EU Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Advice

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I will come on to the specific issue of formal advice from the Law Officers in due course slightly later in my speech, but I first want to conclude the point I was making about the Government’s approach. I hope that, as my right hon. Friend suggested, what I say will be read as an attempt to find some common ground across the House, even if there is not complete agreement.

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

Can I ask the Minister something before he moves on? He referred earlier to the importance of providing not only some legal advice but economic analysis. Can he confirm that that economic analysis will include the merits or otherwise of our staying in the European Union?

[Mr Lidington]

If I may, I will answer the right hon. Gentleman while also responding to something that was said by the Opposition spokesman when he referred to the commitment that, yes, is there in the White Paper that the Government published earlier this year to provide Parliament with information and analysis ahead of the meaningful vote. I want to agree and accept on behalf of the Government that that information and analysis should include not only such things as impact assessments, which the Opposition spokesman mentioned, but a legal analysis as well.

In specific response to the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), we certainly do intend to provide an economic analysis. The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), will have heard what he has proposed one of the options should be.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will keep within that limit.

Let me begin by thanking the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) for securing the debate, because this is an essential point that needed to be considered. I also wanted to put my thanks on record at the beginning because I may raise some matters in my short speech for which he may not thank me quite so much.

It is clearly important for us to get the legal advice published. A number of speeches today have made it clear that the scope set out in the motion might be much wider than was intended, and is therefore to be much more focused. That is welcome.

We are about to make what is potentially the single most important decision that we have made in 50 years, and I think that Members of Parliament are entitled to the greatest clarity on the issue, including legal clarity. At present, clarity is distinctly missing—and not just legal clarity but clarity for businesses, although that often means legal clarity. Let me give an example. A business in Bristol that I visited a couple of weeks ago is finding that its trade in the European Union is on a downward turn because the companies with which it works in the EU have no legal clarity on the position for rules of origin. They are saying, “Thank you. We have worked with you for 70 years and you are a fantastic business, but because we do not know how the rules of origin will apply to our products if we incorporate your components, we are simply going to take those components from somewhere else in the European Union.”

On that same visit, I met representatives of a language school. The legal clarity that they need relates to, for instance, whether children from the European Union with identity cards who currently go to Bristol to take language courses might be required to have passports in future. That would mean that children from Spain, France and Italy might instead go to European Union countries that do not require passports, such as Ireland, to learn English. Wherever we look, there are issues involving clarity.

I was pleased that the Minister confirmed that the Government would provide some economic analysis. He seemed to indicate that that would include analysis of what the Government’s deal would look like economically, compared with our staying in the European Union. I am absolutely confident that should the Government come forward with such economic analysis, it would confirm without a doubt that staying in the European Union would be better economically than any deal that the Prime Minister can produce. I think that not only Members of Parliament but everyone in the country is entitled to know that. If Parliament is pushing ahead with something that will be more economically damaging to us than staying in the European Union, people should know that, and they should be able to make decisions in the future about whom they will support when that is imposed on them.

Let me make a couple of points that the Opposition spokesman might wish to leave, including on the subject of legal clarity in respect of the Opposition’s position. I should be interested to know what legal advice they have received on whether Brexit is stoppable or unstoppable. The leader of the Labour party is on record as saying that it is unstoppable, but the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has said today that it is stoppable. There might be some legal advice behind that, and I should be interested to know its source.

Labour has set six tests for Brexit. The second asks:

“Does it deliver the ‘exact same benefits’ as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?”

The third asks:

“Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities?”

I should be interested to know whether Labour Members have received any legal advice about the compatibility of those two tests. If they have, I suspect it is that the two are completely incompatible.

As for legal clarity from the Government, we need it not only in relation to legal advice concerning the withdrawal agreement. Along with the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry)—I do not know whether she will refer to this today—I seek clarity from the Government about the legal position in respect of the revocability of article 50. The Government have consistently failed to respond to that on the basis that it is a hypothetical question. I would say that for Members of Parliament, it is anything but a hypothetical question. For instance, if we get into a scenario in which we are going to crash out with no deal, the ability or otherwise to revoke article 50 is not a hypothetical question but, I would argue, a question of life or death in terms of what happens to the UK economy.

I welcome today’s debate on the specific point about providing legal advice to Members of Parliament without being selective regarding that provision, but there is a much wider issue about legal advice and the amount of information provided—whether on the economy or other aspects of Brexit—that we need to debate further. Members of Parliament need to be much better informed about these matters before we can possibly be in a position to take a sensible decision regarding whether to support any deal the Prime Minister comes forward with, or indeed to allow no deal to proceed, which is what the Prime Minister is threatening us with if we do not support her deal.