European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Owen Smith and Colin Clark

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). I do not agree with much of what she says on the Union—I value the Union of the United Kingdom—but I do agree with her about this deal. I think this deal will make our people poorer, guarantee that we have less money to spend on the NHS than what was promised, and cede sovereignty from this country to the European Union—a deeply ironic state of affairs and not what was promised. I also believe that the deal is increasingly making our country a laughing stock across the world—something we cannot afford to be in these dangerous times.

I do not want to talk too much about economics today. Such discussion has characterised this debate and has perhaps been one of its great flaws. Indeed, one of the great flaws of the attempt to win the referendum for remain was to concentrate so much on the economics. I want to talk a bit more from first principles about the role of Britain within the world and what the deal will mean for us. As well as affecting the economic future of generations in this country, the deal will determine the role of our country in the world. It will affect whether we fulfil our historic mission to be a leading country in the world or resile from it.

I fear that this Government, whose 30-year civil war is the cause of the mess we find ourselves in, and who cling so desperately to power, will not have the capacity or wherewithal to rise to the challenge we face. Instead, they prefer self-deception and jingoism. They would rather peddle delusions about Britain after Brexit than face up to the real problems that gave rise to it, still less find solutions that might resolve them. The country cannot afford, and this House cannot afford, to indulge the fantasists in any corner of this House for a minute longer.

We are just 79 days away from Brexit and it is time—it was time long ago, truth be told—to tell the truth to the country about Brexit, because there is no global Britain after Brexit. It is a con, Mr Speaker, on your family and on mine. Brexit is a retreat from the globe, starting with disengagement from our part of it. It is a recipe for isolation and an abdication of our responsibility within our continent of Europe. At the very moment when Britain is most needed, when our influence and power might provide ballast and security for a Europe that is squeezed on the one hand by a demagogue in the White House and on the other by a despot in the Kremlin, and at a point when an expansionist China is looking hungrily at all corners of the world—a moment when we could be providing our traditional role within Europe and the world—our myopic response has been to look inwards and backwards, while lying to ourselves and our people that we are doing the opposite: that we are returning somehow to our roots in empire and, to use that dreadful, meaningless phrase, “going global”. It is a claim as facile as it is false.

The reality is that this generation—my generation—of politicians has failed our people. We have failed to rise to the challenges of our age, either within this country or, increasingly it seems, within the world. We have failed to offer an honest analysis of and realistic solutions to the problems of our country and the problems across the globe. The root cause of those problems should be clear to us all. In shorthand, it is that economic development in the east and south has created challenges to our western economies, driving deindustrialisation, inequality and immigration. The sense of loss that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) said is felt in his community is felt in mine—a loss of status, purpose and opportunity. Globalisation is the shorthand, but the key thing is that there is no shortcut to solving these problems, and Brexit is absolutely not the solution. Brexit will compound all these problems. “Stop the world, I want to get off,” is not a political prospectus or a realistic view of how to run a global, integrated economy.

The nostalgia and nativism that are so evident on the Government Benches may be enough to feed the beast of the European Research Group, but they will not feed our children. Blaming foreigners and immigrants—the other—while hawking sepia-coloured myths of betrayal and loss has been a tried and tested strategy of populists and worse the world over since time immemorial, but we surely know that it is neither right nor real. It is also neither right nor real to offer some misty-eyed romantic notion of socialism in one state, as some in my party attempted to do. The solutions to globalisation lie in collective international actions on taxation, on economic and environmental collaboration, and in the building of a new generation of institutions to deliver security, equality and sustainability in Europe and beyond.

Building walls never works, because the people eventually smash them down. Earlier generations understood that. They learned it the hard way through their experience of war and they built the means to withstand those problems. Our country played a central role in building those institutions, defeating people who would divide us on race, and defending liberal values of equality, freedom, tolerance and democracy. Now, when that project and the institutions we built need to be renewed and reformed, what are we doing in Britain? We are waving the flag and we are withdrawing from the fight. That seems to me to be neither right nor honourable.

Nor does it seem right to saddle future generations with increased debt and further decades of austerity. We are living in a situation of through-the-looking-glass politics when Ministers produce pamphlets that show we are going to cut our economy by up to 10%, while the very next day they deny the reality of their own predictions. We all know the truth. The experts do not get it right to the decimal point, but their ballpark predictions will be right. They said the Brexit vote would devalue the pound and see a diminution of investment in our country. That was true and it will be true that we will see a drop-off, perhaps as much as 10%, if we go down the route of Brexit.

[Colin Clark]

The hon. Gentleman mentions several statistics, but what about the 500,000 jobs we were going to lose? Does he not agree that the job numbers have actually increased? That was fearmongering. Would he like to comment on the jobs number?

[Owen Smith]

Jobs have increased; I do not deny that for a moment. I think there are good questions about the nature of those jobs, but the most valuable jobs that have been created under the Conservative Government, such as the manufacturing jobs in the automotive industry, many thousands of which I absolutely concede have been created in recent years, are the precious jobs that are most at risk if we exit with no deal and even if we exit with the bungled deal that is currently before us.

Isolated economies do not prosper. That is an economic fact of life in this integrated modern world. We are proposing, whatever the rhetoric, to isolate our economy from its most important trading partners. It does not make economic sense and it does not make moral sense. Never forget that this Government came to power promising to free future generations from debt. It will not be forgiven or forgotten if they saddle future generations with debt. Nor will it be forgotten or forgiven if my party does anything less than tell the whole truth about Brexit and maintain our opposition to it in principle and in practice. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) wrote earlier this week:

“If we thought Brexit was wrong in June 2016, then it is still wrong today - just with more proof.”

He is right. There is no jobs-first Brexit, no Labour Brexit and no better Brexit. I gather the latest iteration is a sensible Brexit. Well, there is no sensible Brexit either. Brexit will eat the jobs and eat the capital, political and financial, that an incoming Labour Government will need to implement the radical programme that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench are rightly advocating.

Any Brexit is irreconcilable with Labour’s traditional social democratic mission and its twin foundations of providing equality and freedom. Throughout history, different wings of my party have always understood that those tandem aims were at the heart of what we stand for. Bevan said that there is no freedom without an end to poverty. Crosland said that our job is to pursue equality and freedom. There cannot be one without the other, just as there cannot be a cake-and-eat-it Brexit. If we are to be true to that mission, we surely cannot accept any outcome that will limit the ability of our people to live and work in this country or elsewhere. What have we come to that we have a Prime Minister who tells the country to celebrate curtailing the rights of our citizens to work and live abroad? It is plainly out of kilter with reality, and it is plainly wrong for our people.

Nor should we in Labour give any succour to a policy that is fuelling the hard-right politics of hatred and repression, the enemies of the social democracy that we all believe in, not even if—I wish to emphasise this point—there is electoral advantage for us in so doing. If there is seen to be electoral advantage for our party letting the Tories carry the can for a Brexit deal that diminishes the living standards of our people and that extends austerity such that we might contest an election and win it on that basis, it would be shaming for my party to pursue that strategy. We would be sacrificing the lives and livelihoods of the people we came into politics to represent.

In conclusion, we have to be clear: Brexit is a terrible mistake for our country, and the only way in which we can reverse that mistake is by asking the people to do so. We have had two years of exposure to the failures, flaws and risks that Brexit entails. Now is the moment for my party to show leadership, to lead the people away from the brink of Brexit, to offer up the proposal that we revoke article 50 and then, crucially, to campaign and win a people’s vote and to stay in the European Union.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Owen Smith and Colin Clark

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

Perhaps it is because we are getting close to the wire on Brexit, but I think that there has been a new spirit of compromise and honesty in the debate and in many speeches that we have heard on both sides of the House today. I want to continue in that vein, so let me be clear that I remain a remainer—an ardent remainer. I would love this country to block, thwart, resist and reverse Brexit. I say that because I absolutely and sincerely believe, as I have done consistently over the last two years, that Brexit will make my constituents poorer, and my country weaker, more isolated and diminished in the world. I still cannot understand that we have a Government who are pursuing a policy that is going to make our country poorer, or indeed that we have an Opposition who are not properly opposing a policy that is going to make our country poorer.

On a further note of honesty, there is nothing that we have debated in the last two days—neither the meaningful vote yesterday, nor indeed the EEA today—that will stop, thwart, block or reverse Brexit. What we have debated in the last two days is how we, as parliamentarians, might properly shape Brexit and try to mitigate some of its worst impacts. That is why so many people have been entirely right to make the basic point that we should not be taking options off the table. The gravest mistake that the Government made in their negotiations was to set those ludicrous red lines right at the beginning, and to strip from the table so many possible options.

The EEA is a realistic, extant treaty that would allow us a safe port in this Brexit storm. It would be a lifeboat for this country. It would have to be amended so as to complement a customs union, in order to guarantee no hard border in Ireland. That is why our sister party is urging Labour Front Benchers, and all of us on these Benches, to support the EEA in conjunction with the customs union, and I will be voting for both tonight. If we allowed it, the EEA is also a means by which—through articles 112 and 113 of the agreement—we might address some of the concerns about immigration that were rightly raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint).

Ultimately, our job is to try to ensure that we do minimal harm—no harm—to the jobs, opportunities and prosperity of our country and constituents. We cannot do that if we strip away from the negotiating table some of the very few realistic prospects for amending Brexit for the people of this country.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

I rise to support amendment (c) in lieu of Lords amendment 3, to which I added my name. Post Brexit the UK must have maintenance of environmental principles. The amendment recognises that ongoing responsibility and looks to bolster the future environmental powers, and I appreciate that the Government recognise this. For decades the EU has levied fines, carried out investigations, and monitored and held the countries of the EU to account quite appropriately. The agri-food industry has been the guardian of the countryside. It has the greatest impact on the countryside, rivers and flood defences, and it seeks to prevent environmental damage and to enhance the environment. I am very proud of that.

Amendment (c) should not be seen as a stick with which to beat agriculture and industry. It is to hold to account national Government, and rightly so. The Government have an absolute duty to protect the environment for the benefit of our children. This Government, with their 25-year environmental plan, have set a very high bar. We look forward to seeing a lot more meat on the bone, but a public authority looking after the environment will be absolutely essential after Brexit. The amendment clarifies the duty of Ministers: they must take account of, and be held responsible for, the environment.

The Bill is an essential, cast-iron protection that allows us to be ready for Brexit. It is the duty of every Member to ensure that the legislation is in place. It is my duty to represent my constituents in Gordon in the north-east of Scotland, an area dominated by oil and gas; an area that it seeing the highest inward investment in years; and an area of significant environmental beauty, where I am proud to farm and happy to plant my crops despite Brexit. My constituents expect a high level of behaviour from me, and I am proud to represent their interests. I am here to make sure that their voices, and indeed Scotland’s voice, are represented at this vital juncture. I distance myself from the pantomime we saw earlier. I am a Scottish MP and very proud to represent Scotland. The Scottish people want to see sound governance, environmental safeguards and a legal framework that protects the whole United Kingdom.