European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Tom Brake Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The right hon. Lady mentioned the different definitions of a “meaningful vote”. Does she agree that a vote that took place at a point at which, for instance, Parliament could not say to the Government, “What you have negotiated is not acceptable” would not constitute a meaningful vote?

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman is exactly right. The timing of the vote matters, but so does its constitutional status. That is why I think it immensely important for this to be a statutory vote.

Let me explain why the Government’s words and the Prime Minister’s words—in the written ministerial statement, in various letters and so on—are not enough, and why we need to vote on either amendment 7 or my new clause 3. First, the Government’s unwillingness to put their promises on the face of the Bill is a problem. Parliament needs commitments in legislation before we can give the Executive such strong powers—such constitutional powers—and we need that commitment on the face of the Bill before and not after we do so. Secondly, there is still a difference between us on what counts as a meaningful vote. Without either new clause 3 or amendment 7, it would still be possible for Ministers to offer only a vote on a motion on the withdrawal agreement, and that indeed is the Prime Minister’s intention. The written ministerial statement published this morning says:

“This vote will take the form of a resolution in both Houses of Parliament and will cover both the Withdrawal Agreement and the terms for our future relationship.”

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[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend’s point is well made.

I turn now to equalities legislation. Last week, the Government tabled amendment 391 to schedule 7. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said that the Government had not come back with any amendments in response to requests. This is a clear example of where we have listened and returned. The amendment will require Ministers to state in writing, when using the powers in clauses 7 to 9, whether they amend equalities legislation and that they have

“so far as required to do so by equalities legislation, had due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under the Equality Act 2010.”

[Tom Brake]

rose—

[Dominic Raab]

The right hon. Gentleman is quick off the mark. I am about to address his point. When the Bill was introduced, the Government published an equalities analysis of the Bill, and I can reassure the Committee and him—I know that he raised this on a previous day—that, as promised, we will make a similar statement in relation to all other Brexit primary legislation that has been or will be introduced to this House. I pay tribute—if she is here—to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), the Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, for raising this important issue and for her advice in helping us to address it in a sensible and practical way.

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[Tom Brake]

The Minister has now clarified what the Government intend to do in relation to primary legislation. Will he indicate to the Committee when he expects to make a statement?

[Dominic Raab]

The amendment has been tabled, and I am giving the right hon. Gentleman the assurance now that the same formula will be applied to all Brexit-related primary legislation, so he can take that one to the bank.

I turn now to amendment 19, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda. I understand his position and what he is trying to establish, but if the regulations made under clause 9 were to lapse two years after exit day, it would set a very rigid legislative timeframe for the Government and risk unnecessary disruption. If the two-year deadline expired unmet, it would create holes or risk creating holes in the statute book. I sympathise with the intentions behind the amendment, and I just wonder whether it was intended to tempt Eurosceptics on the Government Benches, but it is too rigid a fetter on Parliament’s ability to manage its legislative priorities between now and 2021, and it would risk exacerbating the very uncertainty that the Bill is designed to reduce.

Amendments 74 and 75 attempt to tie the use of clause 9 to our continued membership of the single market and the customs union. The Government have been clear that we are leaving the EU, and that necessarily means we are leaving the single market and the customs union. The amendments rehash old ground. The Government are clear that we are seeking a deep and special partnership with the EU, including as frictionless free trade as possible, and that will inevitably be linked to the withdrawal agreement. It is good news that we are moving to the negotiations on that area, following the success of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and the Prime Minister. The amendments, with the greatest respect to their SNP authors, would be counterproductive on their own terms, because they would undermine our ability to secure and implement the withdrawal agreement, which itself will be necessary for agreeing the future partnership agreement and maintaining barrier-free trade.

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[Mr Baron]

I can help my hon. Friend with her confusion, because the point is very simple. If an amendment suggests that the option is left open for the other side in any negotiation not to negotiate in good faith, so that this Parliament does not sanction the deal because it is not a good deal, that will delay our exit. It is very straightforward. It takes two to tango in a negotiation. I suggest that she reflects on that.

While most of us want a deal, those who criticise the Prime Minister’s position that no deal is better than a bad deal create a series of straw men to support their case. The term “no deal” itself is something of a misnomer, because it creates the idea of some sort of cliff edge. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trade flows regardless of trade deals. The UK would simply revert to using the same WTO rules that govern its trade with countries such as the United States, China, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil—hardly unimportant countries.

As for the trade deals themselves, the next straw man is the suggestion that the UK would find it difficult to negotiate them in sufficient time. If Australia can negotiate trade deals with China, South Korea and Japan within 18 months, there is no reason why the UK cannot do likewise. If anything, a trade deal with the EU will be easy to negotiate because many of the trade barriers have already been removed.

The suggestion that inward investment would suffer without a trade deal is another straw man. That is to ignore the fact that investment is about relative advantage, as anybody who has worked in the City or in industry will understand. Our much lower corporation tax rates, our more flexible labour market practices and policies, the strength of our R and D and science, our language and our time zone more than compensate for having to pay an average WTO tariff of 3% to 5%, particularly given that the currency has already depreciated.

Tonight I will be supporting the Government and rejecting amendment 7. The Prime Minister has been very clear that we will be leaving the EU—that includes the customs union and the single market—in March 2019, and that the European Court of Justice will have no further jurisdiction over British law. I support the stance that no deal is better than a bad deal, and that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. That includes any proposed financial settlement.

My final point is that there is another reason why I support the Government, and it relates to trust. We are not privy to the ups and downs or the ins and outs of the negotiations, so one has to make a judgment as to whether the individuals concerned are honourable. I believe the Prime Minister to be honourable in what she has said. Having known the Ministers involved for many years, I also trust them to deliver the best possible deal. I suggest that those who support proposals such as amendment 7 should trust the EU a little less and their own Government a little more. Our Government have, after all, made concessions in good faith.

[Tom Brake]

Perhaps I could suggest a handicap system for Members who observe the advisory time limit on speeches.

If the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) thinks that the European Union is keen to drag things out, he has clearly not spoken to many EU diplomats. They want this to be over; they are not as obsessed with Brexit as he might be.

I commend the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) for his rational discourse in relation to amendment 7. Unlike me, he cannot be described as wanting to stop Brexit. He does not want to, but I do—democratically, with a vote on the deal. That is covered by amendment 120, which we will vote on next Wednesday. But he and I are certainly in the same place when it comes to the importance of parliamentary sovereignty, and legislative rigour and accuracy. He set out cogent arguments in favour of amendment 7, and he described the extent to which he has bent over backwards in the last few weeks to try to secure agreement from the Government on a way forward, but failed to do so.

The Minister’s main argument against amendment 7 was time pressure. The Government have, to a great extent, inflicted that problem on themselves, whether through the general election that they called, by triggering article 50 when they did, or by refusing to entertain the option of extending the article 50 process. The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) said that EU had not offered such an extension but, as I understand it, the UK has at no point ever asked for one. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield set out a very neat solution to the problem that the Government outlined, and the Minister did not manage to convince the very experienced senior Members who were sitting behind him. He might not have seen it, but the body language and facial expressions of those behind him reinforced the point that, frankly, the Government have not deployed very cogent arguments in favour of opposing amendment 7. I look forward to voting on that amendment, and to Parliament taking back control.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I will not be voting for article 7, because I think it is a mistake—[Interruption.] I am extremely grateful; I mean amendment 7. The amendment calls for legislation to be put in afterwards, which is a very unusual thing for a Bill to do—I believe it is unprecedented. If people do not like clause 9, they should vote against it, rather than voting for this unusual amendment.

I want to make it clear, however, that I very much accept the good faith of those who argue for amendment 7. Those of us who opposed the Government when they were very pro-European should not criticise Members such as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve)—Disraeli pronounced the constituency name slightly differently—when they decide to take the reverse position of the one we took in previous years. What they are doing is completely reasonable.

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[Mr Leslie]

I have even more respect for those who have never held ministerial office and who actually vote with their conscience, rather than looking at the ministerial ladder ahead of them and deciding to suppress their views for other reasons. Anyway, we have been there and dealt with that issue.

In speaking to new clause 20, I want to make a couple of introductory remarks. Over the last 44 years, I think, of Britain’s membership of the EU, the UK has accrued a massive array of international obligations, rights and authorisations via a series of 759 treaties—this is absolutely right—with 168 non-EU countries. Of course, after 29 March 2019, those treaties, because we have accrued them by virtue of our membership of the EU, will fall away. They will cease to exist; they will be no more; they will have ceased to be; they will have expired—they will be ex-treaties. The United Kingdom will no longer be party to those agreements with those third countries, unless of course we have made efforts to replace them beforehand to provide for a smooth continuation.

New clause 20 would require Her Majesty’s Government to publish one month after Royal Assent—we can give them that month to get themselves together—a comprehensive assessment of each of those treaties, agreements and obligations; to set out if there are any requirements they want to amend or renegotiate; and to make an assessment of whether the powers in clause 8 might need to be used. Sir David, you will know, in your eagle-eyed way, that clause 8 gives powers to Ministers, for two years at least, to make a series of orders and regulations to prevent or remedy any breach in those international treaties, as if achieved by an Act of Parliament. I pay tribute to the late Paul McClean, the Financial Times journalist who sadly died in September, who, in one of his final reports, carried out an extremely comprehensive analysis and assessment of some of these many treaties and international obligations.

[Tom Brake]

Is the hon. Gentleman wondering—he might be about to come to this—whether the Government have carried out an assessment of the impact of the UK’s falling out of all these treaties?

[Mr Leslie]

That is indeed a question I was coming to. I am sure that the Minister will tell us that the Government have made an itemised assessment of all those 759 treaties.

Those treaties break down as follows: 295 bilateral and multilateral trade deals, whose approval is needed to recreate any multilateral arrangements that will fall away as we leave the European Union; 202 regulatory co-operation agreements, including on data sharing, anti-trust and so forth; 69 treaties on fisheries, including access to waters and sustainable stocks; 65 treaties on transport and aviation services agreements; 49 treaties on customs agreements, including on the transportation of goods; 45 treaties on nuclear agreements, including on the use of nuclear fuel with other countries, parts and know-how; and 34 treaties on agriculture.

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[Tom Brake]

Just as the hon. Gentleman wonders whether the Government have produced impact assessments for those treaties, he might also be wondering whether they have produced contingency plans for if they are unable to rewrite them to reflect the UK’s new position.

[Mr Leslie]

Indeed, and after the Minister has finished the first page of his speech, on the impact assessment, he will turn it over and tell us about the contingency plans that will be in place.

Imagine, Sir David, that you are a Government Minister at this point in time and you are thinking, “Well okay, I’ve got all these 759 treaties. What are we going to do? How are we going to deal with this? How much time is it going to take to renegotiate them or at least make sure they can be carried over?” Let us assume that all the other parties to those agreements are happy simply to cut and paste them across. Of course, we cannot necessarily assume that, but let us do so. If, for each agreement, it took a civil servant one day to analyse the contents, a day to contact the third party country concerned, of which there are 160, perhaps a day to track down the decision makers in the relevant Departments here in the UK and the other country, perhaps a couple of days in dialogue with that other country—it would be pretty good if they could do it in a couple of days—and maybe a day to bring together our Ministers and their Ministers, we would be talking, on top of the costs of travelling to those other countries and legal costs, some tens of thousands of hours of civil service time.

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[Tom Brake]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Leslie]

I will give way one more time, but then I must make some progress, because others want to speak.

[Tom Brake]

I just wanted to help the hon. Gentleman. Given his position in the Chamber, he might not have been able to see that both Ministers were frantically texting earlier. I suspect that they did not have the list of treaties to which he is referring. He might need to supply it at the end of the debate so that they can start doing some work on this.

[Mr Leslie]

I think that the Minister might actually have been tweeting his respect for the result of the vote on amendment 7 that we have just had. I shall look at Twitter later to check that he was absolutely respecting the fact that Parliament wants to take back control.

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[Geraint Davies]

I shall speak to amendment 352, which seeks to maintain for future trade deals the EU rights and protections that are currently enjoyed in other trade deals. A problem that has already been mentioned is that we are going to move away from the comfort zone of the EU, a massive trading bloc which, on 8 December, agreed the key provisions for a trade deal with Japan that will embrace 30% of global GDP and 600 million people and that has integrated in it the Paris agreement. It does not have investor-state dispute settlement, but it does have various protections. One of my key fears about that particular agreement, which will come into effect in March 2019, is that such agreements take a long time to put together. If we want to come along after the event and say, “Can we join in?” the chances are that the terms will not be as good.

As for our negotiations with other countries, if we exit the EU and expect Chile or Uruguay or some other country to offer us the same trade terms that it has with the EU, which is a much bigger bloc, at a time when we are much weaker, we will be seen among the international trading community as a vulnerable victim of our own self-inflicted harm. They will say, “We will give these terms to the EU, but you are just a small player compared with the critical mass of the EU.” That would undermine not only the financial impact of the terms of trade, but the standards that we currently enjoy.

People will be aware that the REACH arrangements—the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—mean that manufacturers in Europe are required to prove that a chemical is safe before it is sold. In America, however, manufacturers can basically sell asbestos and other harmful products, and it is for the United States Environmental Protection Agency to tell them that they cannot. The worry is that our regime and our standards may change as we are thrust into the hands of the United States, and that workers’ rights, human rights and other rights may change due to China.

The Minister will know that the widespread use of hormones in meat production in America is giving rise to premature puberty among children, and that the widespread use of antibiotics is leading to much greater resistance to them. There is also chlorinated chicken, genetically modified food and other things, and we will be under enormous pressure from the United States to accept standards that are below those that we enjoy as a member of the EU. Donald Trump stood up at his inauguration and said that he would protect the American economy from the foreign countries that were taking America’s jobs, and he has already shown in the Bombardier case that he will play tough. The United States is a much bigger player than Britain, and the competition between the EU and the US is a matched fight when it comes to the negotiation of a deal such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. We will be a much smaller player, and we will have left the conditions of the EU.

Ministers currently have quite widespread powers to sign deals. The current International Trade Secretary signed a provisional agreement for the comprehensive economic and trade agreement without parliamentary approval, and we should be drawing such powers in for parliamentary scrutiny, amendment and agreement. There is a risk that a negotiated settlement that reduces the standards that our citizens enjoy will happen outside this place. I therefore tabled amendment 352, which seeks to maintain the same standards, rights and protections that we enjoy in Europe, as protection in case we end up being asked to vote on trade deals that have all sorts of dire consequences beneath the surface for public health, workers’ rights and consumer protection.

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned chlorinated chicken, and he should be worried not only that the Americans may seek to impose it on us, but that our International Trade Secretary has said:

“There are no health reasons why you could not eat chicken that had been washed in chlorinated water.”

Our own International Trade Secretary therefore seems to be advocating the consumption of chlorinated chicken.

[Geraint Davies]

It is an interesting idea that foxes have been eating chlorinated chicken.

As the right hon. Gentleman says, the concern is that the International Trade Secretary, even at this early stage, will look to undermine consumer standards, health standards and other standards in order to fix a deal and have something on the table to avoid the humiliation we see coming. As has been pointed out, it is in the interest of other countries to hold back from striking an early deal and to let the UK sweat. We will be in a difficult place if we do not have agreement on tariffs with the EU and elsewhere.

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[Hannah Bardell]

Not surprisingly, I could not agree more with my hon. Friend.

[Tom Brake]

Does the hon. Lady agree that there will probably be a chapter in the history books called “Impact Assessments”, and students will study the reasons why a Government took the most catastrophic economic decision for the country without having conducted any impact assessments of its effect on the economy?

[Hannah Bardell]

I absolutely do agree. It will probably say “Impact Assessments” and there will just be a blank page, because that is the reality of the situation. It will probably serve as an abject example of how not to do democracy, and sadly we will all be judged under that banner. I do hope, though, that the history books will include those of us who opposed how this process is being carried out.

It is important to reflect on the fact that, whatever people thought of the Scottish referendum, it was held up as a gold standard and that, when the Electoral Commission reflected on the referendum on Brexit, its view was that it happened in too short a timescale and that there was not proper opportunity for debate and discussion. That is important. It is sad that we set a gold standard on one referendum and then seemed to go backwards.

The other day, sitting on the Tube, reading the Evening Standard, I was quite aghast to read an article celebrating its new appointment of a journalist to Brussels. Is it not ironic that news agencies and the press are suddenly appointing journalists to Brussels? Not that long ago, I read a report that said that, out of all the countries in the EU, the nations of the UK had the worst representation in terms of journalistic reportage. So it is no surprise that, after 10 years and longer of blaming the EU for all our ills and of not properly reporting on it, people were ill-informed and we did not have a proper period for debate.

I come back to my point about children. The House of Commons Library briefing paper on Brexit stretches to almost 200 pages, yet children are mentioned only three times. The Brexit White Paper mentions children only once. It urges us all to work towards a stronger, fairer and more global Britain. Well, is that not ironic because we are going to be weaker, less equal and less outward-looking? We are going to be the exact opposite of what those right-wing Brexiteers seemed to want for us across the UK.