Leaving the EU: Extension Period Negotiations

Peter Grant Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered negotiations on the UK leaving the EU during the EU extension period.

Although I have contributed to many Westminster Hall debates, it is an honour to lead my first one this morning and to do so under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

In my maiden speech nearly two years ago, I spoke of the “delicate gift” that is our “parliamentary democracy”, which is

“the sum of the toil”

and

“sacrifice…that generations before us have made”.

I also said that this “dynamic system” has worked on “trust”, with each cohort of parliamentarians vowing to “fine-tune” and reform our laws and institutions

“to reflect the needs and desires of the citizens they represent.” —[Official Report, 6 July 2017; Vol. 626, c. 1392.]

I made my own vow two years ago, standing on a manifesto to leave the single market and customs union, in an election at which nearly 85% of votes went to parties promising to fulfil the referendum result. I was elected to a House that had already triggered the two-year countdown to our departure from the EU, and I took leadership from a Cabinet that repeated in one voice that no deal was better than a bad deal.

On the eve of European elections, we should all reflect with regret on the fact that this generation of parliamentarians is now on the cusp of losing the trust that is so fundamental to democratic legitimacy. Could there be a more poignant symbol of that devastating loss than the scaffolded shroud that this mother of Parliaments now wears? How disappointing to those who flock to this place in admiration that they find not a confident institution but one where Big Ben—the icon of our democracy—is silent, its clock face peeping on to a Parliament that is being incrementally fortified against rising anger from the streets.

I do not wish to downplay the magnitude of the decision to leave the EU or the complexity of extracting ourselves from the EU some 40 years after entry. However, it should have been our role as parliamentarians to address and manage those complexities. Instead, it is an indictment of this place that, three years on, the question of whether we shall leave the EU at all is not even a settled one. There remains no clear vision of our future relationship with the EU or of our new role in the world to underpin Government strategy. In the absence of that vision, we have become increasingly desperate just to deliver the word Brexit, even if an unholy fudge to obtain our withdrawal binds us into the very systems that the electorate rejected while denying our voice within them.

I sought this debate not to argue about the merits or otherwise of leaving the EU, because that decision has been made, nor to pick over the bones of a withdrawal agreement that has thrice been rejected. Instead, I want us to take stock, ask ourselves how we got here and then—most importantly—ask how we can make use of the period until 31 October to deliver on the referendum and gear our country to its new future.

There are many and varied reasons why people voted to leave, but one of the turning points for me as a floating voter was the conclusion of the attempted renegotiation of our membership. In my opinion, the preference of many swing voters would have been to stay in the EU and reform it from within. However, the renegotiation was the point at which it became clear that British influence, and the threat of the third largest member of the EU walking away from it, was going to be an insufficient driver in making the EU more dynamic and accountable. Instead, the eurozone members were likely to require further political integration, creating a deeper divide with non-eurozone nations and an even more pronounced loss of influence for our nation when it comes to addressing the concerns of our own citizens.

Since then, we have spent three years effectively trying to carve out a bespoke association agreement with the EU, with Chequers being the Prime Minister’s attempt to obtain a half-in, half-out option. The EU dubbed that cherry-picking, and in reading the UK’s political dynamic, it has banked our offers of cash and a comprehensive security partnership, while holding us to a backstop in Northern Ireland that in the next stage of talks will ultimately pull us into a customs union and large parts of the single market. If it does not do that, it risks splitting our country.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am listening with great interest to the hon. Lady’s comments. She does not want a Northern Ireland backstop. Could she tell us her proposal to respect the Good Friday agreement if we leave the customs union and the single market? Does she accept that the Government’s own view is that such a solution does not yet exist?

[Julia Lopez]

I will go on later in my speech to talk about some of the alternative arrangements that are already being worked up. There is a group within Government that actually has the resources now to deal with that issue, and the EU is also looking at alternative arrangements. I think that the question now becomes this: do we make those alternative arrangements now, or after we have signed a withdrawal agreement that is effectively an international treaty that will bind us into a number of things that are not in our country’s interest?

Tied into EU rules on goods, we will find that we have little leverage in negotiating access for our critical services, either with the EU or with new trading partners. However, there is absolutely no point in directing our frustration over this substandard withdrawal agreement at the EU. We have been out-negotiated, hoisted by the petard of an article 50 process that British diplomats designed; this poor outcome has come about through our complicity in its sequencing and design.

However, the withdrawal agreement has been neither signed nor ratified, so there remains a chance for us to pause and read the writing that the British public—if not Britain’s politicians—have seen on the wall for some time, namely that if we go ahead with this agreement, we will give up our ability to secure an attractive future relationship with the EU and instead will find ourselves in an unsustainable, asymmetric relationship with the EU, which will arguably leave us with less say over the rules and regulations that govern us than we have now. The transition period will only extend political uncertainty, and therefore economic uncertainty, because we do not know to what we are transitioning. That will throw a blanket over an economy that desperately wants a sense of direction. Whatever Bill now comes before us in Parliament will not change what has been negotiated in Brussels; we must not waste the next four months attaching funereal adornments to a thoroughly dead horse.

The public also know that the EU is unlikely to reform any time soon because the existing system benefits its most influential members. The EU will not draw up, at least in these current negotiations, a bespoke relationship with the UK, because it has decided that it values the integrity of the single market over frictionless trade with us, and it has also determined—quite correctly—that it has the leverage to reject our overtures regarding special treatment.

Parliament has so far done its job in judging this agreement to be against our interests. However, it has not accepted the consequences of that judgment. Despite attempts by parliamentarians to suggest practical amendments, the Prime Minister and the EU have made it quite clear that no other withdrawal agreement is available. They have also made it clear, through the sequencing of talks, that there can be no negotiations about the future relationship, beyond the broad-brush political declaration, until we have formally left. To put it another way, we will only be permitted to move to stage 2 once we have tied our hands behind our backs in stage 1.

I say with deep regret that we are left to face an unavoidable question: will we leave without a formal withdrawal agreement, with the economic challenges that presents, or will we vote to revoke article 50, and face the democratic consequences of that action? If parliamentarians wish to revoke article 50, let them vote for it and explain to their electorates why they now seek to overturn the inexorable logic of what they themselves put into law. Alternatively, we must face leaving without a withdrawal agreement and use the time before we leave to do our damnedest to make that work, while leaving the door firmly open for discussions with the EU on an alternative withdrawal agreement. Such an outcome, however, will require more than cosmetic preparation and jingoistic mantras about WTO terms. It will need major policy prescriptions, strong Government direction and co-ordination, transparency about the state of our preparedness and potentially even a fresh mandate if Parliament contrives to frustrate this process.

I am grateful to have the Minister for no deal here this morning so that he can set out with honesty and clarity the challenges that we would face in delivery, and how we can best mitigate them, while maximising the leverage of any advantages that this freedom might provide.

The urgent priority for Government in such a scenario would be to address the absence of an underpinning philosophy about Britain’s place in the world. My concern at this absence is reflected in Friday’s National Audit Office report on future trading policy, which effectively said that the UK will not get what it wants if it does not know what it wants.

The Brexit vote has often been misinterpreted as a misty-eyed reflex to return us to Britain past, but I see it instead as a judgment about the future—about where the world is going and whether the trajectory of the EU puts us in the right place to tackle the new challenges ahead. We are moving into an era of substantial regional trading blocs, in the form of China, the US and the EU. However, the UK has ultimately been unable to reconcile itself to Guy Verhofstadt’s vision, which he expressed this week, of an EU empire as the best way to flourish in this era, because we believe that the nation state still has fundamental relevance in maintaining the social and economic pact between Government and citizens that safeguards our cohesion.

Leaving the EU must not mean simply jumping into the arms of an alternative bloc. We must set ourselves up as a dynamic, open trading nation like Australia, Singapore and Canada, with strong links to all major powers and co-operation with the most forward-thinking, mid-tier nations on global standards for new technologies and data, the rule of law, security, and constantly evolving free trade agreements that break new ground on environmental stewardship, sustainable development and people-to-people exchange. Globally, we can be a bridge, a mediator and a thought leader; domestically, we can be a place of safety, liberty, creativity and prosperity, comfortable with the value of our nationhood and proud of our collective, modern identity.

Secondly, we need to move with speed—but not haste—in drawing up a new independent trading policy, ensuring that we avoid entering substandard agreements out of political imperative. We need to quickly establish whether the EU is genuinely interested in rapidly striking a comprehensive FTA along Canada lines, or whether it would seek to drag that process out to stifle talks with other nations. As things stand, it has been difficult for us to roll over existing FTAs, for example, because third countries want to see the shape of the future UK-EU trading relationship: how much flexibility over our own rules we are going to have, and how much access to the EU market.

Before making that approach to the EU, we have to undertake a hard-nosed assessment of our negotiating leverage, be it money, access to goods and financial markets, or co-operation on research and security. We must then answer broad strategic questions such as whether we have the capacity to attempt parallel negotiations with other countries, and whether to roll the Department for Exiting the European Union into the Department for International Trade so that the Government speak with a consistent voice. Immediately after tomorrow’s elections, we will require swift diplomatic analysis of how the new make-up of the European Parliament and Commission has changed the European power dynamic, and the extent to which that alters the landscape of future talks.

Thirdly, we need to accept that future access to the EU market will not be as good as our current arrangements, or is unlikely to be. Trading on WTO terms is not a cure-all, otherwise Governments would never seek to improve those terms via FTAs. We need urgently to identify which businesses will be most affected by that change in access and mitigate its impact, whether through a bold programme of tax cuts, greater regulatory freedoms that can drive competitiveness, or specific short-term support packages from the state. I would be grateful if the Minister explained what cross-departmental work has already been done in this area.

There also needs to be an analysis of long-term impacts. In financial services, for instance, the EU will want to avoid immediate shocks to its own institutions, but will then try to create a medium to long-term drag for firms so that they base themselves in the single market. What is our strategy to provide an even more compelling pull for services firms to retain, or move, bases here? How ready is our trade remedies regime, and are we really prepared for dealing with our own defensive producer interests, which we have hitherto hidden behind the EU to arbitrate?

Fourthly, Northern Ireland will require intensive and sustained focus. All parties, including the EU and Ireland itself, have agreed that there cannot be a hard border, so political impetus and financial resourcing need to be given to the alternative arrangements working group on how existing techniques—not new technologies—to check and clear goods away from the border can be implemented. I would appreciate the Minister’s update on that work, as well as on the state of preparedness at Dover and other major ports; on progress in rolling out authorised economic operator and trusted trader schemes; and on HMRC support for businesses dealing with new paperwork requirements.

If we are to take a tighter approach to immigration from the EU, we will need a major boost to our domestic skills agenda, including the adequate resourcing of our vocational education and college system; intensive investment in recruitment to the health and social care sectors; and incentivisation of businesses to train UK workers. What discussions has the Minister had about the preparedness of the labour market to tackle any impact of no deal?

To make this policy effort work, we will need to rally businesses, citizens and the civil service. Enough of the attacks on one another. Civil servants are just that: dedicated, professional citizens with a desire to serve. However, they cannot compensate for an absence of political direction. Once that has been provided, we must trust them to deliver.

That change of attitude must also translate to our dealings with the EU. Enough of the constant wartime references, and of speeches made in the UK that we think are not being heard in Brussels. The EU is not an enemy, but an organisation comprised of treasured partners; we need a reciprocation of that attitude, while reassuring the EU that it should not fear contagion. For Brits, our membership of the EU has always been more transactional, because as an island nation our borders are comparatively well defined. A desire for political stability, even if at times it comes at the price of economics, takes precedence for many continental European nations.

This new era therefore allows for a renewal of our relationship that will let each party move in a trajectory with which it is more comfortable. That relationship will require the establishment of fresh diplomatic frameworks for dialogue on issues of shared importance, and I would be grateful if the Minister explained what discussions he has had with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about how we are gearing up our presence across the continent. The National Audit Office has also identified that DIT is under-resourced for the new relationships we wish to build. Can the Minister advise us on how quickly we might step up our presence in those countries with which we wish to deepen trading ties?

There are many other areas of no-deal preparations that require intensive focus. However, as other hon. Members wish to contribute, I will conclude by raising a bizarrely under-discussed aspect of Brexit that goes to the heart of this nation’s political malaise. Representative democracy works by citizens effectively subcontracting political decision making to a class of people in a way that gives those citizens the freedom to live their lives and prosper. They then endorse a framework and strategic direction for those decisions via a general election, or—in the case of Brexit—a referendum. In many ways, contempt for the political class has grown over these past few years in line with politicians’ avoidance of the kinds of decisions that they are explicitly elected to make, and their insistence on blaming institutions like the EU for failings.

Brexit was a signal to this place that the public want us to make more of our own decisions and then be accountable for them, but it is astonishing how few parliamentarians welcome the raft of powers that will soon make its way across the channel. We have not even begun to contemplate what that restoration of powers will mean for Parliament, and how it can be used to reinvigorate our pact with the electorate. In that vein, I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me what urgent thought is being given to rebalancing with the legislature the power that has been transferred to the Executive from Brussels via Henry VIII clauses in this period as a means of managing short-term Brexit challenges. Such power vested in Government may seem expedient now, but will rapidly seem less attractive under a Corbyn Government.

I fear that for some time, our political class has harboured a simultaneous inferiority and superiority complex about this nation’s abilities. One group of politicians consistently talks down our country’s inherent strength and resilience, while another parrots slogans of exceptionalism that diminish the practical challenges ahead. The public believe in this nation’s future beyond the EU, but expect us to be clear-eyed in its delivery. The Prime Minister has indicated that she will not take us forward in such an endeavour should her withdrawal agreement fail again, so the duty will fall upon any leadership contender to set out with resolve, and in forensic detail, their response to some of the issues I have highlighted. In doing so, I hope they will place service to nation, rather than personal ambition, at the heart of their task.

Regarding the latest EU extension period, EU President Donald Tusk warned

“do not waste this time”,

but it is not his wrath about which we should be worried. If on the road to 31 October, we do not employ the lessons we have learned over these past three years, the electorate may well indicate tomorrow that they are more than willing to bestow democracy legitimacy on another group of people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

That could be difficult, Mr Robertson. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) for securing this debate. Little did she know that it would serve as an opportunity to release some of the anger I feel following the announcement last night, but more of that later, perhaps.

As is often the case when I get to my feet here or in the Chamber, my audience first and foremost is the good people of Walsall North, because I am here to speak on their behalf and also to speak to them. They will be slightly perplexed, because tomorrow, we will take part in the European elections. That might sound like a fairly uneventful thing, but let us go over it again: tomorrow, we will take part in the European elections. Some 1,062 days ago, 17,410,742 people voted to leave the European Union, yet this Government have so far, after 1,062 days, been unable to deliver that. How do we think the people of Willenhall, Bloxwich and Walsall North are feeling? Not too good, I would say, and that was 24 hours ago. I am not sure how they are feeling after they heard from the Prime Minister yesterday.

Let us talk, however, about why my constituents might have voted to leave in the first place and how optimistic they might have felt. What grounds did those people have for their optimism, which we seem to have misplaced on their behalf? First, let us think about what was happening in 2010. In 2010, Merkel, the German Chancellor, was talking to Sarkozy, the French President, about reform of the Lisbon treaty. They wanted a little photo opportunity, so they took a walk along the beach in Deauville. They were able to do that without their advisers present. Why was that? We know that Merkel does not speak French and Sarkozy does not speak German, but they both spoke English. It is the universal language of business. What a great opportunity we have, because we speak a lot of English in this country. It is a handy place for people to locate their business.

Hiroshi Mikitani, the chief exec of Rakuten, certainly thinks that. He runs a business in Japan that employs 7,500 people. There must have been something in the air in 2010, because he told his business that from then on, it would conduct all its business transactions in—you guessed it—English, because he understood that it was the language of business across the world. The people of Walsall North understand that, too, which is why they believe that people come to locate their businesses in the great United Kingdom.

People right across the globe know where Liverpool, Manchester and London are. We know that because the premier league is broadcast in 221 areas across the world. It is the most successful football league anywhere on the planet. It is broadcast to 640 million houses, with a possible viewership of 4 billion. People right across the planet know where England is. They know where the constituent cities of our great country are because we have great advertising through the premier league.

If those people come here, will they be studying in great universities? According to the Centre for World University Rankings, they damn well will be. Those rankings put two of our universities in the top 10. Unfortunately, they did not have any room for any other European universities in the top 10. QS, on the other hand, put four of our universities in the top 20, and, once again, it did not have any room in the top 20 for other European universities. We have the best universities in Europe as well as having the premiership, and, conveniently for my speech today, the two teams contesting the final of the champions league happen to be from England.

A great nation has a fantastic opportunity and great optimism. People went to the polls and voted to leave because they damn well knew that the UK could make its own way in the world. They also knew that we were leaving the European Union, but not leaving Europe. They knew that nine out of 10 of our holiday destinations were to Europe. They will continue to take their holidays there and they expect us to continue to trade. We will still be friends and will still need each other’s products.

[Peter Grant]

Why is Thomas Cook in danger of going bust if people are still booking holidays in Europe?

[Eddie Hughes]

I do not know the answer to that. I am not aware of the story, but I do know that a couple of weeks ago Which? magazine published an article that said that TUI should not describe hotels that are not on the beach as being on the beach, so perhaps there are some other practices going on. I am not sure what the reasons are, but I am damn sure that we will continue to holiday in Europe: mostly in Spain, as it turns out. Perhaps the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) will share his travel plans for the summer with us later. I am going off course—we are a great nation with a great opportunity that has not been delivered by the Government so far.

So what happened? I came to Parliament and went along with my dear friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), to see the then Immigration Minister. We said, “We don’t think you are making good enough preparations for no deal, because those pesky people from mainland Europe will spot that, although we are telling them we are preparing for no deal, the fact that we have not submitted a single planning application to build any new infrastructure at our ports will probably give the game away that we are not actually committed to it.” It was like playing cards with somebody who had a mirror behind them. They were looking at our hands and saying, “We know you do not have aces. You are not building anything, and that puts us in a great position to negotiate a very weak deal for you and a very strong deal for us.”

Margaret Thatcher said she had the patriotic belief that the British people could achieve anything. If only our Prime Minister had that same belief in our great nation, we might not be in the position that we are in today. When we look forward to any future negotiations, let us believe in this great country, let us understand the reasons why 17,410,742 people voted to leave, and let us deliver on what they voted for because they deserve better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Robertson. I am pleased to begin summing up.

I do not think anyone will be surprised that I disagree with quite a lot of what I have heard in the last 59 and a half minutes. In fact, most people in here, and a lot of people back home, would be extremely disappointed if I did not.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) on securing the debate. She spoke very passionately and I have no doubt whatsoever that she spoke with complete sincerity, but I have to say that, far too often, she just does not get it. There was no recognition at all in her outline of how we got here that it was her party and her Government that put us here. Her party called a referendum to solve the endemic infighting within its ranks. We can see from this morning’s debate what a complete and abject failure that has been. Her party unilaterally changed its own manifesto mid-term, from one that gave it a majority Government and said we would stay in the single market and the customs union, to one that lost it that majority and said we are going to come out.

When I asked the hon. Lady what alternative she suggests to the Northern Ireland backstop, she promised to come back to it later. She then referred to the need—I think it is correct; I wrote it down—to “check and clear goods away from the border”. That would be a violation of the Good Friday agreement and incompatible with the Northern Ireland peace process.

How can it be that three years after the referendum and more than 20 years since the peace process was secured —a process that is still happening; it is not an event that is finished and done and dusted—we still have people leading debates in this Parliament, and speaking knowledgeably about other aspects of the relationship with the European Union, but not understanding what a catastrophic mistake it would be to think that border checks carried out somewhere away from the border would be good enough? They will not be. Nobody but nobody has suggested a solution that comes anywhere close to answering that contradiction. We cannot avoid a customs border between two countries if one is in a customs union and one is not. When the Government set out something that has been tested, and works, that will allow that to happen, then they can credibly say they will come out of the customs union and respect the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday agreement. I do not think it is possible and I have seen no credible suggestion that it is.

It is not good enough to continually make the European Union out as the villain. The European Union did not force anybody to call a referendum. The European Union did not force anybody to trigger article 50 before anyone in the UK Government had a clue how they were going to deal with it. The European Union did not force the Prime Minister to unilaterally paint herself into a corner with red lines. The European Union did not force the Prime Minister to call an unnecessary election to enhance her majority and end up throwing it away. Those have all been mistakes that have been made by this and the previous Prime Minister. It is high time that the Conservative party accepted its collective responsibility for putting those Prime Ministers into power and supporting them through all those catastrophic mistakes, simply because it thought it might enhance the party’s chances of holding on to power for a wee bit longer.

Given that the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) was so glowing about trade and tourism between the UK and the European Union, I asked him why Thomas Cook was in trouble. He suggested it was because TUI had been criticised by Which? magazine. TUI is Thomas Cook’s biggest competitor in the United Kingdom. We might have thought that if TUI was being criticised and getting bad publicity that would help its biggest rival, rather than push it further into difficulty.

[Eddie Hughes]

There are many reasons that a business can go bad. It can be down to management or other changing circumstances. The idea that anyone could solely identify anything relating to Brexit as the reason for business failure seems—I don’t know—imaginative, at best.

[Peter Grant]

Sadly, it is not imaginative that British Steel has cited Brexit-related issues as one of the reasons why, as of about half an hour ago, it is now in insolvency and 25,000 direct and indirect jobs are under threat. That is not something anyone can celebrate or be happy about. Surely it is time for everyone who continues to push us towards the possibility of a no-deal Brexit to stop and ask the question: would the 66% of people in and around Scunthorpe who voted to leave in 2016 have done so if they had understood what it might mean for their town’s biggest employer? I do not know the answer to whether they would have voted the same way, but I would like to give them the chance to answer the question again.

Comments have been made in this debate and others about the 80%-plus of the electorate who voted for pro-Brexit parties in 2017. Some 80%-plus of the electorate voted for pro-remain parties in 2015, because Labour and the Tories were both remain parties in 2015. We are saying that in the space of two years, 60% of the electorate changed from voting for remain to voting for Brexit, but three years after the referendum, we are not allowed to consider the possibility that 5% of the electorate might have changed their minds between remain and leave. It simply does not add up.

[Lee Rowley]

The hon. Gentleman has said that surely it is time for us to understand the consequences of the issue. Surely it is also time for him to acknowledge that he should not use business examples to extrapolate, as he did with Thomas Cook. He will know as well as I do that it has had a massive debt pile for a number of years, that most of its operations are external, that it was previously a German company and that it is seeking to sell off its German airline as much as its British one. These are wide trends and it is just not correct to use these debates to try to extrapolate things that are not directly linked.

[Peter Grant]

Again, I hope that nobody would suggest that the problems in the UK travel industry are completely unrelated to Brexit or that the problems in the British steel industry are completely unrelated to Brexit. It is not the only problem—in manufacturing, we have not kept up with the advances in productivity of our European neighbours, for example—but anyone who would suggest that this catalogue of company failures is not in any way related to the damaging Brexit that the Conservatives are leading us through really needs to face up to reality.

I understand the desire to respect the result of the referendum. I want the 62% result in my country to be respected as well. My national Government put forward a compromise as long ago as December 2016, which was laughed out of court at the time—to the extent that the Prime Minister has actually forgotten that it ever existed. When we are talking about negotiations that might happen now, after the March deadline, is it not a pity that there was not proper negotiation before the red lines were painted?

We have an electoral system in these islands that is deliberately rigged to turn minority popular support into majority Government. When the people choose not to give a big majority Government, the system cannot cope. The Prime Minister came back in 2017 and acted as if she had a huge majority in Parliament, when most of the time she has struggled to maintain a majority within her own party, and that is why she has never been able to get any kind of deal through.

It is not just about trade. Most of the contributions we have heard today have been about trade deals. World Trade Organisation terms—assuming we are allowed in to the WTO, which is not automatic—do nothing about Horizon, Erasmus, the European Medicines Agency, security co-operation, the rights of 4.5 million citizens, the ability to share data to cloud storage in the European Union, or about a million and one other things that the European Union brings us as benefits that have hardly, if at all, been mentioned in the debate this morning. The European Union is not simply a trading organisation. Membership has brought massive economic, social, cultural and educational benefits to our people and it is a tragedy that in the lead-up to the referendum, so few politicians in this place had the courage to stand up and say that.

I was asked about my holiday plans. I will be holidaying in the country that, according to “Rough Guides”, is the most beautiful country in the world, and I would encourage lots of other people to do the same.

As far as what will happen if and when the withdrawal agreement Bill comes back, the position of the Scottish National party is as it has always been. We will oppose any Brexit that takes away the rights of our citizens. We will oppose any Brexit that makes our people poorer. We will oppose any Brexit that takes us further away from the Scotland that we want to be and that our people have told us they want us to help to build.

While tomorrow it is quite possible that the far-right Brexit party will secure a significant victory in other parts of the United Kingdom, the polls suggest that even after 12 years in Government, the Scottish National party will have its most successful European election ever. That is what happens if a party of Government is prepared to show leadership and to face up to the myths, lies and misinformation that Mr Farage and his party and his previous parties have spread for so long.

If tomorrow the results in the rest of the United Kingdom are taken as a message about discontentment with the European Union among the population of some partners in this Union, the results north of the border will give a clear statement about the dissatisfaction of the citizens of my country with the Union that we have been part of for 300 years too long.