European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ms Stuart]

Tempting as that invitation is, I will not take it up.

This is an historic debate. It is immensely historic not because of what we as Members of Parliament will do, but because of what the people did on 23 June 2016. They have now given us the task of implementing that decision—to avoid any arguments about the figures, let us just say that the Bill is less than 150 words long—and we are now charged to do so because the people told us to leave.

When the people told us to leave, there were some broad principles behind what they said. The first principle is that parliamentary sovereignty does not mean being sovereign over the people. It is about the relationship between the sovereign and Parliament. We are representatives in a parliamentary democracy, but when we decide to have a direct mandate, it is our duty to implement that direct mandate. I would not for one moment pretend that it is easy to adapt the structures, but that is our challenge.

The second principle relates to the fact that there was a 72.2% turnout. It is absolutely true that just over 16 million people voted to remain, but more people voted to leave. It is now our duty to do two things: to implement the decision of the majority; and immediately afterwards, to focus on representing the people as a whole.

I chaired the official leave campaign. The leave campaign was clear that it was about taking back control of our borders. That meant we wanted an immigration policy based not on geography, but on skills and economic need. We wanted to take back control of our laws and of our trade negotiations. I also happen to think that the Government should actually honour the election pledge that was made that at least £100 million a week—money saved from not making direct contributions to the EU—should go to the NHS, which is short of money.

That brings me to the nature of article 50, which is where history is important. I was the draftsman—or draftswoman—of the original provision that led to article 50. It was actually an expulsion clause in the draft European constitution, which said that any country that did not ratify the European constitution would be asked to leave within two years. It is in the nature of the European Union that anything on the drawing board is never allowed to go away, and it became a leaving clause—hence the period of two years—but nobody seriously thought through how it should be implemented. The challenge for us is therefore to do what has not as yet been imagined. All the current structures are designed for countries to move increasingly closer, not to leave the European Union, but we are leaving.

Numerous speakers have referred to nationalism, but one of the reasons why the United Kingdom is in a unique position is that, under George I, the British Isles developed a concept of supranationalism. That is why someone like me—I was born in Munich—can say with great comfort that I am British, although I will never be English. The British people have therefore never felt the need to overcome the darker side of nationalism with supranationalism. At the same time, there is one thing, which we have not mentioned, that makes the whole European Union debate different. Various people have relived their youth, but when the euro was introduced, the whole dynamics of the European Union and its relationship to countries that said they would not join the single currency changed. I regard the outcome of the referendum as a logical conclusion of Maastricht. We said that we would not join the single currency and the Schengen common travel area. In the negotiations, we could not come to a deal to accommodate that.

I chair Change Britain, which we set up after the referendum. It is important, irrespective of how we voted, to bring people together. We have been working on a number of principles, including—I welcome what was said from the Government Front Bench—enshrining workers’ rights. It is equally important to enshrine environmental rights and ensure our communities are protected. It is extremely important for us on the Labour side to realise that we now have to fight for the Labour heartlands that never recovered from the 1980s.

It is also extremely important to protect the rights of EU citizens. Let us remember that, of the 2.8 million EU citizens living here, approximately 1.8 million have already established their right to be here. It is those who have been here for less than five years whom we really need to protect.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I might support unilateralism, but does the right hon. Lady concede, given the Government’s policy, that the only obstacle to guaranteeing reciprocal rights is that our European partners have dogmatically insisted on no negotiating before notification?

[Ms Stuart]

There is a rational case for what the hon. Gentleman says, but as we enter negotiations that is the one area where a unilateral decision on our part would set a tone for those negotiations that would serve EU citizens and UK citizens living in the EU.

I want to finish with one basic observation. I take a different view. I do not think it is economic success and peace that deliver us liberal democracies. I will not trade liberal democratic structures for anything else. I believe that it is liberal democratic structures that deliver economic success and peace. Therefore, a new modern 21st-century economic liberal democratic structure would give us that democracy and that peace. That is why I hope everyone in this House will vote to trigger article 50.

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[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Last year, as Minister for Life Sciences, I voted for the EU referendum on the basis that I would be bound by the result. Despite watching over many years with a heaviness of heart the growing failure of the EU to create an entrepreneurial economy, on balance I felt that we were better off staying in to fight for a reformed, 21st-century EU. As Life Sciences Minister responsible for a £250 billion sector, I felt that I had to speak for its interests. So I campaigned, along with many colleagues, for remain, not in a bullying way but in an open way.

I actively offered my constituents a choice by inviting my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and my friend the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) to my constituency to put their side of the debate. We held the debate, and I lost it. Our constituents voted to leave the European Union. My constituents voted, and the country voted, in one of the biggest acts of democracy we have seen for centuries.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said, we are not delegates. As Edmund Burke said, we are not sent here to be slaves to our constituents. I believe that the one thing that parliamentarians should never give away is the sovereignty vested in us by the people we serve. The truth is that successive Parliaments in recent decades have done that, not least in the Maastricht and the Lisbon treaties, fuelling public anger and disillusionment and the sense of unaccountable political elites giving away powers that were never theirs in the first place. That is why I believe we were right to give the people their say and we are right—all of us—to recognise the importance of that vote and the anger that was expressed.

[Mr Baker]

Since my hon. Friend mentions our debate, I hope that he will not mind my saying that he fought the fight with great nobility and grace, and he was eloquent at all times. If only both sides of the campaign—I do mean both sides—had conducted themselves as he did, the referendum campaign would have been far happier.

[George Freeman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that gracious intervention. Having won sovereignty back for this House, we must use it. We must show that the House is worthy of that sovereignty and capable of acting in the interests of all the people we serve. Churchill said once:

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

In the referendum campaign, we all stood up and spoke passionately for our respective sides, but now is the time for us to do the other courageous thing and listen to the will of the British people.

We have to make Brexit work for the 48% as well as the 52%, for London as well as the north, for white-collar as well as blue-collar workers and for Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England. We need to deliver not a soft or a hard Brexit but a British Brexit, which allows us to respect our European neighbours, to be a good neighbour and, as the Prime Minister made clear in her recent speech, to be an active European ally and collaborator—outside the political institutions of the EU, but members of a European community of nations and neighbours.

In my view, proper democrats cannot and must not say, “Oh, the Brexit vote was illegitimate. Brexit voters were ignorant. They weren’t qualified.” How condescending! Do we say that when they vote Labour, or when they vote UKIP? No. We all of us accept such results, and so we should now. Although the referendum was, in my opinion, a low point in British political discourse—let us remember that it included the appalling murder of one of our colleagues by a deranged neo-Nazi—the core underlying mandate of the British people was crystal clear. To the extent that it was not crystal clear, it is our job as elected democrats in our debates in this House to bring to the vote the crystal clarity that it needs.

All we are now doing is giving the Prime Minister and her Government the authority to start the negotiation of the terms on which we will leave the European Union. In many ways, the real debate will come not this afternoon, but when we discuss the terms of the negotiation in the House during the next two years and, ultimately, the package that she brings back to us.

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[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am pleased to speak today on behalf of my Brighton constituents and indeed of anyone else who continues to be desperately concerned about the enormous risks to this country from the Government’s approach to Brexit. To my mind, the bottom line is this: the Prime Minister has no mandate for the extreme Brexit she is pursuing. It was not on the ballot paper, and I see no contradiction between respecting the outcome of the referendum, which I do—we are leaving—and withholding consent to trigger article 50 tomorrow, when the kind of Brexit that has been set out is so profoundly damaging to the people of this country, and when it is being pursued in profoundly undemocratic ways: with the absence of a White Paper, an absence of safeguards for our economy and with no guarantees for our key social and environmental priorities, either.

I have to say that it is a little surreal to hear so many hon. Members acknowledge that extreme Brexit will be a disaster, yet then announce that they are going to go ahead and vote for it anyway. Very cleverly, the Government have managed to morph a narrow vote in favour of leaving the EU into an apparently overwhelming mandate to leave the world’s biggest trading zone and be cut off from the EU and its agencies. The Government seem increasingly desperate to make deals with any despot they can find—we saw an arms deal with Turkey last weekend, and a trade deal with a divisive and dangerous US President to whom the Prime Minister has already clearly demonstrated she is entirely either unable or unwilling to stand up. That is not what the people voted for.

Nobody voted in the referendum to scrap environmental protection, consumer standards or workers’ rights. Nobody voted to undermine the rights of UK citizens living in other EU countries, or indeed EU citizens living here in the UK. Nobody voted for future generations of young people being denied the right to travel, work and study at a level at least equal to what they enjoy now. And nobody voted for the UK to become a tax haven floating off the coasts of Europe, clinging on to the coat tails of Trump’s America. Yet triggering article 50 under the terms set out will set us on a course that will cause all those things to happen, because they are the logical consequence of the Prime Minister’s extreme version of Brexit.

The Prime Minister’s agenda is essentially about sacrificing the many benefits of the single market on the altar of ending free movement. It may be unpopular to say so, but it needs to be said that free movement has benefited our country in numerous ways. It has benefited British people by giving them the opportunity to work, to study, to live and to love in 27 other countries. It benefits our public services, especially the NHS, and it benefits our economy as a whole because EU nationals contribute more to our public finances than they take out. We would be a poorer country without the taxes EU nationals pay and the work they do in our hospitals, our care homes and our councils—and, more importantly, our societies and our communities would be immeasurably the poorer as well.

The Prime Minister’s agenda will also see us abandon the customs union, and it threatens a new economic model defined by a race to the bottom on corporate taxation—a model that, despite the Prime Minister’s pledge to unite the country, will likely see inequality in Britain rise, as spending on vital public services such as the NHS is eroded yet further. Again, nobody voted for that on 23 June, either. On the contrary, many voted for more money to be invested in the NHS. I seem to recall £350 million a week—yet, just last week, Ministers released official figures showing that they will be cutting the NHS budget per head in real terms in 2018-19.

Let us challenge this idea that these other trade agreements are somehow going to make up for the difference if we leave the single market. Research has shown quite clearly that even if we manage to do deals with the US, the EU, China, Russia, Canada and New Zealand, they would not anywhere near compensate for the loss to the economy of withdrawing from the single market. For voters who support leaving the EU only if they are not personally worse off, that, I think, is crucial information.

The Government have been forced grudgingly to allow Parliament a say on triggering article 50, but it is massively insulting to squeeze this resentful scrap of a Bill into a timeframe that is entirely disproportionate to the immensity of its consequences—and doubly so when the Bill throws us off a cliff edge.

[Mr Baker]

I am just enjoying a blog post on a website of 13 July 2015, in which the hon. Lady comments on the Greek situation under the hashtag “ThisIsACoup”. She describes the IMF, the eurozone and the European Central Bank as “the forces of darkness”. She finishes her post by writing:

“It’s time that politicians here in Britain, no matter where they stand on the economics of the Greek situation, take a stand for the simple right of a nation to manage its own affairs.”

Does she still believe what she wrote back then?

[Caroline Lucas]

I do not see any contradiction between what I wrote back then and the position I am taking now. I have always been critical of certain actions of the ECB and I will continue to be so. That does not mean that we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Only someone who was enormously reckless would think that was a sensible way forward.

What is reckless is a Bill that is going to throw us off a cliff edge, entirely unnecessarily, because it fails to include any mention, let alone give any details, of any transitional arrangements. That means that once the clock starts ticking—once article 50 has been triggered—if negotiations take longer than those two years, we will suddenly be thrown into a world of WTO-only tariffs, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that his constituents will not thank him for that. I do not believe that democracy is well served by such recklessness.

In the last few moments available to me, I want to say a few words about the environment, an issue that has been conspicuous by its absence during most of the debate over the past few days. I am especially concerned about the need for guarantees—real guarantees—to maintain environmental regulation that is at least as strong as current EU regulation. An environmental protection Act—crucially, with its own court of arbitration —might be one way of delivering that, but we also need to ensure that there are clear ways of retaining our relationships with important European agreements such as REACH, on the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals, and with the European Chemicals Agency.

We need UK environmental regulators and enforcement agencies, ready to step into the shoes of the EU institutions that currently perform such roles. Those institutions must be properly funded when the EU is no longer funding them. We need to ensure that the principles that underpin our environmental regulations, such as the precautionary principle, are not lost. At present we have no guarantees, and we deserve to have guarantees before article 50 is triggered. About this, as about so much else, there is no information.

Leaders of the leave campaign famously talk about taking back control. If that means anything, it surely means that control must be not just about our departure, but about our destination. Democracy requires that Parliament has ample opportunity to scrutinise the terms of the Brexit deal that will emerge from negotiations, but it also requires the country to have the right to continue to be given a say in the form of a referendum on the proposed deal. I cannot vote for a Bill that fails to provide those safeguards.

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[Richard Arkless]

I will not give way, because I am conscious that I am only the third SNP MP to speak, and we have been in the Chamber for about 10 hours.

Despite what seems to be the conventional wisdom among Conservative Members, there are indeed ways to keep everybody here happy. The UK can leave the EU and Scotland can remain in the single market. Scotland can continue to benefit from the free movement of labour while the UK leaves the customs union, so that the UK has the ability to restrict EU migration to the nations that voted leave, all within the existing parameters of the UK.

The proposals from Scotland can be found in “Scotland’s Place in Europe”. It is crucial to mention at this stage that this document represents a massive compromise on the part of the SNP and the Scottish Government. We are willing to accept that Scotland and the UK as a whole leaves the EU—I would be glad if that was not the case, but we will compromise. We are even willing to take independence off the table, at least in the short to medium term—again, we are willing to compromise. However, for that to happen, we need compromise on a similar scale from the UK Government. That is how families should operate. If it can be done for Nissan, it can be done for Scotland. None of the options in our report is impossible, but all require the will of the rest of the family to get behind them. That, I fear, will be their downfall. In short, our proposal is for Scotland to maintain its membership of the single market and continue to benefit from the pillar of free movement.

[Mr Baker]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Arkless]

I have already explained why I am not going to take any interventions and my mind has not changed.

While accommodating Scotland’s wishes, in parallel we set out a way for the rest of the UK to leave the single market and free movement, and to remove the entirety of the UK from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. I have never had a problem with the ECJ, but, as I say, we are in compromise mode.

We have heard today from those on the Conservative Benches that the single market is apparently an internal EU market, and that leaving the EU de facto means leaving the single market. Well, that is just plain wrong. Members of the EEA are in the single market but are not members of the EU—Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland have that status. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association, but is in neither the EU nor the EEA. Bespoke solutions are out there. It just requires the political will to pursue them.

I often hear that different rules across the UK would weaken the Union. In fact, the complete opposite is true. If proper and substantive regard is not paid to these differences, tensions in the relationships will come under strain—that much should be obvious to all. It is not the SNP who have put independence back on the table, but this Government. If it is back on the table, it will be only because this Government do not listen. Scotland’s distinct mandate and voice must be respected.

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[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

“God’s diplomacy”. My hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) reminded us how Richard Cobden described free trade—and it is a description I very much wish I had had in mind last Friday, when I was asked rhetorically to describe free trade. The same person went on to ask me how, without taxation and redistribution in Europe, we would foster a culture of “diffused reciprocity”. After I had had a while to try to work out what that meant, I realised that I believe that trade is a far better way of showing people that we are co-dependent in this world—that we depend on one another for our livelihoods, our prosperity and our happiness—than tax and forced redistribution through systems that people barely understand. That, I think, is the crux of the matter, which has been touched on elsewhere in the debate.

In so far as the European Union does deliver free trade, it does so through political union. The pattern of free trade through political union and political power beyond democratic control has run its course. If any Member disagrees, I invite them to look at the hollowing out of the centre ground of politics right around the world and to ask themselves why it is not just populism and nationalism on the right that are on the rise, but why populism and harder left policies are arising in a number of countries.

The truth is that several factors are at work in our world at the moment that have delivered us into a profound crisis of political economy. On another occasion, I would be glad to set it out, but in the interests of time let me just say that our trade policy and the tendency to political centralisation is one of the key pillars that has caused the crisis. I think we need a new system of free trade—one that can deliver four things: free trade, self-government, fighting crony capitalism at home and defending against distortions if not predatory practice in countries overseas. If we can deliver those four things, I think we can reinvigorate faith in free trade—a faith generally held right across the House—among working people, who can see that free trade and worldwide co-operation on a fair basis, in which people are not undercut by state subsidies in far-off places, is in all our interests.

[Mr Nuttall]

Given how damaging uncertainty is to business and trade, does my hon. Friend agree that it would be in our national interest for the article 50 notice to be given as soon as possible?

[Mr Baker]

I do agree. Since we are having this debate and are passing, I hope, this Bill, I think the Prime Minister will be well equipped to get on with it swiftly.

The more I work in my capacity as chairman of the European research group with Legatum Institute Special Trade Commission, the more I realise that the four points I have described are highly realisable. The more the Government come to realise that, the more confident they will be to trigger article 50 early.

My second point is that we are here today, of course, to agree the principle of this Bill, and it is a simple principle—that we should confer on the Prime Minister the power to see through the referendum result. I consider myself blessed indeed that the Wycombe district voted remain. I say “blessed indeed” because, although my constituency covers only three fifths of the district, I am well aware that, given the position that I have held with my colleagues and the work that I am now doing, if I did not have that constant reminder that we must serve 100% of this country, it would be easy to be too “hard over” on the issues. We must listen to everyone and take account of their concerns, but we must also see through what is in the best interests of this country, and I believe that that is the complete fulfilment of the 12-point plan set out by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

In that context of fulfilling the wishes of the British public—the whole nation—I would say that all choices have consequences. The Lisbon treaty meant that the European Union constitution was booted through against the positive expressed wishes of populations. That drove me into politics, because I thought it important for power always to originate with the people. Similarly, I think that if the House were to refuse the passage of this Bill, we would suffer in this country a political implosion whose nature we can scarcely imagine.

Today, I believe, we can objectively say that only one party is capable of forming a stable Government, although I would prefer there to be two. I believe that if we were to go ahead and refuse to pass the Bill, even our own party would suffer grave consequences. It is in all our interests for it to be passed.

With that in mind, I should like briefly to defend the former Prime Minister, who has been described today—most unfairly, in my view—as reckless. I dare say, and I think that the record will bear it out, that I have done more than any other Conservative Member in the last year to organise opposition to David Cameron, and it is for that reason that I feel able to say that, in my experience, everything he did was motivated by the very highest concerns for this country. He needed to keep our party together so that it could survive a referendum that was necessary, and still be capable, as it is today, of being strong, united and determined to see through the best interests of the country.

Although we differed in the judgment, I am absolutely sure that David Cameron campaigned for remain because he believed that it was in the country’s interest. I believe that far from being reckless, as he was accused of being earlier, he served this country with profound decency, and, above all, with the pragmatic conservatism which—in his view—led him to campaign for remain in the best interests of the country. Of course I disagreed with him, and I am glad that we are where we are. If I have a lament, it is that he is no longer here—

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Baker]

I cannot, because others wish to speak.

If I have a regret, it is that David Cameron is not with us today. [Interruption.] I mean that he is not with us in the House today. [Laughter.] I am grateful for the lighter tone.

I hope very much that in years to come, when future generations look back on this moment—not only on this issue, but on social reform and the reform of our public services—David Cameron will be seen as the great statesman he is.