European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting
Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, the Commission President will be meeting the Prime Minister tomorrow, and I will be meeting Michel Barnier, to act on that constructive spirit. Both sides have committed to the timescale.

I am conscious that the House is now in a different place, but many Members will recall that it was often said it was impossible to reach an agreement before, indeed, the agreement was reached.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I welcome the fact that the Government are determined to bring this process to an end by December 2020, and I hope that that does concentrate minds in the EU. If the EU and the Government cannot come to an agreement by then, what are the implications for, first, the future arrangements and, secondly, the current withdrawal agreement, especially the provisions in Northern Ireland?

[Steve Barclay]

First, I believe we can and will do this, and, as I have indicated to the House, so does the EU, because it has committed, in the political declaration, to doing it. Secondly, a number of issues are addressed through this Bill: citizens’ rights, which the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) asked about in relation to her constituents, are protected through this Bill. People used to talk about a no-deal outcome, and one thing this Bill does is secure the protection of the 3 million EU citizens within our country, who are valued, and of the more than 1 million UK citizens there. The right hon. Gentleman has concerns about the Northern Ireland protocol, and I stand ready, as do my ministerial colleagues, to continue to discuss issues with him. We will debate that in more detail in Committee tomorrow, but, again, the Northern Ireland protocol is secured through the passage of this Bill. That puts us in a very different place from where many of the debates were in the previous Parliament in respect of concerns about no deal.

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[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that for many people listening to the argument he is making, this is not a case of a fear of jumping over the cliff but more a fear that those opposed to leaving the EU want us to have our feet firmly stuck in the mud of the EU for ever, and that is the reason he wants a further extension?

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because it gives me the opportunity to say that that is absolutely not the case. We accept that we are leaving the European Union in three weeks’ time—end of—but that is not the end of Brexit because we will have considerable discussion in this place, and the Government will be involved in negotiations for some time to come, on the future relationship.

The future relationship is the concern behind new clause 4, because we have consistently sought to oppose any proposals that risk damaging people’s jobs and livelihoods. That is why we voted against the deal proposed by the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May): the current Prime Minister may have voted against her for different reasons. It is why we also voted against the deal proposed by the current Prime Minister in the last Parliament.

Since its introduction in October, this Bill has only got worse—in our view, much worse. It grants expansive powers to Ministers and severely diminishes any role for Parliament in the crucial period ahead. It removes our role in approving the Government’s negotiating mandate and voting on the final treaty. Protections for workers’ rights have been ditched, confirming that the TUC was right to dismiss previous Government promises as “meaningless procedural tricks”. The new Northern Ireland protocol undermines the UK’s internal market—something that the Prime Minister had promised his former allies faithfully that he was committed to protecting. Shamefully, the Government have removed the requirement to negotiate an agreement with the EU on unaccompanied children seeking asylum.

The Government have not only removed any role for Parliament in deciding whether to extend the implementation period but are now specifically prohibiting Ministers from agreeing an extension through clause 33, as the Secretary of State pointed out. So no deal is back on the table, as I think he confirmed in his response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). It is that risk that new clause 4 attempts to address. We do not plan to press it to a vote this evening, but it is intended to provide an opportunity for the Government to come back to this House with their proposals, perhaps on Report, on how we avoid the catastrophe of no deal at the end of this year.

It is a reflection of the unfortunately polarised discourse on Brexit, reflected in some of the comments earlier, that new clause 4 was described in some sections of the media at the end of last week as an

“attempt to delay leaving the EU by two years”.

It is no such thing. We recognise, as I said, that the general election result means that we are leaving the European Union on 31 January, but what happens thereafter is crucial to our economy, to jobs and to people’s livelihoods, whether they voted leave or voted remain.

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[Graham Stringer]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He will not necessarily take this as a compliment, but Tony Benn could have made those points, because they have run through the arguments of both Conservative and Labour Members who support leaving the EU ever since we joined in 1972.

Not only is it better that those decisions be taken here, but it is often assumed that the EU is good for the economy and the protection of trade union and environmental rights, yet quite a lot of evidence runs counter to that. I am not an expert on fishing, but the discard rule has been an environmental disaster in the North sea. I understand quite a bit about trade union protections and legislation and I never get a satisfactory answer from my side about the Laval and Viking decisions of the European Court of Justice. Not only do they undermine the minimum wage and the nature and definition of a trade dispute; they are effectively unchangeable, as we in this country cannot change laws made by the ECJ. That is what is fundamentally wrong with being a member of the EU.

I have no doubt that there will be changes when we leave the EU—people will be able to claim there has been a negative economic change there or a positive one here—but that happens all the time. Where has our paper industry gone? Has it been helped by the EU and its regulations? What about our agrochemical industry? It was essentially destroyed by European legislation, but I do not hear people in this Chamber arguing against the EU in that regard. It is accepted—I do not know why—that the EU will always be good for these things.

If new clause 4 were to be put to the vote, I would not join my colleagues in support of it. I agree with what Labour Front Benchers have said—that we should use the debate on the Bill to improve things—but going over the debate we have been having in this Chamber since 2016 will not do that. I have no idea—I have not counted up the time—but my guess is that we have spent as much time in this Chamber discussing the 2016 referendum, at which we committed to giving the people the choice, as we did debating both the Lisbon and Maastricht treaties put together. I understand, however, that Front Benchers do not intend to put the new clause to a vote. I hope they can be more constructive as we continue this debate.

[Sammy Wilson]

The Democratic Unionist party will be supporting clause 33, though tomorrow we will be tabling amendments to the Bill, because, although we accept that it is essential to get out of the EU as quickly as possible, we believe that the terms of the withdrawal agreement are detrimental to Northern Ireland. The purpose, however, of any amendments my party puts forward will be to assist the process of leaving the EU and to ensure that the whole UK leaves. That is not the case with new clauses 4 and 36, which are designed to extend the period for which we stay in the EU and would make it much more difficult to have a clean break.

Have we learned nothing from the tactics the EU has used over the last few years? The longer the period, the more it can hold back, and the more demands it can make. We have seen that time and again.

The last Parliament made it clear that it would not give the Government the support that they needed to move forward with a deal. The EU dug its heels in deeper, and did not try to be accommodating. What is important about clause 33 is that it draws a line, sends a signal and makes the position very clear. It says, “Here is the deadline: now get on with the negotiations.” No clearer message could be sent to those who are negotiating on the EU’s behalf.

Indeed it is significant that, although we were formerly told that a trade deal could take years to negotiate, the language is suddenly changing because the arithmetic in the House has changed and the Government’s will is different. We are now being told, “Well, it might not be as difficult as it was for Canada and Japan. After all, we are starting from the same place, and we have a lot of the same regulations”—and there are a number of other reasons why the negotiation might be easier than we were previously told that it would be.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to the comments of the EU Trade Commissioner. He made those comments in the context of a decision by the British Government to retain close alignment. The difficulties occur when we disalign.

[Sammy Wilson]

Of course that will be the opening negotiating position. He is not going to say, “Yes, and by the way, we do not have to have close alignment.” There will still be a desire on the part of the EU to keep us as close as possible. However, one way of ensuring that we get a deal, and get the kind of deal that we want, is to make it clear that we will not engage in protracted negotiations. We must say, “We will not allow you to use all the tactics that you have used before. You must come to a conclusion. If you want access to our UK market—and you need access to it because you sell more to us than we sell to you—and if you want the future trading relationship and the co-operation that the Government have offered time and again, you must reach a deal quickly.”

[John Redwood]

Has the right hon. Gentleman noticed, in the three and a half years of these endless debates, that the Labour and Liberal Opposition have always tabled proposals that strengthen the EU and undermine the UK? Has he noticed that they only ever put the EU case, and never put the UK case?

[Sammy Wilson]

That was the whole point of extending the implementation period, to allow that tactic to be used, even in this Parliament, with different arithmetic. It is one of the reasons why I think the Government are right to draw a line and say, “We have a year in which to do this. Now let us get on with it, and let us get the deal.” I just hope that during that period, the Government will also be cognisant of the fact that the protocol on Northern Ireland is damaging to the Union, and will seek to ensure in the negotiations that that protocol is weakened and the differences between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK are changed, so that we leave the EU along with the rest of the United Kingdom and on the same terms.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The right hon. Gentleman has talked about our huge trade deficit with the European Union and how vital a free trade agreement is to the EU—how much more in its interests such an agreement is. I understand that our current trade deficit is more than £92 billion a year. Is the right hon. Gentleman cognisant of that figure?

[Sammy Wilson]

That is one of the reasons why it should not be too difficult to secure a trade deal. After all, in whose interests is that? It is in the interests of workers in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and other countries all over Europe to have access to the UK market. Our market is lucrative for them. We hear all this talk about why it will be difficult to do a deal, but why would EU negotiators, now that they know there is a different will in the House, want to turn their backs on the UK market? Why would they not want to have the ability to sell goods to us, and to sell them on good terms? They will not want to erect the barriers that people said they were likely to erect.

This is the right thing to do, tactically and politically. The Minister has said that it is necessary to deliver on the commitment that his party made to the electorate during the general election, but let us go back further than that: it is necessary to deliver on the referendum result of 2016, when we promised people that we would leave. I think that the delay has been long enough, and people are frustrated enough, so this is the right thing to do politically, but I also think that it is the right thing to do from the point of view of industry, and economically. We have heard time and again that investment decisions are being delayed because of uncertainty—that people need to know what the future is likely to be, so that we can then see a bounce in the economy. Let us not push this further down the road. Let us make sure that people have certainty as quickly as possible.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, throughout the general election, the mantra of the British people was “Just get on with it.”? Indeed, the outcome of the election was a mandate to the House to get on with the exiting of the European Union, and the new clause flies in the face of the outcome of the general election that we have just had.

[Sammy Wilson]

Yes. I—

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir George Howarth)]

Order. I was hesitating to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, because I thought that he was reaching his peroration, but may I just remind him that he should keep his remarks as close as possible to the clauses and new clauses that we are debating?

[Sammy Wilson]

Let me conclude my speech, Sir George, by issuing a word of caution about clause 33. While a deadline of December this year can put pressure on the EU, it can also put pressure on the Government. As we in Northern Ireland have learned, the pressure on the Government from the 31 October deadline led to concessions that were not good for, at least, our part of the United Kingdom. This is where Government will and determination are important.

Equally, the deadline that the Government have imposed on themselves could be used by EU negotiators to make demands. Those negotiators could say, “If you want a deal by that stage, here are the things that we want from you: we want you to make concessions on fishing, on level playing fields, on payments and on a whole range of other things.” That is the only word of caution that I will issue. Deadlines put pressure on both sides, and come December this year, whether the Government are prepared to stand firm in the face of their own deadline and not be pushed around will be a test of their will.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 2 to 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7

Rights related to residence: application deadline and temporary protection

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I beg to move amendment 5, page 9, line 36, leave out from “Crown” to end of clause and insert

“must by regulations make provision—

‘(a) implementing article 18(4) of the withdrawal agreement (right of eligible citizens to residence documents proving legal status), including making provision for a physical document;

(b) implementing article 17(4) of the EEA EFTA separation agreement (right of eligible citizens to residence documents proving legal status) including making provision for a physical document; and

(c) implementing article 16(4) of the Swiss citizens’ rights agreement (right of eligible citizens to residence documents proving legal status).’”

This amendment would mean that EEA and Swiss citizens residing in the UK would automatically have rights under article 18(4) of the withdrawal agreement (and equivalent provisions in the EEA EFTA and Swiss citizens’ rights agreements) rather than having to apply for them, and would have the right to a physical document proving their status.