European Union (Withdrawal) Acts

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Saturday 19th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

I say with all respect and humility to the former Prime Minister that a lot of people watching who have listened to her words will feel strongly that the only con trick was a Prime Minister making a solemn promise to the public that under no circumstances would there be a border down the Irish sea, and then traipsing through the Lobby to vote for precisely that. I would have expected a little more humility from her.

All of us who participated in the referendum debate noticed one thing: in the prospectus for Brexit, it was very poorly defined. It was difficult to gauge precisely what Brexit would mean for our country. However, when the former Prime Minister signed the article 50 treaty, she had the legal right to define Brexit. She came to the House with her deal, which had over 500 pages defining Brexit. For almost a year, she and the Government said that the deal respected the will of the people.

Now we have a separate deal, brought back by a separate Government, who say that this fundamentally different deal, with different customs arrangements, different regulatory systems, and a different order for the United Kingdom, represents the will of the people. Both deals cannot represent the will of the people. I say this with all humility: if we want to know what the will of the people is—what they were voting for—we can ask them. Their response will be based not on promises, but on facts, because we have the facts now.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and I have been working on a compromise—and it is a compromise, because it means we could become the remainers who open the door to Brexit. Fundamentally, it is about breaking the gridlock in Parliament. It is based around a deal.

[Mr Gyimah]

I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman with interest. Does he agree that though the referendum settled the question of leaving, it did not settle where we were going? That is why the House has, over the last three and a half years, debated different ways of leaving the EU. Some people believe in the May deal; some want a May deal minus backstop; some want a Northern Ireland backstop; some want a customs union; some want no deal; and some want a managed no deal. Does he agree that that is why any deal that the Government put before us should be put to the people for a final say?

[Peter Kyle]

I am extremely grateful for a thoughtful intervention. Of course I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I speak as someone who has voted for three separate versions of Brexit. I have not opposed it; I have voted for Brexit in this place more often than most members of the ERG. The key question is: how do we break the gridlock? How do we get past this impasse? The idea of a referendum based on a deal is that it would be a confirmatory referendum. We would put the prospectus to the people and ask, “Is this good enough for you?”, in exactly the same way we did in Northern Ireland with the Good Friday peace agreement.

EU Exit Day Amendment

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Tonight, we are debating whether or not to extend article 50. The thing I would like to touch on briefly is whether the EU would ever countenance a further extension. I say that because from 2007 to 2010, when we were on the Opposition Benches, I was my party’s shadow Europe Minister. I did the Lisbon treaty, working with William Hague, and that was my epiphany; we had 14 days’ debate in this place and we could not change a single punctuation mark. That was when I realised that we had to leave. I hope the Minister will accept that in those three years I spent a lot of time visiting the institutions of the European Union, because that was my job. I came to realise that for many people in the EU, particularly, though not exclusively, in the Commission, what is often referred to as the “European project” has the status almost of a religious act of faith. People passionately believe in it, it transcends almost all other considerations and it must be promoted and protected almost at all costs. Very many people in the EU were utterly shocked when the UK voted to leave. They were absolutely stunned, because in their world what we had done was an act of heresy—it was apostasy to leave.

Many people in the EU believe we should be punished, not least pour encourager les autres. But what they are even more worried about is the UK taking part in European elections, which would bring 73 UK MEPs into the Parliament, many of whom, though not all, would be likely to be Eurosceptic. That would completely upset the calculations that they have made to reconfigure the new Parliament in order to keep out what they call the “populists” from eastern Europe and, for instance, the Lega Nord from Italy. That is why they would not accept the extension to 30 June. They insisted either on 22 May or 12 April, which is the drop-dead date for when we would have to begin European election preparation in the UK.

So my argument simply is this: I believe that for the EU protecting the integrity of the Parliament, which under the co-decision procedure under the Lisbon treaty has much greater power now relative to the other institutions, would be even more important to those who really believe in the project than trying to keep the UK in the EU, although many would like that. Therefore, if I am right, they would not countenance any further extension beyond the dates that have been given, because it would muck up the European Parliament and that would spoil Macron’s plans to federalise the EU. So my argument is that we should not be worried about a long extension, because I believe, although I cannot prove it in the House tonight, that they will never grant it. They do not want, in any circumstances, to go beyond 12 April because it means European elections that they simply cannot stomach, because there would be 35 to 40 Eurosceptic British MEPs who completely rip up their plan for the Parliament.

[Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Francois]

I am going to finish.

I believe, on that basis, that the threat of a long extension has always been a false one and that if we get to 12 April, we can leave, because I believe that those who believe in the project would not allow the extension.

Finally, the Government spent £9 million on sending a document to every household in this country, before the referendum, that said, “This is a once-in-a-generation decision. This is your decision and we will implement what you decide.” If the people in this House overturn that decision, the people will be extremely angry. Do not say you were not warned.

Article 50 Extension

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)]

Like many in the House, I find it impossible to overstate my concern for our country today. We are nine days away from Brexit and, as things stand, we have no agreed strategy for the country to follow. Instead, we have a Government who continue to put their head in the sand about a deal that has simply not been accepted by this Parliament. There will be many books written about why we have ended up in this position, but the reality is that this situation was clear months ago. It was clear from the Chequers agreement and the subsequent White Paper that the strategy would not command consensus in this House, and that has proved the case ever since. I will briefly talk about the damage it has done to his place, before finishing by returning to the fact that, even if the Government were to get a deal through, it would be a pyrrhic victory that serves no one, including themselves.

This Government have delayed. We are debating the extension today because they have not been prepared to confront the fact that their deal has not been accepted by this House. The reality is that, in doing all this, they have undermined the procedures of this House, which are there to help this democracy and those of us privileged enough to be elected to represent our communities. They have damaged the fabric of this place, because Parliament is meant to work by us coming here to represent our communities with our votes and, on the back of our decisions, the House moves on to the consequences. Instead, on Brexit and on this deal, the Government have refused to allow that to happen.

First, the Government refused to have a vote and wasted precious time this country does not have by simply delaying because they did not want to confront the fact that their deal, which had been unpopular in the summer, was still unpopular at Christmas. We finally had a chance to vote before Christmas—I had made my speech—before the vote was cancelled and the debate was suddenly cut short. The deal was not just narrowly defeated; it was significantly defeated. If ever there was a vote that expressed the House’s will, it was that one. If ever there was a time when a Government clearly should have seen the writing on the wall, it was that moment.

The Government could have chosen at that stage to listen to what Members across the House and across parties were saying. Members were representing their communities, and they were not trying to be awkward, which is the impression Ministers have given to Parliament. The simple fact is that very few people were writing to tell us that they wanted their representatives to support the deal. Had the Government recognised that, we could have spent time, even since mid-January, debating, discussing and trying to conclude whether Britain could take another route forward that commands consensus in this House.

I listened to the approach of the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union to this debate and, yet again, it is about party politics. This could have been a three-hour debate to test the House and see whether there is any consensus on what kind of extension the Government should be seeking. Again, the approach has not been to do that. The approach has simply been to brush off the points raised by other Members and to argue as if this is some kind of debating society, rather than a House in which decisions need to be taken at the 11th hour to save jobs and investment in our country.

That approach has massively undermined this place because, fundamentally, we take decisions by voting on motions and legislation. If our votes do not count, it strikes at the fabric of how this democracy works. I have heard Members say today that the vote against a second referendum was very big, but that is not the point. We all know that we might have another vote on a second referendum. We know that we might have a second vote or a third vote on lots of things, because the Government’s approach to Brexit has undermined the very basis on which this House debates: to have one vote on an issue. If a Member supports the motion, they should vote for it—and they should not expect it to come back to the House for another vote at a later time.

Those rules are there not only to protect Members but to make sure that this democracy works, and we have seen those rules fundamentally undermined when it comes to Brexit. We are not meant to have three votes on a deal, and the rules are meant to protect Members from being bullied by the Whips. They are meant to protect our democracy from becoming a “pork barrel” democracy in which billion-pound funds are launched purely to get Members on side for the next round of voting. That is not how the UK Parliament is meant to run. It is totally unacceptable.

[Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case for parliamentary sovereignty, which is, after all, what the referendum was about in many ways. Does she agree that in trying to ram through a deal by bullying MPs to vote for it, the Government are not building a sustainable majority, which is needed not just for this deal, but in the months ahead, because so much about the Prime Minister’s deal is open-ended and not settled yet?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that, and I will come to it shortly in my closing remarks.

The extension that we require clearly needs to be for a purpose. There are only so many versions of Brexit. We can do a clean-break, hard Brexit, which I know many MPs want, and I respect that. Indeed, the millions of people who voted to leave had that kind of Brexit as their expectation. Alternatively, we can have this soft Brexit that the Government are proposing, but I see very little support for it in this House or among the public more widely. The last opinion poll I saw on this deal showed just 12% of the public supporting it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

I agree with the hon. Lady. It seems to me that the story of indulgence over the past two and three quarter years is the indulgence of one section of the Conservative party that has held the Prime Minister, and therefore the country, to ransom. That is why it was a bit rich of the Prime Minister to accuse Members on the Opposition Benches of indulgence, when she is the one who has been practising it for two and three quarter years.

[Mr Gyimah]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the whole language of blame and of trying to assign blame is incredibly juvenile, given what is at stake for the country? We should be talking about what is in the national interest. As the Father of the House argued earlier, we are at an impasse. The Prime Minister’s deal has been rejected heavily twice by this House for a reason. If we want to make progress, we need to be able to discuss the alternatives in a structured and coherent way with the Government’s full support. That is what this House is crying out for, and that is what this Government should support if we are to make progress.

[Hilary Benn]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am not terribly interested in blame, but I am interested in analysing how we have come to this point. Some may regard that as apportioning blame; I regard it as a description of what has happened.

The second thing I want to say is that, as a House, we must demonstrate that we intend to use the time, if we get it, for a purpose. We cannot sit here for three months or longer, twiddling our thumbs; the public expect us to try to find a way forward on which we can agree. The Prime Minister has a perfectly fair point with her strictures: we know what we are against, but what are we for? That purpose should be to consider and then vote on a number of different ways forward. I am an advocate of indicative votes. The word “indicative” is used for a really important reason. A sensible place to start is to say to Members, “Look, you can move in the direction of a free trade agreement.” Then Members in the House would argue for that. “You can decide that you want a customs union. You can argue that you want Norway and a customs union, or a customs arrangement. Which of those three would you like us to explore further?” In my case, I would vote for two of those options. I would not vote for the free trade agreement, for the reasons that the Prime Minister has set out as to why it would not work for Northern Ireland; or indeed for friction-free trade, but I would vote for the other two when we got to that moment. That would then give us an indication of where support might lie in the House of Commons.

Monday is our opportunity—I am talking here about the motion that the Secretary of State clarified for us when he said that he was talking about the motion in neutral terms—to start that process, and the House must take it.