European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Thangam Debbonaire and William Cash

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 2nd sitting
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Regulations that would have been discussed either in the European Parliament or the Council of Ministers, and those people are also elected and have been for decades. Members have been elected to the European Parliament since 1979. I know that, as I am sure Conservative Members do, because I have campaigned for those Members in elections.

[Sir William Cash]

The hon. Lady just referred to the Council of Ministers. Would she deny for a minute, as is well understood by everybody else, that decisions are taken in the Council of Ministers by a majority vote of other countries behind closed doors and without a transcript? They are therefore not democratic. How can she talk about people being elected when the decisions are actually taken in that manner?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

The last time I looked, most—although admittedly not all—of the Government’s Ministers were democratically elected. We participated in the creation of the rules of that Council. I am going to skip ahead in my speech and then come back again, because I wish to remind Conservative Members that it was, for instance, a Tory Government who took us into the single market, with all its rules. They rightly recognised the benefits of the shared rules of a single market. They recognised that they were worth it and that they did not compromise our sovereignty.