Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

I am struck, as ever, following the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), that PG Wodehouse really did get it right when he said that a Scotsman is rarely confused with a ray of sunshine. I have to say, though, that we do not need to make a performance art out of it. I will endeavour to strike a sunnier, more consensual note in this discussion, because I am very proudly centrist in my politics. On the centre ground is where I will be found. That is where most people of Scotland are and where most people of Stirling are, That is where we all need to tend towards in order to find solutions to this debate today.

This debate is not about stopping Brexit. We accept and we regret the fact that it has happened. It is about extending the transition period to avert a self-imposed economic disaster. There are solutions to be found. At its heart, we all need to take a step back and reboot this conversation. There are several conflicting world views at play in this discussion—all of them legitimate. Scotland voted to remain. Northern Ireland voted by a nuanced vote to remain also. Two of the four home nations voted to remain. Two out of the four home nations voted to leave. The UK-wide leave vote was 52% to 48%. All of these are facts—simultaneously correct and simultaneously legitimate. We have a conundrum that we need to try to find solutions to. Surely those numbers, those facts, suggest that we should have a more nuanced, respectful approach than we have seen from successive Governments since 2016.

There are solutions to be found. I respect England’s vote. I particularly respect what the hon. Member for Leigh (James Grundy) said about his constituency and how every ward voted to leave. I respect that. I do not believe that Scotland had a right at any point in the process to stop England leaving the European Union, much as we disagreed with it, so why the hell does not that go the other way round? Respect must be reciprocal if it is to exist at all. The Scottish Government have endeavoured at every stage of this process to engage with the discussion and the conundrum. I was involved intricately with that at the Brussels end of operations. We tried to find nuanced solutions that would have recognised the conundrum that we all faced: we published “Scotland’s Place in Europe”; we put forward the idea of a Scotland-Northern Ireland backstop; and we put forward the idea that the UK could leave the European Union but remain within the single market, which would have been a compromise that most people could have lived with. All of those proposals were shot down, ignored and belittled by a Government who were so busy trying to negotiate with themselves that they could not spend any time thinking about Edinburgh, Cardiff or Northern Ireland. It is a poor show, and it is a poor show that we are here now, facing into a very negative situation for all the citizens that we serve, however they voted. We need to save the situation and it is not too late to change course. It is not too late to dig up the tram tracks that the UK Government have set for themselves.

All of our suggestions were dismissed, but our party is left with fewer and fewer options. We will work within the law. We will work within the constitution. We will work within Scotland and the UK’s democracy. We will work within the settlements that we have, but we will not meekly comply because of a vote that happened in another country. We will not meekly go along with it, because we are told to by a party that has only recently found a common purpose—for the moment. It will not last long.

Leaving aside the democratic deficit of the United Kingdom, which is clear for everyone in Scotland to see, let us look at the project that is actually being imposed on us against our will and against our democratic vote. Brexit is proceeding on a flawed premise. There were a series of interlocking promises that have not been respected, that have been forgotten about and dismissed. There were the promises on the side of a bus and an oven-ready deal that is neither ready nor anywhere near an oven. We have a deal that is falling apart. In my first speech in this place, I described the withdrawal agreement as a grubby, shabby document and we were proven right, because within seconds of that vote being passed, the governing party walked away from the commitments, which were being viewed in Brussels as solemn commitments —to a level playing field, to a non-competitive aspect, and to various mechanisms. Those were all being treated as solemn commitments from a UK Government who now do not look very solemn, or serious, or at all credible in the eyes of our wider European colleagues.

Brexit has already made the people of these islands poorer on any objective analysis of the economics. All of that pain is perhaps necessary, I am willing to accept, if the benefits are there to see and to be explained, but —I believe in intellectual honesty in my politics—all of those benefits, surely we must accept, are at best hypothetical, and absolutely none of them has been delivered in the real world in any sense. Conservative Members wonder why we are sceptical on these Benches about this project. It is because we have not seen any advantages spelled out after four years of looking for one.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

rose—

[Alyn Smith]

Do tell, Sir, please.

[Tom Hunt]

Thank you very much for giving way. You said at the start of your speech that this was not about stopping Brexit; it was just about extending the transition period. So why now are you making the case for why we should not leave, and don’t you think it is uncanny how everybody who is arguing—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I would be very grateful if the hon. Gentleman would rephrase his intervention, referring not to “you”, which would mean me in the Chair, but to the hon. Gentleman.

[Tom Hunt]

Following on from what I said, does the hon. Gentleman find it uncanny that everybody who seems to be arguing for an extension are those people who were previously on the barricades trying to block Brexit completely, full stop?

[Alyn Smith]

I am grateful for the opportunity to perhaps correct if I was unclear. I accept that Brexit has happened. I gave up my seat in the European Parliament because of it; I wanted to come here to fight for Scotland’s place in Europe. There was a point in the December election where we could have had that argument. In the halcyon days, we were thinking about a hung Parliament—with a Labour Administration, with SNP support, and a second EU referendum—but I won Stirling with 51% of the vote and my party won Scotland with a massive vote, to a Parliament we do not want to be in, on a pro-EU platform. Because of events elsewhere, it was clear that Brexit was going to happen anyway. I accepted Brexit has happened in my first speech, so I have made that point. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. What I am trying to do is extend the transition period to avoid a disaster that Conservative Members are going to inflict on this House out of bone-headed ideology, and when the chickens come home to roost, I do hope they will be as accountable as we have been to the people of Scotland on those points.

I again urge the Minister, whom I have much respect for, on the shared prosperity fund. There has been much talk about the power grab. I see the eyes rolling on the Conservative Benches now, but it is a very concrete example. This was not a power that rested in Brussels. The European frameworks exist in order to empower national and local governments. This was a power that was entirely with the Scottish authorities. The proposal on the table now from the UK Government is to put those powers in the hands of the Scotland Office—a part of the UK Government—removing that budget and removing that competence from the Scottish authorities. If that is not a power grab, I will need to have a look at the dictionary the Conservative Members are working with because, in any objective sense, it is. The Minister can assure us now that I am wrong. I will happily be proven wrong. I will happily engage with what we can do with the shared prosperity fund in Scotland, but it must be as a matter of respect for devolution under the competence of the Scottish authorities. If it is not, it is a breach of trust, it is a breach of faith and it is a power grab.

As I say, the pain of Brexit or the pain that Brexit is causing could be worth it if the benefits were there to be seen, but beyond warm words and sentiment, and beyond slogans that do not stand analysis, we have not seen that. Let us be generous—I do try to be generous—and say that the one-year negotiating period was heroically ambitious. That was before covid. Covid has intervened and has taken the focus of all of our Governments and all of our public officials away, rightly, to a health emergency. Extending the transition period is not about fighting old battles. I am not in the business of fighting old battles. Extending the transition period can be done and will give us breathing space and certainty to allow our economy to recover from a health emergency that is turning into an economic emergency. To add a covid-inflicted disaster upon that because of Brexit would be flat lunacy.

I was struck by the Paymaster General’s previous comments. She is now not in her place, but I was struck when she used the phrase that we are now past the point whereby a request can be made. She said that some might argue it is impossible to apply for an extension. She is not here now, but I would happily give way to anyone on the Conservative Benches who can name anybody in Brussels who is of that view. Anyone—Berlin, Paris, Ljubljana? It is a matter of straightforward principle and pragmatism in Brussels that, if the UK applies for an extension, it will be granted. The EU has, at every stage of the process, accepted with regret the democratic choices of the United Kingdom. It will not engage in our internal discussion, so it is with regret that it accepts that an extension will probably not be applied for.

We have not heard any indication today that the UK Government will change course, but they should, and this is a plea from us to do so, because we can still change course. We must change course. This is not about old battles. I asked whether anybody in Brussels, Berlin or anywhere else shared the Minister’s view. How about Dublin? Speaking of Dublin, Ireland is an independent state in north-west Europe that has done quite well lately. With Norway, it was voted on to the UN Security Council. It has the EU Commissioner for Trade in the inestimable Phil Hogan, who is a very strong negotiator in trade deals—Government Members will want to watch that one. It also has the president of the Eurogroup in Paschal Donohoe. The international accolades just keep coming for Ireland, and that is all based on the solidarity, support and encouragement of 26 other EU member states that have its back against the former colonial power.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

It is, for a change, a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), and I am glad to see him doing better. His more measured approach to this debate has been noted on the SNP Benches, and I wish him well—although, as usual, he was talking guff.

We are in the middle of a health crisis that stretches not just across borders—whether or not the Prime Minister recognises them—but across continents. At least 600,000 people around the world are dead from coronavirus, and many millions more will contract the virus in the future. That situation requires an international response, yet sadly, and predictably, the UK has gone further into its Brexit bunker, and decided to try and opt out of the world.

We have heard repeatedly about how Ministers want the UK to remain close friends with our EU allies, but what sort of friend insists on diverting the resources of the EU and its member states away from dealing with the most serious health emergency in modern history, and to negotiating with an obstinate and childish ex-member that seems to use a “Dad’s Army” script as its terms of reference? The EU has made clear time after time that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) said, it would be more than amenable to an extension to the negotiations, to allow it and the UK the space and time that is needed to deal with the public health emergency consuming us all. The response from the UK? “No thanks. I’m all right Jack.” What sort of relationship does it think will emerge on the other side?

Scotland is being dragged into a bombastic mix of exceptionalism, isolationism, and outright self-destruction. Ministers and Conservative Members have said that we voted as a Union, but people in Scotland have heard that before. People in Scotland also know that our democratic wish to work alongside our longstanding partners and allies has been torn up and chucked in the Brexit bin. Again, we are seeing that the British state is fundamentally incapable of good governance for Scotland or the rest of the UK. A clique of self-congratulatory Oxbridge graduates would steer their own country on to the rocks in the name of Brexit if they even knew where the steering wheel was. Instead, they have allowed their country to drift over the decades, taking the rest of us with them.

Scotland has never endorsed this self-immolation. For all that Ruth Davidson was lauded to the heavens by her high-profile supporters in the press, her crowning triumph was 28% of the vote in 2017—a figure that dropped two years later. The Tory record at election after election has been an unbroken streak of dismal failure for decades, yet our entire society and economy has been reshaped and allowed to wither on the vine, because that same Tory party has governed the UK for nearly 28 out of my 40 years. Now they expect us to keep silent and meekly go along with their back-of-a-fag-packet Brexit.

As I have said a few times in this place in the past few weeks, my constituency is facing the biggest challenge to our economy for decades. Rolls-Royce, Glasgow airport, easyJet, British Airways, Menzies Aviation and Swissport—I could go on to list company after company, and sector after sector—are in the process of collectively laying off thousands of my constituents. I have asked time after time what the UK Government plan to do to support constituencies such as mine, which are staring economic disaster in the face, but there has been no answer and no sign of a plan. But EU countries do have plans and they are implementing them now. They want to save jobs and key industries, and they have their levers and powers to do that. The Danish Government do not have to send missives to the Germans asking permission to have an industrial or macroeconomic policy. The French Government are implementing their plan for aviation now, yet there is no plan in the UK—none. Aerospace and aviation are left to rot; there is no sectoral support and no sign of any.

Businesses face a double whammy of coronavirus and Brexit, both accentuated by UK Government incompetence, ideology and arrogance. The exporters in my constituency still do not know what and where they will be able to export to the EU in the new year. Our manufacturers still do not know whether they will be massively disadvantaged by trade barriers that their EU competitors regard as fit only for the history books. The service industries still do not know what access, if any, they will have to the single market after 1 January, all while every business and individual in the country grapples with the impact of coronavirus, and the massive dislocation it is causing and will continue to cause.

This is history repeating itself. Our country lived through decades of de-industrialisation as asset-strippers and spivs were allowed to run riot and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs in the name of ideology—the UK Government sat back and let it happen. Emigration from Scotland ran into the hundreds of thousands as families moved anywhere and everywhere they could to find a skilled job—the UK Government sat back and let it happen. Our towns and cities became victims of the post-industrial economy—the UK Government sat back and let it happen.

[Tom Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the uncertainty that many businesses in his constituency face, but surely that uncertainty would drag on if we were to extend the transition deadline today. Surely it would be far better to focus on getting a deal and providing greater certainty through a clear framework of where we are going to be in the years ahead, rather than extending and pushing it down the road.

[Gavin Newlands]

I am very grateful for that intervention, but I have just listed all the things where businesses do not know what is going to happen after 1 January, so what certainty is the hon. Gentleman talking about? I have no idea and neither do businesses in my constituency. If he has some certainty to give us, I would be happy to give way again so that he can tell us what that is.

The UK has shown itself unfit and unwilling to govern Scotland properly, with, more often than not, zero democratic mandate to do so. I know that an independent Scotland, with its governance, capability and capacity, could plot a better course than the one we are locked into. I know that we could take our place back in the EU alongside the other small independent countries that make up the majority of its members. Do the Government want to carry on telling the people of Scotland that somehow we, on our own, are an economic basket case propped up by the largesse of the Treasury, as has been indicated? That is their concern, but I urge them not to be hypocritical; they should deliver that message to the people of Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Portugal, Austria, Finland, Luxembourg, Slovenia and all the other nations, self-governing, sovereign and independent, that make up the EU. The UK Government should pop up in the national news programmes of those countries telling the electorate that they are doing it wrong. They should be firing out press releases and extending the Prime Minister’s role as Minister for the Union to cover all these countries, Britsplaining their way across the continent. But they will not find a receptive audience and they do not find one in Scotland. More and more the rot at the heart of the UK is laid bare for all to see and people are saying enough is enough—enough of jingoism, isolationism and palling up with Trump; enough of watching the poorest in society being punished by a welfare state that is meant to help them; enough of rhetoric towards our friends in the EU that, until very recently, was the sole preserve of the Daily Mail letters page.

We want a Scotland that protects our citizens and works to protect others. We want a Scotland that values Europe and the benefits we bring each other when working in partnership. The Minister for the Union and his colleagues should realise now that to block the democratic will of the people to achieve these goals would be another nail in the coffin for the UK and another example for the Scottish people of how the UK works against our interests, not for them.

Scotland belongs in Europe and the people of Scotland will make that happen sooner rather than later. The Government, despite what they may think, cannot stop democracy, and they cannot and will not stop the people of Scotland choosing their own future.