European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will vote against this Bill tonight because I have listened to my constituents in Cardiff South and Penarth and because I am continuing to listen to them.

First, I want to praise the absolutely forensic examination of the Bill by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), and by the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). I also praise some of the speeches that we have heard from Conservative Members. The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) exposed the complexity of the Bill. Fair-minded comments have been made both by leavers and remainers on the Government Back Benches, including the hon. Members for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh).

I am afraid that this Bill is the latest chapter in a sorry few months for this tin-eared minority Government. We have seen—let us be frank about this—an utter shambles in the negotiations. That is the view of the public, 61% of whom think that the Government are mishandling the negotiations, and of business leaders, with FTSE leaders refusing to sign the letter that No. 10 was trying to hawk around them last week. [Interruption.] Indeed, where is that letter? They would not sign it.

We have seen a complete failure to make progress. Where are those trade deals we were promised a year ago? Where is the coming together that the Prime Minister promised us? Instead of her trying to find a consensus on this absolutely generationally significant decision, we are now seeing the ideological pursuit of a hard Brexit driven by the one group on her Benches who are keeping her hostage. We are offered the illusion of being told that we are taking back control when instead we are seeing a Government taking back control from the devolved Administrations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, from this House, and indeed from the people.

This must be seen within a wider context—the vote on the Committees tomorrow, the delays in setting up the Select Committees, the programme motion to limit the time spent on this debate, the wider restrictions on judicial review, the charities Act muzzling organisations up and down this country, and the Trade Union Act 2016. This is all part of a similar agenda by the previous and present Governments to shut down democratic debate.

There are many wild claims about what the public want in these negotiations. Well, are we even asking them as we go along? The Government do not want to listen to Parliament or to the devolved Administrations. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and I, as co-operators in believing in co-operative structures where we listen to Members, have suggested setting up citizens’ juries on the negotiation process that would ask the public about the complexities of the negotiations as we go along, not just based on one decision made on a day in June last year. What are the Government so afraid of?

We have covered at great length in this debate the many problems with the Bill. I, too, am deeply unhappy with the Henry VIII powers. I would never trust giving those powers to a Government in any Bill, let alone a Bill of this seriousness that gives them the ability to amend it by statutory instrument, to control the exit day, or even to set up multiple exit days to string out the process to their advantage. I do not believe in giving them those sweeping powers.

Then there is the devolution power grab—the “naked power grab”, as First Minister Carwyn Jones put it. I am happy to work with those from the SNP and Plaid Cymru and others who will seek to defend the devolution settlement that we have all fought for over the past 20 years. The Government say, “Trust us on the devolution settlement”, but look at what they did with the Agricultural Wages Board in Wales. Look at what they are now saying they will do to undermine the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017, which the Welsh Government have just passed under their own powers. The Government want to undermine that, and they would seek to undermine the devolution settlement going forward.

We can see the loss of rights at the heart of the Bill. The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) pointed to the example of the case involving LGBT pension rights. The former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield, said that given how the Bill is currently drafted, those rights could evaporate because they would not be justiciable. The Trades Union Congress has today pointed out how the Bill will put workers’ rights at risk.

I have said much about the single market and the customs union. I do not think the Bill gets it right on the transition. We have to get that right—that is an absolute no-brainer for our businesses—but I want us to stay inside the single market and the customs union. I welcome the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress setting out the trade unions’ concerns about these issues today, just as businesses are repeatedly setting their deep fears out to me both in public and in private. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), I do not want to sacrifice jobs and businesses on the altar of ideology.

Where is the guarantee in the Bill about a final parliamentary vote on the deal before these powers are exercised? Again, the Government say, “Trust us”, but where is the guarantee in the Bill?

I have a much bigger problem with the Bill and the process around it. Democracy is a process, not an event. It is a great irony that those who have often claimed that they support and defend democracy and liberty, and have said that is the very reason why they are pursuing this Bill, at the same time want to restrict our democracy and liberties, and the liberties of this House, by setting deeply dangerous precedents that will echo down the decades to come. We should not simply preserve the binary decision of the referendum day in aspic, freeze it in ice and pray it in aid of every variety of hard Brexit that certain Conservative Members want to push ahead with. Where have those democrats gone—where have the original hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) gone? They smile wryly, but they know in their heart of hearts that this is not right. A majority may have voted to leave the EU in June last year, but I do not believe they voted to give up their democratic rights and their right to be heard on so many issues.