Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

John Bercow Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I inform the House that I have selected amendment (b) in the name of the Prime Minister.

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[The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr David Davis)]

Another day, another outing. [Interruption.] I knew they would like that.

[Mr Speaker]

For the avoidance of doubt—to be absolutely clear for the benefit of all Members, the Secretary of State will move the amendment.

[Mr Davis]

I beg to move amendment (b), at end add

‘; and believes that the process should be undertaken in such a way that respects the decision of the people of the UK when they voted to leave the EU on 23 June and does not undermine the negotiating position of the Government as negotiations are entered into which will take place after Article 50 has been triggered.’.

I am glad to hear that the Labour spokesman accepts that we must respect the decision of the people. That is important progress. Of course, it comes from somewhere, but where is not at all clear. I will come back to that in less than a minute. He went on to say that he did not want to see point scoring, and I rather agree: this issue is too important for point scoring.

The House should know that this morning I received a letter, signed by the shadow Secretary of State and his predecessor, which was extremely flattering about my history of standing up for the rights of Parliament and so on. It went on to pose 170 questions about our negotiating strategy. To give the House an idea of how much of a stunt that is, it is one question a day between now until the triggering of article 50. Worse still, some of the questions in that long list are requests pre-emptively to concede elements of our negotiating strategy.

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[Stephen Gethins]

That is remarkable. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon set up a fiscal commission working group to look into that, covering a whole range of arguments. I am sure we can make that available to the hon. Gentleman. We had all the details. There were two Nobel laureates on that group. How many Nobel laureates do the Government have? Zero. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr MacNeil, you are an exceptionally boisterous fellow, and in the course of your boisterous behaviour appear to be chewing some sort of gum. It is very eccentric conduct. I have great aspirations for you to be a statesman, but your apprenticeship still has some distance to travel.

[Stephen Gethins]

If the House will forgive me mixing my cultural references, the three Brexiteers and their friends have got us into another fine mess, and cannot tell us how they are going to get us out of it.

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[Mr Speaker]

Order. We will begin with a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, from which a number of hon. and right hon. Members will benefit, but I give due notice to the House that that limit will have to be sharply lowered, probably relatively early.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am afraid that the limit on Back-Bench speeches has to be reduced to four minutes with immediate effect. The first person to be subject to that limit, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), has had notice of the change.