European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Roger Gale Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

As I say, remain and leave have been, to a very large extent, united in their dismay at what I think is a wholly undemocratic deal. The thing that really pains me—the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) asked about the role of Ministers in this—is that we on the UK side of the negotiation have been responsible for forging our own manacles, in the sense that it is almost as though we decided that we needed to stay in the customs union and in the single market in defiance of the wishes of the people.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend allow me to intervene?

[Boris Johnson]

I will give way in a minute to my hon. Friend, who has been chuntering away from a sedentary position behind me. We should be careful about claiming any kind of subterfuge—we have lost two Brexit Secretaries in the course of these negotiations, and it is very hard to understand how the former Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union could have been kept in the dark about the crucial addition to paragraph 23 of the political declaration. This country agreed in paragraph 23, apparently without the knowledge of the elected politician concerned, that our future relationship would be based on the backstop. No one campaigned for that outcome. No one voted for this type of Brexit. This is not Brexit, but a feeble simulacrum of national independence.

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[Boris Johnson]

I will give way in a second to my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale). It is a paint and plaster pseudo-Brexit, and beneath the camouflage, we find the same old EU institutions—the customs union and the single market—all of it adjudicated, by the way, by the European Court of Justice. If we vote for this deal, we will not be taking back control, but losing it.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He appears to be one of those who prefers the grievance to the solution. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has come up with a solution. What is his big idea? [Interruption.]

[Boris Johnson]

I was coming to that. [Interruption.]

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[Sir Roger Gale]

The right hon. Gentleman has nailed his saltire to the mast. He has been very clear and we know what he is saying: he wants to stay in the EU. How is he going to get out of the common fisheries policy? What is he going to do for Scottish fishermen?

[Ian Blackford]

Well, well, well, Scottish fishing. Scottish fishing was sold down the river in the 1970s because Ted Heath made sure that our fishing interests were sold out. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that the deal the Government have brought forward is the worst of all deals because in the transition period the UK would remain in the CFP but would have no effect on the rules. Let us look at what the EU has made clear because you are going to enter into a transition but you are not holding any cards in terms of the future relationship, and the EU27 have said that the starting position for the negotiations on fishing will be the existing quotas. The Scottish fishermen have been sold out by the Tories, who have duped them into thinking that they are going to be taking back control of their waters—nothing could be further from the truth.

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[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). I do not agree with everything he said, but let me start with a point of definite agreement: the European Union needs reform. I personally believe that the EU is corrupt, bureaucratic, meddlesome and wasteful, but for all of that I voted remain. I did so because I believe my children and grandchildren and my constituents’ children and grandchildren would be better off within than outwith the European Union in terms of the economy and security.

That is how I voted, but unfortunately 52% of the British public did not. I have accepted that result, although I understand that others take a different view and would like to rerun the referendum or have a people’s vote or try to overturn the decision. But I believe we do have a duty now to honour the expressed wish of the British people, and for that reason I shall be supporting the withdrawal agreement. It is not perfect—no compromise ever is—but I listened very carefully to what the Attorney General said yesterday and his words were, to paraphrase slightly, that it is a risk, but a risk we have to take when we consider all the alternatives.

If we look at all the alternatives—I tried to goad my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) into offering one this evening and got nothing—such as the hard Brexit, and if we have to rule out, as I do, a return to no Brexit, we are left with the withdrawal agreement. I believe my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was absolutely correct in saying it is not possible to go back to the Commission cap in hand. We might get a tweak here and a tweak there, but the idea that anybody is going to offer a radical reassessment of what is on offer today is baying at the moon. I spend a certain amount of time leading the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe delegation, and I meet European parliamentarians, as I have in the past few weeks. They are astonished, looking through the other end of the telescope, at how much has been given to the United Kingdom, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is absolutely right to say that if she goes back and tries to reopen the deal, 27 other countries will all say “Me, too,” and then we shall have a raft of changes that will not be to our advantage. So for all that the withdrawal agreement is not perfect, I shall support it.

I want to touch briefly on the hard Brexit, because this is part of my equation, and now I need to be parochial. I am proud to be a Member of Parliament representing the garden of England—Kent. Other people do not seem to have grasped this fact, but quite a lot of trade comes through Dover and into the rest of the country and goes out through Dover. The fact of the matter is that probably 20 years ago 85% of the lorries going out were British, whereas now 85% of the lorries coming in and going out are continental.

A hard Brexit means a hard border. We have heard a lot about hard borders in Northern Ireland, but we have not heard about hard borders in England—a hard border between Dover and Calais. That shutter will come down. There will be controls, if we go for a hard Brexit. Kent Members visited the Dover Harbour Board last week and we spoke with the Freight Transport Association and Kent police, and I spoke personally with a freight forwarder. If those shutters come down, the traffic backs up at about a mile an hour. That is out of the port of Dover, up the M20, up the M26 and on to the M25, and then we are stuffed.

If the M25 comes to a grinding halt, south London comes to a grinding halt and soon Birmingham will come to a grinding halt. No car parts for the just-in-time car industry, no life-saving pharmaceuticals, no construction materials—rockwool, which is used extensively in construction, comes through Dover—and no food. The good people of North East Somerset and of Uxbridge may not care whether Kent is turned into a lorry park, but I do. What I also know is that the people of Somerset and Uxbridge will scream blue murder when they find that they cannot buy their new Chelsea tractor, their life-saving drugs or the foodstuffs that they enjoy that come in from mainland Europe. We will hear those screams from the west country and west London in Westminster.

We have three options. I rule out no Brexit, because I believe that it is not what people voted for. I have had to rule out, for the reasons I have just given, hard Brexit. I believe that it would be immensely damaging. Even my miserable maths says that two out of three leaves one, and that one is the withdrawal agreement that will be before us on Tuesday night. I believe that I owe it to my constituents’ children and grandchildren to vote for it, get behind it and then let this great country move forward. That is what I shall do on Tuesday.