Brexit Deal: Referendum

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell]

I will just make a few opening remarks, if I may. The referendum asked only one question: “Do you want to leave the European Union?” It did not ask about the single market, the agencies or the customs union. In fact, I recall a time when the Prime Minister was not even clear about the status of the customs union after the referendum, so there was clearly not a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of what leaving the European Union actually meant; everybody interpreted it in a different way.

I think all of us in this room, if we are honest, have gone on a journey since the referendum. We have learned a lot more and we are gathering a lot more information about what is to come. When someone says, as the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) did, that the people voted to leave, I say, well, they did, but only by a very narrow margin—3.7%. My interpretation of the result is that the country was divided, and therefore that every time the people who voted to remain hear that this is the will of the people, their views are being completely ignored. The reality is that it was the will of half the people who voted. We also know that only 72% of the people eligible to vote did so, and, as we have heard, with demographic changes, more people today would be able to vote, so it is not the will of the people, it is the will of some of the people, half the people, at a point in time.

To predicate the whole future of our country on that point in time, in the way the Government are, is really divisive. That is what we have seen: a really divided agenda moving forward. That is what I want to address. The most important thing now is pulling our country together. The rhetoric is being put out more and more; half of the people are hearing that their votes and their views do not matter any more, because we are going off this cliff edge come what may. We really need to respect everybody, and we need to find a way of pulling people together.

There was some hope in the statement on Friday morning, because it talked about things perhaps not changing so dramatically. We know that where there are polarised views, we have to find a mechanism to bring people together. The statement, in paragraph 49, said:

“In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union”.

It is clear where we are heading: after 18 months of further division and pain, we are actually heading to a bit of a convergence of views. That is really important, and it is why Labour set out right from the beginning that we believe in staying in the customs union and single market throughout the transition, and then seeing where we end up after that.

The reality is that we will of course have to be close to the European Union because we will continue to trade; we will obviously have to trade within their rules, and that is the way it will continue. This nonsense that we have to go to a completely polarised position does not work. However, we have already had 18 months in which the pain of the process has been deeply divisive, as I have mentioned, but also deeply damaging to our economy.

For me, the headline in the Budget was the £65 billion loss as the economy has contracted. We heard about the additional £3 billion being put into this process and we have heard of the £36 billion or £39 billion bill to leave the European Union. How much will all these new agencies cost to set up? How much will these trade deals cost us? The real cost is not before us, and it is absolutely essential that we have a better understanding of the impact of leaving the European Union. To keep that information covert, as opposed to sharing it, means that Parliament cannot scrutinise it. Nor can the people of this country; it is about their hard-earned money, which they pay through taxes. It is vital that they have a real understanding of where we are heading.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a persuasive speech about how the referendum was really a snapshot in time. I wonder if she has seen the demographic figures showing that by 2022, at the next scheduled election, there will be more than 3 million extra voters aged 18 to 22 who were unable to vote in the referendum. That is the danger. I do not want to be as crude as to say, “Where there’s death, there’s hope in politics,” but we know there is a younger generation who were denied the vote. Our party thought that 16-year-olds should have had a vote. In time, they will be in the ascendant, and there is a strong case for reviewing that decision. Does she agree?

[Rachael Maskell]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. The reality is that it is not only the age demographic that is changing; opinion is also changing, as we heard through the Survation poll. We expect that to continue, because the myths about Europe are being dispelled as there is more debate and discussion, and people are facing the reality and the sheer cost of what is to come.

We need to make sense of the process. If, in trying to honour the majority of people who voted in the referendum, things are not working in the way that the Government first set out in their ambition, I have no issue with them saying, “Look, we’ve tried. We’ve gone through a negotiating process, but in the best interests of our country, our economy, jobs and the protections we have fought hard and worked for over the years, we are better having a stronger relationship with Europe than walking away altogether.” We need to be pragmatic, as opposed to just following a political narrative that is wearing really thin throughout the country. Otherwise, it is a complete insult to the people who put thought into their vote on 23 June.

In my own city of York, we had a 58% remain vote, but in York Central—the constituency I represent—two thirds of people voted to remain. They did that because of the impact analysis they did. I have gone round before and after the referendum talking to our major industries, to see what the impact is. Let us look at tourism. We were told that Britain would really benefit from tourism; more people would come into the UK because the pound was weaker and therefore we would see a real boom. When I talk to the industry, they say they cannot cope with Brexit. People who previously supported Brexit are saying that it is deeply damaging. We are losing all the labour in the tourism industry, and as a result, businesses are closing. York has a big tourism footprint. We cannot get enough chefs, and we cannot get cleaners for our hotels, and it is deeply damaging on that front.

The universities are a large part of our economy, too, and they are in a desperate state because they have no certainty over future funding, which is their lifeblood. Things are getting really tough. I meet with the vice-chancellors, and they are deeply concerned about where we are going. They are forming relationships for the future, but with the uncertainty about the future, they are not clear where they will take them.

I have not heard language colleges debated. On Friday I met with the language colleges in York—it is a major industry in the city—and they say that all the trade is moving over to the Republic of Ireland, and therefore they are not able to recruit the students they need. Businesses are divesting and moving their headquarters to Ireland and the EU. Of course, that is not just happening in York. It is happening across the UK.

I have had many discussions about the dependency of our NHS on EU labour. People have choices, and they are choosing not to come. I heard on Thursday night how the hospital, after much effort, was able to recruit more than 40 Spanish nurses. Only three now remain. It is not going to be able to repeat that. We know that patient safety is being put at risk as a result of the numbers falling. This is a real challenge for our local economy. When I met with CBI members in the region, they said that 42% of business investments are now not in the UK, but have gone to elsewhere in the EU. That is why Labour has emphasised the importance of a jobs- first Brexit the whole way. We know that good-quality jobs are disappearing, and York has faced that challenge. As we have heard, we have lost the European Medicines Agency, and we are losing our influence and job opportunities as a result.

I want to come on to the issue of how we bring the country together. The reality is that we are still incredibly polarised and split. I have not heard anything from the Government about trying to bring the country together, as well as the people who have polarised views. Just to say, “You voted at a point in time and that’s it, we’re moving on,” is incredibly damaging, and we need to try to adjust that agenda. I did not hear anything from the hon. Member for Cleethorpes about a way forward for the 30% of people who voted remain in his constituency, and about how he would bring them back to the table.

We need a wider conversation with the people of the country. It is intense in Parliament, and it is more intense in Government, by all reports, but the people of the country voted on 23 June, and quite frankly their views have been ignored. There has not been national engagement and a capturing of people’s views as they have shifted. Polling has been done, and we are doing work in our constituencies, but there is not that inclusivity of people across the country. It is essential to look at how we can capture people’s views. Having a referendum that seeks to know the views of the people of our country and to ask much broader questions would help to formulate our future direction.

We have to recognise that we are at a unique point in our history, and we must dig deeper into what the real concerns are. I know that people voted leave for many different reasons. In the north of England, many people felt that for decades, they have been in economic recession, and people have been poor. Because Europe did not answer those questions, they thought, “Well, clearly it’s failing us,” so they voted to leave. They perhaps did not see the failure that is to come down the track, of being outside the EU.

At the time of the vote on article 50, I was serving in the shadow DEFRA team. Many people wanted to leave not the single market, but the common agricultural policy. People had different views on what they wanted to do. There was concern about the immigration issues that were being ramped up by the far right. It is absolutely right that we defeat those views, but we also have to look at a very failed immigration policy in our country. It has failed because Government took away the funding to support people who were placed in many of the poorest areas, and therefore there was a real challenge in those communities. The Government have completely failed when it comes to exploitative agency labour, which has removed jobs and opportunities from local people. All sorts of issues have to be addressed.

Because all the Government’s time is subsumed in Brexit, I have not seen them address the real concerns of people who voted to leave. We have huge inequality. We heard in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report last week that 13.9 million people in our country are living in poverty. We heard about the rise of older people in poverty, but also children in poverty. We also had the Social Mobility Commission report, which shows a regression in social mobility in our country. Of course, many of the people who voted to leave are trapped in poverty, without opportunities in life. We are not seeing the Government really addressing the concerns that people voted about on 23 June. That is why it is really important that we go back, to understand formally what those are. I hear this debate in the House time and time again. People are being ignored, and our democracy is failing them.

One of the last points I want to make is about the end of the process. If we had confidence that there was going to be a meaningful vote in Parliament, we would be able to represent our constituents’ views well. My biggest concern is that the vote will just be whipped through and hon. Members will vote along party lines, and ultimately the people of this country will be ignored—because of the political narrative in the House and out in the media, as opposed to their status at the end of this process, no matter what economic situation we find ourselves in—because it is about saving the skin of the Government when we get to that point, rather than finding a different way forward.

[Sir David Crausby in the Chair]

On referendums, we have all had our experiences and I am sure that we would never want to repeat them, but we need to find a way to include the people of our country in this process. I suggest a general election.

UK Nationals in the EU: Rights

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

I agree. The human cost has been completely underestimated. Whatever the final outcomes, the stress and unhappiness being caused now are real.

As I have said, the Government maintain that reciprocal arrangements are the way forward and will best guarantee the rights of UK citizens in the EU, but if our treatment of EU nationals here is seen to be ungenerous, where will that leave our people in the European Union? It need not even be by design. In the past month, some EU citizens in the UK have received mistakenly sent letters threatening them with deportation. We are told it was an error, but clearly we do not want that to be reciprocated. Sadly, the 3 Million campaign has been compiling compelling evidence of discrimination against EU nationals across employment, housing and a range of services ever since the referendum. We do not want that reciprocated either.

Last week, the Home Office’s immigration plans were leaked. Many people—rightly, in my view—reacted with outrage. Are we really going to restrict the rights of EU family members to enter and remain in the UK, and police that with biometrics? Is that the kind of treatment that we want reciprocated?

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is describing convincingly this Government’s catalogue of errors involving leaks and letters wrongly sent. Regarding discrimination, is he aware of the figures released by the House of Commons Library? In 2011, 49% of British citizens living elsewhere in the EU were over the age of 50, compared with only 15% of EU nationals here. In our aging society, age discrimination is another thing to consider.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I was not aware of that statistic, but it helps to build a powerful and compelling case. I suggest that in general the Government need to rethink their tone, strategy and approach to the negotiations, as well as their aims, because progress so far has been so slow.

Last week, the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament met and published a statement which said that,

“a clear majority of group leaders were of the view that continued lack of clarity or absence of UK proposals on separation issues as well as the latest developments in Brexit negotiations meant that it was more than likely the assessment on ‘sufficient progress’ on the first phase of Brexit negotiations is unlikely to have been met by the October European Council.”

Progress is likely to remain glacial, which takes me back to the point about the uncertainty that many people face.

Although progress may be glacial, fear and uncertainty will certainly not grow as slowly—quite the opposite. The millions of people affected by the failure to secure a settlement deserve better. It is not too late for our Government to change tack and realise that a generous unilateral offer is far more likely to secure progress than a bit-by-bit, step-by-step battle of attrition. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply. He is a decent man, and I live in hope that he might surprise us, but I suspect that he may not be in a position to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Roger Gale]

I think I am right that the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) referred to the House of Commons Library, which provided those statistics, but my evidence is from my own eyes—

[Dr Huq]

The figures from the Library said that 21% of UK citizens in the rest of the EU are over 65, so that is not a majority. The 49% figure is for over-50s, who may be economically active and contributing, paying taxes and all those things.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I think we can accept—well, maybe we cannot, but I accept from personal knowledge—that most Brits who live in France outside Paris and in Spain outside Madrid, as the majority do, are not necessarily over retirement age but are retired or semi-retired. Some are working online. There is a significant number of them, and they are frightened people.

I have become involved because many years ago, under the last Labour Government, I had to fight a battle to secure payment of disability living allowance as an exportable benefit to UK citizens living in the European Union. That decision was taken by the European Commission. Shamefully, and in spite of the best efforts of the then Minister Jonathan Shaw—a very decent man and a personal friend—it took us a long time to secure the payment, but eventually it was made. Within the European Union, there is an understanding that certain benefits are exportable, mainly the disability living allowance—now the personal independence payment—attendance allowance and carer’s allowance. Mobility allowance is not a health benefit and therefore not exportable. That was another battle that we fought but lost.

A significant number of UK citizens are receiving those benefits throughout the European Union. Contrary to popular belief, they are not rich retired people living on yachts in Cannes sipping gin and lying in the sun. Generally, they have worked in the United Kingdom all their lives, paid their taxes and national insurance contributions and for whatever reason—perhaps health, or the climate—found it desirable to live in the Mediterranean or in France. They have no flexibility in their incomes, which have fallen quite dramatically because of the fall in the pound, as many of them are living on United Kingdom state retirement pensions and little else.

If I say to hon. Members that those people live in genteel poverty, I mean it. It is genteel because they have a roof over their heads and they own their property, but having sold up and moved out from the United Kingdom, they are now faced with a choice between a rock and a hard place. Do they stay and face losing perhaps their healthcare and certainly their exportable benefits?

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter.

In August, I visited Cyprus, where my parents were born. During my visit I had the pleasure of meeting the British high commissioner. I was surprised to learn from him that more than 40,000 UK citizens live in Cyprus, which, as hon. Members will be aware, is an EU member. Some of those 40,000 citizens are retired people who have decided to spend their autumn years in the glorious sunshine by the Mediterranean, enjoying the delights that the island has to offer. All is well and good, as long as we remain in the EU, but a number of unanswered questions are causing great uncertainty and concern.

The fear is that, to get tough on immigration, the UK Government could marginalise those UK citizens’ rights. For example, at present EU citizens automatically have the right to have an elderly parent, sick relative or EU spouse join them in the UK, and that is reciprocated in other EU countries. If that right were to be curtailed it could have a devastating effect on UK citizens settled in EU countries, who would not be able to have their family members join them. In June the Prime Minister rejected the EU’s offer that the rights of all EU citizens affected by Brexit, including those of UK nationals living in other EU countries, should be protected for life. She made in return a far weaker proposal, which left UK citizens abroad concerned and confused as to why the UK Government was throwing away their rights.

Healthcare is another issue of great concern to UK citizens living in the EU. As we get older we tend to be more reliant on healthcare, and it is of huge benefit to have the blue European health insurance card. I have one here, and it means that were I to fall ill abroad I would get the healthcare I needed, even without travel insurance. Settled UK citizens living in EU countries, who might have long-term ailments and conditions, could find that the withdrawal of that benefit was critical to their health. Would they have to go back to the UK to receive medical care? What if they were not registered with a GP? Would they be able to get access to the treatment they needed in the UK? At present the UK reimburses UK pensioners if they are treated in another EU country, but if that arrangement were stopped and the UK citizen’s sole income was the state pension they could be left with crippling hospital bills to pay. What if the UK citizen was married to a non-British, non-EU citizen? Could they bring them back to the UK, if they needed urgent medical treatments there?

There are many other unresolved issues in the negotiations, such as the mutual recognition of professional qualifications for workers, the complexities of the two-year rule and the rights of frontier workers, to name but a few. The bottom line is that the Prime Minister and her Government have been woefully bad at negotiating a good deal for UK citizens abroad, by trading away their rights for the chance to control immigration. The offer of protection for the existing rights of all EU nationals affected by Brexit should have been grabbed by the Prime Minister with both hands. At a stroke, that would have reassured and calmed the fears of UK citizens and EU nationals living in the UK.

[Dr Huq]

What does my hon. Friend make of an email that I had from David Hulmes, an ex-constituent, now in Lyon in France, who says that the EU position was initially generous but seems to have hardened? The reason he gives is the settled status after Brexit, which is insulting, inhuman to people who have been living here for years, and should be scrapped.

[Bambos Charalambous]

I am in total accord with my hon. Friend’s very good point.

People who have been resident in the UK for many years have received deportation letters. One of my constituents received such a letter after being resident for more than 20 years. The argument that the Prime Minister and her team would be able to negotiate a better deal for UK citizens living in EU countries is fanciful at best. All that seems to have happened since article 50 was triggered is that we are all six months older. The Government need to wake up to the fact that it will be expected that reciprocal arrangements will be made with the EU negotiators, and that the rights of UK citizens living in EU countries and EU nationals living in the UK must be protected. Anything short of that will be seen as a serious failure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I thought so. It was the very first piece of employment legislation in this House, brought in by a Conservative Government long before the Labour party existed. I suspect that we will still be bringing in such legislation long after the Labour party has ceased to exist. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we will continue to protect workers’ rights. Indeed, the Prime Minister has made it plain not just that we will protect rights, which was the line I started promulgating last summer when I took this job, but that we will expand them. She has appointed the Taylor commission, under Matthew Taylor, with the explicit aim of ensuring that these rights are appropriate to the modern age and will protect people in the modern age.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

All the evidence shows that public holidays improve the productivity and wellbeing of workers, including those in the NHS still awaiting their £350 million a week as promised by the leave campaign. Does the Secretary of State agree with having an additional four days, as the Labour party proposes? Although that would still be short of the number in Finland and Spain, which have 14 and 15 days respectively, it would bring us in line with the European average of 12. At the moment we only have eight. That is an example of how, when we leave—

[Mr Speaker]

Well done—very good. I think we have the gist. The thrust of the question has been communicated and we are eternally grateful to the hon. Lady.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Rupa Huq Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes his point very well, and I shall come on to that in a moment.

Our responsibilities do not end here tonight or with the passing of this Bill. It is deeply problematic that the Government are embarking upon this process without any objective economic analysis of its implications, without clarity on key issues such as the customs union and without any sense of what transitional arrangements might look like, on the basis of what I believe is the fanciful proposition that all the future arrangements can be tied up within 18 months.

On day one of the debate, a number of speakers powerfully made the point that, given the paucity of information we have been given before article 50 is to be triggered, it is even more important that there should be proper parliamentary scrutiny, including a meaningful vote in this House, before the end of the process. The Prime Minister’s apparent wish that our choice will be to accept her deal or face a hard Brexit on World Trade Organisation terms is quite wrong. Such a take-it-or-leave-it option would fly in the face of the central proposition that won the referendum—namely, that we want to take back control and restore parliamentary sovereignty. So I hope that Members—particularly Conservative Members—however they voted in the referendum, will support the amendments that seek to ensure proper parliamentary sovereignty throughout the process. I believe that parliamentary scrutiny will help the Government. It will improve any deal, it will strengthen their hand with the European Union and it will make it more likely that the Prime Minister will end up with a deal that has the support it needs in the country.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, without the safeguards he seeks, there may be a crock of something at the end of the rainbow but it might not be gold?

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. This is deeply uncertain, and the truth is that the Government have not really levelled with the country about the trade-offs. At the moment, they are saying that they can have everything, and I fear that pretty soon in the negotiations we will discover that that is not the case.

I want to focus not on the economic questions, which were well worn yesterday, but on an equally important issue that has received less attention in this debate but is absolutely crucial: our place in the world and our foreign policy relationships after Brexit. The foundation of our foreign policy for a generation has rested on the combination of a special relationship with the United States and, crucially, our relationship with the European Union.

Enlargement of the EU following the fall of the Berlin wall—as a nation, we advocated for that enlargement; leadership on climate change under the last Government and, I freely say, under this Government; a commitment to the rule of law and human rights; a belief in the importance of multilateral institutions—all of these have been bound up in our relationship with the European Union, and we should not be under any illusion about the real risk that, following our departure, our influence in the world will be weaker, not stronger.

I negotiated on climate change for the last Labour Government, and our strength, our power, our standing on that issue came from our membership of the European Union because we accounted for 10% of global emissions, not just 1%. The House should therefore recognise that the question of what strategic relationships come after Brexit is fundamental to the issue of real sovereignty and our ability to have an effect on the big issues that will affect us.

EU Referendum Rules

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Nearly 17,500 people in Ealing Central and Acton signed this petition and 72% of my constituents wanted to remain, so I am here on their behalf. When the enormity of the result set in on that night—I remember that the rest of the country did not go the same way—I was saying to people that if there were a vote on the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972, I would have no hesitation in voting against, but we are not talking about that today. We are talking about this petition, which states that any referendum should have a 60% vote one way or the other and that there should be a 75% turnout. In answer to that, the Government have already said that the referendum was a democratic exercise in which 33 million people had their say and that the goalposts cannot be moved afterwards. I accept that logic. We cannot rerun a football match if we do not get the result we want. I was in Iceland this summer, and the people had the match ball from that horrible game just so they could rub salt into the wounds of English holidaymakers.

I accept all that. There is no parallel or precedent for what we have done. People say that 2016 is one of those years that proves the curse, “May you live in interesting times.” There have been a lot of celebrity deaths: David Bowie; Alan Rickman, who lived in Acton; and Muhammad Ali. Many of my constituents are going through a grieving process, and the saddest thing of all is “Britain in the EU, RIP.” In life, the probability of death is always one, but many of my constituents feel that the referendum result was not inevitable. The referendum was meant to put a lid on the issue and put it to bed. The previous Prime Minister was cowed by his own party’s internal politics, and this was meant to signal a full stop, but it feels as if we have uncorked a genie from a bottle, opened Pandora’s box or opened a can of worms—pick a cliché. The consequences are much wider ranging than any normal piece of legislation, because 40 years of law making will have to be undone, which will not be an easy process. There are two new Government Departments for a start.

We have all heard anecdotes and stories. I spoke to the head of Grange Primary School this morning, and he said that the day after the referendum parents, rather than children, from the settled EU population were in tears and fearing the worst. They thought that people would say, “Go home now.” Apparently things have not been as bad as they thought, but business people have lost contracts. We have a lot of Japanese residents in my seat, and many of the Japanese companies for which they work are saying that they will take their wares elsewhere. We are where we are.

I campaigned to remain, and I am the sort of person who is into building bridges rather than constructing walls, unlike Donald Trump in America. I was disappointed by the result, and I have to accept that the sky has not fallen in, yet. There is an argument that referendums are quite un-British. Why did we have this referendum at all? Some people in my party blame our current leader, but if there is one person whose door we can lay this at it is the previous Prime Minister. We are not Switzerland. There is an argument that we should not trust experts, and a good weight of expert opinion seems to have gone out of the window. The template seems to have been set in the three-hour statement he made when we came back on the Monday after the referendum. He got three hours of questions on all sorts of different aspects of Brexit, including hate crime and all the economic stuff, and the two responses he seemed to have were, “We must accept the will of the people” and, “That is a matter for my successor.” He seemed to say those two things, in either order, in answer to everything.

We cannot carry on with business as usual because things have been so drastically altered—a new political settlement lies ahead—but some safeguards need to be put in place if we ever have another referendum in this country. Safety valves and safeguards are an absolute necessity, not just a feasible prospect. The thresholds in the petition are quite high: 60% have to vote one way or the other and there has to be a 75% turnout. When he was Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) probably thought that the vote would go the way of his other referendums. The referendum in 2011 on the alternative vote had a turnout of 42%, with 69% voting against, so it would have satisfied one of the thresholds but not the other. There is something in the argument that thresholds would protect us from close calls, but I do not know exactly where we should set the numbers.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Huq]

There is limited time left and I have waited ages, so I would rather not give way. I will talk to my right hon. Friend afterwards.

Any mobile phone contract now has a cooling-off period. There is a sense of buyer’s remorse doing the rounds. In a 72%-in constituency, I have had emails from people saying that they did not realise that leave would win. France bans opinion polls in the run-up to a vote, and we could introduce that safeguard. We are not saying that we should rerun exactly the same question, but we could ban opinion polls in the run-up to a future vote.

Nobody knows what “Brexit means Brexit” means. Members on both sides of the House have mooted the idea of having some sort of accountability process. At a general election both sides have a manifesto with codified promises. Perhaps in future the lead campaigns on both sides could have the same. We have heard that most of the promises were not worth the paper they were written on or the cost of the paint used to write the lies on the side of the bus. I advocate that both sides should have proper manifestos from now on. Yes, 48% voted the wrong way—or the right way, depending on how we look at it—but that cannot really be called a ringing endorsement. Maybe we should have some facts because it seems quite possible to do mendacity in these referendums.

From all the Government’s indications, rerunning a referendum that went the wrong way for our side is not an option but I argue for introducing certain measures. I agree with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who has now left the Chamber—[Interruption.] I am just concluding. This is my last sentence. We should have a referendum on the terms of Brexit, because nobody knew what they were voting on, so I advocate having a referendum on what comes after the negotiations.

I am being told to wind up. There is an American saying: “The people have spoken, the b******s.” In some sense, I feel that way. In short, we remainers are down, but hopefully not out—not yet, anyway.