European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I am minded to support the Bill on Second Reading because, like my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), I respect the overall referendum outcome even though I campaigned for a different result. I believe that the Government are entitled to commence the leave negotiations by 31 March, but that we are entitled to some assurances about their intentions and the way they plan to proceed. I do not think the limited time allowed for the Bill is right. It would be possible to allow more time and still meet the Government’s deadline.

The impression that the Prime Minister and her Ministers have given since she assumed power is that they want to silence MPs, sideline Parliament and rely solely on their interpretation of the referendum result. It looks increasingly as if that means ignoring the views of the 48% who voted remain and even of the larger number who voted leave when it comes to issues such as the single market. The hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) said in an intervention that it was only a two-clause Bill and she did not understand the need for a White Paper, but is it sensible to embark on an epic journey without some idea of where we will end up or how we will get there? It is one thing to give approval to start the negotiations but something else to wash our hands of our constituents’ concerns and give the Government a free hand to do just as they please.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Does the hon. Gentleman not acknowledge that the Prime Minister has already promised to issue that White Paper at the earliest opportunity?

[Steve McCabe]

I acknowledge that after a lifetime of denials the Prime Minister said she would issue a White Paper and that we might now get it after the vote on the Bill. That does not seem like much use to me.

The referendum, as has been pointed out, settled the question about our wish to leave the EU, but it did not shape the answer. When the Prime Minister eventually broke her silence in the Lancaster House speech to reveal her intention to disengage entirely from the single market, I do not accept she was reflecting the views of a majority of people in this country. We need to try to ensure continued access to that market on the best terms we can secure and in a way that does not exclude us from regulatory decisions. Without that we risk jobs and businesses and we risk setting in train a period of uncertainty that might do untold damage to our economy.

I accept that the Prime Minister’s position is influenced by her desire to end freedom of movement, but where is the evidence that all those who voted leave actually wanted to prioritise their concerns about freedom of movement over access to the market for our goods and services? Why is it unreasonable to try to reach agreement on controls on freedom of movement? As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) said, why is it so wrong to seek fair movement arrangements allowing for those we need to come here and work, while placing restrictions on lower skilled labour and those not in demand? It might help if the Government were to indicate, as a positive gesture, that they will not use the rights of EU citizens already living and working here as a bargaining chip. That would not be a massive concession, given that the Home Office has already calculated that 80% of EU migrants living here after 2019 will be entitled to permanent residency.

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about protecting the rights of EU citizens contributing to and living in the country, but does he not accept that it is the other countries in the EU that are potentially using this issue as a bargaining chip, rather than this Government, and that it is difficult to enter into negotiations unless we have a similar agreement from them to protect the rights of British citizens living elsewhere in Europe?

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

I am proposing that one way to start the negotiations is to offer up a gesture of good will.

We are talking about people mostly engaged in crucial jobs that help to support and secure the jobs of many other British citizens. They were told that the referendum was a decisive result, but it could not have been much closer, and there are many parts of the UK, and indeed England, that did not vote to leave. My constituency voted by a majority of just over 2,000 to remain, but —to break that down further—two of four wards voted to remain and two voted to leave. I have no intention of speaking up only for the views of one group and ignoring the feelings and opinions of the others.

Rather helpfully, I carried out quite an extensive survey of my constituents in Selly Oak following the referendum, because of the closeness of the result and my wish better to understand what people were telling me. Sixty-four per cent said that they want the UK to continue to trade our goods and services within the single market, 76% think that we should commit to giving EU citizens already living and working here the right to remain, and people made clear their concerns about the cost of living, research funds and training programmes, employment and job security. We cannot simply leave those things to chance. We need to know the Government’s approach, hence the importance of the White Paper.

How are we to proceed? Will we have three strands: administrative, legal and trade? Will we try to deal with them all at once or sequentially? Will there be parallel WTO negotiations and talks with other countries. Who are our negotiators? Exactly how many do we have? Do we have the capacity for so many complex negotiations in so short a time? Do we have enough experts—I was going to say that I knew that would upset someone, but he has left the Chamber—at our disposal? We need to know what progress is being made on the bright new world that enthusiastic Brexiteers are promising.

I want to be optimistic about our future, and I was slightly encouraged in that by some elements of Government thinking in the recent Green Paper “Building our Industrial Strategy”, but I do not feel sufficiently optimistic to want to trust our future to those who lied their way through the referendum, making promises of extra money for our health service that they have no intention of honouring. It is for those reasons that this House needs the Labour amendments, with regular feedback on the shape and progress of the negotiations, a right to intervene on the final offer and a right to reject that offer if it is plainly against the interests of the vast majority of our constituents.