Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is like the old days, is it not? I was going to say the good old days, but they were not all that good. Remember the endless blue-on-blue, Tory-on-Tory Brexit wrangling with nobody being able to make up their minds about the way forward. We have had a little of that, and I thought it was going to get quite serious when the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) seemed to be squaring up to the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham)—I almost saw top hats at dawn. Thank goodness that they were able to back down and come to some sort of a reasonable conclusion.

Here we are once again debating Brexit: the issue that never goes away. You would expect nothing else, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I will put my cards on the table: I think that this is an awful Bill. It is a dreadful Bill. In fact, it is a Bill conceived, drafted and prosecuted in their ongoing ideological Brexit frenzy, ridding the UK of any vestiges of their hated EU. In fact, I would call it a vindictive Bill—more of a vendetta than a piece of legislation. And like all desperate ideologues, all traces of the ancient regime must be obliterated. Everything must be erased. Year zero must be established. We are getting three year zeros, but I think the one at the end of 2024 is the year zero for when all of Brexit is finally banished and we have the sovereignty that they claimed we were always going to have but never actually quite aspired to.

And so, this Brexit exercise in self-harm goes on and on and on. It is the ideological battle that never ends. I get the sense that nothing will ever satisfy them. Their insatiability for things Brexit and EU will never actually be met. They are almost like the Bolsheviks in the 1920s prosecuting their permanent revolution. I suspect that once we are concluded with this Bill and it is on the statute book, they will get around to digging into the earth’s core and start to geologically separate this island just that little bit further from mainland Europe.

The thing is that everybody is coming to the conclusion that their Brexit is a disaster. Anybody and everybody is beginning to tell them that. Even their friends are telling them that. I never knew anything about this guy, Guy Hands, but he is extolling them to

“admit the public was lied to”.

He is saying that they should renegotiate a new deal with the European Union. He says:

“The first thing to do would be to admit that the Brexit negotiations were a complete disaster”.

I do not know this Guy Hands, but I suspected he might have been some sort of tofu-munching Liberal Democrat, with all due respect to my Liberal Democrat friends, but apparently he is the Tories’ biggest donor and even he is saying that Brexit must be renegotiated.

As this disaster unfurls, is it not so disappointing to see the Labour party embracing it? The Labour party is becoming another party of Brexit. But it is okay, Mr Deputy Speaker, because it is going to make Brexit work! Are we not all relieved about that, then? The thing is, and I say this candidly to my colleagues on the Labour Front Bench, is that they cannot make Brexit work. In fact, it is designed not to work. Brexit was never a political strategy, so it cannot work. Brexit is an ideological venture driven by those guys over there on the Conservative Benches, founded by and predicated on British exceptionalism, the exclusion of others and an almost pathological hatred of everything European. But Labour is going to make it work! It is actually going to make it work without revisiting the single market or reinstating freedom of movement. It is going to make it work almost identically to the Brexit ideologists.

Labour may have given up on getting back into Europe, but those of us on the SNP Benches will never give up on our European ambitions. We will lead an independent Scotland back into the European Union. We are a European nation which values our EU membership, which voted to remain and aspires to return. With Scottish independence, we will put Scotland back into the heart of Europe in line with the wishes of the Scottish people.

This is the first day of the third Government in three weeks or four weeks—a few weeks, anyway. Was it not just a perfect opportunity for them to reconsider, pause, rethink and assess whether all of this is working? I went online the minute I got up very early in the morning to have a look to see if the Second Reading debate on the Bill was still on the Order Paper. To my great surprise it was, because I thought they would have taken this opportunity to reset and have a think about their European relationship. But not a bit of it. What we find is that the Sunak Government are the same as the Truss Government, the same as the Johnson Government and the same as the May Government. They are all Brexit—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Not only is the hon. Gentleman going a bit wide of the Bill, but he is mentioning current serving Members by name which he must not do. He has been here long enough. He knows.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Too long!

--- Later in debate ---

[Kim Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the disruption that this Government have caused in the past couple of weeks and months. This is a zombie Government clinging to power in order to push through their destructive agenda. They are running scared from the people they are supposed to represent. They have no mandate, no plan to meet the challenges of the cost of living crisis and nothing to offer working people.

The Bill places our rights at work, our environment and our hard-won equal rights on a cliff edge, left to the mercy of Tory Ministers. The economy is on the floor, with the cost of living crisis set to cost thousands of lives this winter. We need a stable economy with a significant redistribution of wealth and power more than ever. I wish to appeal to the Conservative Members opposite: it is within your gift to stop this deeply destructive Bill and the threats it poses to your constituents. You are facing some of the lowest polling your party has ever seen. Your economic credibility is in the bin. After 12 years of Tory austerity—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. You should not use the word “your”—that refers to me.

[Kim Johnson]

Apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker. As I was saying, we have seen Tory austerity, attacks on working people and a concentration of wealth and power. It is time to face reality. People in this country are saying, “Enough is enough.” [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I am sorry, there were some noises there but I was not saying anything.

[Kim Johnson]

Okay, Conservative Members can make a lot of noise, because that is all they ever do. Thanks.

Is now really the time to decimate rights and standards at work, environmental protections, and health and safety? Conservative Members should consider just how destructive this will be, and just how angry people will be with this wholesale attack on their basic rights and protections. This Bill is not fit for purpose and it should not go ahead.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. At noon, the new Prime Minister promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability”. At 5 pm, he reappointed the former Home Secretary, who resigned from the post just one week ago, saying that she had broken the ministerial code and admitting that she had sent confidential documents outside Government from a private email.

In the urgent question last week, I raised a series of questions about whether there had been an official audit to check what other documents the former, and current, Home Secretary might have circulated from personal emails, because there were suggestions in the media that there had been others; and whether the right hon. and learned Lady’s resignation letter was in fact factually correct, because her account was different from briefings to the media and the statement by the Minister for the Cabinet Office last week.

May I ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to help us to get urgent answers to these questions? The Home Secretary has access to the most sensitive information of all, relating to our national security. We cannot have someone careless and slapdash in that job. How on earth does it meet standards of integrity and professionalism to reappoint someone who has just broken the ministerial code, and has just breached all standards of professional behaviour in a great office of state? It looks as if the new prime minister has put party before country. Our national security and public safety are too important for this.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her point of order. While she will clearly have opportunities to address those matters in Home Office questions, I fully appreciate that the next Home Office questions will not be until 14 November. Those on the Treasury Bench will have heard her point of order, and I am sure that they will pass it on to the Home Office.

Royal assent

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that His Majesty the King has signified his Royal Assent to the following Acts:

Supply and Appropriation (Adjustments) Act 2022

Social Security (Special Rules for End of Life) Act 2022

Health and Social Care Levy (Repeal) Act 2022

Energy Prices Act 2022.