European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion & Ways and Means resolution
Friday 20th December 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), and it is also a pleasure to have heard some really excellent speeches already, most notably the maiden speech made by the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna). It was a pleasure to hear the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), who spoke powerfully about trust.

In a sense, we are ending this year very much as we started it: with a debate and a vote on an EU withdrawal agreement. As I did in January, I will be voting in support of the withdrawal agreement, first and foremost because I am a democrat. I believe in honouring the outcome of the 2016 referendum and I will support measures to take the United Kingdom out of the EU. I also believe that how we leave the EU really matters. I believe in an orderly exit. I have been consistent in my support and preference for leaving with a deal. We have what I think is an eminently supportable deal in front of us.

We are also ending this year in a very different place from where we started. All week, there has been a sense of a fresh start around Westminster and of a page being turned. I appreciate that that might not be felt equally on both sides of the Chamber, but I hope that this will be a fresh start for the whole House of Commons, with a new sense of purpose and direction. I believe that voters last week put us here to bring a fresh sense of purpose and direction. Voting for the Bill today will send a very powerful signal back to the British public—back to our voters—that we have heard their message and that we are bringing that sense of direction and purpose.

Make no mistake about it: for those who were not in this House during the course of this year, 2019 has been a year of sclerosis. We took the British public on a tortuous journey of suffocating delays, endless and repetitious debates, and votes that took us nowhere. There was no substantial outcome from all the hours that we spent in the Chamber on this very subject. The British public turned out at polling stations a week ago to give us their verdict on that. Very quietly and very firmly they said, “Enough now.” It is time for action and decision.

We have a Government who have been put here to legislate to take us out of the EU in an orderly and responsible way. We have tested the patience of the British public quite enough. They send us here to do a job. Yes, they expect us to scrutinise. They expect us to ask difficult and challenging questions of the Government, even when their Ministers sit on our side of the House. They expect us to work hard at that, but they do not expect us to come here and wilfully block a democratic mandate such as the one they gave in the 2016 referendum.

[Colum Eastwood]

May I just point out—I know it was not said very often in the previous Parliament—that the people of Northern Ireland voted to remain? In every election since, they have reasserted their rejection of Brexit. Government Members talk about one nation and all that, but will they recognise that Northern Ireland and Scotland have once again, and very loudly, rejected this Brexit and every other kind of Brexit you could possibly come up with?

[Stephen Crabb]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. In fact, I was going to come on to make precisely the point that as well as being a democrat, I am also a Unionist. The election results in Northern Ireland and Scotland, which reaffirmed the referendum votes there, present a challenge to those in government about how to take Brexit forward. I am satisfied that we are dealing with Northern Ireland very sensitively and I think we have work to do on how we address the issue for Scotland, but I come back to the point I was making: we have been sent here to do a job. Voters—members of the public—do not expect us to block democracy. They do not expect to see their Members of Parliament trying to use every trick in the book to block Brexit, but that was precisely what happened in 2019. Members of Parliament went to their constituencies to tell their leave voters on a Saturday that they really wanted to get on with Brexit. They then came back here on a Monday morning to find and use every trick in the book to block Brexit.

I am very clear that the constituents of Preseli Pembrokeshire have put me here to do a job. Passing the Bill today is a really significant, first positive step forward to implement the outcome of the 2016 referendum. I believe that to vote against it would be a vote for continuing all that we saw during 2019: a winter that never ends, and never reaches Christmas. My appeal to colleagues on both sides of the House is to get behind the Bill and show the country that this new House of Commons has a real sense of direction and purpose for the whole United Kingdom.