Northern Ireland Backstop

John Bercow Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)]

Before I answer the hon. Gentleman, my constituents would expect me briefly to express their dismay and deep concern about Honda’s announcement this morning, which will deeply affect the community. I anticipate the statement of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Do not tell me what the situation is. The hon. and learned Gentleman is a Law Officer and a member of the Government. A sentence, but absolutely no more. He should have asked me in advance. He is either on the Front Bench or he is not. It is not for him to presume the right to speak of a matter about which he could speak if he sat on the Back Benches, which he does not.

[The Solicitor General]

I am very sorry, Mr Speaker, but I said what I said.

The Government recognise the legitimate desire of Members on both sides of the House to understand the legal effect of the proposed withdrawal agreement. On 12 February, the Prime Minister set out ways in which legally binding changes to the backstop could be achieved. She explained that the UK and the EU would hold further talks to find a way forward. Those discussions are ongoing, and it would not be appropriate to provide a running commentary.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

On the subject of calmness, I think we should hear from a Lincolnshire knight. I call Sir Edward Leigh.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is really a taster for what will be a very calm debate: my Adjournment debate on Thursday on this very subject, which I am sure will be the highlight of the week. I do not ask the Solicitor General to provide running commentary, but has he noted that many international lawyers have said that if the EU does not want to reopen the withdrawal agreement, it would be entirely in accordance with international law for us to issue, either unilaterally or in agreement, a conditional interpretive declaration proclaiming that there will be an end date to the backstop? It is something that I have been boring on about for weeks now.

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[Mr Speaker]

The right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) is quite wrong. He is far too hard on himself. I have known the right hon. Gentleman for 25 years and have never been bored by him on any occasion. Never.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I wonder whether the Solicitor General minds my putting on the record, and I hope he will also put on the record, the distaste that we felt at that personal attack from the Back Benches—I think from a member of the European Research Group—on a civil servant who is trying to do his job. The job that civil servants are trying to do is a very difficult one and the people responsible for that difficulty are the Government, not the civil servants trying to do a good job.

Does the Solicitor General agree that we need a running commentary in this House? I am glad that he has made this statement today, because the fact of the matter is that at a certain juncture in this dialogue we are supposed to be having to find the answer to this difficult problem, the Government side stopped talking to people. Will he resume the talks so that we can get this sorted?

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[The Solicitor General]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks about the communities that both and I and my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) serve in the context of Honda. He is absolutely right to say that it is rather rum for people in this House and elsewhere to constantly believe the words of other negotiating parties and other Governments as gospel and refuse to accept anything that Her Majesty’s Government might say as even in the remotest bit true.

[Mr Speaker]

As colleagues will know, the word “rum” was much favoured by PG Wodehouse of whose works, I suspect, the Solicitor General is, among others, a devotee.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Solicitor General says it is in the fate of the Labour party to help him secure a deal, but that simply is not true. What concessions, if any, will the Government make towards the deal that the Labour party has put down as a potential way through this? He knows that I have given his Government the benefit of the doubt on more than one occasion by not supporting things that my party has asked me to, and actively opposing things on other occasions. I did not support the Government on the Brady amendment, but nor did I oppose it, because I believed it was important that the Government had the space to conduct negotiations to get a deal through. The wording of that amendment quite clearly said that the backstop should be “replaced”, so can the Solicitor General tell me, without equivocation, that when he brings that deal back, the backstop will have been replaced?

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[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

Although I recognise the challenging position of many Opposition MPs, does the Solicitor General share my amazement at those Opposition MPs who say they cannot support the withdrawal agreement because it may include a temporary backstop, keeping us temporarily in the customs union but not paying into the coffers and without freedom of movement, and simultaneously advocate a permanent customs union that would stop us from doing international trade deals?

[Mr Speaker]

The one disadvantage of that inquiry, as the Clerk, having consulted his scholarly cranium, has just pointed out to me, is that it was not about Government policy, and therefore it does not warrant an answer. The hon. Gentleman has made his point in his own way, but he was asking about Opposition policy, which he knows he should not do.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Rather than having to agree with the European Union whether we have met our obligations to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland, would it not be fair and reasonable to both sides to refer the matter to a process of arbitration?

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[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

If it arises from the urgent question, and in deference to the Father of the House, let us hear it.

[Mr Clarke]

It is a genuine point of order. In the course of the exchanges, two Members of Parliament on the Government side of the House made reference to a civil servant, Sir Oliver Robbins, who they obviously regard as some sort of political enemy, although he is a non-political civil servant. They not only repeated newspaper rumours about what he was supposed to have been overheard saying, but they did so in terms that suggested he had been drinking too much when he was overheard, of which, as far as I am aware, there has never been the slightest indication, even in any of the newspaper reports on which they were relying.

Mr Speaker, people like that have no opportunity whatever of even knowing that these allegations are about to be made, or replying to them. An increasingly unpleasant personal tone is creeping into debate about Europe, mainly from the right-wing members of my party, and it will get quite out of hand if you do not issue a word of reproof and say that that is an abuse of the privileges of the House of Commons, and is not conduct that should be repeated.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Father of the House. I have had a discussion about the matter with the Clerk. I will not argue the toss about wording—it is not, strictly speaking, an abuse of the procedures of the House and it is not disorderly; but I think it is extremely undesirable, and it does represent a rank discourtesy, and indeed, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman implied, a coarsening or vulgarisation of the terms of trade in political debate, which we should all strive to avoid. Let me say to the Father of the House that I did not react as quickly as I should have done to the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) when he said what he did. He was absolutely entitled to his point of view, and even to robust questioning of Ministers, of course, but he should not have said what he did about a serving civil servant.

Perhaps I can gently suggest, at the risk of embarrassing the Father of the House, that Members across the House, whatever their political views, would do well to seek to emulate his example. I have known him for 24 years, and throughout the time I have known him, I have always observed one thing: he plays the ball; he does not play the man or the woman. He sticks to the issues—rather as the Chair of the Brexit Select Committee does, on the other side of the House. That is the model that other colleagues should follow. So I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for stepping in; the point he has made is valid.