EU Referendum: Electoral Law

Debate between Tom Brake and Ben Bradshaw

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I could not agree more. I am sure that others will contribute to this debate—they may principally or exclusively be from the Opposition Benches—express their concerns about these allegation and ask that the matter be fully investigated in the way it deserves.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I am sure that were he not at the Liaison Committee, the Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, who has done such a fantastic job on this and has just spent four hours listening to the testimony of Christopher Wylie, would be here making exactly the same points as the right hon. Gentleman.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that equally helpful intervention. I hope that during this debate Members who heard that evidence will be able to contribute and update the House on what was said there, although I suspect that a lot of that information will have been contained in the papers this weekend, which I am sure many Members have spent hours assessing over the weekend and since.

I want to focus briefly on the Electoral Commission. This is how its website describes its role in relation to referendums:

“Our focus is on voters and on putting their interests first. Our objectives for referendums are that:…they should be well-run and produce results that are accepted…there should be integrity and transparency of campaign funding and expenditure”.

It is safe to say that neither of those objectives was met with respect to the EU referendum campaign—I am not blaming the Electoral Commission but others involved in the campaign.

What action has the Electoral Commission taken to date? The allegations we read about this weekend were new allegations, but there were existing allegations working their way through the system. I thank WhatDoTheyKnow, openDemocracy and FairVote for their work on this issue. They obtained internal emails from the Electoral Commission that described Darren Grimes’ spending as “unusual”. I think we can all agree it was remarkable that someone whose organisation in the first 10 weeks of its existence apparently managed to raise £107 was given £625,000 to spend in a completely uncontrolled manner. It is remarkable that such confidence was placed in that organisation and the one or two people behind it.

Leaving the EU: NHS

Debate between Tom Brake and Ben Bradshaw

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bradshaw]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). I will develop that argument in more detail in a moment.

Our Committee also recognised that the Government have ruled out, so far, continued membership of the customs union and the single market. In the absence of a change of mind from the Government, the Committee concluded that the least damaging Brexit for our NHS will be for us to keep the closest possible regulatory alignment with the rest of the EU in the long term. A majority of the Committee would probably have liked our recommendations to be stronger on that and to include keeping open the option of an European economic area-type relationship in the long term. However, as Committee members we recognised that it is much more powerful for a Select Committee to agree a unanimous report, which ours is, rather than to disagree on a contested one.

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

Is the right hon. Gentleman able to say whether his Committee found anything that was positive about Brexit from a health perspective?

[Mr Bradshaw]

Not that I recall. Maybe when the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), contributes she will have better recall than me. The unanimity of the evidence we heard was very striking indeed.

As well as pursuing the closest possible regulatory alignment, one of our strongest recommendations to the Government is that they must be much more open and clearer about their Brexit contingency planning for a no-deal scenario.

We note and welcome the Prime Minister’s most recent statement that the UK will seek associate membership of the European Medicines Agency—although, given that, it is tragic that we are losing the EMA headquarters from London to the Netherlands. We also welcome the recognition shown by both the Health Secretary and his Lords Minister in their evidence of the importance of continued regulatory alignment with the rest of the EU. We noted that that was in contrast to the Foreign Secretary’s statement that medicines regulation is one of the areas where he would like to see the UK diverge from the EU. I am pleased that the Health Secretary at least won that argument.

However, we have serious concerns about the Government’s lack of a strategy for a no-deal scenario. The Government are still saying that they want a pick-and-mix, cake-and-eat-it relationship with the EU in the future. The image the Prime Minister used in her speech was of three baskets: full alignment in some areas, full divergence in others and something in between for the rest. But if the other 27 EU countries have made anything clear throughout this process, it is that that option is not available. We can have a Norway-style relationship, or we can have a Canada-style relationship, but we cannot have Canada-plus-plus-plus or Norway-minus-minus-minus. It is our choice.

I wish the Government well in their endeavours to achieve their pick-and-mix deal, but given the strong likelihood, if not certainty, that we will not get that, either Ministers will need to do the sensible thing and concede on the customs union and single market, or we will face the danger of crashing out on World Trade Organisation terms. Let me just spell out what our witnesses told us that would mean.

First, it would mean the seizing up of our medicines and medical equipment supply chains. We export 45 million patient packets of medicines a month to other EU countries and import 37 million. Any customs, regulatory or other barriers to this trade will affect supplies. Radioisotopes, for example, are vital in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. They have a very short lifespan. Their smooth importation from the continent is time critical. The British Medical Association has warned that any disruption to this trade could lead to the cancellation of patient appointments, operations and vital radiotherapy treatment for cancer. Medicines and medical equipment would also become more expensive and there would be delays in getting them licensed and available for British patients. Switzerland gets access to new drugs 157 days later than the EU; Canada, six to 12 months later.

Secondly, we would suffer a further haemorrhaging of NHS staff who are EU nationals, exacerbating the staffing crisis that the NHS and social care face.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I join other hon. Members in paying tribute to PC Keith Palmer. It is a privilege to serve in this place, and an even greater privilege to be protected by courageous, selfless public servants such as PC Keith Palmer. It is tragic that he had to give his life to defend those working in and visiting the Palace. We will remember him, and are doing so today.

What the Government are doing in relation to Brexit, and what the prominent supporters of Brexit have inflicted on this country, is unpardonable. I get angrier and angrier as the ramifications of the decision become clearer. Hon. Members mentioned customs. If we do not get the seamless, frictionless deal that is promised, and small and medium-sized enterprises in this country that export to the EU are required to fill in a customs form, the Institute for Government estimates that that will cost them £30. That cost will add nothing whatever to those businesses.

The UK has been a major player in the European Aviation Safety Agency, but we are at risk of coming out of it. If we go back in, we will be subject to the European Court of Justice.

To bring the debate back to the NHS, what will Brexit do to the Institute of Cancer Research in Belmont, in a neighbouring constituency, and its ability to recruit staff and work co-operatively with other EU countries and institutions? I think this is unpardonable.

Yesterday, the Government made one of the very few of their announcements I have welcomed—the pay increase for staff. I intervened on the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and asked about its impact on the recruitment and retention of EU staff, among others. Of course, as several hon. Members have mentioned, the NHS has been hit by a triple whammy. First, the UK is much less welcoming. That is a direct consequence of Brexit. Those who supported it, who say we are creating a global Britain, need to go out and talk to people and find out that we have left a perception of the UK as an insular country that does not welcome people from abroad. The value of the pound has gone down. Because the pound has crashed, it is much more attractive, particularly for nursing staff who used to come from places such as Portugal, Spain and Italy and remit money to their home countries to support their families, to work in Germany or France. Of course, we are in the bizarre position of choosing to make our trading arrangements with the EU much harder at a point when it seems that every single EU economy is growing faster than ours. We are at the bottom of the pile, so many of the citizens who would have come to this country to work in the NHS will see that their economies are growing faster than ours and that many more jobs are available in their home countries. Therefore, there is less inclination to come here. The NHS, like many other sectors, has been hit by that triple whammy.

Many Members have mentioned the impact on staffing levels, qualifications and retention, but I want to focus on one issue that I do not think other Members have mentioned. The Minister supported Brexit, and I want to understand whether he took into account the impact of our leaving the EU with respect to the falsified medicines directive. I suspect that there was not much small print behind that £350 million extra for the NHS every week, and it certainly did not include a reference to the impact of the UK coming out of the EU in relation to the directive. For those not familiar with it, an EU-wide system ensures that medicines used in the NHS are known to be genuine, rather than being something created in a sweatshop in India, which is not what the packet says. The system is about making sure that everything used in the health service in the EU is genuine, not falsified.

As I understand it, partly as a result of Brexit, the UK has not started building the database required. I see the Minister sending a note back to his officials. I hope that they know the answer. The work has not yet been started on the UK database, but it needs to be in place by February 2019. If it is not, we shall not have the guarantee that the medicines we use here are safe. The Government have apparently said that they definitely want to be part of the database or this arrangement, which is welcome, but it is not clear whether they want to be part of it after Brexit. We need to know immediately from the Minister whether they do want that, and whether the database will be in place by February 2019. If it is not, we shall be at risk of not being able to supply medicines that we are certain are safe.

This may of course be one of those cases when one of the famous red lines on the role of the European Court of Justice may have to be smudged a little bit. My understanding is that the database, and certainly the data within it, would be subject to the ECJ, and therefore if we want to be part of it we will have to swallow the fact that the ECJ will rule over the use of the associated data. That is just one small example of the many—probably millions—of different impacts that Brexit has had where we gain nothing. What we gain is additional cost. We are putting burdens on business. We are certainly not going to get any health benefits. The Minister will be alone in this debate, I think, in trying to find some silver lining in the Brexit cloud in relation to the NHS, because no one else has. He does not have any supporters there in his ranks weighing in behind him, saying “Brexit is brilliant for the NHS; Brexit is what we want for our healthcare.” It is solely on his shoulders. Of course, Mr Davies cannot weigh in, although I know he might be tempted to, but the Chair is not allowed to. So the Minister is alone. Even though he was a Brexit supporter, I suspect that even he does not actually believe that there is anything whatsoever to be gained by Brexit for the NHS.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that it is significant that the only Conservative Back Bencher to come and speak in this debate focused his remarks almost entirely on the benefits he saw of importing Chinese and Indian homeopathic medicine to this country? Does that not give the impression that there is such a paucity of positive arguments that they were the only ones that anyone could come up with?

[Tom Brake]

I think neither the right hon. Gentleman nor I would like to read too much into that contribution. I doubt very much whether it is established Government policy. The hon. Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) is very much an outlier in terms of his approach towards the health service generally.

Now that the Minister has had time to get some information on the falsified medicines directive, I hope he can provide some assurances that the UK will play a part, and will have a database up and running in time for us to be part of that, and he will swallow—although no doubt he was one of the people who said that over his dead body would the ECJ have any impact on us here—the role of the ECJ so that we can be a participant in something that is clearly beneficial from a health point of view, beneficial to patients and to the United Kingdom.

My final point is that the Department of Health and Social Care has asked Ernst and Young to conduct an assessment of the potential implications for the supply of medicines following the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. As I understand it, that was started in March last year and I believe the work was finished in June. I may be wrong and I am sure the Minister will take pleasure in correcting me if I am, but if I am right, we are entitled to know when this is going to be published. We have a nasty suspicion, just as we did with the sectoral analyses and the impact assessments, that the Government are more interested in hiding the impact of Brexit from us than they are in making these reports public.

I am sure that that report would have gone into extensive detail about the potential implications for the supply of medicines following our withdrawal from the EU, and I doubt very much that it will have found anything very positive about those implications. If that report has been published and I missed it, I apologise, but if it has not, I hope the Minister will be able to set out when it will be published, and published in its entirety, so that we can all assess the impact of Brexit on the supply of medicines.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Tom Brake and Ben Bradshaw

Committee: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

Absolutely. Many Members on both sides of the House know that one of the most damaging things that the Government did from the outset was to rule out membership of the single market and the customs union—particularly the customs union. We can see what problems that has caused in relation to Ireland and Northern Ireland. Even now, that can has simply been kicked down the road. The issue has not been resolved in any shape or form.

It is probably fair to say that people, including Members in this House, now have a much clearer understanding of exactly what the single market is. I know that there are Members, particularly on the Government Benches, who claim that, during the course of the EU referendum campaign, people had a very clear idea of what the single market was and what the customs union was; they did not want to be in them. Frankly, I do not believe that to be true. It may be that some of those Members had in their constituencies a trade specialist or an economist who knew precisely what the single market and the customs union were, but I am afraid that, broadly speaking, there was not a great degree of awareness of what they constituted—I am talking about the fact that the single market ensures that UK companies can trade with the other 27 EU countries without any restrictions and without facing arbitrary barriers. That is why it is essential that people support this amendment.

I hope that, in the longer term, the Government will see sense and realise that it is in the UK’s economic interests to stay in the single market and the customs union. I know that my amendment has cross-party support, but I hope that I will also get support from the Labour Front-Bench team, because that will reinforce the message that I am hearing from the Labour party that it is committed to the single market and customs union for the transition period. What I need to hear is that, beyond the transition period, there is also a commitment to the single market and the customs union. The Labour Front-Bench team say they are worried about jobs, and such a commitment is the best way of securing jobs in the United Kingdom. I hope I will get support for that; I will be pressing amendment 124 to a vote.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will get a lot of support from the Labour Benches if his amendment is pressed to a vote. To be fair to our Front Benchers, they have made it clear that they think the option of staying in the single market and the customs union should remain on the table after the transition. The right hon. Gentleman was not quite fair in his description of our Front-Bench policy as I understand it.

[Tom Brake]

All right—the right hon. Gentleman is probably closer to his Front Bench’s policy than I am, certainly in respect of the understanding of it, if not necessarily the direct input. I hope that Labour may be able to take things one step further: to make staying in the single market and the customs union not an option but the party’s actual policy. As I said in an earlier intervention, staying in the single market was in the 2015 Conservative manifesto, which also mentioned the benefits of doing so.

I turn to amendments 363 and 364, and a number of other related amendments, which are on equality and human rights law. The amendments are needed to prevent changes to fundamental rights being made without full parliamentary scrutiny. The Bill permits Ministers to amend laws, including Acts of Parliament, by delegated legislation. The Government have said that the powers will not be used for significant policy changes and that current protections for equality rights and workers’ rights will be maintained. I welcome those commitments, but in order to protect fundamental rights, it is essential that they are guaranteed by reflecting them in the extent of the delegated powers in the Bill.

Many other Members have quoted the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, so I will not. That Committee has expressed strong concerns about the Government’s approach, as has the House of Lords Constitution Committee, which it might be worth quoting. It believes:

“The executive powers conferred by the Bill are unprecedented and extraordinary and raise fundamental constitutional questions about the separation of powers between Parliament and Government.”

That point has been repeated by many Members during these days of debate.

I welcome the fact that the Bill already prevents the use of delegated powers to amend the Human Rights Act 1998, which, of course, recognises the importance of the rights it protects. However, if the Bill does that for the Human Rights Act, I do not quite understand why it does not protect the rights in other Acts. The Equality Act 2006 and the Equality Act 2010 must also be protected, as must the Employment Rights Act 1996 and secondary legislation such as the Working Time Regulations 1998, which were mentioned in an earlier contribution. My amendments would protect the rights in such legislation. I am unlikely to press them to a vote, but the Labour party’s amendments 25 to 27 are similar. In fact, they could be improved by providing equivalent protection to the Equality Act 2006.

In the first day in Committee, the Government made a commitment to table amendment 391, which they have done. I welcome that, but I would like the Minister to clarify one point. I think it was the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), who said that the Government would ensure that they would address

“the presentation of any Brexit-related primary or secondary legislation”—[Official Report, 21 November 2017; Vol. 631, c. 904.]

But as far as I read it, the amendment refers only to secondary legislation. I am not sure whether that means that there will be further amendments, that the Minister misspoke originally or that we are to expect more. Perhaps the Minister will pick up on that point when he responds.

I have a couple more minutes, in which I will refer briefly to EU citizens’ rights. Now, I hope that people are not under the impression that, in moving on to phase 2 of the negotiations, EU citizens in the UK or UK citizens in the EU are happy with where we are at; clearly, they are not. Some 3 million EU citizens in the UK still have significant concerns around the time limits being placed on certain protections. They are also concerned about the all too frequent errors that occur in the Home Office—something with which we are all too familiar—which they anticipate leading to a large number of problems with the proposed changes regarding their status. Nor are UK citizens in the EU any happier with the outcome, and they are as critical of the EU as they are of the UK Government in terms of the speed with which they have moved on. However, as has been said in the debate, given that nothing is agreed until everything has been agreed, those issues can still be pursued.

The final point I want to make relates to amendment 121. If I had had time, I would have read out the list of 21 organisations, although by the sounds of it, given the earlier intervention on this issue, I have missed about 19 organisations, because there are more than 40. However, I would have liked to ask Members present, in a moment of truth and honesty, whether any of them had anticipated that all the organisations on the list would be affected by our leaving the European Union—if, indeed, we do leave, because nothing is certain on that front. I suspect that not a single Member here would have claimed, if they had answered honestly, that they knew of each and every one of those organisations.

We are going to have to go through a costly process of creating our own organisations, with heavy costs attached to that. The purpose of the amendment is simply to ensure that the Government are not able to create these new agencies, or to give substantial new powers to existing agencies, by way of delegated legislation, because that is the sort of thing that needs to be done through Parliament and through primary legislation.

Thank you, Dame Rosie. I think I have kept within your time limit. I would just like to reinforce the point that I will be pressing amendment 124 to a vote, and I hope I will receive support from both sides of the House for it.

Business of the House

Debate between Tom Brake and Ben Bradshaw

Thursday 17th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend was able to be here for Energy questions earlier, but energy efficiency and the green deal came up then. Let me detail some of the specific things that the Government have done. In October 2012, the Department of Energy and Climate Change offered English local authorities the opportunity to bid for funding to reduce the extent of fuel poverty, and £31 million is now going into 60 projects involving just under 170 local authorities. Of course, we have the Warm Front scheme—it was closed in January for new applications but we are still processing others and measures are being taken on the back of that. In response to the shadow Leader of the House, I also set out the measures we are taking to support people who are in fuel poverty or are struggling to pay their bills with a range of initiatives, including the warm home discount, winter fuel payments and cold weather payments.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting the debate next Wednesday on the fate of the Arctic Sunrise crew, who are still being held captive in Murmansk. It is nearly a month since the Russian authorities hijacked the boat and unlawfully detained and arrested the crew, including six Britons, three of whom are from Devon. They have now been charged with the ludicrous charge of piracy. May we have an urgent statement from a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister on what the British Government are doing to secure their release?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, which raises a significant issue. Indeed, the Prime Minister responded to it yesterday in Prime Minister’s questions, because one of his constituents is also affected. The British Government have rightly made representations, and I want to see those people released as soon as possible.