EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the chance to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) on securing it, and I thank you for approving it, Mr Speaker.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) could have conducted this debate on her own, because in the space of what I am reliably informed was about 10 minutes, she utterly dismantled any shred of credibility that the Secretary of State and the Government had left. She has made a succession of attempts to get a simple answer—I can vouch for that, because I was often either behind or beside her when she did so—but one has not been forthcoming. The charitable explanation of that is, as she suggested, that the Government made up the answer just a few days earlier. The less charitable, but, I fear, correct, answer is that they responded to every single question with a deliberate attempt to place obstacles in the way of Members of Parliament and prevent them from doing their job. This Parliament is supposed to be getting back sovereignty as a result of Brexit, but the Government’s first, and often only, response to proper parliamentary inquiry is to stonewall, swat away questions and often to insult the motivations of those asking the questions.

It was a bit rich for the Secretary of State to talk about how many times he has answered these questions. He has not answered them at all. He has responded to them, but has not yet given an answer. Although my right hon. Friend could not, within the terms of parliamentary order, say that he has not been telling the truth, it is fair to say that he has not been telling the whole truth. Although not telling the whole truth is not unparliamentary, it can sometimes have the same effect as telling a complete untruth. Although the explanation that the contract is about securing emergency medical supplies has apparently been talked about in Government circles since August or September last year, it has been used as an explanation for Members of Parliament only for the past few days. It simply does not wash.

[Tom Brake]

I agree that the explanation about medicines is entirely dubious. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, even if it were true, the fact that our Government—in peacetime, not wartime—are having to prepare to air freight in medicines because of the risk that they will get stuck at the border is condemnation enough of their complete incompetence?

[Peter Grant]

Absolutely. The single biggest example of incompetence coupled with complacency—it must be said that a lot of the official Opposition were guilty of this—was triggering article 50 and setting a two-year deadline that we cannot unilaterally get out of, after which we will leave without a deal, before the Government had any idea what no deal meant. It is notable that, although the Prime Minister’s mantra was, “No deal is better than a bad deal,” we just heard the Secretary of State announce that, two years after the referendum, they suddenly discovered that no deal would be a lot more disruptive than they realised. I will just mention in passing that when the Government discovered that a no-deal Brexit would be much worse than they realised, they were allowed to change their minds, have another think about it and do something that they had not done before, but 60 million citizens of these nations have not been allowed to have another think and perhaps another go at a decision now that they have been told what they could not have been expected to know in June 2016 about the disastrous consequences of no deal, because Her Majesty’s Government were blithely unaware of it until August or September last year.

We are told that the reason why the Government brought in this new company was the desire to support a new start-up business. Well, bravo. I would always support that, but it completely annihilates the claim that the reason for urgency was that this was a potential life-or-death medical supplies requirement. If there is a service that cannot be allowed to fail because people’s lives would be at risk, who in their right mind would give the opportunity to undertake that work to somebody who had never done the job before? I am sure that health services and health authorities all over the United Kingdom do what they can to give work experience and job opportunities to young people who have not had too great a time at school, but they would not under any circumstances put them behind the wheel of an ambulance with a blue light and ask them to go and save lives, but that is, in effect, what the Secretary of State is telling us the Government did with this contract. Either the contract was innocuous enough that we could afford to give it to a business that did not exist, because nothing would go wrong if the whole thing collapsed, or it was a life-or-death contract that, for reasons of urgency, had to be signed very quickly. If that was the case, it was an act of utter folly to award it to anyone who did not already have an impeccable record in the running of ferry services.

I commend the efforts of the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) to protect the Secretary of State by saying, “It wasn’t the Secretary of State who was incompetent; it was everyone else in the Government.” My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West has given us the way out of that.

What does the fact that this Parliament does not have the authority to table a vote of no confidence in the Secretary of State for Transport tell us about this model of parliamentary democracy? We do not have the authority to instruct a Prime Minister to remove a Minister from office, and we do not have a say over who the Prime Minister appoints or does not appoint to any post in the Government. We must be one of the very few allegedly democratic Parliaments in Europe that does not get a say before Ministers are appointed. Ministers in the Scottish Government have the same Crown appointment as Ministers in the UK Government, but the First Minister of Scotland will not put them forward until they have been agreed by a motion of the Scottish Parliament. The First Minister herself did not accept the commission from Her Majesty until her appointment had been recommended and agreed by a vote of the Scottish Parliament. Maybe that is one of the 1,001 improvements to democracy we need in this place, so that in future Ministers are appointed and unappointed not at the whim of the Prime Minister but by a vote of their peers in this Parliament and can removed from office when this Parliament loses confidence in them, rather than only when the Prime Minister decides they have become too much of an embarrassment.

Throughout this Brexit shambles, any number of serious issues have been raised—life-or-death issues, issues with the potential to devastate our economy, issues such as citizens’ rights that have the potential to ruin the lives of millions of our fellow citizens, issues with the potential to wipe out entire sectors of industry and put tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people on the dole—and each and every time the knee-jerk, first-choice response from Her Majesty’s Government has been to throw it back at the person raising the concern. If it comes from Labour Members, they are told, “Well, if you lot had been in power, it would have been an even worse disaster.” What kind of a way is that to run a Government? I can understand why a lot of people would have concerns if the current Leader of the Opposition became Prime Minister—I would have my concerns as well—but if the only thing the Government can say to defend themselves is that the Government-in-waiting would be even worse, they are a Government well past their sell-by date.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West has repeatedly and rightly raised valid concerns—I hope she will continue to raise them because she has right on her side—and the response from numerous Ministers has been ridicule: she did not know what she was talking about, she was trying to make trouble, she was just an SNP Member, the SNP did not want to leave the EU anyway so how could they possibly have any good ideas for making Brexit less damaging? That would be unacceptable for a Government with a majority of 150. For a Government who threw away their majority and do not command majority support in the House or the nations, it is a despicable way to behave. If that is the best they can do, not only the Secretary of State but the whole Government have to go.

Leaving the EU: No Deal

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

There is no doubt at all that the EU referendum, as well as having the biggest participation of UK citizens in any democratic test, was also the most corrupt and most dishonest there has ever been and, I sincerely hope, we will ever see. Revelations are still coming out, even today, about the illegalities, some of which I suspect will never be brought to account. The penalties imposed on those who corrupt the democratic process are puny compared with what happens to a person who is found to have attempted to corrupt the full course of justice, so there is clearly a question that has to be addressed in future legislation.

We know that the calamitous effects of no deal are not what the majority of leave voters voted for.

[Tom Brake]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

Not just now.

It is not what they were promised either in the Government’s information or by the leave campaign. It is not what they voted for, and I believe it is the absolute duty of this Parliament and of this Government to make sure it is not what they get. It would be an unpardonable dereliction of duty for the Government, or anyone else, deliberately to use the procedures of this House in such a way as to maximise the danger of the worst possible outcome, the least-favoured outcome, simply because it is the only conceivable way to deliver an outcome that the Prime Minister has decided she wants but which practically nobody else in this Parliament wants.

In the past few days, as was mentioned earlier, a number of Conservative MPs have said publicly that they are likely to resign the party Whip if it looks as though the Prime Minister is herding us towards a no-deal Brexit. I would not want to see anyone put in that position.

I have respect for a number of Conservative MPs—for most Conservative MPs, in fact—even though I disagree with them, and I do not think any of them will hand back their party card easily or with a light heart, but think about it. It would not need many more Tory MPs to do that before suddenly, even with the Democratic Unionist party, the Government no longer have a working majority. There is already a motion of no confidence in the Government on the Order Paper, and it would take only one signature on that motion, and a few more people in the Conservative party to decide to put the countries of this Union before narrow party advantage, and suddenly the entire Government, not just the Prime Minister, would find that their jaikets were on the shoogliest of shoogly nails. That might be what concentrates minds, which would be welcome, but what does it say about the state of British politics when hundreds of thousands of other people’s jobs can be sacrificed by the Cabinet for an ideologically driven hard Brexit but a threat to their own jobs suddenly makes them sit up and take notice?

Ultimately, whatever voting procedure the Government decide to use whenever, if ever, we get to that vote, Parliament will be faced with a choice between two final options, and no deal cannot be one of them. Think about what happens in, to take a random example, a Conservative party leadership election. I understand that quite a few Conservative Members had reason to check the rules recently. If there are more than two candidates, they go through a series of eliminations, with the least supported candidate dropping off at the end of each round and the election finishing with a run-off between the two most supported candidates.

If that process is good enough to pick a temporary, sometimes extremely temporary, leader of the Conservative party, why cannot we do it for the most important peacetime decision these islands have ever taken? If we did that, no deal would be off the table before we started, which would ease a lot of the concerns that the Government are now quite deliberately fuelling.

Leaving the European Union

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Monday 19th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant]

I will defend the right of anybody, whether they are a politician or a normal person, to take exception to somebody’s political views and to knock down their views as hard as they can if need be. However, when they begin to knock or mock the person, a line has been crossed. Obviously, I cannot monitor what is happening on Twitter just now and some people have made sure that I cannot monitor what they are doing publicly on Twitter.

[Tom Brake]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

No, I really need to move on. I said that I did not want to take up too much time and I may have taken more interventions than I expected.

We hear a lot about sovereignty when we talk about Brexit. Regarding sovereignty in Scotland, it might be worth reminding Members that on 4 July 2018 the House unanimously agreed a motion that stated that

“this House endorses the principles of the Claim of Right for Scotland…and… acknowledges the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs.”

How do we square that with the fact that 62% of people in Scotland said that the form of government best suited to their needs was a Government who were part of the family of nations that is the European Union? I am not suggesting that the whole of Brexit has got to stop for ever to suit one part of the United Kingdom, but it is unacceptable that the majority view in Scotland and in Northern Ireland has been completed ignored by the Government almost from day one.

For example, during media interviews over the weekend, the Prime Minister claimed that nobody had put forward a workable alternative to her proposed agreement. That is categorically untrue. It is almost two years since the Scottish Government published “Scotland’s Place in Europe”, setting out a couple of options that would respect the overall result of the referendum to leave the EU but would retain as much as possible of the benefits of EU membership for those parts of the equal partnership of nations where people had voted to remain.

“Scotland’s Place in Europe” did not set out the Scottish Government’s preferred option—and certainly not my preferred option—because it was based on a method of leaving the European Union. It was a significant compromise by the Scottish Government and it was dismissed with hardly a second glance. That is possibly why at the weekend the Prime Minister was, no doubt in absolute good faith, unaware that it had ever been published. I think she put it in the bin without bothering to read it and has now forgotten it ever existed. Ironically, the proposals and options set out in that document are probably closer to what the vote leave campaign promised leaving would be like than anything I have seen since. It is certainly closer to the Brexit campaign promises than anything the Government have produced, either in the speeches made by the Prime Minister or in the draft withdrawal agreement.

It is clear that the Government do not want any kind of meaningful debate or vote in Parliament about what Brexit should mean. The Prime Minister unilaterally and unnecessarily drew red lines before she began to negotiate and then complained that other people had not been pragmatic or flexible enough. We now have a Prime Minister who has insisted from day one that the Brexit negotiations cannot impose a binary choice on Britain, who is herself imposing a binary choice on Parliament by saying, “Take it or leave it. My deal or no deal. If you don’t let me be in charge, I’ll take my ball and go home.”

The Prime Minister, who for two years has been appeasing the hardliners by insisting that no deal is better than a bad deal, is now trying to browbeat the rest of us into voting for a very bad deal, by telling us that no deal is not better than a bad deal—it is actually significantly worse. This Parliament should not accept a choice between two bad outcomes or be forced to accept a choice between two outcomes, neither of which can command anything like a majority in the House. I think it extremely unlikely that the Prime Minister’s draft agreement can get a parliamentary majority. No deal, as beloved by the 28 MPs who signed up to the Leave Means Leave website, has even less chance.

What kind of democracy is it? What kind of taking back control for Parliament is it if Parliament is denied the option of recommending a proposal that is probably the only one that would gain an overall majority in Parliament? Of course, it does not mean that Parliament can overturn the result of a referendum that was held two years ago. I do not think that England and Wales can stay in the European Union unless there is a referendum in which their people say that that is what they want to do. Surely, if Parliament believes, and it is the judgment of 650 Members, that the best option available now is that we do not leave, we have got to be prepared to go back to the people and say, “Now that you know exactly what this Brexit thing really means, do you still want to go ahead with it? Do you want the Government to try and get a better deal, or do you now think that we should not be going ahead with Brexit at all?”

I am absolutely convinced that there will be a people’s vote in Scotland in the not too distant future. The Prime Minister, and indeed the rest of Parliament, may well have a significant part to play in deciding whether that people’s vote is conducted among 5.5 million people on one question or 60 million people on a different question. The intransigent and patronising approach to Brexit that the UK Government have been adopting is effectively persuading greatly increasing numbers of people in Scotland that when we exercise our unalienable right to choose the form of government best suited to our needs, fewer and fewer people in Scotland are prepared to believe that that will be based in the city of London for much longer.

[Tom Brake]

On a point of order, Mr Hollobone. I seek your guidance on whether it is appropriate for Members who have taken part in this debate to tweet during it and to use the word “betrayal”. Would you agree, Mr Hollobone, that using that word in such a heated discussion is something that Members should know to avoid? We are trying to work in a reasoned and safe manner, as far as possible. The use of the word “betrayal” potentially has risks associated with it.

Legislating for the Withdrawal Agreement

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am pleased to be able to contribute to this debate. First, I invite Members to spare a thought for our good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), whose husband passed away recently and his funeral is taking place today. I have no doubt that otherwise a lot more of my colleagues would have been here. Certainly, my thoughts are very much with Marion and her family today.

We are talking about legislating to leave the European Union, but I find it very difficult to know how even the best drafter of legislation that we have—and there are some pretty good ones in this place—can have a chance of drafting legislation when the Government still have not quite decided what they are legislating for. The first thing that anybody asks if they are asked to draft something, whether legislation or a legal contract, is, “What do you want it to say and what do you want it to do?” The Minister talks about the overwhelming majority of the draft agreement now being in place. That overwhelming majority is 80%; it has increased from 75% about three months ago. Even if we accept that it is the hard bits that are still to be done, if it takes us three months to do 5%, we can see that 20% before the end of March is pushing it a wee bit. Even if the Government knew what they wanted the legislation to say, it would be difficult; when they cannot decide what they want the legislation to achieve, it is a potential recipe for disaster.

That is not talking down Britain. I thought it was quite funny that when the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) spoke earlier, the Minister suggested that he was failing to get behind Britain and told him to get behind British businesses and British institutions, because he was highlighting some of the not only potential but now very real and present-day difficulties, problems and downsides to Brexit. Although I disagree with quite a lot of what he says about Brexit, I would suggest that his comments are a lot closer to the comments of British business, British universities and British civic society than some of the platitudes that we continue to get from Government Front Benchers—let alone some of the stuff we get from their so-called allies on the Back Benches.

[Tom Brake]

I echo the hon. Gentleman’s comments about his colleague. Is he aware that British businesses are already finding that when they are dealing with EU suppliers with a lead-in time for orders of six months, those suppliers are saying, “Well, of course we can sign a contract with you, but you’re going to have to bear all the risk of things like no-deal tariffs and delays on the border, and we’re not going to carry any of that risk.”? That is already happening to British businesses.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I will begin by commenting on some of the earlier contributions. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean). I am not aware that anyone has said that all women are against Brexit, but I am aware that recent polls suggest that women have switched in large numbers from leave to remain. Clearly, that does not mean that all women support remain, but there has been a switch.

I was going to suggest that the hon. Lady should perhaps get out more, but that would have been rude, because I am sure that she does get out among her constituents. However, I am rather surprised that she has found no one who has changed their mind on Brexit. There are people who have switched from supporting leave to supporting remain, but equally others have gone in the other direction. I am not quite sure about the circles in which she has been moving—perhaps they are particularly set in their ways—but I suggest that, even in her constituency, there are people whose thinking has changed in both directions.

I corroborate the analysis of the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) of where the Government are at. However, he was far too generous about the legacies that David Cameron and the Prime Minister are going to leave us and about the assessment of their contribution to history, because I think things will be even bleaker than the situation that he portrayed.

The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) said that he did not support a people’s vote due to his worries about how badly the first vote was conducted. However, something is significantly different now. Over the past two years and three months, we have had the debates that we should have had in the run-up to the referendum. Issues such as no deal meaning that Health Ministers will require pharmaceutical companies to stockpile medicine is something that should have been in the debate before the EU referendum took place. The current debates about the impact on the economy, the pharmaceutical sector, the automotive sector, aviation and so on should have happened before the vote. I therefore hope that there will be a final say on the deal or a people’s vote and that it will be better informed debate. I accept that some players will seek to muddy the waters, but at least some of what we should have been talking about two years has been aired.

I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) is not in his place, because he said—I have heard him say this often—that the people he spoke to during the referendum campaign only talked to him about the single market and the customs union and understood perfectly what they both meant. Well, he and I actually shared a platform during the campaign and, although I do not have perfect recall, I am reasonably certain that the people in that exchange focused on immigration, which was clearly a major factor. Yes, there may have been some who referred to the single market and the customs union—I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman referred to them many times during that debate—but for the audience it was about immigration. People were not saying that they wanted to come out of the customs union because that would enable us to do trade deals. I appreciate the irony of the Prime Minister going to Nigeria, which is trying to negotiate a customs union with its neighbouring countries. We are leaving the customs union while Nigeria and the countries in that region are trying to establish a customs union, but such is the illogicality of much of what we are doing at present.

The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), was present for the earlier debate in Westminster Hall about article 50, but he came and sat here in the Chamber too. I was hoping that he would answer the question that I put to him during an exchange in Westminster Hall about whether article 50 was revocable, because the House is entitled to know the Government’s view. Even if the Government are not willing to reveal their hand—although they should, because Members of Parliament are entitled to know something that will be key to some of the decisions that we might be taking —I hope that the Wightman case in the Scottish courts may lead to the matter being decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which will determine whether article 50 is revocable. I think it will determine that article 50 is revocable, and I hope it can do so on a timescale that is pertinent and helpful to this debate. Of course if that happens, at least we will have demolished one of the Government’s arguments, that they cannot revoke article 50. Hopefully the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) will be able to clarify whether the Government are now willing to take a position on this or whether they will simply run with, “We are not going to answer this question, because it is not something we intend to do.”

[Peter Grant]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that possibly the reason the Government will not tell us their view is that they know perfectly well that article 50 can be revoked and that the European Union would be quite willing to talk on those terms? It is not a question of legality; it is a question of obduracy and obstinacy on the part of Her Majesty’s Government.

[Tom Brake]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman, who has of course provided the Minister with an opportunity to get rid of that obduracy by providing some transparency so that we all know the Government’s view on this.

I will speak briefly, which I am sure Conservative Members, and possibly some Opposition Members, will welcome, in part because I have a nasty feeling that we may have all this debate about a withdrawal agreement that is not then secured. We are having this debate, but the evidence from Conservative Members who are no longer in their place is that they are not going to support the Chequers agreement, and therefore we are very unlikely to have a withdrawal agreement to discuss or to vote on at some point in the future.

I hope that one thing the Minister will do in his response is to go on the record again on the question of whether, when the Government table the motion on the withdrawal agreement and the future relationships, Members of Parliament will be able to amend it to enable us to insert a people’s vote. In the same vein, I hope he will say whether, in fact, it would be in order for the withdrawal agreement Bill itself to be amended to allow a people’s vote, if Members choose to table such an amendment. I put those two specific points to the Minister, and if he has not made a note, I know that people elsewhere will have so that he is able to respond to those questions directly. If he fails to do so, I suspect I will be writing to him to require that he does respond.

The withdrawal agreement includes a transition period or, as the Government prefer to call it, an implementation period—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) that it is not entirely clear what the Government will actually be implementing during the said transition period. In many ways it is just a standstill period, as opposed to a transition period or, indeed, an implementation period.

With the transition period and with the fact that we are going to be rule takers, the Government have succeeded in uniting hard-core Brexiters and remainers. Congratulations, because there has not been much unity so far, but on that point the Government have found a way to unite two very different, opposing wings. On the one hand, nobody wants to be a rule taker; on the other, although we might want to accept rules from the European Union, we want to participate in that decision-making process, as opposed to being excluded from it.

On EU citizens and UK citizens, I am pleased with something the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) said—I am rarely so—because he called for the rights of EU citizens to be ring-fenced. We have also heard that from Labour Members, and Liberal Democrat Members support it, and I am sure Plaid Cymru and SNP Members do too. We need to park this issue. The Government could do so by saying that they are going to legislate unilaterally to provide full rights to EU citizens, regardless of what happens and regardless of whether we end up with no deal. The Government would then not have to say that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. They could say, “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, but we have actually agreed the rights of EU citizens.”

I hope that would provide some reassurance to UK citizens in the EU. I am not sure what other Members are finding, but I am on the receiving end, perhaps because I am my party’s spokesman, of a steady stream of emails from people across the EU who might have lived in, say, France for 15 or 20 years but are now being asked to do things they have never been asked to do before. In some cases, elderly people are being told to drive 30 miles to a particular office to get their paperwork, which is causing them some concern. If the Government were unilaterally to agree those rights, the issue could be addressed more quickly and the concerns of many, often retired, UK citizens in the EU would be addressed.

Documents often have pages in the middle saying, “These pages are left deliberately blank.” Well, clearly that is what has happened in relation to Ireland and Northern Ireland, because, after two years and three months, we are still no closer to getting a solution to the Ireland-Northern Ireland border, unless of course the solution is, as outlined in the technical note, that if any business trading across the border has any problems it should talk to the Irish Government. It is an interesting approach from the British Government to advise British businesses that if they want answers to questions about cross-border trade, they should talk to the Irish Government. I have not previously heard of that approach, and it is not one that I would commend, but it neatly sums up the difficulties the Government have got themselves into on this question.

I am sorry that he is not in his place to hear this, but the hon. Member for North East Somerset has previously referred rather glibly to

“our ability, as we had during the troubles, to have people inspected.”

That rather neglects the impact that that might have on peace in Northern Ireland, about which Northern Ireland’s police chief, George Hamilton, has expressed great concern.

George Hamilton revealed the level of chaos surrounding preparations for the border in Ireland after Brexit, claiming that no one is in charge. He told Members that no go-to co-ordinator is actually taking responsibility for the project, which does not sound very positive. I hope that since 27 June a go-to person has been identified.

I made an intervention earlier on the divorce bill, and I was accused by the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) of not supporting British business. Well, I talk regularly to British business, which is why I went, long before any DExEU Minister did, to talk to the port of Dover authorities about the impact on that port and on all the business that goes through it.

It would perhaps be more honest of the Government if they were to set it out that not only will there be the £39 billion divorce bill, give or take a little, and that European leaders, contrary to the words of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), are not going to “go whistle,” but that there is no doubt we will be making ongoing payments for a number of years thereafter—one report suggests we will be making payments until 2064. People are entitled to know that, because it slightly changes the parameters of the criteria on which people based their decision two years and three months ago. If at that point people had been told, “Well, it is a down payment of £39 billion, and then an ongoing payment, which will probably continue, certainly in relation to pensions, until 2064,” I think the outcome might have been different. Certainly people would not have swallowed or taken at face value the rather glib statements of the leave campaign.

I have a real worry, as other Members, including the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, have expressed, that what we will get in the framework, and perhaps Mr Barnier will facilitate this, is an almighty fudge—something that enables the UK Government to come back and say, “Peace in our time,” and wave a bit of paper, and that enables Mr Barnier to go on and pursue other interests that he may have. I have written to Mr Barnier and to the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union asking some very precise questions about what criteria this political agreement will have to hit so that we can have some substance, a point made by the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook). We want a very precise agreement that sets out the terms. What we do not want is a vague undertaking that achieves our getting out of the European Union and then, for the next 15 or 20 years, leaves future Governments the responsibility of trying to unpick the mess caused in seeking to achieve that exit. I hope that that will not happen and that the House would reject it. If the agreement is just the equivalent of a couple of sides of A4 with a lot of clichés and a lot of nice words about how we are going to work closely together in the future, I hope that Parliament will say no to it.

There has been a lot of reference to how EU trade deals will simply be rolled over, and how the EU has said that is fine. I have asked the embassies of the countries involved—I have also asked Ministers in parliamentary questions, but they have not really answered—how many of those countries have written to the UK Government saying that they are happy for their trade deal to be rolled over without any change. I imagine that Members can guess how many have written back to me saying that they have confirmed that: zero. Not a single embassy that has responded has been willing to put it in writing that they will allow their deal to be rolled over. Some have said that they want to reopen aspects of the deal. Good luck to the Government if they think that all 65 trade deals will simply roll over just like that, lock, stock and barrel. That is not the feedback that I have got from the countries involved.

I conclude by putting on record again the questions that I have asked the Minister, so that he really cannot escape answering: whether the Government consider that article 50 is revocable, and whether the motion that they will bring forward or the withdrawal agreement Bill itself will be amendable to allow a people’s vote. I am sure he has listened carefully twice to me asking him those questions, so I am absolutely confident that I will get simple yes/no answers when he responds.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

Few of us can speak on the fishing industry with such knowledge and authority as my hon. Friend.

The nearest we have had to a public vote anywhere on any of the consequences of a hard Brexit was the public vote against the possibility of a hard border across the island of Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland and the people of the Republic of Ireland overwhelmingly rejected such a notion when they endorsed the Good Friday agreement and, of course, the people of Northern Ireland, the only people in the United Kingdom who would be affected by a hard border, voted to remain in the EU. How can anyone argue that the best way to give effect to those votes is for decisions to be taken by Ministers who represent a party with no MPs in Northern Ireland? The people of Northern Ireland have no way of re-electing or not re-electing those Ministers, based on whether their decisions are in the interests of those people.

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

Is the hon. Gentleman as outraged as I am that it looks as though we will have no possibility to debate those issues today? Is he as surprised as I am that, unless the Department for Exiting the European Union has not kept its website up to date, we do not even have a Minister from DExEU here listening to the debate?

[Peter Grant]

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are quite used to seeing Government Ministers abandoning their posts as soon as anybody from the third party in Parliament gets up to speak. He will have to take it up with them why that might be.

At the end of this entire process, we owe it to ourselves, to each and every one of us, to acknowledge that later this year some Members of Parliament—possibly those on the Conservative Benches, possibly those on the Opposition Benches—may in all conscience want to go back to their constituents and say, “I recognise the way that you voted in June 2016. I respect your right to take part in that vote, but in all conscience I cannot be part of a decision that I believe in my heart of hearts will be deeply damaging to your community and to these islands and nations.” Members of Parliament must have the right to say to their constituents, “On this occasion, what I fundamentally believe to be in your interests differs from what you believe to be your wishes.” Each of us should be given the right to go back to our constituents and face the potential political consequences. I have no qualms whatever about the political consequences of following my own conscience if it is against the wishes, expressed or otherwise, of my constituents. That is a decision we all have to be prepared to take from time to time.

This is possibly the most important occasion of this Parliament—and of many previous Parliaments. Members of Parliament must be given the opportunity to decide for themselves where they place the balance between what we believe is best and what our constituents have told us they want. If Members of Parliament are not prepared to face up to that very difficult dilemma, there is a question whether they should be Members of Parliament at all.

Leaving the EU: Parliamentary Vote

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Monday 11th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tom Brake]

Demonstrators outside are saying, “Stop Brexit!” Good timing.

[Peter Grant]

They are indeed. I can speak for longer if you want, Mr Austin, but—

EU Referendum: Electoral Law

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

My hon. Friend has carefully enumerated all the different ways in which some of the promises made during the EU referendum campaign have been broken, and why people might now be thinking that a vote on the deal and an exit from Brexit is the only way out for them. Certainly, I must say that sometimes I wonder if the Prime Minister feels the same way, because when she seeks to answer questions about the economic benefits for the UK of us doing this, she is sorely short of any sensible answers.

I want to focus briefly on the issue of the Electoral Commission’s resources. It has confirmed in answer to my letter that it does have the resources it needs. I welcome that and take its word for it; however, when I was a Minister and had some responsibility for this area I was aware from contact with charities, political groups and others that the Electoral Commission often struggled to respond to queries in a timely manner, and there was always an appetite for more guidance and more detailed guidance. Perhaps the resourcing has changed, as it seems to be confident that it has what it needs to investigate this, but, as I said earlier, my hon. Friends and I have concerns about the progress made on some of the existing inquiries.

As long ago as 10 March last year Lord Tyler drew the attention of the Minister in the Lords to the fact that the leave campaign stood accused not only of lying in the substance of its campaign, but of cheating in the process of delivering it. He instanced the claim, which others have just referred to, by Arron Banks that Cambridge Analytica had played a crucial role in the campaign and “won it for Leave”. He also described the use of a very substantial anonymous donation to the Democratic Unionist party, as has also been mentioned, to fund a campaign wholly targeted at the British mainland. I am a little perplexed as to why those on the Conservative Benches do not get aggravated about the fact that in the UK it is fine for a very large anonymous donation to be made to a political party such as the DUP and for it then to be spent not in Northern Ireland. That smells rather bad to me, and I am surprised that Conservative Members do not share my concern.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am sure that, like me, the right hon. Gentleman is at least cheered by the fact that some Conservative MPs seem very keen to participate in today’s debate despite the fact that 24 hours ago none of them thought there was anything worth debating. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that on matters as important as the long-term constitution and international status of these islands, it is not enough for somebody to assert, full of bluster, that there is nothing wrong? All of us individually and collectively must be seen to be above suspicion, and when suspicions are raised with the volume and intensity of the last few days, there must be a full investigation, hopefully to prove nothing is amiss, but if there is anything amiss, those responsible must be held to account or the public will completely lose any faith in our democracy?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and his point is well made. I am sure he will agree with me and the other Members who have already expressed strong views on the fact that when anyone has broken electoral law—if indeed it has been broken—that requires investigation and appropriate action needs to be taken.

Government’s EU Exit Analysis

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful for that intervention. We have to be careful about language. There is whistleblowing as defined in the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 and it is not clear whether this incident would comply with that.

As a council leader, I sometimes found myself having to respond to information that technically should not have been disclosed. I always took the view that, if the motivation was clearly public interest, we should seek to protect those who did that, even if they had not technically done it in the correct way. The question today should not be about the motivation or principles of whoever disclosed this information into the public domain. The question should be first about what the information tells us, and secondly about what the Government’s determination to hide this information from the people tells us about the Government’s handling of Brexit.

I hope that, when the Under-Secretary of State responds, he will do what the Minister did not do earlier, and tell us when the Government started to prepare this analysis. Is this the homework that the Secretary of State had to confess to a Select Committee he had not done yet when the House asked for it? It looks suspiciously like this is not only the Secretary of State’s late homework but that he copied it off his new pal Big Mike in the high school up the road in Scotland. The similarities between the Scottish Government’s analysis that the Government rubbished two weeks ago and the Government’s own analysis are so striking that it would be a remarkable coincidence if the people who prepared those analyses had not been copying from each other.

[Tom Brake]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is clearly important to get this information out into the public domain or in controlled circumstances. Is he as worried as I am that, despite having information out in the public domain that tells us that Brexit, whatever version we go for, is going to cause us huge damage, not only the Government but, it seems, those on the Labour Front Bench are still going to proceed none the less?

[Peter Grant]

Again, this may not be the time for that debate. My position is perfectly clear. We have the results of four national votes and we have to seek to respect those as far as possible. We cannot respect them all because two of us want to leave and two of us want to stay, and the European Union does not allow bits of nation states to stay or go. However, on the Government Front Bench and, to a lesser extent, on the main Opposition Front Bench, there has been a failure to distinguish between leaving the European Union and leaving the single market, the customs union and various other European institutions, which is where the real damage exposed by these analyses lies. It is possible to leave the European Union, to comply with the referendum result, and not to bring down on ourselves, for example, the potential 8% reduction in Scottish GDP as a result. That can only be done if the Government admit that they got it wrong and step back from the red line on single market and customs union membership. There was no referendum about the single market or the customs union. At the moment, we only have unilateral political dogma from the Government, telling us that we have to leave.

The real reason why these analyses were never done and they were kept secret for as long as possible after they had been done is that they show that, in deciding to take us out of the customs union and the single market, the Government got it badly wrong. All we need is for the Government to admit they got it wrong and this whole debate then becomes an irrelevance.

The Government’s behaviour demonstrates again the fallacy of the argument that Parliament holds the Government to account. In effect, we do not have an electoral system that is designed to produce a proper Parliament. We have an electoral system for this place that is designed to produce one winner and one loser, and it does not like it if there is more than one party on the alleged losing side, because the system cannot cope with having more than one big Opposition party. It does not like it if it is unclear who the overall winner is. This place is always in turmoil if a coalition has to be formed and there is a minority Government. The whole procedure of Parliament—the way that Bills are produced, the way that time is allocated and so on—is based on the assumption that the Government decide and just every once in a while Parliament tries to tell the Government that they should have decided something different.

In the discussion we had about the first batch of Brexit papers before Christmas—there have been elements of it again today—we heard that it is disloyal to the country and to our constituents for any Member of Parliament to suggest that the Government have got it wrong and should be doing something different. Whether it is in relation to publishing or not publishing the papers, to handing them over in secret to a Committee or not, to the decision to take us out of the customs union in the first place or to any other decision that the Government take and announce without having the full mandate of the people, it must be open to any Member of Parliament to criticise and seek to change it.

When I keep hearing Members—not so much those on my Benches, because we have a clear mandate from our constituents—on either the Government Benches or other Opposition Benches being denounced as traitors and enemies of the people simply for standing up in this place for what they believe in, we have to ask ourselves what is going on with democracy in these four nations. In some ways, that is even more fundamental than our membership of the EU and its related institutions. We have to get a grip.

It was disappointing to hear comments yesterday from Government Back Benchers about London-based elite remoaners. No one on the Government Front Bench picked up on that and said that that kind of language is not acceptable. There should never be any need to question the integrity or motivation of anybody in the Chamber simply because we disagree, however passionately, with what they are saying.

Brexit Deal: Referendum

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Monday 11th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant]

Well, it might become available after we leave, but I have not seen any hint of it in the Chancellor’s forward spending projections, or any indication that the NHS will suddenly become adequately funded, after not having been for a long time. The simple fact is that that was a good example of taking one isolated piece of information about the European Union and interpreting it to say whatever was wanted. In a previous Westminster Hall debate, I remember a number of hon. Members on the leave side claiming that nobody paid any attention to that big red bus anyway, which makes me wonder why they spent so much money driving it the length and breadth of these islands.

On the change of circumstances, I would always say that if it cannot be demonstrated that there has been some change of circumstances, it is difficult to argue for a rerun of any kind of process, whether an election, a referendum or anything else. In this case, it is difficult to be sure whether the facts have changed or whether people are more in possession of the facts than before. Certainly, some people have switched from vote leave to vote remain because they simply did not understand how complicated and fundamental a change this could be—the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) gave some exceptional examples of that.

With permission, Sir David, I will quote at greater length than I would normally from a document that was published shortly before the referendum, to give an indication of how people’s interpretation of the facts can sometimes change. It says:

“Voting to leave the EU would create years of uncertainty and potential economic disruption. This would reduce investment and cost jobs…it could result in 10 years or more of uncertainty as the UK unpicks our relationship with the EU and renegotiates new arrangements with the EU and over 50 other countries… Some argue that we could strike a good deal quickly with the EU because they want to keep access to our market. But…it would be much harder than that… No other country has managed to secure significant access to the Single Market, without having to: follow EU rules over which they have no real say; pay into the EU; accept EU citizens living and working in their country”.

A number of hon. Members will be familiar with that information, which comes from the document about the referendum published by the UK Government in April 2016. The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) spoke glowingly about what a good-quality publication it was.

We might look back to those Government announcements from April 2016 and say that they got it right, but unfortunately they are now telling us that they got it wrong. They are telling us that the negotiations will be very quick and there will be no loss of investment, no loss of jobs and all the rest of it. The Government have changed their mind; they have obviously decided that there has been a significant change of circumstances. The Prime Minister has gone from a remainer to a leaver; the Foreign Secretary had written an article for a newspaper saying why we should remain, and changed his mind; and of course, the Environment Secretary went from the best friend and strongest supporter of the Foreign Secretary’s leadership campaign to somebody who chose to stand against him. Even at the highest levels of government in these islands, Cabinet Ministers can change their minds very quickly. I understand the argument that if the people change their mind at some point in the future, they should be given the opportunity to express that at the ballot box.

Generally speaking, however, I take the view that the way for a party to change a referendum result is to get elected at the ballot box with an explicit manifesto commitment to a referendum. The Liberal Democrats had that manifesto commitment at the last election, but they did not come close to winning. I do not think we can say that everybody who voted Liberal Democrat wanted another referendum. We certainly cannot say that everybody who voted for another party did not want another referendum. If somebody wants to put the public through a process such as a referendum, they have to have some kind of clear public mandate for that. Only in exceptional circumstances could Parliament decide on a referendum that was not in the manifesto of the Government or the Opposition. I am not saying that it could never happen, but I think it would be very unusual indeed.

Having said that, we have to accept the simple fact that we have never had a referendum on leaving the single market or the customs union. Some people might claim that we did because somebody on the vote leave side and somebody on the vote remain side said that we would have to leave the single market and the customs union if the result was to leave. I caution hon. Members to be careful before they start asking the House to accept that the losers’ views are the ones that have to be put into place after the votes have been counted. I could give examples of where that logic would lead to conclusions that Conservative and Labour Members would be unhappy about.

The Government’s response to the question of the single market and the customs union has been to conflate what is necessary with what they have unilaterally decided. We now have Conservative Back Benchers who believe in good faith that it is not possible to leave the European Union without leaving the single market and the customs union. Quite clearly, that is possible. It is not what the Government have decided, but they have decided that because they decided it; it was nothing to do with the referendum.

The Government have refused point blank to tell us whether they have taken legal advice on whether article 50 can be withdrawn or revoked at any time for any reason. They are simply saying that their decision is that they will not revoke it—end of story. I wonder why they are being so coy about what legal advice they have had. Not that long ago, in the lead-up to other referendums, the Government were quite happy to publish legal advice when it seemed to support the political position they wanted to adopt. There is a degree of inconsistency there: sometimes the Government will publish legal advice and sometimes they will not. As long as the Government will not publish the advice they have had on whether article 50 can be revoked, people will wonder why.

[Tom Brake]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the most likely reason that the Government want to withhold that advice is because they do not want to give people the certainty that article 50 is revocable? I think that is what the advice says.

[Peter Grant]

The right hon. Gentleman may well say that; I could not possibly comment. I remind him, however, that like his colleague the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), I am a member of the Exiting the European Union Committee and we have had a lot of interesting discussions about why the Government might or might not want to disclose stuff, to decline to say whether it has been done, and then eventually to say that they cannot disclose it because it does not exist.

I understand why the result of the June 2016 referendum came as a massive shock for a lot of people—people who voted to leave, as well as some who voted to remain. It is correct that most people, however they voted, had no idea what a massive decision they were taking. I have been accused—in the Daily Express, no less—of saying that people were stupid. I do not think that they were stupid on 23 June; I think that they were badly informed—sometimes they were ill-informed and certainly they were misinformed a lot of the time.

The social implications of leaving the European Union have still not been properly discussed. I travel to other parts of Europe on parliamentary business, and I went to Northern Ireland with the Exiting the European Union Committee just a few days ago. The social impact of a possible change in the relationship between Northern Ireland and its neighbour to the south is really frightening people. I do not use that word lightly; people are frightened about what will happen to their communities and to their social and family links.

In Donegal, if someone needs radiotherapy, they go to a foreign country—they cross the border into Northern Ireland and the Government of Ireland help to pay for that hospital. On both sides of the border, people are used to the fact that they go to hospital or to school or to visit their granny in a different country. It is not just about whether people will be allowed to stay there and continue to make those journeys every day of their lives, but about the fact that a decision has been taken—not by the people of Northern Ireland, incidentally; as in Scotland, they voted to remain in the European Union—by somebody else that will fundamentally change the psychology of the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The psychological and social impact of Brexit in Northern Ireland has not been touched on in most of our debates over here.

Comments have been made today about the size of the majority in the referendum. I am not convinced that that is a strong argument because we could wait a long time before we got any more than a 10% majority either way on the question of leaving the European Union. People have sincerely held views in opposite directions, so if we set a limit that there has to be a majority of more than so-and-so per cent., we could be going over it again and again. I do not think that would help.

If the Government want to continue to insist that Parliament simply has to vote for whatever deal they come back with at the end of this process—remembering that the only choice we have just now as far as they are concerned is to accept their deal or have no deal at all—it is important that they are a lot more inclusive about who contributes to those negotiations. They have to be prepared to listen much sooner in the process, not only to the Opposition, but to their own Back Benchers. If they had had the humility to do that during the first round of negotiations, we would have got to the stage we reached on Friday a lot sooner and with much less pain and grief.

The time may yet come when I will be prepared to say that there has to be a second referendum on EU membership. I do not rule that out; indeed, I suspect that I am coming closer to that view as each day passes. However, although I fully understand the grief that people are suffering as a result of the vote, I think that when we give people the right to take a decision, we must give them the responsibility to live by its results. I suspect that if we had a second referendum, either during this Parliament or at some other time, we would have a much more constructive and better informed debate than we did last time. I certainly know the result I would hope for if that happened, but—as always— I will accept any result that shows the will of the people.

Duties of Customs

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

If I am indeed following a pragmatist, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will listen to what is being said by many economic sectors, and perhaps read carefully the 58 sectoral reports once they are published, and come to the very pragmatic conclusion that he, as a pragmatist, will want to start to be more outspoken about the Government’s agenda of taking us over the cliff.

Members have suggested that the UK needs to leave the EU to be able to trade, but that is clearly not true. Many European countries are just much more successful than us at trading with other countries, including Germany, France and Italy. They do so within the EU, so there is no reason why we could not do so more effectively than at present. If we are unable to trade while we are part of the EU, I wonder why previous Prime Ministers, particularly David Cameron, spent so much time and effort sending trade delegations to various countries around the world to drum up trade. Was that a completely pointless exercise? Was that just about having 10-course banquets in Beijing, or was it because we can do a lot to boost trade while we are in the European Union? I think it was the latter, rather than a desire to have big dinners courtesy of foreign Governments. Of course the UK is in a position to trade—and, perhaps, to do so more effectively—with other countries while we are members of the EU.

It is nice, as a Liberal Democrat, to be able to make a speech that is longer than three minutes, so I might take full advantage of that in the couple of hours that remain for me to make a contribution, before the Front Benchers make their response. First, I want to focus on the issue of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Frankly, Opposition Members have had enough of listening to Ministers’ platitudes about how they will sort out the problem that is the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. We do not want to hear about “frictionless” any more, or about blue-skies solutions that do not yet exist. What we want to hear from Ministers is the solution to this problem, because if the Irish Prime Minister was asking on Friday for a written guarantee from the UK Government that there would be no border controls, that was because he is worried and because he has heard nothing from our Government to explain how we will be able to leave the customs union, yet have no border and no border controls between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

[Peter Grant]

Does the right hon. Gentleman also agree that if the Government were to have a change of heart and agreed to ask to remain in the single market, that would take out two of the three stumbling-blocks? The rights of EU and UK citizens would be solved immediately, and the Irish question, although not completely answered, would be made a lot more soluble. We would then be left with the financial settlement as the only stumbling block to getting on to talk about trade deals, which is what we want to do.

[Tom Brake]

I entirely agree. Like other hon. Members, I am perplexed as to why the Government ruled out several obvious solutions to the dilemmas they face from the outset.

I am sure that a number of Members in the Chamber will have visited Northern Ireland. When I did so, which was about five weeks ago, one of the communities I visited was Forkhill in South Armagh, which was very badly affected during the troubles. A garrison of 3,000 soldiers in that town was responsible for the safety of approximately 24,000 people. The people of Forkhill reckon that when the garrison was there, it was the most militarised place in western Europe, and they are worried about returning to the troubles they experienced there in the ’70s, ’80s and so on. People were placing improvised explosive devices in culverts, under roads and on the approach roads to the border, and the residents of Forkhill are worried that there will be no means to control safely the 275 border points between Ireland and Northern Ireland. If the proposal is that part of the solution will be to conduct ad hoc checks at separate border points, or at some distance from the border, those people are worried that the British customs officer, the British police officer, or perhaps the British soldier will become a target.

All we have heard from a succession of Ministers is dismissive comments. The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union dismisses any concerns expressed about the difficulties that could arise at the border. We need reassurances from Ministers, not the dismissive comments they are making.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Thursday 26th October 2017 Commons Chamber

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

The Commission has given no formal consideration to the cost of introducing electronic voting. Its responsibility is limited to any financial or staffing implications of any change in the present system, were a change to be agreed by the House. Such a change would normally follow a report by the Procedure Committee, which would, I am sure, welcome representations from the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) and his hon. Friends.

[Peter Grant]

While I accept that this is not primarily a matter for the Commission to decide, does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that before we spend astronomical sums on refurbishing this place, the Commission should at the very least build in the capacity for electronic voting in the future, should the House at some point decide to move itself into the 20th century before the rest of the world enters the 22nd?

[Tom Brake]

I have set out for the hon. Gentleman perhaps the most effective way in which he could voice his concerns, but an opportunity may well be provided shortly by a contingency Chamber, in which case it would of course be open to the House to decide to implement an electronic voting system if it considered that to be appropriate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tom Brake and Peter Grant

Thursday 21st January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington)]

I anticipate that both Houses will have an opportunity to debate the matter once the Joint Committee on the Palace of Westminster has reported. The question of future scrutiny will be aired in those debates and the House of Commons Commission will listen carefully to the views expressed before making any decisions.

[Peter Grant]

Many of my constituents find it difficult to understand how we can consider spending billions of pounds on a palace—literally a palace—for parliamentarians when so many of them can barely afford a roof of any kind over their heads. Can we have an assurance that the Joint Committee, which so far has met entirely in private, will soon meet in public and that all documentation relating to its considerations will be made public?

[Tom Brake]

I am sure that the Joint Committee and the Leader of the House will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s comments and will want to respond positively. It is worth underlining the fact that we have neglected the upkeep of this building for many decades and that we do need to make investment in what is, after all, a world heritage building.