EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)
Paul Williams Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
Every one of us in this place has a firm duty to our constituents. We have a duty to protect their security and their livelihoods. We have a duty to make the best decisions for our country, and we have a duty to approach this whole process in good faith and with an open mind. This House is deeply divided, but—it is important to say this—no matter our view, all of us are acting in a way that we believe best serves our constituents and our country.
When I look at the options before the House this evening, Mr Speaker, it is obvious that there are no perfect solutions. Everything we do from now on will involve compromise. The public, like this House, are deeply divided. In a democracy, when there is division and when there are trade-offs to be made, we do not shut down the conversation. That has never been what our country does. The healthiest way to repair any kind of relationship where both sides have to stay together is to carry on talking. There is nothing threatening to democracy about testing the public’s opinion. A healthy and vibrant democracy is supposed to be loud. It is supposed to discuss, to debate, and, yes, to vote. The only threat to democracy is if we allow fear and intimidation to stop this debate. That must never happen.
No Member of this House should be scared of doing the right thing today. That is the job we were all elected to do. I sometimes get messages calling me a traitor, a backstabber, an enemy of the people. Colleagues across the House receive much more vitriol than me. I know there is frustration out there, but our job as MPs is to look at the evidence and make a rational, balanced and objective assessment. My assessment is that Brexit is far more complicated than anybody expected and we now have a duty to bring the public back into our discussions as we reach this vital, difficult stage in the process. They are entitled, in a healthy democracy, to give their informed consent to any deal agreed by Parliament.
This is a moment when the House must rise to meet the challenge in front of us: the task of uniting our divided country. So far, we have not managed that. This evening, we have the opportunity to do our country proud, to do what we know is right and to give the public the chance to help us fix this. That is why I will be supporting motion (M) in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett).
Leaving the EU: No Deal
Paul Williams Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney), and I thank him for his courtesy.
This is not a Noel Edmonds game show. The Government are playing politics with Brexit. They are playing on people’s fears, and they have created a hoax that will divert huge resources away from frontline services this winter. The Chancellor has said that at least £4.2 billion has been set aside for no-deal planning since 2016. That is a grotesque waste of taxpayers’ money on something that will not happen, that does not need to happen and that Parliament must not allow to happen. How much extra help would that £4.2 billion buy for the NHS? How many extra police and how much extra help for our schools would it buy? And that £4.2 billion is only the Government spend. The increased costs now for our businesses do not bear thinking about.
Why am I so confident that a no-deal Brexit does not need to happen? When the Government were negotiating with the EU27, they took a negotiating position about no deal, using the slogan “no deal is better than a bad deal”. That was the negotiating position taken by the Government to try to negotiate the best possible deal with the EU, but the negotiations concluded. The Prime Minister and the EU signed off on an agreement. This is the final deal, according to the Prime Minister. She said as much when she opened the debate that was concluded prematurely.
Given that an agreement has been signed off, pending the approval of the UK Parliament and the European Parliament, why is no deal still being touted as an option? It is there for one reason only: the Prime Minister wants to bully Members across the House into voting for her deal. It is a deal that businesses tell me will lead the UK into a blind Brexit, when nothing about our future has been nailed down. It is a deal that does not give us access to the European Medicines Agency, which gives patients access to cancer drugs six months earlier. The Minister shakes his head, but the deal says that there is an aspiration to join the European Medicines Agency; it does not nail anything down. It is a deal that leaves us following EU rules without having any say in them. It is a national humiliation. We will not be bullied, and we do not want to vote for the Prime Minister’s deal.
The Prime Minister could easily rule out no deal herself. If the House was allowed to vote on the matter, no deal could easily be ruled out. There was even an amendment to the motion that was pulled that would have ruled out a no-deal Brexit. The Government are wasting so much money on something reckless that could be stopped now. And now Parliament is going into recess—18 days off at time of national crisis, when we could be sorting this out.
Why are the Government not allowing Parliament to vote on this now? It is simply because they are trying to escalate the crisis. What responsible Government allow a crisis to develop just to bully MPs? What responsible Government spend millions on fridges for political reasons? What responsible Government, for political reasons, allow businesses to escalate their planning for no deal, which is likely to include making people redundant? Whether people voted to leave or to remain back in 2016, nobody voted for this. A no-deal Brexit was not on the ballot paper and it was not in the prospectus.
I believe that there is only one sensible way out of this crisis: Parliament must be allowed immediately to rule out a no-deal Brexit, without going into recess. Parliament must be allowed, the day after new year’s day—when everyone else goes back to work—to vote on the deal. When Parliament votes against the Prime Minister’s bad deal, as it will, we must revoke the article 50 notice and give the people the final say. This would be the first chance the public have had to vote on EU exit while being in possession of all the facts needed to make the decision. We need a people’s vote with an option to stay in the EU.
I represent Stockton South in the north-east of England, an area with significant inequalities, in need of investment and massively dependent on our relationship with the EU: 57% of the north-east’s trade is with the EU. Our area stands to lose the most from a no-deal Brexit—16% less growth, according to the reports that the Government did not want us to see. North-east businesses are pleading with MPs to rule out a no-deal Brexit. The North East England chamber of commerce, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) said, wants us to stay in the single market and in the customs union to protect jobs. A no-deal Brexit is an existential threat to the NHS. The Government should stop playing politics with Brexit, immediately rule out no deal and give us a meaningful vote without delay.
Oral Answers to Questions
Paul Williams Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
Stephen Barclay
If there is an outlier to which the hon. Gentleman refers—I always enjoyed our dealings in my previous ministerial role, given his health expertise—the overwhelming feedback we have received from business is its support for the deal and its desire to see the implementation period. Business does not want the uncertainty of crashing out, but it also does not want the uncertainty of a second referendum.
Oral Answers to Questions
Paul Williams Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Steve Baker)
We continue to work closely with the Department of Health. Reports that large numbers of EU nationals are leaving the NHS are untrue. The latest figures from NHS Digital show that there were over 3,000 more EU nationals, including 470 more doctors, working in the NHS in June 2017 than there were before the referendum result. That is an increase of 5.4%. The overall share of the NHS workforce who are EU nationals also increased over that time, from 5% to 5.2%. I believe this proves that EU nationals recognise that we value the enormous contribution they make to the NHS, and I hope the agreement on citizens’ rights reached on 8 December gives them even more certainty.
Dr Williams
I refer Members to my declared interest. Some 1,700 NHS doctors from European economic area countries were recently surveyed by the British Medical Association, and half were considering leaving and one in five have made firm plans to go, many after 20 years. Whatever Ministers say, the message is not reaching our doctors and nurses. What more will the Minister do to convince them to stay?
Mr Baker
Happily, I am married to a doctor and I read that BMA article, which is available online. I recommend to anyone that they read the entire article to put everything into context. Of course, I respect the fact that the hon. Gentleman is a doctor, but I say to all Members that it is incumbent on us all to celebrate the agreement we have reached on citizens’ rights and for every one of us, without exception, to send out the message that we value people from wherever they may come.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill
Paul Williams ExcerptsWednesday 6th December 2017
(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is right, but I am confining myself to the impact of new clauses 17 and 80.
We need to understand how Ministers will cope with this big bill when the deal is done. Will Ministers give everybody a massive tax bill—and it will be a massive tax bill, because we are talking about at least £800 per person, or £3,000 per household—or will they increase Government borrowing?
I return to the simple point about the promises that were made by, among others, the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), during the referendum campaign—the £350 million a week for the NHS that we saw on the side of a bus. This is £16 billion a year. After the Brexit vote, I had a number of public meetings with my constituents and asked them what their expectation was when they voted to leave the EU. I will never forget this nice old lady saying, “Helen, it will be marvellous, because now there will enough money for the Government to reopen the A&E in Bishop hospital.” That is obviously not what the Government have in mind. It is incumbent on them to be open and clear with the British public, and that is what new clauses 17 and 80 are driving at.
Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
We have all heard the famous phrase “a week is a long time in politics”. Well, it has now been almost 18 months since the public voted to leave the EU and in that time lots of new issues have come to light. From leaving the single market and customs union, to the renewed tensions over the Irish border, we know things now that voters could not have been expected to know all those months ago. We also know that the Brexit divorce bill is likely to cost the Treasury upwards of £50 billion. That is almost £2,000 per household that could have been put to more positive use but instead becomes the opportunity cost of Brexit. Some people will say, “That’s money that would have been paid to the EU anyway”, and to some extent they are right. The difference is, however, that the money we paid to the EU in the past bought us collective benefits and access to shared resources, such as Euratom and the European Medicines Agency, that are now at risk as a result of Brexit.
Dr Williams
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks. We have no idea how much extra it is going to cost us to establish our own agencies to cover the roles of the many European agencies we have shared. This opportunity cost is not simply about the raw cash we need to spend; it is also about the time and other resources devoted to making this happen. When I stood for election to Parliament, I had in my mind a long list of issues I wanted to address and ideas I wanted to drive forward to make this country a better and fairer place. Instead, I find that much of the time in this House is now being devoted to tackling the myriad problems that have arisen, and working to reduce the harm that may come to our country and our economy from leaving the EU.
This whole process is not just an opportunity cost—it is also an opportunity lost. Nobody in my constituency who voted to leave the EU voted to make our NHS worse off. They wanted to see it improve and, if anything, were persuaded by a somewhat misleading figure on the side of a bus, but the threats to our health services are very real. Just yesterday, Dr Jeanette Dickson, from the Royal College of Radiologists told the Health Committee that the isotopes we import for cancer treatments could be rendered useless by delays in the customs process. Quite simply she told us, “If we do not have an assured supply, the reduction in rate of cure means more people will die of thyroid cancer.” That is thousands of lives every year that will be at risk if we get this wrong.
Voters did not vote to make their family poorer either; they genuinely wanted to see our economy thrive and believed that exiting the EU would bring renewed prosperity for their families. But with slowed economic growth, a collapse in the value of the pound and rising costs of imports, that flourishing economic future seems a far cry from this Government’s current performance.
Ian Paisley
Earlier in this debate, I was accused of having an extreme view on something. Is it not rather extreme to suggest that people are going to die of cancer because of this? Seriously, listen to yourself!
Dr Williams
I recommend that the hon. Gentleman looks at what was said by the expert who provided evidence to the Health Committee yesterday. She explained what would happen if we get this wrong—what I suggested was conditional, because I said “if” we get this wrong. She said that radio isotopes that we do not produce currently in the UK and need to import from other European countries, and that are essential for cancer treatment, will not be available to provide that treatment.
Carol Monaghan
Just to add a little more on that, these isotopes often have a half-life of six hours, which means that within 24 hours they are effectively useless for treatment. We do not have the ability to produce them here so they must be imported. If we are not part of the Euratom treaty, we will have serious problems with cancer treatment. It is not scaremongering, it is fact.
Dr Williams
I thank the hon. Lady for adding to the evidence. We must listen to the evidence.
As we know, the proposals before us would require the divorce bill to be assessed by independent watchdogs, and I support that. It is important that the information that comes out of the Government’s negotiations with the EU is properly scrutinised in this Chamber and beyond. As a scientist, I learned to follow evidence. When new evidence emerges, so must our course of action change. As a doctor, if a test carried out on a patient revealed a totally unexpected result, I would repeat the test again rather than plough on with a process that I thought would harm the patient. For some years, medical professionals used to say that smoking was not a risk to people’s health, and they also used to tell pregnant mothers that moderate drinking during pregnancy posed no risk to the health of their child. With the benefit of hindsight, new information and the evidence we have now, how ridiculous do those statements seem?
We must continue to keep an open mind and to scrutinise the divorce-bill negotiations and Brexit more widely. As the opportunities seem to diminish and the potential for harm to our economy and society increases, we must also be willing to ask whether this is what the public voted for. Yes, we have a duty to act on behalf of our constituents, but as representatives, not simply delegates. I promised the residents of Stockton South that I would fight and work for them all, regardless of how they voted. The public must have the right to change their minds; that is one of the key aspects of democracy. It is why we have elections every five years—or perhaps more often. If public opinion shifts, we must all be able to look at matters again.
Attention to detail and accountability to Parliament are crucial to the Brexit process, and particularly the divorce bill. That is why I shall support new clauses 17 and 80 tonight.
Oral Answers to Questions
Paul Williams Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Davis
That is a very legitimate and sensible question. I believe that the benefits of a transitional arrangement go both ways—they are symmetrical. They apply equally to France, Holland, Germany or Denmark as they do to us. That is some of the read-back we have been getting. I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been travelling around Europe himself and he will no doubt have picked up that same read-back. We are finding that the Commission is open to discussion of transition. We have raised it only briefly at each of the last two meetings because it does not fit within the current four groups of negotiation, but I think there is a very good prospect.
Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
2. What assessment the Government have made of the potential effect of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill on (a) workers’ rights and (b) environmental protection.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Steve Baker)
The UK already goes beyond EU minimum standards in a number of employment areas, and similarly we have a long history of environmental protection. We are committed to safeguarding and improving both. The EU Withdrawal Bill will ensure that EU-derived workers’ rights and environmental protections that currently apply will continue to be in place in domestic law on exit, and will enable those laws to continue to function effectively. It will then be for Parliament and, where appropriate, the devolved legislatures to make any future changes to EU-derived law.
Dr Williams
Britain already has one of the most competition-friendly economies in the world, according to the OECD, but some Conservative Members want to use Brexit to dismantle workers’ rights and erode environmental protections. [Interruption.] The EU brought us—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but there is huge pressure of time today, and we do not have time for descriptions. What we need is short, pithy questions, preferably not heckled extensively, so that we can get down the Order Paper.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but I explained that what I need is a single-sentence question, not a series of descriptions.
Dr Williams
Will the Minister assure the residents of Stockton South that their rights will not be eroded and that workers and the environment will not end up paying the price of Brexit?
Mr Baker
Yes, I am happy to reassure the hon. Gentleman and his residents. I can reassert the Government’s commitment not to roll back workers’ rights. As I have said, the UK already goes beyond EU minima, and it will be for Parliament in future to determine the future course of the law.