European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Peter Grant Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I have said already that we will put our overall negotiation through legislative consent motions; I have made that point previously. Let us come back to the core of the argument. The argument being put is that everything that belongs to the European Union now belongs to the devolved Administrations, but that clearly does not work, as I will come on to say in a minute.

The common frameworks will be important as they will enable us to manage shared resources such as the sea, rivers and the air, and they will enable the continued functioning of the UK’s internal market. They will allow us to strike ambitious trade deals, administer and provide access to justice in cases with a cross-border element and enter into new international treaties, including on our future relationship with the European Union.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

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[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I commend the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and, in particular, the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), for their two outstanding contributions.

This Bill, and the whole Brexit process, not only gives us an opportunity but requires us to go right back and think fundamentally about what Parliament is for and what democracy is about. The Scottish National party supports as a fundamental principle the ancient and honoured tradition that sovereignty over the land of Scotland is inalienably vested in the people of Scotland. That principle is not for sale now, or at any time, to anybody.

This Bill seeks to usurp and undermine that sovereignty in a number of ways, which I will mention later. That fact alone compels me to vote against the Bill on Monday night, and it compels anybody who believes in the sovereignty of the people of Scotland, and anybody who purports to be here on their behalf, to oppose the Bill on Monday night, regardless of the party that is trying to get them to do something different.

As it is Labour’s reasoned amendment that has been selected, we will be supporting it on Monday night with some reservations. First, given that 62% of our citizens voted to remain in the European Union, I am certainly not ready to give up on that for the people I represent. I fully understand and respect the fact that two nations of the United Kingdom voted to leave, but I ask the Members of Parliament from those two nations to respect the fact that the other two nations voted to remain and that their votes cannot simply be cast aside.

Secondly, the reasoned amendment refers to parliamentary sovereignty. I respect that that is an important principle for some people, but it does not apply universally across the nations of these islands.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware of the question that was on the ballot paper? It was a United Kingdom question and a United Kingdom vote, and we voted as a United Kingdom to leave the European Union. That is what we decided. Does he not understand that?

[Peter Grant]

I do not know which part of “the people of Scotland are sovereign” the hon. Gentleman does not understand. The people of Scotland are sovereign, and I will defend their sovereignty. I urge all Members of Parliament from Scotland to respect that sovereignty when the time comes.

My final concern with Labour’s reasoned amendment is on the transitional period.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

I need to make some progress.

I welcome that we now have a lot more clarity from Labour on the benefits of membership of the single market and customs union, and I welcome that it mentioned those benefits in its reasoned amendment. I am disappointed, given that everybody now knows—the Norwegians certainly know—there is absolutely no reason why being out of the European Union means we have to be out of the single market, that Labour has not yet come round to a position of saying that we should attempt to stay in the single market permanently after the UK leaves the European Union. Having said that, Labour’s reasoned amendment is a vast improvement on allowing the Bill to go ahead unchallenged, so we will support it on Monday evening.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Peter Grant]

I will not give way just now.

In all the reasoned amendments that have been tabled, MPs from different parties have come up with a huge number of powerful reasons for rejecting the Bill at this stage, which tells us that it has a huge number of serious and sometimes fundamental flaws that mean it cannot be allowed to proceed in its present format. If that is a problem for Government timetablers, tough. The interests of my constituents are far more important than the interests of Government business managers.

I will address four particular weaknesses in the Bill, some of which have already been ably covered. First, the Bill proposes an act of constitutional betrayal. It gives a Tory Government in London the right to claw back any powers it fancies from the elected Parliaments of the three devolved nations of the United Kingdom. That is not just a betrayal of those who campaigned for so long for the establishment of those Parliaments, it is a betrayal of the great parliamentarians of all parties and none who have worked so hard to make those Parliaments succeed.

[Luke Graham]

The hon. Gentleman talks about representing Scotland, but let us remember that 1 million Scots voted to leave. In fact, a third of SNP voters voted to leave. [Interruption.] Those are public stats. What he is actually saying is that, if he truly wants to represent his constituents, he should respect the democratic will of the United Kingdom, which is what he, like all of us, is in this Parliament to do. If SNP Members want to be stronger for Scotland, I suggest that they engage by tabling detailed amendments rather than trying to create a wedge between the nations of the United Kingdom.

[Peter Grant]

I will happily see the hon. Gentleman’s 1 million Scottish votes to leave the European Union and raise him 1.6 million Scottish votes to leave the United Kingdom, not to mention the 2 million or so who voted to remain in the United Kingdom, because he and his colleagues promised unconditionally that that was the way to protect our membership of the European Union.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Peter Grant]

I will take no more interventions from people whose position on the European Union has changed so radically over the past couple of years.

Returning to the attempt to grab power back from the devolved Parliaments that so many of us worked so hard to establish, many of those who take the greatest credit for their establishment, such as the great Donald Dewar, are not here to see the success of what they created, and I shudder to think what they would have thought of these attempts completely to emasculate all three devolved Parliaments.

We are seeing a betrayal of the promises—one could almost say the “vow”—that certain people made to the people of Scotland just three years ago: the most powerful devolved Parliament in the world, they said; Scotland should lead the Union, they said; parity of esteem and an equal partnership of nations, they said. What definition are they using if the Prime Minister, who takes her authority from this Parliament, decides it is beneath her status even to meet the First Ministers, who take their authority from their respective national Parliaments? What definition of “equality” or “parity of esteem” are the Government using? Where is the parity of esteem if the Joint Ministerial Committee, trumpeted by the Tories less than a year ago as the epitome of good relations between our four national Governments, has not met for seven months? I note, however, that, completely coincidental to an attempt by my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) to have an urgent debate on the matter, the Government have now decided they are going to reconvene the JMC at some time in the autumn. I hope they will not fall back on the claim that autumn finishes on 30 November. I welcome the fact that they have given way to some pressure and are now going to reconvene the JMC, but the fact is they have done nothing, even ignoring a request for a meeting by the national Governments of Wales and Scotland, which they had promised to act on within one month. They broke that promise, as they have broken so many other promises to the peoples, Parliaments and Governments of those devolved nations.

[Wayne David]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be simple and straightforward for the Government to accept the reality of devolution and that where there is the repatriation of powers from Brussels in devolved areas they should go directly to the devolved institutions?

[Peter Grant]

Absolutely—that is what devolution means; if the powers are currently devolved, they should remain devolved.

If we cannot trust the Tories to keep their word on something as simple as arranging a joint meeting of Ministers, nobody in any of the devolved nations can trust their assurances that the draconian new powers in this Bill will not be abused. Our experience of promises from the Tories suggests we cannot take them at their word unless the legislation is nailed down so tightly that they have no wriggle room to go back on their word.

We have heard a lot of rhetoric about some issues needing a “UK-wide approach”. I wonder how the UK-wide approach to agriculture, animal welfare and food standards is going to work in Northern Ireland, because regardless of what the legislative or constitutional position will be, the matter of business survival means that the food industry in Northern Ireland will follow the same standards as are followed in the Republic of Ireland—the same standards as apply in the EU will be followed. So we are talking about different animal welfare standards in Northern Ireland from those in the rest of the UK, and I cannot really see how that is working.

What a UK-wide approach has been shown to mean in practice is that the Prime Minister and a few hand-picked colleagues get the right to dictate to the peoples of these islands and to our elected Governments. For example, the need for a “UK-wide approach” led to Scotland’s fishing industry being sold out by the British Government when we first joined the EU and there is a serious danger that it will lead to those fishermen being sold out yet again as part of the process of leaving.

My second concern is about the all-encompassing powers set out in clause 9, which was superbly torn to shreds by the shadow Secretary of State a few minutes ago. One of the Prime Minister’s own Back Benchers, the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), described this on Wednesday as an “unprecedented power grab”, and there is no other way it can be described; 649 elected MPs will be expected to stand by and watch while a single Minister, with a single signature, can make new legislation. This includes the right to make legislation that should require an Act of this Parliament. The only requirement there will be on the Minister is that she or he thinks the legislation is a good idea. When we have Ministers who think that welching on the Dubs amendment and introducing the rape clause were good ideas, I am looking for a slightly harder test than a Tory Minister thinking that something is a good idea.

These new powers are often referred to as Henry VIII powers. Henry VIII was a despot with no interest in democracy, who thought Scotland and Wales were just places to be conquered and trampled on, so perhaps this is not such a bad name for something this Government are doing, but using that nickname hides the danger of these proposed powers. Despite his murderous deeds, a lot of people see Henry VIII as a figure of fun and pantomime villain—someone who even got to star in a “Carry On” film. But the fact is that the powers in this Bill are more “Nineteen Eighty-Four” than “Carry On Henry”. The powers that bear his name are anything but funny. They represent a significant erosion of parliamentary democracy; indeed to those Members here who believe in the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, I say that the powers in this Bill are utterly incompatible with that idea. This is not about taking back control to Parliament and resuming parliamentary sovereignty for those nations of the UK where parliamentary sovereignty exists. This Bill threatens to destroy it, once and for all. The powers are designed to allow Ministers to bypass all pretexts of parliamentary scrutiny. It is even possible that we could see an Act of Parliament receive Royal Assent one day and then be repealed by a Minister the next, simply because they thought it was a good idea.

The Government will argue that delegated powers are an essential part of modern government, and I agree. We do not have an issue with the principle of using delegated legislation. We do have an issue with allowing delegated legislation to be abused in order to bypass proper scrutiny. The only way this House can be satisfied that the powers will not be abused is if the Bill is reworded to make it impossible for them to be abused in that way.

The third significant weakness in the Bill has been touched on and it relates to our membership of the biggest trade agreement in the world. We are going to throw that away. We are talking about the loss of 80,000 jobs in Scotland and the loss of £11 billion per year coming into our economy as a result. The figures for the rest of the UK will be proportionate to that. This is being done simply to pacify the extreme right wing of the Conservative party and their allies, whose obsession with the number of immigrants has blinded them to the massive social and economic benefits that these EU nationals have brought to my constituency and, I suspect, to every constituency in the UK. The sheer immorality of the isolationist, xenophobic approach that the Conservatives are trying to drag us down is there for all to see, but it is not just immoral—it is daft. It threatens to destroy our economy. Already we are seeing key sectors in industry and key public sector providers struggling to recruit the staff they need. It was reported a week or two ago that a private recruitment firm is being offered £200 million just to go to persuade workers to come to the UK to work in our health service. I have a hospital in my constituency that we could rebuild for £200 million quite comfortably, yet this money is going to be handed to a private firm to try to undo some of the damage that has been done by the Government’s obsession with the immigration numbers. With the collapsing pound making British wages are worth a lot less to European workers than they were before, with the anti-European rhetoric and hysteria that we still get from Government Members and with the Government still refusing to give European nationals the absolute, unconditional and permanent guarantees that they deserve if they choose to come and live here, those recruitment difficulties are going to become much, much worse before they get any better. The Secretary of State wants our EU partners to be innovative, imaginative and flexible. I urge him to apply these same qualities to his Government’s attitude to membership of the single market.

I have mentioned the plight of EU nationals, and another major concern, which again has been raised, particularly by the shadow Secretary of State, is that this Bill threatens to undermine the rights of not only EU nationals but of everyone, regardless of their nationality or citizenship, who lives on these islands. I hear the promises from the Government, but we have had promises from this Government before. They are not worth the paper they are written on, even if they are not written down on paper at all.

At yesterday’s Prime Minister’s questions we had the usual charade of a Tory Back Bencher asking a planted question so that the Prime Minister could confirm how successful the Government have been in bringing down unemployment. She went so far as to say that unemployment in the UK is at its lowest for more than four decades, so let us just think about that. The Prime Minister is telling us that unemployment is lower now than it was when we went into the European Union and the single market. How can the Conservative party boast about having almost done away with unemployment altogether and then say that immigrants are to blame for the huge unemployment problem? The fact is that the free movement of people—free movement of workers—and membership of the single market has not caused unemployment; it has caused employment. It has benefited our economy and helped our businesses to thrive. It keeps schools open in places where they would otherwise have closed. All the evidence suggests that the most successful, wealthiest and happiest countries in the world—those with the highest standard of living, whether material or in the things that really matter, are countries that are open and inclusive. The Government are trying to move us away from that to become one of the most isolationist and isolated economies in the world. Only five countries are not part of a trade agreement, but none of them is a country we would want to see as an example.

The Government’s mantra on Brexit has been about taking back control, but that will not happen—at least not in the way that the people who voted to leave hoped it would happen—because it is not about taking back control to the 650 people who collectively hold a democratic mandate from our constituents to represent them; it is about taking back control from this Parliament and putting it into the hands of a few Ministers. It is about taking back control from the devolved and elected national Parliaments and Assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and putting it into the hands of a few chosen Members of a political party that cannot get elected into government in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The Bill allows Ministers to usurp the authority of Parliament and gives them absolute power to override the will of Parliament.

A lot has been said about the UK Government’s red lines in the Brexit negotiations, and I will give the Minister one red line from the sovereign people of Scotland: our sovereignty is not for sale today and will not be for sale at any future time—not to anyone and not at any price. The Bill seeks to take sovereignty from us, probably more than any Bill presented to this Parliament since we were dragged into it more than 300 years ago. That is why I urge every MP who claims to act on behalf of the people of Scotland, who believes in the sovereignty of the people and who believes in the sovereignty of democratic institutions to vote with us and against the Bill on Monday night.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. A 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches will now apply.

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[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) on a speech that was fluent, forceful and, at the same time, generous to her predecessor. Her speech has also made me determined me to visit Canterbury, which sounds such a delightful place.

I have a few points: on why people voted to leave in the referendum; on where the Bill stands in relation to why people voted to leave; and on how all the other aspects of Brexit are going, and how they relate back to why people voted as they did. There may be other areas, but there are three that I think are most relevant. First, people voted to restore the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. However they define that sovereignty, the issue was certainly debated forcefully, and it was occasionally raised on the doorstep—I use the word “occasionally” advisedly.

Secondly, people voted to restore some kind of economic independence. People felt that we were spending too much money in Europe and that we would be better off outside, where we could negotiate better trade arrangements with the rest of the world—everything in the garden would be rosy. Thirdly, the issue most commonly raised with me on the doorstep was immigration.

I will briefly address those three points. On the first issue of sovereignty, the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) can dance on the head of a pin all they want about what the Bill actually does but, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) so forensically demonstrated, the Bill is a transfer of power from Parliament and towards the Executive. That certainly is not what the people in my constituency voted for.

Secondly, on economic independence, apart from the fact that it will potentially cost us £70 billion just to walk away, people did not vote for a worse trade deal and for worse economic relationships within the European community. Okay, I accept that the Prime Minister says, “You can’t leave and, at the same time, be a member of the single market. You cannot leave and, at the same time, be a member of the customs union.” I am sure she is right, but let us be honest about what we know the Government are seeking to do.

[Peter Grant]

Please will the right hon. Gentleman explain Norway’s arrangement? Norway has never been in the European Union but is a full member of the customs union and single market, as are Iceland and Liechtenstein. It is a complete fallacy to suggest that being outside the EU has to mean a country is outside the single market—unless it chooses to be.

[Mr Howarth]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The one I was going to make is that if we are being brutally honest, we all know what is going to happen. The Government, through the negotiations, are going to find a set of arrangements as close as possible to being part of the single market but without being a member of it and something approximating the customs union. If they do not do that, they will not be looking after the best interests of this country. That much we know, which leads me on to the question about immigration.

If the Government are going to achieve anything approximating the customs union and some sort of relationship with the single market, the price they are going to have to pay is to agree some sort of approximate arrangements about the free movement of labour between the UK and the EU. Ministers might say, “Well, we can do that.” No, you can’t. The reality is that if the people negotiating on behalf of the EU were to say, “Okay UK, you can have something that approximates the single market and customs union, and you don’t need to worry about any free movement of labour”, they would soon be removed from their negotiating positions. This idea is not realistic.

Where are we in this audit of what we have achieved since the referendum? First, we have a set of arrangements in this Bill that are less democratic, and that give less power to Parliament and more power to the Executive. That is hardly what was promised in the referendum. Secondly, we are likely to be paying £70 billion for the privilege of leaving—not getting £350 million a week to put back into the health service. Finally, if we get anything like reasonable arrangements on our economic relationship with the EU, we are going to have to accept some level of free movement of labour. Everything people voted for is going to be betrayed.