Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

Debate between Seema Malhotra and Neil Carmichael

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

First, I acknowledge the result and accept that its consequence is that Britain will leave the European Union, as I would have expected people to have done back in 1975 when we last had a referendum on this subject. My second point is that it is really critical to recognise that a binary decision of this nature opens up so many issues, and we have to think carefully about them all. I am going to list a few.

Obviously, one issue is the economy. We must think of some tests to have in our minds over the next two or so years about the value of our pound, the development of our trade, the trends in foreign direct investment, employment characteristics and so on. If we do not have such tests, we will lose sight of a fundamental point: back in June the electorate did not vote to become poorer. They are expecting something different.

The problem is that the clarion calls of hope and confidence that we have heard today, combined with the sense that there is a horizon over there that we will get to, will simply not be enough in terms of setting out our future. We have to think carefully about the detail. As anyone connected with the European Scrutiny Committee should know, we have been listening to detail about what happens in the European Union for years. It cannot be surprising that there must be detail as we leave the European Union. That point needs really to be taken on board.

The question of the single market is imperative. It is all very well saying, “Oh well, we’re going to leave the European Union, so we will leave the single market,” but to leave the world’s freest trade area without rhyme or reason will be verging on an act of national self-harm unless we have some alternative. We have to understand the importance of that issue.

How do we scrutinise? Back in the early 1990s, the Maastricht treaty was thoroughly scrutinised—not by a portion of Parliament, but by the whole of Parliament; various Members who now suggest that we might not want to scrutinise things terribly much were at the forefront of that scrutiny in the 1990s. We should remember that.

[Seema Malhotra]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the way in which we deal with the single market is fundamental for a very different reason? It is about not just the sale of goods, but the development and production of goods, as outlined in some earlier speeches, because our economies are far more connected in terms of the production of goods.

[Neil Carmichael]

Absolutely right. I have talked many times in this Chamber about the importance of free movement and the importance of the single market in connection with supply chains, investment and so on. That is central to the single market argument.

That reminds me of an important point made earlier: we have to make sure that we have some friends in the world so that we can deal with them later. We face risks—with Russia and other nation states—and it is imperative to make sure we are friendly with the remaining 27 member states of the European Union post-Brexit. The way in which we conduct ourselves is absolutely essential to building up those friendships and to making sure those bridges are protected and, indeed, strengthened, and, my goodness, we will need them.

This issue is also about something my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) correctly pointed out: we have to think about bringing people together; we have to think about what kind of nation we are creating post-Brexit and how we are going to present ourselves to the world, because we are engaged not just in an internal argument but an external process, and it involves not just Europe but the rest of the world. If we end up being reliant on the World Trade Organisation, 163 nation states will be able to say, “Aha, we might not let them in.” We are busy criticising one or two of those nation states right now, so we need to think carefully about our relationships with some of them.

As regards Select Committees, the Education Committee will be doing a full-scale inquiry into the consequences of Brexit on the university sector, picking up some of the points we have heard about skills. One reason the referendum went the way it did was that we have a mismatch between the skills we have produced and the skills we need. That is one of the things my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) was referring to when he talked about why we lost, and we must learn from those reasons and make sure that all our Select Committees play their part.