nations, on how they implement them.

Without any certainty over what happens on the day of Brexit, we can have no deal, no certainty and no regulation of those matters. In Scotland, we have developed a circular economy strategy and made a lot of progress towards the implementation of the EU’s circular economy action plan. We have made more progress than the rest of the UK has, and we have made different progress. The directives have given us the flexibility to take a different road. Were the matter to come back to the UK Government, we could not be guaranteed the flexibility we need to make progress with the plans that we have already embarked on.

The Local Government Information Unit recently produced an excellent briefing on waste disposal and Brexit. The briefing raises specific concerns about the future UK directive, which could well be less ambitious than our plans. We have heard a lot from various Tories in the past about cutting red tape and regulations, but doing so could have a serious impact on the interesting and important issue of waste collection. Scotland’s zero waste plan is award winning and ambitious, as we are on climate change. We should have full control over it, and we should not have to drag behind the UK if it does not wish to step forward as quickly as we do.