European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I rise to support new clauses 3 and 57. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for their speeches. The one thing I would add to the forceful case made by my right hon. and learned Friend is this: when the Exiting the European Union Committee took evidence from representatives of Brits living abroad, one might have expected them to make the argument that has just been advanced, but they said the opposite. They said that Britain should give a unilateral commitment now, because they felt that doing so would ease the process of negotiation.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I was not at that Committee hearing, and I am quite interested to know whether evidence was taken from ambassadors of EU countries about their Governments’ positions as part of the inquiry.

[Hilary Benn]

No, we have not taken evidence from ambassadors, but we have heard what has been said from the Government Dispatch Box, namely that—from memory—almost all member states are up for this, apart from one or two. We do not yet know who the one or two are, and I hope that they will change their minds so that we can make progress.

I want to address the arguments we have heard thus far in relation to new clause 3. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander)—she is no longer in her place—asked the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) whether we should be able to have a vote on certain aspects of the nature of our withdrawal. He said no, because during the referendum campaign it was made clear by leading participants what would happen if we voted to leave, and therefore it is gospel and we cannot argue with it. That is a very interesting argument. On that basis, the NHS will be getting £350 million a week, because that, it was said, would be the consequence of a leave vote—but I will leave that to one side.

The right hon. Gentleman’s central argument, which he made at the beginning of his speech, was to ask what new clause 3 added. I say to him sincerely that it adds accountability. It has been argued that the new clause is unnecessary because the Government are already doing what it would require. If that is true, I would ask why there is a problem with the Government accepting it.

The argument was made that the Government would be forced to reveal all sorts of stuff. All that the new clause says is that the Prime Minister

“shall give an undertaking to…lay before each House of Parliament periodic reports”.

The content of those reports will be for the Government to determine. There is nothing in the new clause about forcing the Government to reveal their hand. When it comes to getting in English the documents that the European Commission is giving to the European Parliament —probably in English, while we still have MEPs, and in the other languages of the European Union—surely there cannot be any argument about that at all. It is entirely sensible.

On the point about confidential documents, I listened carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said. I raised the matter with the Secretary of State when I was first elected as the Chair of the Select Committee, and he replied to me in a letter that

“negotiations will be fast moving and will often cover sensitive material, so we will need to find the right ways of engaging Parliament.”

I welcomed that reply. All that new clause 3 says is that the Prime Minister shall

“make arrangements for Parliamentary scrutiny of confidential documents.”

The arrangements are for the Government to propose. Given the extent to which Brussels is a very leaky place and the fact that we will be negotiating with 27 other member states, I cannot help making the point that I suspect we will find out very shortly after the meeting has concluded where the negotiations have got to, so the Government’s arrangements will be to advise us all to buy certain newspapers, in which one will be able to read what was discussed during the course of the afternoon and evening.

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[Helen Goodman]

I have not thought about that in as much detail as the hon. Gentleman, but it will be interesting to see what the Minister says when he responds to the debate from the Dispatch Box tonight.

As I was saying, we should have proper, structured scrutiny, and I am disappointed that we do not have slightly longer to consider all these matters in more detail.

[Richard Fuller]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who expressed her view with her usual forthrightness. She was one of the first Members in the House to raise the complex issue of the customs union, for which I am very grateful.

Last July, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) moved an Opposition motion on guaranteeing the rights of EU nationals in the UK, and I was one of five Conservative Members to support it. It was an excellent motion to propose at that time, and thanks to that motion tremendous progress has been made in the Government’s thinking and statements. We are debating an issue on which there is unanimity of view about what we want to achieve. It goes almost to the point of parody: everyone is agreeing on a point about which they are then going to disagree. The fundamental question is whether placing such a measure in this Bill is the right approach to continue the pressure and achieve what my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) spoke about so eloquently.

[Heidi Allen]

My hon. Friend asks whether the Bill is the right place for such a proposal. Should it be that we in this country need legislation to orientate our moral compass?

[Richard Fuller]

I think my hon. Friend knows my view, so I will not dwell on that.

As I looked through the many amendments, I noted that they fall into three main categories: those that ask for or require scrutiny of the Government’s approach; those that seek to frame a position for the Government in the negotiations; and those that seek answers to an imponderable list of questions—most notably those from the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie). Each of those groups in turn is less worthy of the House’s attention. Scrutiny is relevant to how the House sees things proceeding, and I will listen carefully to what the Front-Bench team says about that. I am concerned, however, by some of the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) to which he did not receive answers. The idea that we would involve the Government in the negotiations, then involve Parliament in the negotiations and then also involve the courts in the negotiations brings the words “dog’s” and “breakfast” close together very quickly.

On EU nationals here in the UK, many of the contributions to this debate have focused on the easiest side of the argument. My right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) mentioned prisoners in the UK, and under last year’s motion those prisoners who have committed crimes in this country would be guaranteed the right to remain. We may want to do that, but it is a hard case to make that we should do that while not giving any consideration to British nationals in other EU countries. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire might say, we would then seem to be losing our moral compass through legislation.

A number of Members have cited specific examples of where prisoners would already be guaranteed rights in this country. As parliamentarians, we have a responsibility to reduce uncertainty as we go through the process of leaving the EU, and one practical way of doing that is by knowing what the circumstances are for each of our constituents who come to talk to us so that we can explain to them that there is no need for them to be concerned because their rights are secure—the proposal will not cover all of them, and it might not cover as large a proportion as my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) mentioned, but it is a practical example of where we can help to reduce uncertainty.

The third argument on this issue of EU nationals who have the right to remain here, upon which we all agree, is that we have focused all our attention on the Government Front Bench. Hardly anyone has mentioned Angela Merkel. As I understand it, and I get this from two very reputable newspapers—The Sun and the Daily Express—so it must be true, it was Mrs Merkel who said no to a deal. Where are the voices talking about pressing the German Government to make an agreement? I have heard plenty of speeches today about Donald Trump and how terrible we feel about his policies. Well, here is something that affects British citizens in another country and not a word from anyone.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, by triggering article 50, we will simply give the EU27 all the rights to deliver our future? We would then have no negotiation, which is why we should delay article 50 and let the people have the final say on the negotiated package. As full members, we have negotiating rights. We would then have the power of time, and we would give the EU27 the incentive to come to the negotiating table because we might vote to stay in the EU.

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Gentleman would not get a top mark in negotiation analysis at Harvard Business School. The last word the British public want to hear when it comes to this Bill is “delay.” Most people think we should get on with it, if they do not think we have done it already.

It is important for the Government to understand that messaging is important. There is uncertainty, and people feel that perhaps they do not have the right to remain here, so the Government must continue their progress in signalling to people not only that we welcome them here but that our intent is that everyone in the United Kingdom as a legal EU resident will be able to stay. We must not avoid, or fail to pursue, communicating that message.

Equally, the Government must avoid measures that give the optics to British citizens in other EU countries that they have been abandoned. One of the worst things of stating this in legislation is not that it is necessarily a bad thing but that the optics for British citizens in other countries would change dramatically. They would say, “Why have we not been protected?” They would feel even more vulnerable because of the inaction of EU Governments if the UK Government were, by statute, to have to take this measure.

I support the Government on this amendment, and I call on them to continue their progress on the issue to end uncertainty. Ending uncertainty is not just about the rights of EU nationals currently living in the UK; it is about wanting people in the European Union to come to the UK. The progressive message of this Government should not just end with the issues contained in the amendment. We should send a positive message that we will continue to welcome people from the European Union after we leave.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I support the new clauses and amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins), and I will particularly address new clause 51, in the name of the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith).

In particular, I support the argument for a White Paper that includes details of the expected trajectory for the UK’s balance of trade, gross domestic product and unemployment. A number of earlier contributions explained precisely why we need that. My hon. Friend said that Vote Leave failed to provide detailed answers to any of the key economic questions before the referendum and, of course, he is right.

The right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is no longer in his place, demonstrated incredibly ably the confusion at the heart of Vote Leave and why taking a decision today is incredibly difficult. He effectively said—I have spoken to him, so this will come as no surprise to him—that no one in the leadership of the official leave campaign ever argued that we would join the EEA or have an EFTA-type agreement. It might be that the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), or one of the other senior figures, never quite said that, but to argue that the leave campaign did not suggest it, and suggest it strongly, is simply wrong. The leave campaign Lawyers for Britain said:

“We could apply to re-join with effect from the day after Brexit… EFTA membership would allow us to continue uninterrupted free trade relations”.

That was still on the website only a few weeks ago.

The former ambassador and Brexit supporter Charles Crawford appeared on “Newsnight” to argue that an EEA option may be the first step of Brexit. Roland Smith, the author of “The Liberal Case for ‘Leave’”, wrote an extended paper titled “Evolution Not Revolution: The case for the EEA option”, so I suspect that there were many people who, indeed, voted for Brexit believing that we were not voting for a hard Tory cliff-edge Brexit and that we would maintain membership of the EEA, EFTA or an equivalent. Given that that now no longer appears to be the case, it is absolutely right, as new clause 51 makes clear, that we have details of the expected trajectory of the balance of trade, GDP and unemployment. Those are not abstracts; they are at the heart of the measurement of our economy, of wages, of living standards and of economic growth. They are the platform for tax yield, which pays for our vital public services. All those words and concepts were almost entirely absent from what I will generously call the first White Paper.

I gently observe that it is not good enough for the Government to produce, after a referendum, a White Paper that is little more that the Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech dressed up with a few pictures and a couple of graphs. That is not the basis for the economic plan necessary to mitigate the huge potential damage to the economy from a hard Tory Brexit. Make no mistake, that is what we are facing.

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[Dr Wollaston]

I agree with that, and I have also heard from constituents of mine who are British citizens now living in the EU. But my point is that, come what may, it is inconceivable that we would seek to separate families such as this one. There is no doubt that many people are sleepless and sick with worry about this, and we have all seen them in our surgeries. [Interruption.] It is true. I am seeing these people in my surgery. We also need to consider the tsunami of paperwork that we will have to deal with in settling the rights of these citizens if we do not get on with this quickly. We need to keep this simple. There is no way that families such as this should be subjected to vast bureaucracy and vast expense. We all know that this needs to be settled, so in negotiating, surely, making a bold, open offer as a gesture of good will can do nothing but good in this situation.

[Richard Fuller]

I agree with my hon. Friend, but my question to her is: can she cast any thought on why the Chancellor of Germany refused the offer?

[Dr Wollaston]

I have no idea why this is happening, but I am saying, as an important point to the Chancellor of Germany, that making this clear unilateral offer is the right thing to do, and we should get on and do it. There is no reason not to do so. Even if other countries were to take an obstructive and unreasonable line, it would still be inconceivable that our Prime Minister would separate families such as my constituents. So let us get on with this.