European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

DUP Members’ starting point on the Bill is, “Does it help us deliver the will of the people of the United Kingdom to leave the EU?” We believe that it does. We believe that it is, in fact, an essential building block.

I have listened to the arguments that have been made today. Some Opposition Members—the hon. Members for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy)—have made it quite clear that their reason for opposing the Bill is that they do not want to leave the EU. If they had stopped there, I could have understood their argument, but it is rather ironic that they go on to say how undemocratic the Bill is when they are quite happy to stay in the EU with directives and other laws going through without any reference to this House. In fact, 20,000 have gone through, yet those Members want to continue that.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to interrupt his rhetoric. There is one critical point that I would like him to address, and that is that the Bill is not going anywhere without the legislative consent of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. We have no Assembly in Northern Ireland, so how will the Government get legislative consent?

[Sammy Wilson]

The fact that we do not have an Assembly in Northern Ireland might make it easier for the Government, but we will leave that aside.

The other argument that has been made is that the Bill is flawed and people want changes, yet the only way of getting them is to allow it to go to the next stage where the Minister has already made it clear he will consider amendments, provided that they are not designed as wrecking amendments.

May I make something clear from our point of view? We do not want to give the Government carte blanche to do whatever they wish. First, that is why we wanted to leave the EU. Secondly, we have had some experience of that in Northern Ireland. During the period of direct rule, decisions about the laws in Northern Ireland were made by Orders in Council in this place, which could not be amended. Of course, that sometimes led to bad law.

Arguments have been made against the Bill, claiming that it is a power grab. It is quite clear from what Ministers have said, from what the legislation says and from the restrictions placed on Ministers that that is not the case. First, it enables EU law to be brought into the sphere of this Parliament where eventually, if it is not appropriate, it can be amended through due process. Secondly, Ministers have made it quite clear that the powers in this legislation will be limited. Thirdly, they have made it clear that they will be only for technical amendments and that there cannot be changes, for example, that create criminal offences, change human rights, introduce new tax powers and so on. There are limits on what Ministers can do.

[Ruth George]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the House of Commons Library that in spite of what he has said it is difficult to ascertain how the content of the Bill can be regarded as any limit on the scope of the powers given to the Government under clause 17?

[Sammy Wilson]

Of course there are limits, and the ultimate limit is that we have heard speeches from Government Members today, and a considerable number of people, not just on the Opposition Benches, have made it quite clear that they perceive dangers in this Bill and would not give the Government a free hand. If Ministers tried to overstep the promises made on the Floor of the House and the limits on the face of the Bill, we can be sure of one thing: it will probably not be Opposition Members who stop Ministers doing that but Government Members. That is the ultimate brake on Ministers who try to abuse the powers that are being given to them.

[Mr Francois]

Reference was made earlier to the Lisbon treaty and, like me, as he was in the House at the time, the hon. Gentleman will remember debating it night after night. There is a fundamental difference between that and the Bill, in that the Bill can be amended in Committee or on Report, whereas we could not change a single dot or comma of the Lisbon treaty.

[Sammy Wilson]

Of course. That is the flaw in the argument of Opposition Members who have said that this Bill is flawed and therefore ought to be rejected tonight. If the Bill is flawed, the place to change it is here when it comes back for debate and amendment in Committee. That is the real test of whether people want an effective Bill, or no Bill because they do not want us to leave the EU in the first place.

Let us consider the impact of not having the powers in this Bill. First, we would now be gummed up for the next number of years in trying to get the legislation through. Secondly, there would be no certainty for businesses. I have heard people say here so many times, “We need certainty.” Well, the one way of having certainty is to transfer EU law into UK law so that there is a framework. Lastly, the Bill will enable Ministers, when they go out to negotiate our free trade deal with the rest of the EU, to ensure that we start from a basis of compliance and equivalence.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Monday 4th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if the powers are devolved without a framework having first been established, whether we are talking about a European or a UK single market, that principle could not be applied, because powers would be devolved to four different Administrations who could then make whatever regulations they wanted? How does the hon. Gentleman marry that with the need—the recognised need, as he has pointed out—for a UK single market? Surely the framework should first be set, with the remaining powers then devolved to the Assemblies.

[Ian Murray]

But that assumes that we automatically start from the position of hoarding the powers here at Westminster, and I disagree with that principle. The principle must be that when a power is currently devolved to the devolved Administrations, that power should remain devolved—it is very simple. I accept that Members might not agree with that principle, but it is fairly sensible. My amendment 164 would merely remove from section 29(2)(d) of the Scotland Act 1998, on legislative competence, the words “or with EU law”, meaning that everything else would have to be compatible with the Act.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

Hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), have referred to the question of no deal. Without doubt, there is no majority in the House of Commons for no deal. Of course we hope that there will be a deal, because we want the best outcome for our country, but in the event that it all went wrong and Ministers came back to say, “I’m sorry, but no deal is on the horizon,” and all Parliament could do was to say, “We are going to reject this,” and be left with no other recourse, that would not constitute a meaningful vote, would it, not least because the clock would be running down?

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The right hon. Gentleman is getting to the nub of the issue. If a meaningful vote, by his definition, means that Parliament should be able to say to the Government, “We don’t like the deal that you have got, and we’re not accepting no deal, so go back to the EU and negotiate another deal,” what chance does he think there is that those who do not want us to leave in the first place will ever offer a deal that this House could buy into?

[Hilary Benn]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates precisely the point that I was going to make—[Interruption.] I was. As we have already heard, all the Ministers and Prime Ministers who negotiate in this process will say at some point, either in the main forum or in other discussions, “I’ll never get this through my Parliament.” That is the accountability we are talking about. It is called democracy, and it is really important that Ministers, Prime Ministers and negotiators have that thought in their minds when they are negotiating on behalf of the country and the House. In such circumstances, I think the House would first want to ask why we were facing no deal, and it might well wish to give the Government fresh negotiating instructions. The House might want to tell the Government to go back in and say, “On reflection, we would like to suggest that we do the following.” There must be sufficient time for that to take place if we are going to get a reasonable deal.

Another point I want to make—I am conscious, Sir David, of what you said about the time—is that Ministers need to understand why they are having such difficulty with this fundamental debate on the Bill. It has to do with the history of the Government’s handling of the whole process. At every single stage, this House has had to demand our role and our voice. I remember the answer when people first asked what the Government’s negotiating objectives were: “Brexit means Brexit.” When a follow-up question was asked, we were told—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baron]

I rise to address amendment 7, in particular, which I hope the Committee will reject if it is put to a vote. However, may I first quickly put on record an exchange I had with the Father of the House—I am sorry he is not in the Chamber. In his usual courteous manner, he suggested that I had misquoted him when I said he had once said:

“I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a council chamber in Europe.”

He suggested I had got the quote from social media, but, in reality, it is given in volume 23 of the International Currency Review from 1996. I thought it wise to put that right, if only for the record.

I note the amendment in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), and I see that he is also not in the Chamber. He once suggested that, having been the only Conservative to vote against going into Libya, I was leading the charmed life of a rebel. I think he now knows that when we vote against our Government, we are not leading a charmed life—it is a pretty awkward situation sometimes, and I think he is now finding that out for himself.

Amendment 7 has several flaws. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) set out a number of them. He also spoke about the importance of having clarity of intention when addressing this issue, but I want to raise an additional point that has not been covered. Amendment 7 is fundamentally flawed because it leaves open at least the possibility—given that the EU does not, in reality, want any member to leave—that as there would be no incentive for the EU to negotiate a good deal that this Parliament could accept, we could find ourselves in a permanent state of limbo, deadlocked in unproductive negotiations for months and months with no incentive for the other side to pursue a constructive deal. Members should reflect hard on that practical flaw as they go through the Lobby, assuming that the amendment is put to the vote.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the incentive would be to make sure that the deal was as bad as possible so that we would be left in a limbo whereby we cannot leave, yet cannot move on?

[Mr Baron]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are trying to negotiate a good deal, but it takes two to tango. The amendment leaves open the door for the other side not to try to negotiate a good deal, knowing that it could drag out the negotiations and therefore prevent, at least until this Parliament were to accept the deal, our leaving the EU. If that was the case—

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The reason why some in this House are determined not to give Parliament a meaningful vote is that they are worried an overwhelming majority of parliamentarians on both sides of the House might vote against the cliff-edge scenario they have already plotted for us.

But the real reason why some Government Members, and even one or two Opposition Members, are acting now to block the chance of this so-called sovereign Parliament to have any powers on this whatsoever is that they know that if they put their true agenda before the House, in all probability it would be greeted by a majority that is numbered in the hundreds, rather than in the tens or the dozens.

They say the Government have to be protected at all costs from Parliament, because Parliament might do something the Government do not like. Is that not what Parliaments are for, especially a Parliament in which the Government have lost their democratic mandate to form a majority Government by their cynical calling of an unnecessary and disruptive election?

The Prime Minister has asked us not to accept the Lords amendments because she does not want to have her hands tied. It is none of my business whether the Prime Minister likes having her hands, her feet or anything else tied, but surely the whole point of having a Parliament is so there is somebody with democratic credibility and democratic accountability to keep the Government in check when it is clear to everyone that they are going in the wrong direction. If plunging over a cliff edge is not the wrong direction, I do not know what is.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Although the hon. Gentleman says it is none of his business whether the Prime Minister has her hands, her feet or anything else tied, does he accept it is in the interest of the country for the Prime Minister to have the freedom to go and negotiate the best deal for the country? Parliament cannot negotiate the detail of that deal. Only the Prime Minister can do that.

[Peter Grant]

These amendments contain no desire for Parliament to be involved in the negotiations, but we are being asked to believe there is no possibility that the negotiations will fail. That is what we are being asked to believe, except some of those who give us that promise are hoping the negotiations will fail, because some of them have already decided that they want to push for a no deal Brexit, despite the calamitous consequences outlined by the Secretary of State.