Early Parliamentary General Election Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Main]

I have, and the worst impact is the absolute uncertainty surrounding investment in our jobs and businesses. People do not know whether they can trade, whether they have to stockpile goods or what the arrangements will be because the dates keep moving. That is the worst thing.

All this flummery about Brexit is hiding the fact that we are not getting the business of this House done. Almost no one was here to talk about the Environment Bill, yet people are marching against plastic.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

To return to the Second Reading of this Bill, my hon. Friend faces a challenge from the Liberal Democrats in St Albans. Does she agree that, during the referendum, every household in the country received a letter saying

“The Government will implement what you decide”?

Does she remember the previous leader of the Liberal Democrats saying that, even if it were by one vote, the result should still stand? And did she hear the other day—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say very gently to the hon. Gentleman that there is a difference between a brief intervention and what one might call leisurely musing. I fear that what should be a brief intervention has elided, surely inadvertently, into leisurely musing and therefore his triple-hatted inquiry is, I feel sure, reaching its zenith.

[Richard Graham]

You are absolutely right, Mr Speaker. My inquiry was reaching its climax. I finish by asking my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) whether she also recalls the current leader of the Liberal Democrats saying that, if there were to be a people’s vote and the result were to go, in her view, the wrong way—in other words, if the people were to vote again to leave the European Union—she would not recognise it as valid. Is that not a most extraordinary position for any party of democrats to take?

[Mr Speaker]

It is always a pleasure to oblige the hon. Gentleman because his naughtiness is mitigated by his charm, but the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) should not be diverted from the path of virtuous debate by his intervention, no matter how sedulously he propagates his case.