European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 6th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

That was the surprise, and not just for us. Perhaps we were a bit cynical and did not expect the £350 million a week for the NHS on the side of the red bus to come to fruition, but I think that the British public were genuinely surprised when it turned out that, rather than Brexit’s giving us that fantastic dividend, it was actually going to cost us a considerable amount.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is not surprising that the public were surprised. We may have accepted that much of what was promised during the referendum might fall apart subsequently, but even after the event the Government were telling us a very different tale. My hon. Friend will remember being with me on the International Trade Committee when the Secretary of State came along and said, “I don’t expect us to pay anything to leave.” My constituents heard that said not just during the referendum, when they might expect to hear things that were somewhat fanciful, but many months later. The Government were saying, “We won’t be paying anything to leave.” What we are hearing now is very different.

[Mr Leslie]

It is worth listing the promises that were made to the British public in the run-up to the referendum, not just by Vote Leave but by individual Members of Parliament, including the Environment Secretary and the Foreign Secretary. On 22 June 2016 they wrote, on behalf of Vote Leave:

“We will take back control of our money”.

The International Trade Secretary said:

“Instead of handing over £350m a week to Brussels we should be spending that money on local priorities”,

such as the NHS.

I am delighted to see that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) is present. He is very assiduous when it comes to these issues: I will grant him that. Before the referendum, he asked “How should we spend this Brexit bonus?” It was suggested that riches would be available for our vital public services. Those were the promises that were made to the British public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Leslie]

At the very least, we should know what we are being asked to pay. We know that the Foreign Secretary told the European Union to “go whistle”, and perhaps that is still the Government’s official policy. We also know that only in September the Brexit Secretary was saying that a figure of £50 billion was “nonsense”. Since then, of course, we have seen completely different reports. Parliament and the people deserve to know the sum involved. The idea of a blank cheque is completely unacceptable.

[Toby Perkins]

I am worried that my hon. Friend is going to move on from the important point that he has just raised about the impact assessments. There is a serious question about the competence of the Government if they have gone ahead with this without producing those assessments. There is a more important question, however. We as Members of Parliament were told that there were 58 documents that went into excruciating detail, but it now appears that that was not true. Amid all the talk about what happened outside this place, we must not forget the central point that the Secretary of State stood at the Dispatch Box and told us that those documents existed and that the Prime Minister had looked at a summary of them. He is now saying that those documents do not exist, so what he said was not true.

[Mr Leslie]

My hon. Friend’s anger about this is correct. For all the bonhomie and swagger of the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, this is unacceptable. He always has a cheeky little smile and a glint in his eye, but we should not let him off the hook. With all that bluster, he was saying, “Oh, don’t worry, there are oodles of detailed impact assessments but you must realise that they are commercially sensitive. We can’t possibly share them, but don’t worry, detailed impact assessments have been produced.” It now turns out that his bluff has been called, and when the curtain was pulled back we saw that those things did not exist, and he is now cycling away. Nobody expected this to be quite so threadbare.