Global Britain

Debate between Peter Bone and Stewart Malcolm McDonald

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Ah, well, the hon. Gentleman, who is new to the House, will have to get used to that. Those on the Government Benches have a habit of forgetting that the UK is a political state. It is a union of nations across these islands, even if they do not govern as such. He is, of course, correct. Let us take freedom of movement as an example. It is one of the greatest instruments of economic freedom, of peace and of the exchange of ideas that has ever existed, yet Minister after Minister fall over themselves to get to that Dispatch Box to decry freedom of movement. It is the very instrument that this country was enthusiastically setting up within the European Union. Of course, we should keep freedom of movement, and if the United Kingdom does not want to keep it, then I ask it please to think of the Scottish context, and work with us to deliver something that will help our economy, which is something that the Government keep telling us that they want to do.

Madam Deputy Speaker, if you will indulge me very briefly, I want to acknowledge the contribution that my own party has made to the European project over a great many years, starting, of course, with the great Winnie Ewing. She is the only person in Scotland ever to be elected to all three Parliaments—the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and, of course, to this place in a historic by-election in Hamilton in 1967. There was also Alan McCartney, Professor Sir Neil MacCormick, Ian Hudghton, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith), and, more recently, Christian Allard, a French Scot representing Scotland in the European Parliament, Heather Anderson, who was appointed only earlier this week and, of course, Dr Aileen McLeod, who gave a fantastic speech yesterday, outlining our ambitions to be back in the European Union, and hopefully quickly.

Turning to the trade issue briefly, when the Secretary of State was at the Dispatch Box earlier, she responded to an absurd intervention from the hon. Member for Wellingborough, who seemed to blame the European Union for some kind of restriction that meant the United Kingdom could not do more in terms of international aid. The Secretary of State tried to lay on an almost Churchillian defence of free trade and economic freedom. It is the same Secretary of State, as the shadow Secretary of State pointed out, who, eight weeks into the job, had to come to Parliament to apologise for the fact that the Government had broken not one, not two, but three court orders banning weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. She was eight weeks into the job. This was only about four months ago. It is surely inconceivable that she should still be at that Dispatch Box today. We know that there is a reshuffle coming at some point, so who knows if she will still be there, but my goodness if that is a candidate for International Trade Secretary, she is in no position to come here and expect us to buy into her agenda on proper free trade that genuinely helps alleviate poverty and abides by the rules.

[Mr Bone]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I apologise if he thought that I was yawning at his speech. It was just the fact that I have heard it so many times before. Does he accept that one of the advantages of coming out of the European Union is that we will be able, at our own bequest, to lower tariffs to developing countries?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Let us see what comes forward. Sure, I am all for that debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) is much more qualified on these affairs than me. I will welcome it only if it is a genuinely good plan. If it is a good plan, we will be the first to welcome it. None the less, I have to say that, given who the International Trade Secretary is and given the short history that she has in office on these types of affairs, I am not exactly expecting very much.

The Secretary of State also mentioned the upcoming integrated defence and foreign policy review. We have had a number of miniature defence reviews over the past few years. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us whether this will be a proper strategic defence and security review, or will be fiscally neutral—a bit like the modernising defence programme?

Think about the context in which this debate is happening. Earlier this week we heard the Government announce their Faustian pact with the Chinese Communist party over Huawei. The announcement comes from a position of great weakness. It is gullible Britain, not global Britain, that I see from this side of the House, and the sooner the Government are honest about it, the better.

I have a few other questions. More broadly, what exactly is the China strategy? We talk a lot about Russia, and rightly so—I note that the Minister who covers Ukraine is here, and he knows of my interest in that part of the world—but what is the China strategy?

What is the strategy to fix the utterly broken instrument that is the UN Security Council? It is supposed to underpin security, freedom and the international rules that keep us safe and allow free trade, but it has become largely redundant. Will NATO, which faces all kinds of strife, internally and externally, be included in the integrated review?

Will there be some kind of assessment of our capability? Tories love nothing more than thumping their chests and reminding us that Britain spends 2% of GDP on defence. That is wonderful, but what does it mean for our capability? That is where the debate really needs to go.

We need to hear more about the Government’s supine response to the Trump Palestine-Israel plan, which we had a brief exchange about this morning. The Government could not quite bring themselves to wholly disown the plan. Admittedly, it is not their plan, but it strikes me that they are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea on this. It is time to show some muscle, to be honest and to stand up for international law. If we are against the annexation of Crimea—we are right to be—we should be against the annexation of Palestinian land, and I would like the Minister to make that clear when he sums up.

To conclude, the Conservative party—and, by the sounds of it, the Labour party—might have given up on this country being a member of the European Union, but Scotland certainly has not. We will always be open to Europe. We will always be a place where Europe and the world can come and have a conversation—hopefully we will do more than that—and keep contributing to Scotland. The challenge for my party, and for my country, is to live up to the maxim that Winnie Ewing set out in 1967, when she said:

“Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.”

Well, we want to get on and do more, and the saltire will not be drowned out by any of this global Britain nonsense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

That was a marvellous speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt). He may have spoken only three times, but I encourage him to speak many more times in this Chamber. The maiden speeches we heard today were all different, but they had one thing in common: they all held the House. The House listened and was respectful, and these new Members will be a useful addition to this Parliament.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am so pleased that you are in the Chair. I have been waiting not five hours to make this speech but more than 30 years. I cannot tell you how unbelievably happy I am about what is going to happen tomorrow. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) quite rightly said that we should remember that some people will be disappointed, but there will only be a few Liberal Democrats left, so— [Laughter.] No, the point is that I have knocked on thousands of doors over the past 30 years, and I know that whether someone voted leave or remain, they will celebrate tomorrow because the decision has been made and we are leaving, and I will be in Parliament Square tomorrow to celebrate.

I have a couple of things to say about Brexit and then I will talk about something perhaps more important. We will end the free movement of people. We will stop paying billions of pounds to the EU each and every year. We will make our own laws in our own country to be judged by our own judges. Since we went into Europe, more than 2 million people net have come here, and the problem with that is that they came here whether we wanted them to come or not, which made us restrict immigration from the rest of the world. I am looking forward to us having a fair immigration system, under which we get the people we want from all over the world and we keep out the people we do not want. The amount of money that we have given this club since we joined—after all the money they have given us back in funny projects—is £211 billion net, and yet that same club exports in goods nearly £100 billion more to us than we sell to them. That is not a good deal, and that also ends tomorrow.

Then I thought—I do not think this has been mentioned today—that what has happened is that the establishment has been beaten. I lived in Wales in the 1990s and stood against Neil Kinnock in 1992, and the position of the Conservative party then was that we should be in Europe for ever and that we should join the euro. That was the held position when Mr Major led the party. I got myself into trouble, as I put in my manifesto that I wanted to come out of the EU. Mr Major was not much pleased. I did not quite win against Neil Kinnock—I lost by a mere 30,000 votes to 6,000—but it was the best ever Tory result in Islwyn.

In 1997 the established view of the establishment, whether it was big business, the media—especially the BBC—the civil servants, the Government or the Opposition, was that we were in decline as a nation. They all agreed that we were in decline as a nation and that the only way we could survive was to become part of this federal Europe. That changed over time. I fought the seat of Pudsey in 1997, and I think I was the only Conservative candidate to be endorsed by the Referendum party. Under Mr Major and co we were still the party of staying in Europe.

Moving on to 2001 and we had William Hague. At least then we were fighting to keep the pound, which we managed to do. There had been a slight move in the establishment. Then we come to 2005, when I was first elected. The establishment view of Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne was, “We are staying in the EU. You right wingers are fruitcakes,” and things like that.

With the help of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and a number of others in our group, we organised the 2011 Backbench Business debate on whether we should have an EU referendum. I remember George Osborne arranging for the debate to be brought forward from the Thursday to the Monday so that we Eurosceptics would be put in our place. On the day, 81 Tories voted against a hard three-line Whip, because they were in touch with their people, to say that a referendum was necessary. In 2013, thanks to the last Speaker, there was an amendment to the Queen’s Speech regretting that it did not include an EU referendum.

This House slowly began to believe that we should come out of Europe, or at least that we should give the people the chance. I was delighted when David Cameron granted the referendum, and I was delighted to work with my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering and for Corby (Tom Pursglove) to create Grassroots Out. We toured the country, and many of those rallies and meetings were attended by colleagues I now see in the Chamber, including some on the Front Bench and even one in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. It was clear to me that people wanted us out and that Parliament was behind.

We won that referendum, and I remember being in the Division Lobby after a later debate, before David Cameron resigned his seat. He gave me a friendly punch in the stomach to show his appreciation. Who would have believed that after that result, for three and a half years, the establishment would continue to fight? We very nearly lost our grip on Brexit. Thankfully, now that we have a Prime Minister who had the courage to resign as Foreign Secretary, who led the Vote Leave campaign, and who got the withdrawal agreement changed when nobody said he could, we are coming out tomorrow, and I am so proud of that. That is the result of what we did in this Chamber and what the people outside did. It is right that the Opposition continue to scrutinise and criticise, as that is their role, but there are fewer of them because they did not listen to the people.

I am very pleased about what is going to happen, but this seems unfair on the people who have actually achieved this. They put up with all the propaganda, turning down the “fact” that we were going to have bubonic plague, massive unemployment and falling house prices—there was all that money thrown at the remain campaign. People will celebrate tomorrow, but why should we not do something a little more permanent? We should follow the example of some of our European neighbours. Germany has nine bank holidays, France has 11, Italy has 11, the Netherlands has 12 and Belgium has 15, so why not take a leaf out of their book? We have only eight in this country, so why not have an extra bank holiday? I suggested this to the Leader of the House, but I was not sure from his answer whether or not he was in favour. I will introduce a private Member’s Bill next week—

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

rose—

[Mr Bone]

I must just finish this important bit. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, and I will not yawn at that moment either. My private Member’s Bill will establish a bank holiday on the Friday nearest to 23 June each year. It is a good time to have a bank holiday, and we do not have one in June at the moment. I want it to be known as “United Kingdom day”. [Interruption.] Members may scoff—

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I do.

[Mr Bone]

He does. But the advantage of this is that we can celebrate our sovereignty at the same time as celebrating our nations of the United Kingdom. That would be a permanent reward; every June, people would have the day off and say, “Thank goodness for that Brexit vote.”

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

We will work that bank holiday if the hon. Gentleman is successful in getting it. Throughout his speech he has been railing against the “establishment”. I know he sees himself as a kind of mild-mannered, modern-day answer to the metric martyr here in Parliament, but the Brexit project is entirely of the establishment. Is he really asking us to believe that people such as Arron Banks are not the establishment? They are, and the hon. Gentleman is the establishment now, even if he does not want to believe it. But why does he want to take a leaf out of all of those European countries’ books, all those countries he is so desperate to get away from? Why is he so workshy, in wanting to have another bank holiday?

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for that intervention. The praise the hon. Gentleman gave me about being a metric martyr was kind. I was just saying that on this last day of our being in the EU let us take the one good thing that the EU does, which is have bank holidays. Once we are out, we will not have all these pettifogging regulations and all this oppression on industry, so industry will do better. So let the workers have the extra day off to celebrate.

I am pleased and honoured to be the last Back Bencher to speak in this debate, the last Back Bencher to speak while we are still in the European Union. People in this Chamber deserve credit, but the people who deserve the most credit are the British people, and well done them.