EU Membership: Second Referendum

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to speak for the Opposition under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I take this opportunity to welcome the Minister, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), to his place in the Department for Exiting the European Union team. Taking up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (John Grogan), I shall be impressed if the Minister knows the Government’s plan B; he will be the first Minister to have achieved that objective if he does. I look forward to hearing from him later.

I thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for opening the debate. He made an important point on public polling reflecting his friend’s opinion that everybody is fed up with hearing about Brexit. There is almost a momentum behind the current process of people looking forward to 29 March, because then it will all be over. However, as he rightly pointed out, it will not be. We are certainly not nearing the end, and we are not really nearing the end of the beginning. The biggest discussion is yet to be had, because the declaration on our future relationship is so lacking in detail. He also made the important point that this is a critical moment in our history. The decisions that we take over the next few days will shape our country for generations. The situation could not be more serious.

The Labour party campaigned in the referendum to remain, because we believed that it was right, economically and politically, for our country and for the continent that we share, but we accepted that we lost, which is why we voted to trigger article 50, to begin the negotiations to leave. However, the last two years have been largely squandered, with negotiations within the Conservative party taking precedence over the negotiations that needed to take place with the EU27. I understand the predicament of the Government and the warring factions within the Conservative party, but it has left us in a difficult position, and the country is paying the price.

It did not have to be like this, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) indicated. The Opposition urged the Prime Minister to reach out two years ago to the majority in Parliament in favour of a sensible Brexit and, in the spirit of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), to look towards national reconciliation by saying that, yes, people voted to leave the European Union, but by the closest of margins. The referendum gave a mandate that we should no longer be members of the EU, but not that we should rupture that relationship, which was built over 45 years.

If the Prime Minister had said then that she would seek a deal that was right for the people of this country and their livelihoods, she could have begun to pull together the 48% and the 52%. If she had said that that would have involved a customs union, a close relationship with the single market and continued participation in the agencies and partnerships we built together with the EU, I think she could have achieved that. She would have had a clear majority in Parliament and united the country, and the Northern Ireland border, as raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, would certainly not have been an issue.

However, the Prime Minister instead let the Brexit extremists within the European Research Group shape the agenda. She set her red lines and boxed herself in, and the result is this doomed deal that satisfies nobody. We face a vote next Tuesday in which the Government are likely to be defeated, and we will then move into uncertain territory. It appears that a clear majority in Parliament will reject the deal and, while there is also certainly a majority in Parliament that will ensure that we do not leave without a deal, it is not clear whether there is a majority for any other outcome. Parliament, like the people we represent, is conflicted.

When the deal is voted down, we will need maximum flexibility. The Opposition will demand a general election, as we have made clear. I hope that, despite their experience in the general election last year, Conservative Members may yet come to recognise that an election to break this deadlock would be in the interests of the country. If they do not, other options must be kept open, including a public vote.

I understand the concerns of the petitioners who made the case against a public vote, which have been reflected by hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). However, it is interesting that, as we move towards the Brexit endgame, the debate is changing fundamentally. Some honesty is finally beginning to break out. Those who spent the last two years endlessly repeating the mantra that no deal is better than a bad deal have been hitting the TV studios over the last couple of weeks to urge MPs to back the Prime Minister’s deal because, they argue, the alternative is no deal, which they rightly say would be a catastrophe.

Even more significantly, claims that the country will be more prosperous have been abandoned, including by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. Instead they argue for the Prime Minister’s deal on the basis that failing to deliver on the 2016 referendum would have serious social and political consequences. That serious point has been made in the debate and it should not be lightly dismissed. However, we should also recognise that there will potentially be even more serious social and political consequences if Parliament votes for a damaging Brexit on a false prospectus.

The Government have confirmed that we will be economically worse off, to varying degrees, under every Brexit option. Instead they say that the Prime Minister’s deal deserves support because it delivers on other pledges, with a particular focus on taking back control of our borders. On the Government’s website, “40 reasons to back the Brexit deal”, the top reason is on migration, with a promise that free movement will come to an end once and for all.

However, the expectations unleashed by the rhetoric of taking back control are a long way from the reality. The Government have had complete control of non-EU migration for the last eight years. In every one of those years, net migration from outside the EU was higher than from within it, and it has stayed at a steady level. As last week’s figures from the Office for National Statistics show, the recent decline we have seen in EU migration has simply been replaced by rising numbers from beyond the EU, with non-EU migration hitting a 14-year high. But on that central issue, the Home Secretary has said this morning that we are unlikely to see the Government’s plans before next Tuesday’s vote; the much-promised White Paper on immigration has apparently been delayed again—and beyond next Tuesday.

We potentially face a future that is poorer, with less money for public services, and with migration numbers changing little. That is a long way short of the wild promises made during the Brexit campaign, and potentially the social and political consequences of people being in that position five years down the road are very serious.

Therefore, when the Prime Minister’s deal is inevitably voted down, all options have to remain open. As I said, that includes a further public vote. That is not something on which there are divisions between Opposition and Government Members. The hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) made the case for a public vote when he resigned as Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation on Friday. His predecessor as Universities Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), has also made the case, as have former Conservative Cabinet members and the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, saying that a public vote may be the only way out of the predicament in which we find ourselves.

A public vote would not be without difficulties, and nobody could predict the outcome. However, the public do have information that was not available two years ago. They can see now, in contrast with then, what Brexit looks like, so there is a case for giving them a chance to reject Brexit or give informed consent to the Prime Minister’s deal. We will explore all the options available, but we believe that we should not rule out the chance to give the people the final say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I will absolutely make the comparison and I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Economic Community and now the EU had been a top-line issue for 45 years. If it had not been, why was there a referendum in 1975, the year I was born? This issue has gone on for two generations, so I suggest respectfully to the hon. Gentleman that the electorate did have a sense of what they wanted.

We cannot go down the route of simply relitigating referendums when we do not like the result, because that essentially is what this boils down to. That is essentially what is driving the call for a second vote—the so-called people’s vote. Former Prime Minister Mr Blair has said as much. He makes no bones about the fact that he thinks that Brexit is a disaster and the way to reverse Brexit is by means of a second referendum. It is an instrument by which one can reject the will of the people as expressed in June 2016. Let us not be fastidious or naive about this. The people who generally are driving for a people’s vote and a second referendum want to reverse the result. They think—mistakenly, in my view—that the way to reverse the result is to get a second referendum, which will confirm or reconfirm our membership of the EU. I think they are wrong and, as I have said, the Government have made a clear undertaking that we will not have a second referendum.

The question on 23 June 2016 was clear; it was absolutely unequivocal. The question was simply:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”

Many of us in the Chamber took part in the referendum campaign—some with Vote Leave and some with the Stronger In or remain campaign. It was a very hard-fought and widely trailed discussion. Some people have said that the quality of the debate was not good enough or that some pieces of information were withheld, but generally it was an extraordinary exercise in democracy. As has been said many times, it was the single biggest vote that this country had ever seen in a general election or any other kind of election. And as we all know, 17.4 million votes were cast to leave the EU. That was the highest number of votes cast for anything in UK electoral history.

What those calling for a second vote—the so-called people’s vote—are saying is that the people should think again. Essentially, they are saying, metaphorically, to the electorate, “Your homework was not good enough. Please do it again.” As the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton suggested, the electorate—certainly in my constituency—are quite a cussed lot. I do not see the floods of support for remain described by others. I strongly suspect—this is my personal view—that a second referendum would not deliver a different result.

That is irrelevant, however, because the Government are tasked to enact the will of the majority of the people, as expressed in the 2016 referendum. All major political parties were committed to respect the outcome. We fought a general election on the basis that we would leave the EU. As has been said, 499 Members of this House voted to invoke article 50, which we all knew would involve a two-year process, at the end of which we would leave the EU. All of that is in the public record and everyone understood the consequences of it. Furthermore, the Labour party committed in its 2017 manifesto to leave the EU and the customs union. More than 80% of the British people voted either Conservative or Labour in the general election. They voted for parties that were absolutely committed to respect the 2016 referendum result. That is exactly what the British people expect us to do.

I fully understand the emotional impetus behind the call for a second referendum, but I think it is a ruse by which people seek to stay in the EU. We are pledged to leave the EU. The full democratic process of the referendum delivered a clear directive, which this Government hope to deliver. The call for a second referendum opens up a huge question about the levels of trust in our Government and our democracy. We have to respect the will of the people. To do otherwise and say, “We will have a second referendum and try to reverse the result of the first referendum, because you got the wrong answer first time,” is not only an abnegation of democracy, but profoundly disrespectful of the electorate. As a Minister, I would not want to see that.

We have to look at the nature of the referendum itself. It was a long, four-month campaign, but we cannot just think of the referendum as those four months in 2016, because this debate had been going on for decades, not only in my party but in the Labour party. I am old enough—just—to remember the 1983 general election, in which the Labour party was pledged to leave the EEC. That created great divisions and caused great debate within the Labour party. My own party has been a scene of great discussion and lively debate on this issue. It is not right to say that those four months of the referendum campaign in 2016 encapsulated the whole debate, because it has been ongoing for 45 years and more.

I sense that I am in a room of clairvoyants, because everyone has told me that the Government will lose the vote on Tuesday. I have been in the House long enough—let us see what happens. People have asked, “What about plan B?” If I knew plan B, I would not divulge it in this Chamber—I assure hon. Members of that—so the question is redundant. I remind hon. Members that the choice is between a deal and no deal, because, as others have suggested, the hourglass is running quickly. We are running out of time. Article 50 was invoked on 29 March 2017. It does not take a mathematician to work out that 29 March 2019 will be the end of our formal membership of the EU. Nor does one have to be mathematically gifted to work out that there are fewer than four months between today and exit day. In that timeframe, the notion that the Government will throw off their policy of the last two and half years and then bring in some parliamentary device for a second referendum to take place before the exit day is, frankly, ridiculous. We do not have the time to do it and people would feel that it would be extremely irresponsible to do so.

I could spend the next hour and three quarters trying to convince hon. Members of the merits of the deal. I do not want to do that, because they probably want to do other things. However, I will say that the deal does precisely what the electorate voted for. On immigration, we have heard about restrictions to freedom of movement.

[Paul Blomfield]

Given that the Minister has raised the question of immigration, does he agree that it is incumbent on the Government to do as they previously promised and publish the immigration White Paper before we vote on the deal?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The shadow Minister is trying to tempt me down paths I do not want to go down. We will have a plan. At the moment, the Government are focused on winning the vote on Tuesday and getting on with Brexit, as so many of our constituents want them to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam said that someone was bored of Brexit. I have used that phrase myself—not of me: I love Brexit and am fascinated by it, but a lot of my constituents want to get the ball rolling. They want to get on with wider political debate and to get on with their lives. They see that the deal is a way of getting to the finishing post of 29 March. Anything we do to jeopardise that would not only frustrate Brexit, but be a great abnegation of democracy.

The debate about our relationship with Europe will not end with our formal exit from the EU. There will be all sorts of ongoing discussions and debates about bits of the EU that we might want to pay into and others that we might not. That is the nature of democracy: we can debate it. It will not be set in stone, but we will have an evolving and, I hope, co-operative and fruitful relationship with the EU. However, we seek to close the question of membership of the EU and we will formally end it on 29 March.

People have talked about the money—the £39 billion. The figure of £35 billion to £39 billion has been quoted as a divorce payment. That is actually a small fraction of the £100 billion that we saw in the newspapers and the other huge amounts that were trailed across the media. Looking at our 46-year commitment to the EU, we see that £39 billion works out as four years of net payments to the EU—what I call the annual subscription.

The annual subscription in the 2014 to 2020 budget period was about £10 billion a year net, depending on how it is calculated. After the payment and the implementation period, we will not have to pay a penny piece. The golf club subscription, as one of my constituents once referred to it, will be over. We will not be paying into the common kitty to the tune of £10 billion a year. We will secure—we hope and confidently expect—a free trade deal. We will be able to co-operate with the EU, but our formal membership and the annual tribute or payment that we used to make will be over.

My last point is about sovereignty, which was raised by the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton. People wanted to have a sense that they were electing to this Parliament Members who would exercise the sovereign will of the British people and make our own laws. That is a fundamental point that cannot be captured in trade deals, money or economics; it is about fundamental independence and sovereignty. That was a big driver of the vote and this deal delivers it. I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Government in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam on introducing it and I look forward to his concluding remarks.

[Paul Scully]

I thank the Minister for his reassuring remarks. It was remiss of me not to have welcomed him to his place for his first Westminster Hall debate. He gave a good amount of reassurance that we will not get distracted from our important task by the so-called people’s vote. We need to concentrate on making sure that we deliver for the people of this country.

In the last couple of years, the Government and the Prime Minister have had the incredibly difficult job of squaring seemingly impossible circles. It is impossible to find a solution to the Labour party’s six tests when the last one says that leaving must deliver the exact same benefits as membership. Clearly, at the golf club that the Minister referred to, pay-as-you-play is not the same as membership.

[Paul Blomfield]

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the Prime Minister said that she was determined to meet the six tests set by the Labour party?

[Paul Scully]

The Prime Minister will go as close as she can, but that last one is clearly impossible. She is working to satisfy as many people as she can in incredibly difficult times.

We then have the Liberal Democrats, who want to have their Bobby Ewing moment and pretend this all away, frankly. Those are the dynamics that we have been working on.

We are now at the dénouement—the end of the first part of the process. Let us try to get through this week and a half, get the vote next Tuesday, and move on to the exciting, optimistic global Britain thing that we can do—trade with the rest of the world and with our European partners. I look forward to the fact that our 40 or 50-year decision will allow us to make sure that our best days are still ahead of us.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 226071 relating to not holding a second referendum on EU membership.