European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Stephen Kerr and David T C Davies

Committee: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Monday 4th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

The hon. Gentleman knows the difference between a local authority area and a parliamentary constituency, so he knows there is absolutely no way of telling what the Monmouth constituency did. He will be aware that it was quite close in the Monmouthshire local authority area. Indeed, there was a very small majority in favour of staying in the European Union. He will also be acutely aware, as I am sure is the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), that I represent 10,000 Labour-voting, traditionally working-class voters in Torfaen. I respect those voters, and they voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union. Some people say I should not listen to such people, but I tell the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) that those people mean as much to me as anyone living in Monmouth. I will represent their views, and they overwhelmingly voted to leave the European Union.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

Is not the key point about the referendum not which regions or nations within the United Kingdom family voted one way or another but that we voted as a United Kingdom on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union?

[David T. C. Davies]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Of course, the Government’s whole purpose is to ensure there is a single market within the United Kingdom. We cannot have a situation where different nation states within the United Kingdom go off and do their own thing. If that were to happen, we would have exactly the problem that some Opposition Members complain will occur when we leave the European Union. That is what we are about today.

If one judges the Government by their actions, rather than on the words of Opposition Members, one can see that, actually, this Government and this Conservative party have, over and again, given extra powers to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Welsh Assembly. Sometimes they have been rather more enthusiastic in doing that than I would choose, but we saw it happen in 2011 and we are about to see a huge tranche of extra powers being handed over to the Welsh Assembly on 1 April 2018. The Conservative party has shown it is very willing to give extra powers to the devolved Parliaments and, to some extent, I suppose I agree with that approach. I sometimes think it is happening a bit too quickly, but it will certainly happen again. So I completely support what the Government are doing here today. They are doing what all those on the other side of the House are calling for: bringing about Brexit in a stable and controlled fashion that allows us to move forward with certainty. It is inevitable that this will lead to further powers going to the devolved Parliaments—it may not happen straightaway, but it will happen. Not one single power is coming back to London as a result of these measures; there is not one single thing that can be done by the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly today that they will not be able to do once this Bill is passed.