European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Nick Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clegg]

The right hon. Gentleman would start blaming bad traffic on the EU if he could. It is absurd. We picked the fight, not the EU. His party picked the fight; the EU did not.

I have one observation that I want to press the Secretary of State on. Even if he gets the deal on the issue of EU citizens here and UK citizens there, which I sincerely believe he wishes to seek, and even if that goes as smoothly and quickly as he has suggested today, there is no earthly way that this Government can separate the 3 million EU citizens who are already here from the millions who may, after a certain cut-off date, want to live, study, and work here without creating a mountainous volume of red tape.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Clegg]

Remind me, was freeing ourselves from red tape not one of the principal reasons why the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and so many others told us that we should leave the European Union? Yet this Government are going to create a tsunami of red tape, which EU citizens, including my mum and my wife, will rightly resent just as much as this Government have always resented red tape in Brussels. The particular irony is that the Secretary of State and I worked closely together in this Chamber as Opposition party spokespeople 12 years against the then Government’s attempts to impose ID cards, yet I predict that he and his Government will have to introduce something not identical but strikingly similar to the paper trail behind ID cards.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

rose—

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

rose—

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Nick Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clegg]

The insult was that the Brexit campaigners deliberately withheld from the British people what they meant by Brexit. It was a deliberate, effective but highly cynical tactic. We never received a manifesto with the views of Nigel Farage, the Foreign Secretary or the former Education Secretary, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), explaining what Brexit means. Therefore, when we finally know what Brexit really means in substance, rather than in utopian promise, of course the British people should have their say.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Clegg]

No, I wish to make some progress. That is why I believe that this House has not a choice but a duty to withhold from the Government the right to proceed with Brexit in the way they have planned. That would not stop Brexit but would simply urge the Government to go back to the drawing board and to come back to this House with a more sensible and moderate approach to Brexit.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Clegg]

I really wish to make some progress. I have only four minutes.

Some people say that there is no alternative, that we must leave the single market and that there is no remote chance that we could find an accommodation with our European partners. Nonsense. For instance, I confirm to the House that I have recently heard it on very good authority that senior German decision makers, shortly after the Prime Minister, no doubt to her surprise, found herself as Prime Minister without a shot—or indeed a vote—being fired, were keen to explore ways to deliver her an emergency brake. In return, they hoped for an undisruptive economic Brexit.

But what did this Government choose to do? They decided to spurn all friendship links with Europe. They decided to disregard the needs of Scotland, Northern Ireland and, indeed, our great capital London. They decided to placate parts of the Conservative party rather than serve the long-term strategic interests of this country. They decided to pander to the eye-popping vitriol and bile that we see every day from people like Mr Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, and other members of the moneyed elite who run the Brexit right-wing press in this country—and this Government have become too slavishly preoccupied with their opinions. But, above all, this Government have decided to disregard the hopes, the dreams and the aspirations of 16.1 million of our fellow citizens, which is more than have ever voted for a winning party in a general election— 242 Westminster constituencies voted to remain.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Clegg]

No, I have only two minutes.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

You will get an extra minute.

[Mr Clegg]

All right.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have a very simple question to ask and the right hon. Gentleman will get the rest of his minute. Does he recall that, during the referendum campaign, the then Prime Minister and many others on the remain side said that if the British people voted to leave the European Union, it would absolutely mean that we leave the single market? Did he agree with that at the time?

[Mr Clegg]

It is a novel concept that the winning side in a competition invokes the arguments of the losing side to make a case that it did not make itself. That is ludicrous. The Brexit campaign deliberately did not spell out to the British people what Brexit means, which is why it is right that, when we finally do know what Brexit means, the British people have another say.

My final point is that the British Government have taken the mandate of 23 June 2016 and not only disregarded the 16.1 million people and the 242 constituencies that voted to remain but have very deliberately decided to ignore the pleas, the dreams, the aspirations and the plans of the people who should actually count most. It is our children and our grandchildren, the youth of Britain, who will have to live with the fateful consequences more than anybody in this House or anybody on the Government Front Bench, and—guess what?—conventional wisdom says that the youth of today are politically indifferent and do not participate but 64% of 18 to 24-year-old voters voted. They mobilised in huge, unprecedented numbers, and 73% of them voted for a different future.

I know that the vote of a 19-year-old does not weigh any differently in the ballot box from the vote of a 90-year-old but, when we search our consciences, as we have just been asked to do, we should search our consciences most especially about what country we think we are handing on to the next generation. Call me old-fashioned, but when a country decides to go on a radical, uncompromising departure to a new and as yet entirely unpredictable future, and does so against the explicit, stated wishes of those who have to inhabit that future, it is a country embarking on a perilous path, and I hope that our consciences will not pay for it.

I have a great sense of foreboding. Notwithstanding my personal admiration for the Secretary of State for Brexit, who will try to conduct his negotiations in good humour, the negotiations are going to get nasty and acrimonious. Just think what will happen in the British tabloid press when the Government first start arguing about money in the next few months. The Government’s position is asking for the impossible and the undeliverable. Most especially, it is not possible to say that we will not abide by the rulings of a marketplace and then somehow claim that we will get unfettered access to that marketplace. That is not going to happen.

European leaders, many of whom I have spoken to, look at us with increasing dismay and disbelief at the incoherence and the confrontational manner in which this Government are proceeding with Brexit.

My final plea is that Members look to the long-term interests of our country and their constituents when voting, not to the short-term interests of this Government.