UK’s Withdrawal from the EU

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I will give way to my right hon. Friend—my best friend among all these arch-remainers, who are otherwise my political allies in the House, day in, day out, though they all voted against the agreement. They are still threatening to do so, because they do not want to leave. They think there should be a people’s vote.

Then there was a faction of people who were not content to vote for the political agreement, because it will take years to negotiate and is rather general, and who wished to be reassured on the record, before we started negotiations, that we would establish basic and sensible points, such as our staying in a customs union and having some regulatory alignment. If that was established, all the arguments about the Irish border would go completely out of the window, because we would have an open border in Ireland and an open border in England. I would like to see that. I would vote for that—and I have, several times; I voted with the official Opposition once or twice on a customs union—but it is not necessary, because everything is up for grabs after we leave. There will be wide-ranging negotiation. I think the pressure from business interests, economies and people of common sense on both sides of the channel will drive us towards something like that in some years.

Meanwhile—this is where we are now—the Government have pursued one of the factions on the Conservative side of the House. We have a kind of breakaway party within a party—a bit like Momentum, really—with a leader and a chief whip. They are ardent right wingers. The Government have set off in pursuit of these bizarre—as some Government members say—negotiating tactics; some of them, though, seem positively to want to leave with no deal, because any agreement with foreigners from the continent is a threat to our sovereignty.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I will not give way any more. I have great respect for my hon. Friend, so I hope that I will not be too disparaging of his views—he and I fundamentally disagree—but lots of people want to speak, and I cannot give way as if I were a Front-Bench spokesman. That is not possible.

That is the wrong group to pursue. The Brady amendment, which I voted against, is meaningless; it rejects the agreement that the Prime Minister has spent two years getting and has commended in warm terms to the House. We can see from interventions that a lot of the people in the European Research Group will reject anything she comes back with, because they want—some of them—to leave with no deal. That is where we and the House must start from, and we have very little time within which to do something.

We must get past these procedural obstacles that the Government keep putting in place about what we can and cannot do, and get some binding policy that the Government have to follow. In the end, some of us—even remainers, divided over referendums—will have to back down once a sensible majority is established, and will have to compromise. That was the aim of the amendment that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland and I tabled. I hope that method will still be considered—a single transferrable vote, a ballot—because we will get nowhere until we have some idea of what can command a majority here.

I think there is a majority in favour of a customs union. I do not know whether there is a majority in favour of a referendum—there might be, I do not know. I am certain that there is an overwhelming majority flatly against allowing us to leave with no deal. My guess is that there are about 20 or 30 Members of this House who actually want to leave with no deal, and they should be rejected; I very much hope that they will be.

We will need more time to do this. I am quite happy to revoke article 50, and then invoke it again, if the House wants, when we have some idea of where we want to go. If we do get through this immediate crisis without a calamity, there will be four or five years of negotiations, on any sensible estimate, on what kind of arrangements we will have. That will be based on the political declaration. We cannot allow this kind of calamitous debate and constant crisis to continue throughout those five years.

Before we even start those negotiations—this is why I would revoke or extend article 50—we need a British consensus, a clear parliamentary majority, a path established that the British Government can go to Brussels with, knowing that it commands a majority. Our partners must see that we can command a majority for it. We must get through these daft days and eventually have a debate that produces a majority for something sensible.

At the moment, I think Brussels has given up on us. It does not think that the British Government even agree with themselves on what they are trying to pursue, and they have no idea what the British Government are asking now. It requires great faith on Brussels’ part to believe that the British Government can get a majority for anything that they will produce in the next two or three weeks, if they get some form of words amending what we have. It is time that this House found some method—I have advocated some approaches that we might take—of taking command of the situation. That would have the support of the vast majority of members of the Government; it would make their position easier. The vast majority of Members, I suspect on both sides of House, are looking for such an eventuality to emerge very soon indeed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams). While I agree with Wales in voting to leave the EU, I am afraid that I found little in his speech—though he put it powerfully and coherently—that I could agree with. I certainly cannot agree with a second referendum, or indeed, to taking no deal off the table.

I have always found that it is a good idea in the House to vote on what the motion says and not necessarily on what Ministers or other Members say in the House, so I thought I had better have a look at what it says today. It is very clear, actually:

“That this House…reiterates its support for the approach to leaving the EU expressed by this House on 29 January 2019”—

so I thought I had better look and see what the House had agreed to, and within the motion that it agreed to were the words

“rejects the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a Withdrawal Agreement”.

In other words, the motion that we are voting on tonight takes no deal off the table. It does not matter what Ministers have said. It is what the motion says, so I would expect all Opposition Members who do not seem to want a no-deal option to support the Government’s motion tonight, which is exactly the reason I will not be supporting it. It is a badly worded motion—well, no, it is not a badly worded motion; it is deliberately worded that way. I think the Government thought that they could slide it through and that it would not matter. I know that, if I supported this tonight, the Whips would point out to me, “You have supported taking no deal off the table.” That is not what I can do.

I want to go back to when I was a co-founder of the Grassroots Out movement. I travelled the length and breadth of the United Kingdom during the referendum campaign discussing with people what they wanted if they were going to vote to leave. It came down, I think, to a few things. They wanted to end the free movement of people, to stop giving billions and billions of pounds each and every year to the EU and for us to make our own laws in our own country, judged by our own judges. I fear that the current withdrawal agreement proposed by the Government fails on all those tests. Maybe that is one of the reasons why it suffered the biggest defeat in Commons history. Anybody who had suffered the biggest defeat in Commons history might want to go away and think very carefully about what they put to the House, and not tinker around for a couple of weeks before coming back with more or less the same motion, because the same thing will happen. It will get rejected by this House.

Let us look at the tests. Does the withdrawal agreement end the free movement of people? It does not, because there is no future deal worked out, just some sort of political wish list—a political declaration—so it fails on that score. Does the agreement stop billions and billions of pounds being given to the EU each and every year? We know that £39 billion is going to be given whatever happens under the withdrawal agreement, and if the transition period is extended, even more money will be given. Clearly, our courts will not be able to be the final arbiters, because the European Court of Justice has a significant say over our future.

[John Redwood]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that, because the agreement is not about the future partnership, it sentences this House and the whole nation to 21 to 45 more months of the rows, disagreements, uncertainties and problems that we have presided over for the last two years and seven months?

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention. I will deal with that issue in a minute, but I want to finish the point that clearly the withdrawal agreement does not let us make our own laws in our own country, because we would still be tied to the European Union.

The one thing that people say—I hear it from leading remainers—is that they want certainty, but the one thing that the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration in particular give us is uncertainty, with months and months of squabbling and not delivering what the British people voted for in June 2016.

[Ian Paisley]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be most useful before the conclusion of tonight’s debate if we heard from the Government Front Bench whether the textual, legal changes that are binding have been drafted and whether they have been put to Europe?

[Mr Bone]

I am very grateful for that intervention from the very sound colleagues on the DUP Benches. Of course, it would help enormously to hear that.

Everyone talks about no-deal cliff edge and disaster, or says that people did not vote to make themselves poorer, but that is complete and utter nonsense.

[Anna McMorrin]

Rubbish.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

No, it is not rubbish, it is nonsense. But the hon. Lady can use the word “rubbish” as well—whichever one she likes: rubbish or nonsense. [Interruption.] Oh, she is saying that I am talking nonsense? I listened to hon. Lady, who made a powerful remain speech that was absolute—let us use one of those words—nonsense. The truth of the matter is that the British people had the Cameron-Osborne “Project Fear” thrown at them. They were told that it would be the end of the world if they voted leave. They would be poorer, house prices would go up or down, interest rates would go through the roof and there would be mass unemployment—even bubonic plague—and they still voted for it, so I am afraid that people in this remain Parliament are ignoring the wishes of the British people. With the exception of very few Members, none of the Members who has spoken mentioned the British people. They all mentioned themselves and what they wanted—[Interruption.] Sorry, did the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) say, “Shut up”? If the hon. Lady suggests that, I am going to shut up very shortly, and I am sure we will hear from her, but I will say this—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let me say in the most affectionate possible terms to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who is an extremely cerebral Member of the House, that at this moment he is behaving like an incorrigible delinquent. I urge him to desist from this disorderly behaviour. He is fundamentally a very good man—some would even say a great man—but something has seized him today, and he is behaving in a mildly eccentric manner.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman says that the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is “very irritating”. Well, this is a subjective matter. Some people might find the hon. Gentleman irritating, or even find the Chair irritating—but who cares?

[Mr Bone]

I can assure you, Mr Speaker, that I am not a snowflake, so I will not take offence from the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman).

The truth is that a no-deal Brexit—which is, of course, a deal that means leaving on the basis of WTO rules—is the answer. It gives clarity to business, and it delivers what the British people voted for in June 2016.