Article 50 Extension

Debate between Peter Grant and Owen Paterson

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

I will be brief. I have listened carefully to the debate, at the beginning of which I had no intention of speaking. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), who touched on several points with which I entirely agreed, but I have reached a totally different conclusion.

Three international events are important. First, President Tusk said that we need to vote on the withdrawal agreement again. Given your stricture, Mr Speaker, which I support, that we cannot vote on the same text again, does that count as changed circumstances? I am very interested in your thoughts on that. You might like to address the matter in answer to a point of order later. Secondly, the Le Point magazine website put out a report at 1.6 pm that President Macron had stated that unless there is “a clear project”—that was the translation—France intends to veto any extension. Thirdly, there have been interesting reports from a respected BBC journalist that the letter from the Prime Minister has gone out too late for some Prime Ministers to consult their legislatures so they may not have the chance to make a decision this week. That is yet another muddle in this saga.

The hon. Member for Wirral South made a point about populism. I have said the following goodness knows how many times inside and outside the Chamber. The conundrum we face is that the House had three democratic mandates around the referendum. David Cameron said, “If you vote Conservative in 2015, I will give you an in/out referendum. It will not be advisory—it will be decisive. If I have a majority, the House of Commons will deliver what the people want.”

[Peter Grant]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Paterson]

Time is short and I would like to press on. Other people want to speak.

David Cameron won the election and then, probably to his horror, he had to deliver the referendum. The then Foreign Secretary made it clear when the referendum Bill was going through the House that MPs were handing back their sovereignty to the people and that the House would honour the people’s decision, whatever it was. The referendum was not advisory, but decisive. It was the biggest vote in British history and 17.4 million people voted for the broad slogan of “take back control”. The immediate question was, “What does that actually mean?” The Conservative party interpreted it as meaning that we would honour leave if people voted for a Conservative Government in the 2017 election. It would mean leaving the single market, the customs union and the remit of the European Court of Justice. The Labour party broadly supported that. So 85% of the votes in 2017 went to the two main parties, which supported that proposition. That means that more than 60% of the seats in this Parliament represent that proposal.

To pick up on the comments made by the hon. Member for Wirral South, I am genuinely worried. This was a huge step by the British people. It was the first time, following a succession of referendums, that they had gone against the wishes of the establishment—the political establishment, the commercial establishment, the media establishment. We had had the 1975 referendum, the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland referendums and the alternative vote referendum. Each time, the people had gone along with what the establishment wanted. What we are now wrestling with this afternoon—the hon. Lady raises the question of populism—is how we deliver that.

My contention—I really mean it—is that I am seriously worried about the long-term damage to the integrity of our institutions. People are writing to me and sending emails. I have been mocked for making one particular comment. A guy came up to me on the tube and gave me his visiting card—the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) picked me up on this; she can come to my office and I will give her the visiting card of this guy if she wants to see it—saying, “Please stick to your guns, because we depend on you to see it delivered.” I appeal to Members of both main parties. The position of the Liberal Democrats and the SNP is totally honourable. They have been consistently against leaving the EU and voted against it. Of course, the Liberal Democrats got crushed in the general election as a result, but the two main parties did really well in the general election. The Prime Minister got the second-largest number of votes in history.