European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Gentleman would not get a top mark in negotiation analysis at Harvard Business School. The last word the British public want to hear when it comes to this Bill is “delay.” Most people think we should get on with it, if they do not think we have done it already.

It is important for the Government to understand that messaging is important. There is uncertainty, and people feel that perhaps they do not have the right to remain here, so the Government must continue their progress in signalling to people not only that we welcome them here but that our intent is that everyone in the United Kingdom as a legal EU resident will be able to stay. We must not avoid, or fail to pursue, communicating that message.

Equally, the Government must avoid measures that give the optics to British citizens in other EU countries that they have been abandoned. One of the worst things of stating this in legislation is not that it is necessarily a bad thing but that the optics for British citizens in other countries would change dramatically. They would say, “Why have we not been protected?” They would feel even more vulnerable because of the inaction of EU Governments if the UK Government were, by statute, to have to take this measure.

I support the Government on this amendment, and I call on them to continue their progress on the issue to end uncertainty. Ending uncertainty is not just about the rights of EU nationals currently living in the UK; it is about wanting people in the European Union to come to the UK. The progressive message of this Government should not just end with the issues contained in the amendment. We should send a positive message that we will continue to welcome people from the European Union after we leave.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I support the new clauses and amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins), and I will particularly address new clause 51, in the name of the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith).

In particular, I support the argument for a White Paper that includes details of the expected trajectory for the UK’s balance of trade, gross domestic product and unemployment. A number of earlier contributions explained precisely why we need that. My hon. Friend said that Vote Leave failed to provide detailed answers to any of the key economic questions before the referendum and, of course, he is right.

The right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is no longer in his place, demonstrated incredibly ably the confusion at the heart of Vote Leave and why taking a decision today is incredibly difficult. He effectively said—I have spoken to him, so this will come as no surprise to him—that no one in the leadership of the official leave campaign ever argued that we would join the EEA or have an EFTA-type agreement. It might be that the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), or one of the other senior figures, never quite said that, but to argue that the leave campaign did not suggest it, and suggest it strongly, is simply wrong. The leave campaign Lawyers for Britain said:

“We could apply to re-join with effect from the day after Brexit… EFTA membership would allow us to continue uninterrupted free trade relations”.

That was still on the website only a few weeks ago.

The former ambassador and Brexit supporter Charles Crawford appeared on “Newsnight” to argue that an EEA option may be the first step of Brexit. Roland Smith, the author of “The Liberal Case for ‘Leave’”, wrote an extended paper titled “Evolution Not Revolution: The case for the EEA option”, so I suspect that there were many people who, indeed, voted for Brexit believing that we were not voting for a hard Tory cliff-edge Brexit and that we would maintain membership of the EEA, EFTA or an equivalent. Given that that now no longer appears to be the case, it is absolutely right, as new clause 51 makes clear, that we have details of the expected trajectory of the balance of trade, GDP and unemployment. Those are not abstracts; they are at the heart of the measurement of our economy, of wages, of living standards and of economic growth. They are the platform for tax yield, which pays for our vital public services. All those words and concepts were almost entirely absent from what I will generously call the first White Paper.

I gently observe that it is not good enough for the Government to produce, after a referendum, a White Paper that is little more that the Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech dressed up with a few pictures and a couple of graphs. That is not the basis for the economic plan necessary to mitigate the huge potential damage to the economy from a hard Tory Brexit. Make no mistake, that is what we are facing.

[Will Quince]

Did the Government leaflet, at great cost, not exactly make the point that single market membership was not an option and that access would be the result of a leave vote in the referendum?

[Stewart Hosie]

Many things were said, which is my point. Some might argue that being in the EEA or a member of EFTA precisely gives one not just access to but membership of the single market—one could call it access if one likes. There was deep, deep confusion in the messaging of the no side, which must be rectified now with proper details on the trajectory of the key economic numbers before more decisions are taken.

I say that we are facing a hard Brexit, and let us understand what has been said. The leaked Treasury document last November suggested that the UK could lose up to £66 billion from a hard Tory Brexit and that GDP could fall by about 9.5% if the UK reverted to WTO rules. I accept that that is a worst-case scenario, but if the circumstances that lead us to that catastrophe occur and we do not have a plan to mitigate it, the guilt would lie with the Government for failing to plan. The final part of that—the “if we revert to WTO rules”—is key, because the Prime Minister has said that a bad deal is worse than no deal. That is very twisted logic, because no deal is the worst deal; it means we revert immediately to WTO rules, with all the tariffs and other regulatory burdens that that implies.