Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship

Debate between Tom Hunt and Alyn Smith

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—

[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.