Exiting the European Union

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

I thank you for that, Madam Deputy Speaker. The way things are just now, I worry about why so many people are withdrawing. Hopefully, everything is all in order. We know that the Whips usually try to force people to speak in debates, especially debates that might be short or dry, so it is certainly unusual that the Whips have been pressuring their colleagues to withdraw from today’s debate.

I hope that you can show some forbearance, Madam Deputy Speaker, because as I thought there were so many speakers in the previous debate, I did not expect to be called so early in this one, so my notes are a wee bit haphazard; hopefully, you can bear with me on that.

I must commend the shadow Minister for her speech and for the amount of information that she covered. She highlighted the deficiencies that the Minister did not cover. She said that, in actual fact, when we talk about the movement of goods, one of the key issues is what it means for businesses and whether they are ready for this. We can talk about divergence in standards of the EU, but are businesses ready for what will happen on 1 January 2021? Have the Government given enough support to businesses? When we turn on the radio just now, it tells us all, “Get ready for Brexit”. That is all very well, but it does not actually tell us what we need to do. What is the point telling us to get ready, when there is no information that is clearly accessible to businesses about what they need to do? Are IT systems up and running? The companies need to know what they have to do to be able to export, and that is before we even get to divergence.

Just today, ironically, my office got a letter from the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which is supposed to be aimed at all businesses, but I can assure the Minister that although that letter might be a bit of propaganda, it does not clear up what businesses need to do going forwards.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I hear that from businesses across my constituency as well. A lot of them do not know exactly what they are supposed to do or how they are supposed to prepare. The simple solution to this surely is to extend the transition period, as we called for in our Opposition day debate before the summer. There would be no shame in the Government taking a little bit more time to get the negotiations right and to give people time. If they do not want to call it the transition period any more, they can come up with a different name for it—call it the implementation period or the adaptation period, or something like that. There would be no shame in it; we are in the middle of a global pandemic—no one foresaw this coming. It would do nobody any harm, and then one day they would get the glorious Brexit they are looking for, rather than the cliff edge that we seem to be barrelling towards.

[Alan Brown]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am pretty sure that many businesses across the UK would agree with what he said. It would be a simple, common-sense approach. It could be called the emergency covid implementation period—something that would give businesses a bit more certainty in the short term, while the Government sort out the mess.

The key question I had for the Minister earlier is about where we are on the consent of the devolved nations. Importantly, what discussions have been had with the devolved nations about what will happen if the UK Government wants standards to diverge from those of the EU? What would that mean in terms of how the devolved nations operate? What will it mean going forward? Are they going to ride roughshod over the wishes of the devolved Administrations, as with the UK Internal Market Bill and the shared prosperity fund, which was a mechanism to bypass the wishes of the devolved Administrations? Is that what we are looking at? It is symptomatic of the entire Brexit process and debacle.

I looked at the explanatory memorandum at the weekend—unusually for me, on Saturday night I was sad enough to read an explanatory memorandum. It said that the Welsh Government had granted consent, but the Scottish Government had not. The explanatory memorandum has now been changed and does not reference either the Welsh Government or the Scottish Government. It would be great if the Minister would clear up where things are on that. I would be happy to take an intervention—I am still happy to take an intervention. I see there are none coming.

I refer to a letter from Ivan McKee to Michelle Ballantyne MSP, convenor of the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee. He said:

“The UK Government is seeking to lay the SI as soon as possible in order to secure a debate in the UK Parliament before the end of the year. This timeframe means that the SI would need to be laid before Scottish Parliament consent is confirmed, however Mr Zahawi’s letter states that they will not debate the SI until consent is received, therefore the Scottish Parliament should have the usual 28 day period in which to scrutinise the notification.”

In the preceding paragraph, he also says:

“Scottish Ministers therefore consider that consenting to the regulation remains appropriate.”

The Scottish Government have indicated that they are willing to consent to the SI and are willing to work with the UK Government on it. The UK Government committed not to debate the SI until consent was given. As we are now debating the SI, I ask the Minister again whether consent has been formally given. Perhaps we can assume it has not been; it would be great if the Minister could clear that up later on.

This is about divergence. I understand the UK wants to protect itself from challenges. We can understand that—there is a need to have some legal protections—but the Minister did say it is not a precedent to diverging. Could she confirm that? Why would we want to diverge from the EU, especially at the moment, when we are still negotiating this trade deal that really determines the future of the UK, particularly in the short term, on 1 January? What is the status of the trade deal discussions? Surely the UK thinking about diverging has a massive impact on the trade deal because the trade deal will confirm what divergences are possible or not. It seems to me that the cart is before the horse. We can talk about taking back control, but unless the UK Government are capable of joining up the dots in the big picture, this SI matters not a jot.

[Patrick Grady]

I suppose we should commend the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) for turning up and contributing to this debate. Taking back control was supposed to be what it was all about, and where are they? Where are the Tories—the European Research Group, the Maastricht rebels and all the rest of them?

We had the same last night with the statutory instrument that directly amended primary legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament. Fair enough, it was relatively technical in nature, as is this measure, but it goes to the point of respect for the devolution settlement, and it goes to the point of democratic accountability that Brexit was supposed to bring forward.

Was the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson not right when she said that when the Government force through relatively technical stuff such as this statutory instrument what they are doing is driving a coach and horses through the devolution settlement, and they are doing our work for us, because they are undermining the case for the Union?

[Alan Brown]

I wholeheartedly agree. The shadow Minister used the phrase “rocket boosters” under the argument for independence, and I hope we do have these rocket boosters in place and getting fired up right now.

[Alan Brown]

I will need to catch up with the hon. Gentleman in better surroundings, and we can share a sausage and Talisker, but of course he makes a serious point. In actual fact, the devolved nations want a common framework for agreeing how goods move about. To be honest, if we get our wish of independence, we are going to operate that way as well. We want to work with the other nations, and that is really important. But the way this UK Government are going about it, they want to impose their will on the different devolved nations, and it is like it or lump it. Hopefully, we can toast a wee dram to independence and we will discover we will still be friends after that as well, even though we do not share the same aims at the moment.

[Patrick Grady]

I am sure the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) will be entitled to a passport as well, but is not the point that Lorne sausage and Scotch whisky—the indicators of these vitally important products—are at risk because of the lack of the UK Government’s ability to conclude a deal with the EU? That is the kind of thing that ought to be being addressed through statutory instruments like this, Madam Deputy Speaker, and that is why it is relevant to this debate.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

For clarification, I was not suggesting that the hon. Gentleman was in any way out of order in the points he made. I am just really concerned about the square sausage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that we have just clipped through three items of business and the Leader of the House has been handling the Dispatch Box, should the House not be suspended again so that the Dispatch Boxes can be sanitised and Members who want to participate in the next item of business can make sure that they are present?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but I have taken the decision that, as we have just suspended and we have been sitting again for only two or three minutes, a further suspension is not necessary, and that the Leader of the House’s touching of the Dispatch Box was momentary.