Article 50 Extension

Owen Paterson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

No, I am going to make some progress. I will give way in a moment.

We are now acting in the absence of a deal, with the express will of this House to prevent no deal. One of my biggest concerns is that the Prime Minister’s actions make no deal far more likely, not less—and that is the very issue that we were trying to deal with last week. If agreed by the EU, a short extension for the purposes of forcing through this deal would simply push the cliff edge back to 30 June, and we would start down the same track. The Prime Minister is repeating the same flawed strategy that she has been pursuing for two years in order to recreate the binary choice between her deal and no deal that this House rejected last week.

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Keir Starmer]

I am just going to make some progress before I take any more interventions.

After voting as we did in last week’s debate, we recognise that an extension to article 50 is now needed, and it is the failure of the Prime Minister’s approach that has caused the requirement for an extension. Of course, any extension should be as short as possible, but it has to allow a solution to the mess that the Prime Minister has got the country into—to provide a route to prevent no deal, not to make it more likely. It also has to provide a way for this House to prevent the Prime Minister from forcing the same deal on us over and over again. That is why we believe that the focus in the coming days and weeks should be on finding a majority for a new direction—to allow the House to consider options that can resolve the current crisis.

For Labour, that centres on two basic propositions: a close economic relationship with permanent customs union and single market alignment; and a public vote with credible leave options and a remain option. Those propositions, and possibly others, need to be discussed and tested, and we need to come to a consensus to see whether we can move forward. That is what extension should be about, not about the narrow interests of the Conservative party and trying to keep the Prime Minister in post.

Thank you again, Mr Speaker, for allowing this debate today. I look forward to hearing the Secretary of State explain the Government’s approach and how they plan to prevent Parliament from going back to the same place in three months’ time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

I will be brief. I have listened carefully to the debate, at the beginning of which I had no intention of speaking. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), who touched on several points with which I entirely agreed, but I have reached a totally different conclusion.

Three international events are important. First, President Tusk said that we need to vote on the withdrawal agreement again. Given your stricture, Mr Speaker, which I support, that we cannot vote on the same text again, does that count as changed circumstances? I am very interested in your thoughts on that. You might like to address the matter in answer to a point of order later. Secondly, the Le Point magazine website put out a report at 1.6 pm that President Macron had stated that unless there is “a clear project”—that was the translation—France intends to veto any extension. Thirdly, there have been interesting reports from a respected BBC journalist that the letter from the Prime Minister has gone out too late for some Prime Ministers to consult their legislatures so they may not have the chance to make a decision this week. That is yet another muddle in this saga.

The hon. Member for Wirral South made a point about populism. I have said the following goodness knows how many times inside and outside the Chamber. The conundrum we face is that the House had three democratic mandates around the referendum. David Cameron said, “If you vote Conservative in 2015, I will give you an in/out referendum. It will not be advisory—it will be decisive. If I have a majority, the House of Commons will deliver what the people want.”

[Peter Grant]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Paterson]

Time is short and I would like to press on. Other people want to speak.

David Cameron won the election and then, probably to his horror, he had to deliver the referendum. The then Foreign Secretary made it clear when the referendum Bill was going through the House that MPs were handing back their sovereignty to the people and that the House would honour the people’s decision, whatever it was. The referendum was not advisory, but decisive. It was the biggest vote in British history and 17.4 million people voted for the broad slogan of “take back control”. The immediate question was, “What does that actually mean?” The Conservative party interpreted it as meaning that we would honour leave if people voted for a Conservative Government in the 2017 election. It would mean leaving the single market, the customs union and the remit of the European Court of Justice. The Labour party broadly supported that. So 85% of the votes in 2017 went to the two main parties, which supported that proposition. That means that more than 60% of the seats in this Parliament represent that proposal.

To pick up on the comments made by the hon. Member for Wirral South, I am genuinely worried. This was a huge step by the British people. It was the first time, following a succession of referendums, that they had gone against the wishes of the establishment—the political establishment, the commercial establishment, the media establishment. We had had the 1975 referendum, the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland referendums and the alternative vote referendum. Each time, the people had gone along with what the establishment wanted. What we are now wrestling with this afternoon—the hon. Lady raises the question of populism—is how we deliver that.

My contention—I really mean it—is that I am seriously worried about the long-term damage to the integrity of our institutions. People are writing to me and sending emails. I have been mocked for making one particular comment. A guy came up to me on the tube and gave me his visiting card—the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) picked me up on this; she can come to my office and I will give her the visiting card of this guy if she wants to see it—saying, “Please stick to your guns, because we depend on you to see it delivered.” I appeal to Members of both main parties. The position of the Liberal Democrats and the SNP is totally honourable. They have been consistently against leaving the EU and voted against it. Of course, the Liberal Democrats got crushed in the general election as a result, but the two main parties did really well in the general election. The Prime Minister got the second-largest number of votes in history.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Paterson]

Time is really short. I am just going to finish now.

The two main parties need to think about this. If there is any sort of extension beyond next week, it will be disastrous for candidates in the Conservative cause and, I think, disastrous for candidates in the Labour cause. The first 100 seats the Labour party has to win are 78 for leave, 73 strongly for leave.

This is an issue where the integrity of the idea of voting is absolutely at stake. Given that the Labour party is not going to vote for the withdrawal agreement and people like me are not going to vote for it—handing over the power to make law to 27 countries, a position where there is no manner in which a sovereign independent UK could leave, and a proposal that breaks up the United Kingdom and creates something appalling called UK(NI) is not acceptable to me—the only solution is to leave with no deal, which is the law of the land. As Mr Barnier said in his statement last night, the vote has not changed that.

I know this is not a popular view, looking around the Chamber at those who are present today, but talk from Opposition Members about crashing out is, bluntly, lazy. Ask why. I have been to Dover twice in the past three weeks. We have had discussions with those in Calais, including Mr Puissesseau, and they all say that they are prepared. The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), answering an urgent question earlier, gave some very confident answers. Numerous statutory instruments, many of which I have sat on, have gone through. We have Mr Barnier saying that there are only two more issues, one of which is the budget which is really not going to touch on Brexit, that have to be sorted. So I appeal to Members that hiding behind the mantra of “crashing out” is lazy.

There may be hiccups. There was a lot of preparation for the millennium bug. We had exactly the same thing: virtually every business was prepared; they just thought that other businesses had not prepared. That may well be the case on this occasion. The damage from a bit of disruption is far less than the huge damage and the risk of populism should we thwart the wishes of the 17.4 million people.

[Several hon. Members rose—]