European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Paul Farrelly Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Many hon. Members have long believed that the United Kingdom’s interests would be best served outside the European Union. They campaigned passionately for what they believed in, and their view is that we must now leave the European Union. The Prime Minister says that she wants to deliver a Brexit that works for all and that unites our divided country. I, too, want to bring the country back together. Members right across the House will have experienced just how divided the country became in the months leading up to last June and how divided it has become since, but we cannot bring the country back together if we pretend that it has spoken with one united voice.

People who voted to leave did so for all sorts of reasons, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with the European Union, so when the Prime Minister speaks of the will of the people, her interpretation is frankly no clearer or more precise than anyone else’s. Let us not pretend that the people have spoken, because not all of them have. In fact, only 27% of people of the country voted to leave. Some 13 million did not vote, another 7 million eligible voters were not registered and 1 million British ex-pats were not allowed to vote. Even though the futures of 16-year-olds were on the ballot paper, they were denied a say. Only two of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom voted to leave, and there was no quadruple lock. There was no two-thirds supermajority, which is common in all other countries making major constitutional change. Even so, we are told that the people have spoken.

Look at what we have been allowed to become. In a matter of months, our public discourse has been consumed by vitriol and abuse. Hate crimes rose by 40% in the aftermath of the referendum, and we do not yet know what forces will be unleashed on our departure.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Like a number of colleagues including, I am sure, my right hon. Friend, I have been subject to the most orchestrated abuse that I have seen in the past 16 years in this House. Does he agree that there is a danger that the debate is corrupted by a small minority who feel that they are the masters now and that, therefore, any dissent is unacceptable?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is easy to dismiss views with which you disagree if you never listen to them and just dismiss the people who hold them as villains or enemies of the people.

Yet it is on these terms that we are being asked to rubber-stamp a blank cheque for the Government to deliver the most extreme version of Brexit imaginable. We are being asked to ignore the fact that leaving the European Union will saddle us with a £60 billion divorce bill. We are not going to get tariff-free access to EU customers while rejecting free movement; that is not on the table. We are not going to get a more favourable trading agreement with Europe from outside the single market; that is a paradox. We are not going to come to a full agreement with Europe within two years; believing otherwise completely flies in the face of precedent and all evidence.

Exiting without a deal and falling back on the World Trade Organisation rules is being talked about as though that is a good option. That is totally wrong—it would be an absolute disaster for this country. Even on the optimistic assumption that we can sign trade agreements all over the world, this does not even come close to making up for the loss of the single market. We are facing a return to a hard border in Northern Ireland and a breakdown of the Union with Scotland. We are not reclaiming sovereignty, another promise that falls apart under any scrutiny: we are transferring it to a negotiation behind closed doors.

Doctors are against it, scientists are against it, the financial services sector is against it, and manufacturers are against it because of their exports, but these people are dismissed—and why? Because these days we do not listen to experts. Yes, we are leaving, but it is the EU nations that decide how we leave and what we end up with. Where will this end in 2019? We do not know. Outside the single market, for sure, and outside the customs union, with no trade deal with Europe or anywhere else, our only friend President Trump—a man who has demonstrated why we should worry greatly about a free trade agreement that will probably lead to Kaiser Permanente running the NHS.

We should not fool ourselves. This is not, and never has been, a debate about the economy; it has always been about immigration. We are staring down the barrel of a hard Brexit because immigration has been prioritised over everything else: the economy, jobs, and living standards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I am strongly in favour of the reasoned amendments and against the Second Reading of this grudging, threadbare Bill, which will have such profound and damaging consequences for our country. Like the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who again today proved himself to be a true statesman, I did not vote for the legislation paving the way for the referendum, so I am being entirely consistent in my opposition. I did not vote for the referendum because I thought it a reckless gamble with our country’s future by David Cameron—and so it also proved for his future.

In Stoke-on-Trent, next door to my constituency, 70% voted to leave and 30% to remain. In Newcastle-under-Lyme, after a very hard campaign, it was 60% and 40%. As this fraught, long process goes on, I have not given up on persuading another 10%, at least, in my constituency. In opposing the Bill, I am not disrespecting the opinion of the majority; I just think, on this occasion, that it is wrong. I am not failing to trust the people; I just disagree with some of them and agree with the 48% who voted to remain. What I do not trust, however, on the basis of their performance so far, is this Government or their ability to achieve the best for our country if we hand them this blank cheque of a Bill with no safeguards.

We need assurances on many areas, including on tariff-free access to the single market for our goods and services—for the ceramics industry, a major exporter in my area of the Potteries, for instance; on continued membership of the customs union, which not only aids trade in Europe but, importantly, helps to diminish non-tariff barriers to trade; on assurances on visa-free movement to and from the European continent, which we have got used to and which is so important to our people, businesses and the economy as a whole; and on guarantees that the rights of EU nationals living here and of UK nationals on the continent will be protected, not just with permanent leave to remain but with full democratic rights, so that we do not create a second class of Gastarbeiter among our populations. These are fundamental issues that the Government need to address further before being given the green light to trigger article 50.

I and other colleagues will no doubt be the target again of orchestrated abuse, as we have been since the vote in December, for being so impertinent as to even raise these issues. However, I think we can be given a bit of slack for our questioning in the mere seven months since the referendum, when my next-door neighbour, the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), spent 40 years defying the so-called will of the people following the overwhelming vote to remain, by two thirds to a third, in the 1970s.

Let me draw to a close by mentioning a further safeguard that such a Bill needs: the guarantee of a meaningful vote on the terms that the Government negotiate before we exit the European Union. After her trip to the White House, I see that the Prime Minister was in Turkey at the weekend. There was a very effective piece of political advertising during the referendum that entirely changed the terms and the tone of the conversations that we were having in Newcastle-under-Lyme and around the country in the last few weeks of the campaign. That was the big, red banner poster that went up saying, “Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU—Vote Leave”. It was not, of course, and it is not. That was a lie, but the only question that we were asked from then on was, “What are you going to do about the Turks?” It was simply impossible to convince people during the referendum that it was indeed a lie.

[Alex Salmond]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman recalls that it was actually the Foreign Secretary, who was campaigning hard for Turkish accession to the European Union, who then, as part of the leave campaign, used that mythical accession as a reason for the UK exiting the European Union.

[Paul Farrelly]

I remember it very well. It was an abysmal and terrible performance from someone who considers himself one of the leading statesmen of our time and, indeed, an aspirant Prime Minister.

The peddling of myths and falsehoods during the referendum is a very good reason why there should be a second, meaningful vote on the terms of departure—a vote on the facts and not the fictions. Quite frankly, this House and the country deserve better than the type of vote that has been promised so far by the Prime Minister, which is, “My way or the highway”. That is simply not good enough.

When I was growing up, in my late teens and early 20s, I used to organise international youth exchanges. Every summer, teenagers from all parts of Europe gathered to tend war graves in Berlin, where the wounds of conflict were still fresh and the cold war divided the city by a wall. I did that because in Staffordshire, at Cannock Chase by the Commonwealth war memorial, we have the German war graves. I have worked closely with the German War Graves Commission over many years. For me personally, co-operating with Europe is about much more than simple prosperity. I would simply not be doing the right thing by my conscience, nor would it be in the interests of the country or what I believe to be the interests of the people I represent, if I voted for this flimsy Bill. I do not support leaving the European Union and I think this Bill is too blank a cheque for this Government.