European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I must press on if my hon. Friend will forgive me.

I do believe, however, that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Sir David Lidington) said, the European Union has reopened this deal once but it is not going to do so again. When I and my colleagues in the Exiting the European Union Committee—its Chairman, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), is sitting opposite me—have been to see Mr Barnier, Mr Selmayr and Mr Verhofstadt, they have all asked us, “What is it that will get a majority in the House of Commons?” That is what they have wanted to know. That is what I hope we will be able to show them tonight.

There is no question about it: the European Union is as fed up with this dragging on as I think the entire United Kingdom is. It wants to get the matter settled. To be honest, those who vote against tonight will, I suspect, find fault in whatever deal is put forward; actually, their agenda is stopping Brexit. This represents an opportunity finally to settle this matter and to deliver what the people voted for now coming on three and a half years ago. I hope that the House will—at last—vote in favour of the deal that is before us and in favour of the programme motion in order that we can get it delivered and fulfil the promise by 31 October.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

I will give way one more time.

[Richard Graham]

The right hon. Gentleman wrote in September that it would be

“utterly irresponsible for the Government to be rushing headlong towards”

no deal. Now that the House knows that the Government have a deal on the table, surely he and all his colleagues, who were elected on a manifesto pledge to respect the result of the referendum, should support this deal, rather than risk no deal. Is it not the case that no deal will ever be good enough for him?

[Hilary Benn]

The direct answer to the hon. Gentleman, with whom I also have the pleasure of serving on the Exiting the European Union Committee, is that to attempt to say to Members that the choice has to be between a bad deal—this is worse than the previous Prime Minister’s deal—and no deal is not a very attractive proposition. During the passage of this Bill—if it gets its Second Reading—I hope that we will attempt to improve some elements of it.

Clause 30 goes to the heart of the point about no deal, because the withdrawal agreement makes provision for the possibility of an extension to the transition period, which, at present, will end in 14 months’ time. Clause 30 says that the House can agree to a further extension, but it requires a Minister of the Crown to move the motion in the first place. The situation I am worried about is what if the Minister of the Crown fails to come to the House, does not move a motion proposing that the Government should request to the joint committee that the transitional period be extended, and the answer is that we would fall out without a deal in 14 months’ time if an agreement had not been reached. The House has voted on several occasions to make it clear that it is opposed to leaving with no deal, and there are arguments on either side as to whether people think that is a good thing or a bad thing, so I flag this up at this stage, because we will need to deal with that point—I gather that an amendment is on its way if it has not already been tabled—and to safeguard against it.

There is a second related problem to clause 30. What happens if a deal has not been negotiated by the end of December 2022 when the two-year extension has been applied for and secured? Now we would be facing exactly the same difficulty: the possibility of exiting without an agreement at the end of the transition period. In those circumstances, there is no way under the agreement that the British Government can get a further extension, so we have to find a way of ensuring that a deal is concluded by that time.

Ministers claim that, because of the high degree of alignment, it will all be done really quickly. I would just observe that took three and a quarter years to get to this point, and it took Canada six to seven years to get an agreement. Michel Barnier said this morning that he thought it would take around three years to negotiate such a deal, so we will be looking for assurance from the Minister in Committee that under no circumstances will the United Kingdom leave the European Union at the end of the transition period without a deal. I think another amendment may be on its way about that. The same point is relevant to citizens’ rights, which have not been raised much in the debate so far. We could do with clarification from Ministers, because if the transition is extended, will they also change the deadline by which EU citizens have to apply for settled status?

As I said on Saturday, I will not be voting for the Bill, above all because of the political declaration—I do not have a problem with the withdrawal agreement—which is not the right approach to take, because it is not good for business. I am very surprised, like other hon. Members, that the Government have just blithely said, “We are not going to undertake an economic assessment,” and I assume that the reason for that is simple. They did one before which showed that a free trade agreement is the second-worst outcome up for the economy after no deal, and they do not really want to have to point that out again.

My final point is about clause 31, and it links to the economic impact of the political declaration. The clause deals with the oversight of negotiations on the future relationship, and it appears to give Members some oversight, some say, over the nature of the negotiations on the future relationship, but proposed new section 13C(3) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 says:

“A statement on objectives for the future relationship…must be consistent with the political declaration of 17 October 2019”.

I simply point out that if, in one, two or three years’ time, the House realises that the objectives of such a free trade agreement are not in our economic interests, because we finally realise the damage it will do to the economy—we have seen what businesses have said and the concerns they have expressed—the current wording of the clause gives no opportunity for Parliament to get a Government to change those objectives. I do not think we should accept the Bill on that issue, as it is currently worded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

When the Prime Minister said that the odds were a “million to one” against no deal, some of us had doubts. I would have agreed with the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) that it was “utterly irresponsible” for this Government to be rushing towards no deal, if it were true. Now the Prime Minister has produced a deal, surely all those here against no deal can come together to support it. However, too many Members will never support leaving, despite the pledge that they were elected on. They want a second referendum to overturn the original one. The leader of the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), goes further: she would not accept the wrong result of a second referendum, so contrary to what some people argue, a second referendum will not bring us together. We cannot trust the Opposition parties to carry out the result of a referendum that goes the wrong way any more than they have so far.

Some say that there is not enough time to debate the Bill. My right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) said that he wishes that there were three more days to debate it, but as the Institute for Government said, there are some for whom no amount of debate will be enough. Then there is the Leader of the Opposition, who said that his greatest worry is the serious threat to manufacturing from not being in a customs union. Therefore, he should support both the Bill on Second Reading and the programme motion, table an amendment in Committee and, if that does not work, put it in Labour’s manifesto, campaign on it in an election, form the next Government and negotiate that in the free trade agreement. The point is that the customs union, let alone the NHS, has nothing to do with the Bill. The manufacturers I know are a lot more concerned about what the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor will do to them than they are about the deal.

There are changes on the Northern Ireland protocol that are very relevant, but because they are internal matters, between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, they can be resolved between us, which is why it is so important that the Democratic Unionist party supports a deal to make sure it does not get the worst possible result for Northern Ireland, which would be no deal.

Let our constituents be clear: there will never be a perfect deal, any more than there will be a perfect job or a perfect marriage. I said three years ago that we needed a deal that few would love but most could live with, and there is enough in the political declaration to reassure those who are open to being reassured on environmental and workers’ rights, enough to respect the Good Friday agreement, and enough to reassure all those elected to respect the result of the referendum that we are delivering on the pledge that what the people decided we would implement. That is why we should all vote for the Bill and leave the EU in a sensible way.