Legislating for the Withdrawal Agreement

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I am disappointed that the hon. Lady is not here to welcome the implementation period, which has been welcomed by many businesses not only in her constituency, but throughout the UK, because it provides time and certainty. It is part of the withdrawal agreement, which is part of the final deal package, which is intricately linked to the future framework on the economic partnership. Together, they will be put to Parliament for the meaningful vote.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that 90% of future global growth will come from countries outside Europe? Will she therefore clarify that we will be able to start to benefit from that potential growth by signing trade deals during the implementation period?

[Suella Braverman]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s optimism. She is absolutely right. During the implementation period, the UK will be able for the first time in 40 years to design and develop its own independent trade policy, with the freedom to sign, negotiate and ratify trade deals with countries outside the EU. That is an important benefit precisely because, as she says, 90% of global growth will come from outside the EU, and we need to maximise that for our businesses and our citizens.

The provisions in the Bill in no way diminish the importance of the EU (Withdrawal) Act, which colleagues on both sides of the House worked so hard to scrutinise. That Act remains vital to the exit process, and any changes made to it by the withdrawal agreement Bill will not change its purpose. It was not appropriate for the EU (Withdrawal) Act to account for an implementation period, as the Act needed to be passed without prejudice to negotiations to ensure a functioning statute book on exit day. Now that we have secured agreement on the implementation period, we must ensure it is given proper domestic legal effect, which includes deferring the point at which some of the Act takes effect.

The negotiated financial settlement covering the UK’s financial commitments to the EU and the EU’s financial commitments to the UK provides predictability to current recipients of EU funding, including farmers, businesses and academics, with the UK continuing to get receipts due under the current EU budget plan. This is an issue of great importance to the House. We are a country that honours its international obligations, but it is important to recognise that the financial settlement was reached on the basis of both sides’ commitment to reaching a deal. If one side fails to live up to its commitments, there will be consequences for the deal as a whole, which includes the financial settlement.

The withdrawal agreement Bill will include a standing service provision that allows the Government to make payments due under the financial settlement. Although the amounts to be paid will vary and are a function of the terms of the settlement, the Bill will only allow payments to meet the financial commitments required by the withdrawal agreement. Parliament will want to monitor those payments, and it will be important to ensure that the payment mechanism balances the Government’s legal responsibility to pay the financial settlement with Parliament’s duty to scrutinise.

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[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards). I rise to speak about this issue from the point of view of the people of Redditch, who are always at the forefront of my mind in this place. I remember clearly the expression of their sovereign desire to leave the EU, which they expressed in the referendum with 62% in favour of leaving. I have not found anyone in Redditch who has changed their mind during the ensuing period, even though we have been grappling with a series of extremely difficult and complicated technical issues.

We spend a lot of time in this place dealing with incredibly complex legislation, some of which has been eloquently explained tonight by hon. Members on both sides of the House. However, my constituents always come back to talking about three basic things. They voted to leave the European Union in those numbers because they wanted to take back control of their money, their borders and their laws. That brings me to something that we have not heard mentioned at all tonight. It is something that is very hard to put into figures, and it is called sovereignty. It is an emotional concept for people in my constituency and in constituencies across the United Kingdom, including Hartlepool, which we heard about earlier.

People in Redditch and across the midlands are very level-headed. They know very well that we are reliant on jobs in the manufacturing industry and in the supply chain. The excellent Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, makes this point on a regular basis. I declare an interest in that I helped him to win that election, and I am very proud that I did so. He is a businessman, and he understands the need for a deal so that those jobs can be protected. I also understand that very clearly from the businesses in my constituency, including GKN and a number of other businesses, large and small.

I come back to a point that I have made before in this House, which is that we are sometimes misled by listening to the voice of the very large corporate businesses and failing to heed the voices of the small and medium-sized enterprises. I know those SMEs intimately, because I ran one for 26 years before I came to this place. I can tell the House that there are many things that stand in the way of businesses. They face obstacles every single day as they grapple with trading conditions, whether at home or around the world. The great genius of our British entrepreneurs is that they are able to turn those obstacles into challenges and to innovate and be entrepreneurial. They are able to seize the opportunities that are provided by any state of affairs or economic situation that they face. That is why we have such a thriving and dynamic economy in this country, and why we have given rise to some of the best businesses in the world.

I asked the Minister earlier whether she believed we would be in a position to take advantage of the 90% of trade outside our European borders in the future, and she assured me that we would be in a position to start signing those deals and that we would shortly be able to move quickly to ratify them. That is why I welcome this withdrawal agreement. We have all been calling for certainty and clarity; I hear it from my constituents in the business sector all the time. This agreement will start to put in place some of the things that we have been calling for. It is not perfect, of course; there have been vigorous debates on these subjects and they will continue.

When I think about being the Prime Minister, I think, “My goodness me! Who would want to do her job?” At the end of the day, she just cannot win, can she? She cannot ever please everybody, either on our side or on the other side of the House, or in the country. We had a vote in which some people voted to stay and some people voted to leave, so she is never going to be able to please anybody. However, I hear people in Redditch saying, “Good on her. She is just getting on with it. She is facing down criticism on all sides.”

[Chris Bryant]

The thing is that the Prime Minister will have to please more than half the Members of this House. If she does not do so, she will not have an agreement, the whole thing will fall apart and she will be done for, won’t she?

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[Rachel Maclean]

I have absolute confidence that the Prime Minister will continue to do what she is doing, and I for one certainly support her. If she can bring back a deal that is in the interests of my constituents, I will support her. I take heart from the way in which she has been able to make such significant progress in the face of all the criticism and of people saying, “You won’t be able to get this far. You won’t be able to make a deal. You won’t be able to settle these incredibly complicated issues. You won’t be able to unpick all these decades of agreements.” But actually, she has. She went to Africa over the summer and, again, she was in a position where she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. She was faced with people demonstrating their dancing skills. If she had not joined in, everyone would have said, “Oh, that’s terrible. She’s awful. She isn’t spontaneous.” What did she do? She got stuck in, and she got so much admiration from people for her dancing skills. I really think she should be on “Strictly Come Dancing”, and I would certainly vote for her to do that.

[Chris Bryant]

I think the Prime Minister would probably have to leave the House if she went on “Strictly”, so the hon. Lady would be voting for her to leave office.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. I hope that he will take my comments in the spirit in which they were intended; they were somewhat light-hearted. Of course I would not wish the Prime Minister to leave the House. I want her to get a great deal and to enable us to leave the European Union. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will see that I have put that on record.

[Chris Bryant]

It takes two to tango.

[Rachel Maclean]

It certainly does, but the hon. Gentleman is making me lose my place.

I shall return to the negotiations, where we have seen considerable progress not only on the business-related issues that I have referred to but on the question of European citizens.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

As an example of the negotiations that we can do, the Minister for International Trade was able to negotiate on behalf of one of the companies in my constituency, Lakeland Dairies, a £50 million powdered milk contract with China—worth £250 million over five years. Is that not an example of the good things that we will be able to do when we are outside the EU?

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for highlighting some of the examples that we will see when we are out of the EU. I have seen some of the benefits in my area, too. Worcestershire is benefiting from the Department for International Trade’s forward-thinking policy of going out to the rest of the world and making the case for investing in the county, and Redditch in particular, and I hope that some of our international companies will take advantage of that.

[Stephen Kerr]

My hon. Friend was interrupted from a sedentary position by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who said, “It takes two to tango.” We have evidence of the EU’s willingness to tango, particularly with the Trump Administration. At the suggestion of tariff changes from Washington, the German Chancellor was immediately on to Jean-Claude Juncker, and he was on the next flight to Washington, and they made an agreement in the same day. Is that not an example of what is possible when there is a willingness to reach an agreement?

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my hon. Friend greatly for that intervention. If we all embrace the optimism that he has just demonstrated, I am certain that we can do some great deals in the interests of the British people and of Redditch.

I return to my point about the status of EU citizens. It is a matter of great concern. We all have EU citizens in our constituencies. I have been approached by EU citizens who live in Redditch, such as those who work at the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, and we rely upon them to deliver the caring services that we can all need. That is why I welcome the details already set out in the withdrawal agreement, but there is more work to be done on that and we must ensure that the processes are working properly and that people get the security they need to be able to stay in our country, because that is exactly what we want. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) said, we invited people to come from the EU, and they have contributed and we want them to stay.

My final point is about women and Brexit. I am a proud feminist and agree with campaigners on many issues, but I cannot bring myself to agree with the suggestion by some notable feminist campaigners over the weekend that women do not want to leave the EU. Newsflash: women are able to make their minds up based on the issue, not their body parts. We are able to consider an issue without basing it on our gender. Amazingly enough, I feel entitled to say that because I am in a minority in this House. I have some hon. Friends on my side who are also women. I do not have any on the other side at the minute. I actually do want to leave the EU, and I am a woman, but I recognise that I do not speak for all women—women, just like men, will have a variety of opinions. However, to try to say that all women do not want to leave the EU is a lot of nonsense that I utterly refute.

[Chris Bryant]

Who said that?

[Rachel Maclean]

The hon. Gentleman is speaking from a sedentary position, and I am going to conclude my remarks. This Government have done more for women since being in office in terms of bringing women into work, strengthening women’s rights, bringing in policies that support women back into the workplace, such as on childcare, and a whole raft of other issues. I put it on the record that I refute that ridiculous stance about women and Brexit, which should be rejected out of hand.

In summary, I of course have some questions about the withdrawal agreement. Naturally, I expect to scrutinise the final deal that is brought back in great detail, as any Member should. I would not like to see us spend hard-earned taxpayers’ money—the £39 billion or whatever it is—unless we get something good in return. That is absolutely essential, and I would not be doing my job and would be failing my constituents if I did not hold the Government to account on that. In the negotiations so far, we have demonstrated to our international partners that we are a reliable negotiator and that we can be trusted to keep our promises, and we are sending out a signal so that they can come back and negotiate with us. That is how we will continue to build the scaffolding to deliver on the will of the people and their sovereign desire to leave the EU.