European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion & Ways and Means resolution
Friday 20th December 2019 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). I agree with her argument that we need to be able to disagree agreeably, as I think President Obama once put it.

If the Secretary of State is looking for some consolation for his Department being abolished at the very moment that we leave the European Union, let me tell him that it will also mean that he will no longer have the untrammelled joy of appearing before the Brexit Select Committee. I thank all Members who have served on the Committee and our wonderful team of Clerks and advisers, who have supported us with their expertise.

At the heart of this Bill is a gamble—a gamble with our nation’s economy. The Prime Minister has so much confidence in the Government’s ability to finalise a new relationship with the European Union by this time next year that this Bill will prevent, by law, any extension of the transition period beyond December 2020. If he succeeds, his gamble will have paid off—although I wonder how detailed an agreement he will manage to achieve in that time—but if he fails, the cliff edge of a no-deal Brexit beckons in just 12 months’ time.

The pillar on which that confidence is built is the argument that because we have been aligned with the European Union for the past 40 or so years, that deal should be easy to reach. That argument would have force only if the Government were planning to stay as closely aligned to the other 27 member states and their rules, but we know that that is not the case. The Government want to move away from European rules and regulations. Indeed, the Prime Minister said it today: no alignment with EU rules. As that intention becomes clear to our EU negotiating partners, it will make the negotiations not simple, but much more complicated.

No doubt the Bill will be passed today. The question that the House has to address is: can a deal be completed when, as we have just heard, it took Canada seven years to reach an agreement? Can it be completed in 12 months, when we know that we have to negotiate not just tariffs and quotas and rules of origin, but services—80% of the British economy is built on the service sector—data, aviation, medicine safety, co-operation on consumer rights, security, access to databases that have helped to keep us safe from terrorism, which we will lose if we do not get this right, foreign policy, co-operation on climate change, and a long list of other matters of huge importance for the British economy and British society?

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has spent the last 12 months claiming that the Prime Minister never wanted to get a deal, and then he got one, and that the Prime Minister was not serious, and therefore he had to produce a Bill to hamstring Parliament and stop it progressing. Can he admit, just for once, that we have a deal—a deal that is going to happen this year—and use all his expertise and good services to rally round this Parliament, this Government and this country to make sure that we agree it by the end of year, so that we can all move on at last?

[Hilary Benn]

The Bill that the last Parliament passed did not hamstring the Prime Minister, because he achieved a renegotiation. However, to be fair, all he did was accept 95% of his predecessor’s deal and replace the previous backstop with a backstop that had been offered the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), but rejected on grounds that were clearly set out by the current Prime Minister to the Democratic Unionist party conference in November 2018—namely, that he would never, ever accept a border in the Irish sea, which is what he has promptly now done, which reminds us that it is not always wise to take the Prime Minister at his word.