Government’s EU Exit Analysis

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, That she will be graciously pleased to give directions that the EU exit analysis which was referred to in his response to an Urgent Question in the House on 30 January by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union be provided to the Exiting the European Union Committee and made available to all Members on a confidential basis as a matter of urgency.

The saga of the Brexit impact assessment rolls on. This all started back in December 2016, when the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union first told the Brexit Committee that the Government were working on “sectoral impact analysis” in 57 areas—later, one was added to make it 58. In October last year, he got rather carried away with the idea and elaborated, saying that the analyses were “excruciating detail”, throwing in for good measure that the Prime Minister and the Cabinet had read the summaries. When various right hon. and hon. Members sought disclosure of the impact assessments, they were met with a flat refusal.

Things moved on. In November last year, we presented and won a Humble Address requiring the Government to disclose the impact assessments arising from the Government’s analysis—an important statement of principle. So far, so good. Some documents were made available, and I was one of those who went to the Treasury to see them. I was escorted to a room, where I had to pass over my phone and sign a document on confidentiality. I sat down, and two files were solemnly brought to me; I was allowed to read them and take some notes. We now know that those documents contained a description of the sector that could have been found in any House of Lords or Select Committee report, a summary of the EU law and policy—surprising that I had to give up my phone to read that—and then a very generalised view from the sector. I went through the footnotes to that third section and struggled to find one that did not relate to open-source material. Press releases and evidence given to Select Committees were there, all of which I solemnly noted before I handed the files back, got my phone back and left the premises. Those documents are now available online, minus the sector analysis and therefore the open-source material.

In September, when questioned by the Exiting the European Union Committee about the rest of the documents, the Secretary of State said that the Department had not done any impact assessments on any sector of the British economy. He made the point that the use of the word “impact” did not mean that an impact assessment had been done within the formal definition used by the civil service. As a former defence lawyer, I was struck by that defence. It was technically right that someone cannot be censured for contempt for failing to hand over impact assessments because they have not done any, but I was never sure which was worse: relying on that technical defence, or not doing the impact assessments in the first place.

Roll on one month, and in the past two days it was leaked that an assessment called the “EU Exit Analysis – Cross Whitehall Briefing” does in fact exist. It is reported that that document looks at three of the most plausible Brexit scenarios based on current EU arrangements with the range of predictions. Consistent with the principle established back in November 2017, the Opposition yesterday called on the Government to release that analysis. In true groundhog fashion, the Government said no, as they did last year.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman had a distinguished career in law before he came to this place. Does he condemn the leak of a Government document? To what extent are any Government documents to be regarded as confidential? Will he condemn the leak?

[Keir Starmer]

Before I was in this place, I held the post of Director of Public Prosecutions. We took leaks from our department or any other civil service department very seriously. I can only assume that an inquiry is in place in relation to this leak, and in the circumstances we should say nothing more about it.

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[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the chance to speak in this debate and I commend the main Opposition party for securing it.

I am wondering why we are here because, yesterday, the Minister’s colleague beside him on the Front Bench, the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), spent over an hour valiantly, loyally and completely unsuccessfully trying to persuade the House that the sky would fall down if this information were shared with anybody. Now we are being told that it can be shared at the very least with 650 people.

Incidentally, part of the reason why relatively few MPs—certainly those in the Scottish National party—went along to the “Kremlin” reading room to look at the sectoral analysis is that, having seen part of the papers, I told a lot of my colleagues not to bother. It simply was not worth their time to go through the security checks to read stuff that they could get by looking online.

Again, we are seeing a symptom of the fact that, despite all the assurances we get that Brexit will restore “sovereignty” to Parliament, this is really about trying to restore the alleged sovereignty of a minority Government over the will of Parliament. Parliament is supposed to tell Government what to do, but every time it looks as if Parliament is going to tell the Government to do something they do not want to do, it causes absolute panic on the Government Front Bench. It also causes a headache for civil servants, as one of their main responsibilities is supposed to be to prevent Ministers from doing anything that causes political embarrassment to the Government—good luck to them. If they can achieve that, they must be quite remarkable people.

[Stephen Kerr]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman a very simple question? Does he condone or condemn the leaking of Government papers? It is an important question.

[Peter Grant]

At this point, the answer is no: I neither condone nor condemn because I do not know what the circumstances were.

I walked away from a potentially successful career in NHS financial management. I wrestled for six months with my own conscience, seeing things that I knew had to be brought to public attention but knowing there was no way I could do that, and knowing that the public were being deliberately misled about what was going on in the health board that I worked in. The only way I could bring it to public attention was to resign and walk away from the job. So I will never, ever condemn anyone who believes they are acting in the public interest by doing something that they are not supposed to do.

I would be very surprised if there is a single Member in the Chamber today who is not at this very moment considering an important constituency case that has been brought to them by someone who technically was breaking the rules by raising it with a Member of Parliament. There are times when the public interest has to outweigh all other considerations, and until I have seen the full circumstances of why this information was disclosed, I am not going to condone or condemn, and I do not think anyone else should prejudice the case by commenting on it now.

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[Peter Grant]

May I deal with the first intervention first, please?

What I said was that the reason I had told my colleagues that it was not really worth while for them to hand over their phones, make appointments and so on to go and see the documents, was that there was nothing in there that they could not have got quite easily on the internet. Is it really a good use of a Member’s time to go through a security check more severe than at an airport, in order to read in a classified document that Airbus and Boeing make aeroplanes? To read in a classified document that gambling legislation in Northern Ireland is devolved but not elsewhere? These are all things that were in the documents that the Government said they could not disclose. To read in the sectoral report on the electricity industry that lots of people in the United Kingdom rely on electricity for domestic and commercial purposes?

Come on, Madam Deputy Speaker: there may well be information in the latest batch of documents that there is good reason for wanting to keep classified and confidential, but the Government’s attitude is that they tell the people and Parliament as little as they can possibly get away with. We all know that the reason for the change of heart from yesterday to today is nothing to do with the Government’s having decided that, because part of the documents had been published, they might as well give Parliament everything. The Government are not opposing the motion today because they know they would go down badly if they forced it to a Division. They do not have the support of their own Back Benchers; I doubt if they even have the support of their own Front Benchers. Their culture of excessive secrecy no longer has the support of their own people. They are not forcing the matter to a vote today because they know they would not only lose, but lose so badly that it would call into question the continuation of the Government in its entirety.

[Stephen Kerr]

rose—

[Peter Grant]

I did say I would give way to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry).

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful for that intervention. I am aware of the time, and I do not want to impinge too much on other people’s—

[Stephen Kerr]

rose—

[Peter Grant]

I will give way once more, but I hope the intervention is a bit more relevant than the earlier one.

[Stephen Kerr]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his gracious approach to my intervention. It is just that he is contradicting himself. He says that the Government are not responsive to Parliament—that Parliament is some kind of constitutional eunuch—and in the next breath he says that the reason there will not be a vote today is that the Government cannot control their own side. He cannot have it both ways. This Parliament is very successfully holding the Government to account and is being very thorough in its scrutiny. In defence of the honour of this Parliament, I needed to intervene to say that.

[Peter Grant]

The reason why Conservative Back Benchers will abstain in this debate is that the Government Whips have told them to abstain. The reason why the earlier motion on the main Brexit sectoral analysis was not opposed was that the Government told their Back Benchers not to oppose it. Since then a number of Back Benchers, sitting in this Chamber, have said that they would have been quite happy to lead a move against that Humble Address before Christmas but the Government Whips told them not to. The fact of the matter is that all too often the Government hold Parliament to account, not the other way around.

We shall not fix that today, but if we appreciate that that is the background against which this fiasco has developed, it is easier to understand how it is that, as soon as there is a Government who do not command a substantial majority in the House, there are problems. The British electoral system has a phobia against minority Governments or coalition Governments, despite the fact that in numerous other places—some of them not too far north of here—there are examples of Governments operating very successfully indeed, either in coalition or as a minority Government.

The Minister, as part of his argument to try to discredit his own Government’s analysis, points out that it is based on average free trade agreements, as opposed to the all-singing, all-dancing with bells and whistles free trade agreement that the Government keep telling us they will achieve within the next year or two. What is that assurance based on? What grounds does this Parliament have to believe that the Government have a snowball in hell’s chance of finding anyone to give the United Kingdom on its own a better trade agreement than they are willing to give to the 500 million people of the European Union single market? Have the Government done an analysis to tell them that they are going to get better trade deals? I hope not, because if they have done such an analysis, that analysis is quite clearly rubbish as well.

Given that analyses that come out of Her Majesty’s Treasury are no longer to be trusted, may we now take it as the Government’s official position that we can no longer believe what was said in the 16 analyses that were done by Government Departments in 2013-14, showing what a disaster a yes result in the Scottish referendum would be? And can we just cut to the chase, and save everybody a lot of time, by getting the Government to admit now that the bucketsful of analysis that they are going to produce next time around are also worthless and incomplete and selective, so they can just not bother producing them and save us all a lot of time?

Madam Deputy Speaker, when you get a Government who have to defend their own excessive secrecy by telling the people of these islands that they cannot rely on information that comes out from the Government, whether it was meant to come out or not—when the Government tell us we cannot rely on information that the Government themselves are producing—that is what undermines Britain’s negotiating position with the European Union. It is not the fact that information might be published that the EU could have put together itself quite easily; it is that the Government’s action in attempting to conceal that information and then seeking to discredit it demonstrates to our EU partners what they probably knew—that they are negotiating with a disorganised, disunited, shambolic and incompetent Government. That weakens Britain’s negotiating position more than any release of Brexit analysis papers could ever do.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 6th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Ross]

I am not saying anything against that, but what I am trying to put across is that it is quite clear that there is support for the Belfast agreement without the need for new clause 70.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

I accept everything that my hon. Friend is saying, and join him in paying tribute to the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), but does he not agree that perhaps this is a time where some form of underpinning of the Good Friday agreement, by one means or another, might be helpful in building trust?

[Douglas Ross]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. We are doing some of that by debating this very issue today. By proposing new clause 70, the hon. Member for North Down has allowed us the opportunity to discuss that in this place today.

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[Douglas Ross]

The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, but the Law Society was absolutely against the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 and continues to be. The Scottish Government and the SNP Members north of the border are happy to ignore the views of the Law Society of Scotland when they do not suit their argument. Now SNP Members in this Chamber tell us that we have to agree with absolutely everything that the Law Society says.

[Stephen Kerr]

On that point, did the Scottish Parliament not vote that that 2012 Act should be repealed?

[Douglas Ross]

I believe that we may be straying slightly from the point. I may now have to declare an interest as a football referee in Scotland. Yes, my hon. Friend is correct that the Scottish Parliament has voted for that Act to be repealed, and the SNP has still done nothing about it.

Much of what we are discussing today should not be controversial. Quite simply, it is what is needed to keep this country operating after exit day with as little disruption as possible. There should, therefore, be consensus behind the broad principles of clause 10 and schedule 2 of this Bill. Where there is not, I suspect that it is because of a burn-it-down mentality that is less concerned with the real world and more intent on achieving some other ideological goal. However, no amount of ideology will keep our industries properly regulated on 30 March 2019. Brexit is happening; it is happening to the entire United Kingdom, and it is our duty now to ensure that it goes as smoothly as possible.

There appear to be two broad themes in the proposed amendments to schedule 2. Some amendments restrict the powers given to the devolved Administrations, while others expand them. Some of my Scottish Conservative colleagues have spoken about the need for a middle ground on clause 11. Well, with respect to clause 10 and schedule 2, it occurs to me that we have already got the middle ground. Amendments 209 and 307 take issue with the provision that a devolved authority may use its delegated powers as it “considers appropriate”. The SNP, it seems, would prefer to replace that with as it “considers necessary”, while Welsh Labour would prefer that a devolved authority make such provision as “is essential”. I welcome the SNP’s new-found restraint when it comes to the powers of the Scottish Government, who have spent the last decade centralising as much power as possible in their own hands. We are seeing it with the NHS in Scotland—centralisation from the SNP. We have already seen it with the police and fire services—centralisation from the SNP.

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[Jenny Chapman]

As earlier contributors have made clear, this issue is the one that finds out the fantasists from the realists. If the Government have the ambition of avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland, they need to explain exactly how they intend to achieve that.

[Stephen Kerr]

Is not the hon. Lady putting the cart before the horse? The next phase of the negotiations will determine the future relationship between the EU and the UK. Is not she presuming an outcome that very few people would actually be in favour of?

[Jenny Chapman]

I am just making it very clear to the Government and all other observers that this matter is not something on which the Labour party is prepared to compromise. That point may need to be made again as we proceed, but it absolutely ought to be made now too.

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[Tom Brake]

I agree. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will regret, as many Opposition Members and I do, that very early on, the Government shut down some of the options available to us regarding the single market and the customs union. There was no attempt by the Government to negotiate with the European Union on whether there was scope for the EU to give ground, including on freedom of movement. I know from contacts that I have had that there would have been some appetite among some EU countries to give ground on freedom of movement, but that is not something that the Government sought.

[Stephen Kerr]

We have had a huge election within the past six months. The Conservative party went into that election with a manifesto commitment to honouring the outcome of the June 2016 referendum. I am not sure that I quite understand what the right hon. Gentleman does not understand about what the result of that election meant for the representation of the parties in this House. The majority of Members in this House are elected on a platform of leaving the European Union.

[Tom Brake]

The clearest outcome of the general election was that the hon. Gentleman’s party lost its majority and is now in an unwieldy and dangerous relationship with the Democratic Unionist party. The route that the Government are going down—a particularly hard Brexit—was not endorsed in the general election.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I commend the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and, in particular, the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), for their two outstanding contributions.

This Bill, and the whole Brexit process, not only gives us an opportunity but requires us to go right back and think fundamentally about what Parliament is for and what democracy is about. The Scottish National party supports as a fundamental principle the ancient and honoured tradition that sovereignty over the land of Scotland is inalienably vested in the people of Scotland. That principle is not for sale now, or at any time, to anybody.

This Bill seeks to usurp and undermine that sovereignty in a number of ways, which I will mention later. That fact alone compels me to vote against the Bill on Monday night, and it compels anybody who believes in the sovereignty of the people of Scotland, and anybody who purports to be here on their behalf, to oppose the Bill on Monday night, regardless of the party that is trying to get them to do something different.

As it is Labour’s reasoned amendment that has been selected, we will be supporting it on Monday night with some reservations. First, given that 62% of our citizens voted to remain in the European Union, I am certainly not ready to give up on that for the people I represent. I fully understand and respect the fact that two nations of the United Kingdom voted to leave, but I ask the Members of Parliament from those two nations to respect the fact that the other two nations voted to remain and that their votes cannot simply be cast aside.

Secondly, the reasoned amendment refers to parliamentary sovereignty. I respect that that is an important principle for some people, but it does not apply universally across the nations of these islands.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware of the question that was on the ballot paper? It was a United Kingdom question and a United Kingdom vote, and we voted as a United Kingdom to leave the European Union. That is what we decided. Does he not understand that?

[Peter Grant]

I do not know which part of “the people of Scotland are sovereign” the hon. Gentleman does not understand. The people of Scotland are sovereign, and I will defend their sovereignty. I urge all Members of Parliament from Scotland to respect that sovereignty when the time comes.

My final concern with Labour’s reasoned amendment is on the transitional period.