Oral Answers to Questions

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

The answer to that is, again, to listen to the voice of business. It is clear that business wants an implementation period, not just for the certainty that it would deliver, but because, from a regulatory position, it does not want to have to take two steps and have two changes.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

18. If he will make an assessment of the implications for his Department’s policies of a second referendum on the UK leaving the EU.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

The Government have been clear all along that we will not hold a second referendum. A clear majority of the electorate delivered an instruction to the Government to withdraw from the European Union, with 17.4 million votes cast in that manner.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the Minister for his unwavering commitment to that position, which my constituents will be very pleased to hear. A clear majority of people in Redditch —62%—voted to leave. That is nearly 29,000 people who voted to leave in that historic vote. Does he therefore agree that to go back on that vote and on our manifesto commitment would cause massive damage to our democracy?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend—[Interruption.] I hear some murmuring from Labour Members that they refuse to deliver on their manifesto commitments that were made in exactly the same manner. I guess that a fair question to ask those proposing a second referendum: should they not come clean and admit that they are not really after asking the British people, and that they just want to prevent us from leaving the European Union in the first place? That would be a much more honest position for them to take.