European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Pat McFadden

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, to the many right hon. and hon. Friends who signed up to the amendment and, above all, to the Government for turning it into a Government amendment.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

If the European Communities Act 1972 is abolished on 29 March 2019 and that is the legal basis for following the European Union’s rules at the moment, what does the right hon. Gentleman think will be the legal basis for following the European Union’s rules during the transition period?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

That is a very interesting question, to which we will know the answer when we have seen the text of the agreements that lead to the withdrawal and implementation Bill and when Parliament accepts it. I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman, but I maintain steadfastly the effort to use the Committee stage of this Bill to speak about this Bill, this clause and this amendment, and not some extraneous consideration.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Pat McFadden

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Sorry, clauses 2 and 3. I do apologise. My right hon. Friend accurately corrects me, and I hope that Hansard notes that correction.

If that is therefore what my hon. and learned Friend said, I have nothing further to add to it. However, I want to point up one connection with the useful discussion we had yesterday about clause 6. The more I have thought about this over the past few weeks, the clearer it has become to me that the ultimate resolution to the problem of the unrestrained abilities of the Supreme Court under clause 6(4)(a) is to make it clearer in the Bill that the method by which any change in the snapshot legislation that my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, was talking about should be made not by the Supreme Court, but by Parliament. The point is that, so far as there is fundamental change, and in particular so far as there is fundamental change in the interpretation of the plain words of directives, regulations and treaties, it should be made by primary legislation.

That puts primary legislation in the right place, and hence puts the Supreme Court in the right place, because the Supreme Court is there to interpret the common law, which this is not, and to interpret statute, which this could and should be, and it can certainly also interpret European law using European principles except to the extent that, through statute, this Parliament has changed those things.

That would be a perfectly recognisable pattern. As I mentioned yesterday, it is not my ideal pattern, as I would like to unwind in the Bill a good deal of the expansive interpretations of the European Court of Justice that have gone before exit day, but I recognise that the Government might not want to do that. It does not worry me if they do not, because this Parliament, post-Brexit, will have the ability to do it, which is, from my point of view, even speaking as someone who on balance was a remainer, the big advantage of exit. We will be able to make those decisions as a Parliament through the proper process of primary legislation.

By coming forward with the package that I think my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General offered the Committee a little while ago in this debate, he will also point the way to at least a great part of the solution to the problems of clause 6. While we are at it, just as a bonus, we have not yet debated clause 5—assuming I have my numbers right—but we will do so anon. When we do, we will hit exactly the same set of issues in a slightly modified form. While we are at it, we will hit this again in clause 7, in another way. The same package that the Solicitor General has suggested will handle all the problems arising from clauses 5 and 7, and point the way to handling the problems with clause 6, once we have got rid of the clause 6(4)(a) error.

We have a pattern here that can make the Bill work in its own terms. It can provide the flexibility that the Government need in order to correct deficiencies, to transpose or adjust things when references are technical or incorrect, to bring to the House important matters that need adjustment but are not fundamental, and to give this Parliament the power it needs to change the law fundamentally and to make that something that Parliament does, rather than the Supreme Court. If we can get to that point, we will have a Bill that is perfectly good in its own terms and that will serve the purposes that the Government intend for it, and I shall rest happy in the knowledge that I have in a small way been able to contribute to a series of debates that will have provided legislation of which we can be proud.

[Mr McFadden]

I want to make a few points about new clause 22, which my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) spoke to a little while ago. Language can obscure things as well as shed light on them, and that is true of much of our Brexit debate. For example, we were told that this was all about taking back control but, as we have seen many times since the referendum, the Government have stoutly resisted giving control to Parliament, resisted publishing a White Paper, and resisted allowing us a meaningful vote. They have finally caved in on having legislation, but they are still resisting allowing us a meaningful say on a real choice, rather than a choice between whatever is negotiated and no deal and WTO rules. We were told that Brexit would save huge amounts of money, yet one of the critical issues in the talks is how to settle a multi-billion pound divorce bill that was mentioned by no one during the referendum campaign. So language can obscure as well as shed light.

Perhaps this is nowhere more true than in all this talk about “the negotiations”. Unsurprisingly, the public place great faith in anything called “negotiations”. If I were buying a house from someone—I hesitate to tread here after yesterday’s exchanges—who was asking a certain selling price and I offered a certain purchase price, the negotiation would involve us meeting somewhere in the middle. There might be parts of the Brexit talks that involve negotiation in that sense of the word.

I serve on the Brexit Select Committee, but I should add that I do not seek to speak on its behalf here today: this is my interpretation of the situation. Last week, the Committee spent a couple of days in Brussels and Paris talking to some of the people involved in the so-called negotiations. There may be negotiation about parts of this process, particularly in phase 1, but the point that I want to make—which refers to new clause 22 and the European Economic Area—is that our future relationship is less about negotiation than about a fundamental choice. What is the relationship that we want to have with the European Union? Where do we want to be in relation to its system, which is a market with rules? The people that we talked to about this round of talks made it pretty clear that this is a choice. It is a decision.

Basically, there are two ways of doing this. The first is the way outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East—that, having voted to leave the European Union, we remain part of its single market system and adhere to the rights and obligations that that gives us, and in so doing, we put the economic prosperity of our people first. That is one way, and I wholeheartedly back my hon. Friend’s assertion that the referendum did not decide this question. The referendum decided our membership of the institutions. The referendum did not decide on the manner of leaving the European Union. There are countries outside the European Union that take part in this system, and we know which they are. I do not think that this is a perfect solution by any means. There is, of course, the issue of having a say in the rules, and whatever our say is outside, it will not be like the say that we have now. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East covered that as well.

The other option involves a free trade agreement, something akin to what has been negotiated with other countries. This matters to our economy. We have talked a lot in these debates—and I have been guilty of it myself—about the importance of manufactured goods. We have talked a lot about cars, we have talked a lot about aerospace, and we have talked a lot about agricultural products. All those are all hugely important to our economy, but 80% of it consists of services. We are hugely successful at them, and we are hugely successful at exporting them. Tens and hundreds of thousands of jobs are sustained by financial services, insurance, legal services, business services and so on. I must say to those who advocate the FTA option that the blunt truth is that no existing FTA would give us anything like the access to the services market that we currently enjoy as members of the single market.

That, fundamentally, is the choice that we must make. The Solicitor General resisted the existing comparisons, as the Government have throughout: they have said, “We will have a bespoke arrangement that is somehow different from this.” Let me tell the Solicitor General candidly that not a single person on the other side of the table last week thought that that was possible.

This is a decision, a choice. What kind of Brexit will we have? Fundamentally, at some point, the Government will have to face up to the truth, be candid with their Back Benchers and the House as a whole, and be candid with the public. The choice, in the end, is not just a choice between systems, but a choice between economics and nationalism. It is a choice about whether we put the prosperity of our constituents first or the nationalist ideology that is driving this agenda, and I know which I prefer.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Pat McFadden

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr McFadden]

The new clause is very simple on this point. It asks that in those circumstances the Government will seek to negotiate an alternative agreement. That is perfectly reasonable.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr McFadden]

I do not have much time so I am going to conclude.

The point of all of this is to avoid the choice between being told that we have to define as success, on the first account of it, whatever the Government have managed to negotiate, or default to the WTO. To be honest, a concession on timing that does not allow us to ask the Government to go back and negotiate a better agreement is simply holding a gun to Parliament’s head a few months earlier than would otherwise have been the case. This new clause is about taking all the claims made for decades about parliamentary sovereignty and making them real, rather than giving us a choice between deal or no deal, take it or leave it, my way or the highway. Frankly, Parliament and the country deserve better than that.