Exiting the European Union

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I can understand the interest in this. The last thing that I can do is comment on either the timing or the content of live legal proceedings. That is entirely a matter for the courts and it is outside the jurisdiction of Ministers.

It might be helpful to the House, as I have just received word from Strasbourg, if I say that in addition to the two documents I outlined in my statement, I can confirm that the Government will also be laying a unilateral declaration that will form part of the package the House will vote on tomorrow. This declaration is focused on the temporary nature of the backstop and we would make it formally, alongside signature of the withdrawal agreement. Once made, the declaration would have legal status in international law, and such declarations are commonly used by states alongside the ratification of treaties. The declaration clarifies what the UK could do if it were not possible to conclude an agreement that superseded the protocol because the EU had acted contrary to its obligations. In these circumstances, the UK’s understanding is that nothing in the withdrawal agreement would prevent it from instigating measures that could ultimately lead to the disapplication of its obligations under the protocol. Were the UK to take such measures, it would remain in full compliance with its obligations to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

We understand—it is clear that we should be looking at Twitter rather than listening to the Minister—that the Irish Government have said that the unilateral statement is the UK “talking to themselves”. Given that it is a unilateral statement, will the Minister confirm who else would possibly agree to it? Otherwise, it really is just more hot air. This country deserves better.

[Mr Lidington]

I can understand that the hon. Lady will want to look at the text when it is available, but as I have just said, such declarations are used frequently by states when they come to ratify international treaties, and they do have legal status in international law.

Leaving the European Union

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to say that we are working to deliver a deal in the national interest. We have reached across the House, although we have so far had limited discussions with those on the official Opposition Front Bench. We are happy to continue those discussions with the Opposition Front Bench, but we have also been talking to Members from across the House. It is important that we get a deal that the House is able to support, and the stronger the support across the House, the better that will be.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister can surely not be unaware of the fear out there in the country about what no deal means. Surely her constituency surgeries, like mine, are full of people who cannot sleep at night for worrying about their businesses and their jobs and because of the fear of no deal. She has told us today that in the event of her deal being rejected again by this House, there will be a vote on 13 March to take no deal off the table. I will vote to take no deal off the table. She has been asked several times today about this, and she has lectured us all about personal responsibility, so how will the Prime Minister herself vote in those circumstances? If the House votes down her deal and she brings forward that motion, how will she vote? It is not just MPs who deserve an answer; it is the public.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady misses out a stage. There is a stage before we get to that point, which is the vote in this House on the meaningful vote and the deal, and I can assure her that I will be voting for a deal.

Leaving the EU

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. When I stood on the steps of Downing Street on the first day I was Prime Minister, I was very clear that I wanted to ensure that we worked for those communities that did feel that they were left behind and did feel that they had not achieved the benefits that they had seen some other parts of the country have. That does mean certain parts of the country, and it also means certain types of town, like coastal towns such as Dover and Deal, which my hon. Friend represents and champions so well.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the Prime Minister’s statement today and the lack of concrete progress, it feels as though the Prime Minister is purposefully making Parliament hit its head against a brick wall in the hope that when we stop, we might feel better. We are fewer than 45 days away from exit day, yet the Prime Minister is picking and choosing which of the directions from this House that she listens to. This House overwhelmingly said that it wanted to reject no deal. Please, Prime Minister, stop being so stubborn and focusing on buying fridges and fantasy ferries, and at least admit that extending article 50 would help this House take back control?

[The Prime Minister]

What this House voted for was an amendment that confirmed avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, confirmed that this House wished to leave with a deal and confirmed the issue that needed to be addressed for this House to agree a deal, and that was the issue of the backstop.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

There has been much talk today about finding consensus across the House. The consensus that should trouble us all is the consensus between the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) when they talk about the contempt the British public have for the process they are seeing unfolding before their eyes: the pantomime that we are becoming in Parliament, the questions they have about what on earth is going on in this place and the plague on all our houses that they see.

I have gone through all the amendments and tonight I will support the amendments in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) and Labour Front Benchers to try to make some progress. The honest truth, however, is that we have heard many powerful speeches today and there will be little progress.

In the short time available to me, I want to talk about amendment (h). It was not selected, but it speaks to Einstein’s principle that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and again and expecting a different result. We are living through that in this place as we talk but do not listen to each other.

Citizens’ assemblies are not about replacing MPs, or about cancelling or giving up on Parliament. They are not about saying parliamentary democracy cannot work; they are about making it work with the public. They are also about stopping the games that we have seen being played in this place: the horse trading and the unicorn hunting that has meant that we are in this gridlock. Parliaments around the world have used citizens’ assemblies as a circuit breaker to all the bad habits that now inhabit this place. Everybody here claims to know the will of the people on these issues when the truth is that nobody does, because nobody has actually asked them. It is 250 people randomly selected to represent the British people: not the “Question Time” audience or those who will bother to turn up, but people sorted by their age, ethnicity, gender and social class, excluding politicians and those who work for them. Not aye or no, but looking at the priorities and feeding back into our discussions. We would be free as a Parliament to say no to what they said, but after just 10 short weeks of deliberation we never know what a pair of fresh eyes might bring to this debate. Certainly, that has been the experience in Ireland, Iceland, Canada and Australia. It would equally have leave and remain, Norway, Canada and any other flavour of Brexit.

The Prime Minister was right when she said that nothing has changed, but it can get worse. I ask Members whether they truly think progress can be made in the next 10 weeks, or whether it might just be worth looking at whether there is a better way that we can learn from. The public are watching. They need us to do better. Let us give it a shot.

No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The famous phrase is that a fish rots from the head down. It is a recognition that bad leadership infects all that it touches, and what greater example of that could there be than this present Government? The rot is not confined to Downing Street; it is infecting the whole country. Not strong and stable, but stubborn and self-obsessed. Brexit is by far the clearest, but by no means the only, example. The Prime Minister has turned Brexit into a bizarre modern-day Schleswig-Holstein question. Palmerston claimed that question to be so complicated that only three people understood it: one was dead; one had been driven mad by it; and one had forgotten it altogether. The truth is, however, that this is not a complicated situation. It is the Prime Minister’s red lines that have killed her deal; it is her red lines that have driven this Parliament mad; and it is her red lines that are now best forgotten.

This infectious failure has covered all the bases. This is a Government who cannot organise a tailback on the M20. They are presiding over a shortage of nurses, while stockpiling fridges. They are alienating our EU citizen neighbours, while deporting our Windrush families. They are a Government obsessed with what stickers are on the Speaker’s wife’s car, while ignoring pleas for help with issues such as knife crime. The roll call goes on and on. Universal credit, homelessness, the cost of living, the refugees crying out for sanctuary, the human rights of the women of Northern Ireland—at every turn, this Government cannot get a grip, and those burning injustices burn harder as a result.

This country is divided, and this Parliament is divided. The deadlock is deepening, not dissolving, and the Prime Minister cannot even be bothered to pick up the phone. No party can continue to prevaricate while the far right grows stronger. That will not stop with Brexit, and Brexit does not deal with the crisis of confidence in our politics that we all now face. We are not the only country facing difficult choices or challenges, but we are the only country that thinks that, because we are the mother of all democracies, there is nothing wrong with how we approach things. Change has to come, for all our sakes, but for that to happen, it has to start at the top and we have to stop the rot.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right. The need to ensure that we are providing for children with special educational needs is very important. We are already seeing £6 billion this year going towards children with complex special educational needs; that is the highest level on record. We are also investing £265 million through to 2021 to create new school places and improve the existing facilities for children with special educational needs and those with disabilities. But it is also about the programme we have with our free schools: 34 special schools have opened so far with a further 55 in the pipeline. That is providing for children with special educational needs and we will continue to do so.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q6. Yesterday, within hours of the Prime Minister greenlighting the no-deal preparations, a constituent contacted me to say that he had been sent a redundancy notice by his work directly as a result of the chaos that this will cause. Her own figures show that any Brexit deal will leave us poorer, but no deal means a £24 billion hit to our public finances. [Interruption.] The Chancellor barracks—these are his own figures. Can the Prime Minister tell my now unemployed constituent what public services she is going to cut, or what taxes she is planning to raise to deal with that hole? Or is she just going to leave it to one of her successors to deal with these problems?

[The Prime Minister]

While the Government are making contingency arrangements for no deal, of course, what they are working for is to get the agreement on the deal that has been negotiated with the European Union such that we leave with a good deal for the United Kingdom that ensures that jobs are increased in this country, as they have been over the last eight years under a Conservative Government.

European Council

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I echo my hon. Friend’s comments; she is absolutely right. I understand that those sister parties have been talking to the parties on our Opposition Benches and encouraging them to see that this deal delivers a far wider and more ambitious trading arrangement than has ever been offered to any other third country.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

For weeks now, the Prime Minister has been clear about what her deal is. For weeks now, the European Union has been clear about what deal it will offer. For weeks now, this House has been clear about what it will reject. However, it is not true that nothing has changed, because it is clear that what little support the Prime Minister had left on her own Benches is now ebbing away by the hour—[Interruption.] Well, cheer if you want, gentlemen, but it is not happening, is it? We know that the quicker we take the deal, the longer we will have to prepare for whatever the outcome of that vote is. The British public will not forgive any of us for going away on holiday without having made any progress on this. For goodness sake, Prime Minister, stop wasting our time! Get on and table that vote, and let us prepare for what comes next.

[The Prime Minister]

It is not correct to say that no progress has been made, but I want to see further progress being made and that is what I am going to be working on.

Leaving the EU

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The answer to that question is that the extent to which we are able to enhance the prosperity and the number of jobs in the regions of the United Kingdom depends on a whole variety of decisions that will be taken by this Government. It is our good management of the economy that has ensured that 3.3 million jobs have already been created. If my hon. Friend remembers the Budget in November, he will be aware of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s prediction that 800,000 jobs will be created over the next period of years in this country.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister has been very clear this afternoon that she does not think that the public, having voted to leave the European Union, should have a say on what happens next on the deal that she has done. Can she therefore confirm that if this House votes down her deal, she will not seek to force a second vote on it, or will we find out, as the DUP has, that it is one rule for her and no say for anyone else?

[The Prime Minister]

I will be working to persuade Members of this House that the deal on the table delivers on the vote of the British people, and that it does so while protecting jobs, protecting our security and protecting our United Kingdom.

Progress on EU Negotiations

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

By contrast to the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees- Mogg), I am pleased to see the Prime Minister recognise the role of the European Court of Justice, because this agreement explicitly states that we will not only respect its integrity and agree to binding rulings, but consider financial compensation for when they are broken. Can she tell us a bit more about how she intends to influence the decisions of the ECJ, given the impact that this will have on British businesses and British jobs?

[The Prime Minister]

What is absolutely clear is that in the future relationship we will have with the European Union, the European Court of Justice will not have jurisdiction here in the United Kingdom. It is possible that the hon. Lady is thinking of the circumstances put in place in the withdrawal agreement in relation to either those cases that are pending in relation to the European Court of Justice and Union law before we leave, or those cases that relate to activity that has taken place under European Union law while we were a member of the European Union, in which case it will be possible for those cases to continue to be taken as they would have been had we remained a member.

EU Exit Negotiations

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have not changed our position, which is that, as of December 2020, the UK should be an independent coastal state able to negotiate the issue of access to its waters for the following year and, obviously, for thereafter.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister has been on her feet now for almost two hours. She has talked about making difficult choices. She has also said that this was not the final deal. With the pound set to have its biggest fall for two years and only seven MPs in two hours expressing any support for this deal at all, will she tell us what she expects to change to enable her to break that deadlock?

[The Prime Minister]

What will happen over the next few days, and before the special European Council takes place, is the final negotiation on matters relating to the future relationship. We will fill out the details and show a future relationship that will indeed be good for the UK economy.