European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Paul Williams Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes). We both represent proud towns, but I will vote against the deal because it is my assessment that it would leave people in my constituency worse off and make their jobs less secure.

Back in June 2016, I approached the EU referendum not as my town’s local MP, but as one of Stockton’s local GPs. My experience of working in the NHS taught me the principle of informed consent, which is given based on a clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications and consequences of an action. Do we really have informed consent for this Brexit deal?

Did people have a clear appreciation of how this interpretation of Brexit would affect health and social care, for example? Half of us will get cancer. Did people really give their informed consent for us to leave the European Medicines Agency and get new cancer drugs six months later than other countries, or to risk our health and social care workforce? We depend on people from EU countries coming here and sharing their skills.

Did my constituents who make car parts for Nissan give their informed consent for a Brexit deal that the North East chamber of commerce says threatens the very future of car manufacturing in the north-east? Their jobs will be on the line when we cast our votes next week. This is no small thing: will “taking back control” be any kind of compensation for not having a job?

What if someone wants to retire to the sun? Sorry—no. There will be no ongoing entitlement to go and live in Spain. Was informed consent given for that? Young people will lose their right to study and work in Europe. Did they give their informed consent for that? Did members of our armed forces who have served our Union give their informed consent for us to go back to the bad old days of conflict in Northern Ireland? Peace in Northern Ireland was hard won, and it will be under threat if we leave the EU in this way.

My constituents were told clearly that their lives would be better, that the rest of the world would be queueing up to trade with us and that the NHS would get more money. We now know that none of those things will happen. Informed consent was never obtained for this version of Brexit. That detail just was not there.

Brexit has never been about igniting the better, prouder country that my constituents want. The whole Brexit project stems from a group of people who want fundamentally to weaken our country’s safety net. They want to water down workers’ rights, pension protections and leave to care for children—those extra costs of employment that we in the EU have all agreed to share. They are a good thing that unions and workers support, but they are threatened by Brexit.

Let us be clear: this version of Brexit does not have the support of the NHS either. The Royal College of General Practitioners says:

“It is essential that the public are fully informed about the damage exiting the EU could potentially cause to the health service.”

Nurses and midwives say the same. Brexit will damage because it will lead to less money for the NHS, as our economy grows less than it would; damage because it will exacerbate the existing staffing crisis; and damage because it will delay access to new drugs. It just is not worth it.

I spend my weekends listening to people on the streets of Stockton South. Opinions are mixed and emotions strong, but my constituents have given me two clear messages. First, they agree that Brexit is not going well. They are as frustrated as I am with how the Government have handled it, and they do not want me to vote for this deal. Secondly, they want a final say—a public vote on the final deal—now the facts about Brexit are clear. If Parliament cannot agree what to do, we need to go back to the people for a people’s vote, which would be the first chance for everyone to give their truly informed consent, knowing all the facts about what Brexit means.

There is nothing to fear from more democracy. We owe it to the people we represent, before taking this giant risk to the future of our country, to check with them that we truly have their informed consent.