European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gethins]

As usual, my hon. Friend makes a very pertinent point. I pay due respect to the work he has done for the Brain family and others in his constituency in some of the disgraceful immigration cases we have seen. These EU nationals have chosen to make the UK their home and Scotland their home. They make this a better place in which to live and work. It is a no-brainer that we should give them the certainty they deserve.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very cogent and well-structured argument, and I broadly agree with many of the points he is making, but would he not agree that this is really a Mexican stand-off with water pistols? There is no realistic chance that any signatory of the European convention on human rights—the United Kingdom is one; in fact, we drafted much of it—will kick out anybody. We are not going to kick out anybody from the United Kingdom, and nor are UK citizens in other parts of the European Union going to be expelled. Would it not be better for the House to recognise that the position of these EU nationals is not at risk? Would we not be much better off comforting those who are in doubt, rather than spreading fear?

[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. The ECHR is under threat from this very Government, so does it not make sense to come into the Lobby with us to support the right of EU nationals to live and work here? I look forward to his standing up for what he has just said and joining us in the Lobby.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Gethins]

No, but I will say this to the hon. Gentleman, because he probably has a lot more influence on the Government Benches than I do—that is one thing I will give him. The Government are desperately in need of friends and good will. If we benefit financially from EU nationals being here, and if our society is richer for their being here, we want to keep them regardless—they are not bargaining chips, but that is something the Government seem to ignore. If EU nationals are not bargaining chips, I would encourage him to join us in the Lobby and give them the certainty they need and deserve.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

No.

That idea is a misunderestimation—if I may borrow a phrase from George W. Bush—of what all of us, as Members of Parliament, are capable of.

That brings me to my final point—

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is expounding entirely on the principle of the House, which is the principle of democracy under the rule of law. He is not arguing, as others have done, for the rule of lawyers.

[Michael Gove]

I could not agree more, and my hon. Friend’s intervention gives me an opportunity to commend him for the work that he has done to draw attention to the way in which some lawyers have used some legislation to enrich themselves at the expense of those who wear the Queen’s uniform and defend our liberties every day. His work is commendable, and it is an example of what a Back Bencher can do. He did that work without any impact assessments having been published, and without waiting for the Ministry of Defence to act. He did it because he believed in holding the Executive to account, as we all do—and the one thing for which we all want to hold the Executive to account is the triggering of article 50. So if anyone wants to have the opportunity for perennial judicial review, they should vote for these amendments. If they want to earn the scorn of the public by putting pettifogging delay ahead of mandate—

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Grady]

No.

I want to address some of the new clauses and amendments that have been tabled by various factions on the Labour Benches, and I shall focus particularly on the ones relating to Euratom. The exchanges on this subject on Second Reading demonstrated the utter chaos that has gripped this Administration and their predecessor. Euratom’s role is to provide a framework for nuclear energy safety and development. I would have thought that, no matter how much some of the Brexiteers hate the European Union institutions, this one would have been among the least controversial. Surely there must be consensus on protecting us from nuclear meltdowns. Do they not think that that is a good idea? No.

The Command Paper that the UK Government published in February last year on the impact of Brexit made no mention of coming out of Euratom. Nevertheless, we are being taken out of it without any warning and, if the Government will not accept the Labour new clause on this matter, there will be no further discussion about it. I do not remember the subject featuring on the side of buses or in showpiece debates, yet here we are with another ill-thought-out unintended consequence of a Brexit vote that started as an internal ideological battle among Conservative Members and that is going to leave decades of uncertainty in its wake for us all. That is just one example. Each new clause and amendment, from whatever party, that calls for an impact assessment shows the Government’s lack of preparation across the whole suite of policy.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman a small question, if I may. Has he given his constituents an impact assessment of any change that might take place at the next election? Has he prepared them fully and properly for the impact that a change of Member of Parliament might have on them? Or does he trust them to make their own impact assessment—does he trust the people to decide?

[Patrick Grady]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman was here for my Second Reading speech last week, so he will know that 78% of my constituents voted to remain in the European Union. I am therefore reasonably confident that their voice is at last being heard. They will make their judgment at the next election, whenever it comes, and I will be happy to live with their decision.

We want to test the will of the House on new clause 143. It tests the Government not only on the practical costs of Brexit but on the hard money, because we know that the financial costs will be high. It is simply not in the interests of the remaining member states for the UK to be better off as a result of Brexit. We have already seen the shocks to the currency market described by my hon. Friend the Member for Badenoch and so on—[Laughter.] I am not quite as good at this as the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). We have seen the shocks to the currency market and the revisions that have already happened in the economic forecasts. Withdrawing from the European Union and exiting the single market will lead to an enormous hit on our economy, and new clause 143 calls on the Chancellor to bring forward further revised forecasts and an assessment of the UK’s financial liability to the EU on the completion of the triggering of article 50.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

No, that is not what it says. If the hon. Member reads the Member’s explanatory statement to the amendment he will see that it says:

“This new clause would require HM Government to negotiate to continue the UK’s participation on agreeing all rules affecting trade in goods and services in the European Union.”

My understanding is that those rules are made by the Commission and agreed by the Council of Ministers and the Parliament, so we would have to stay around all those tables.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Should we pass this new clause, will the Act of Parliament therefore be binding on the other 27 members, who will therefore, because we willed it, be forced to accept our presence at their table, despite our having left all the organisations that we have left? Does my hon. Friend think that this is in any way enforceable? If not, is it not slightly fallacious even to debate it?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend rightly points out that, as with all of these amendments, even if this does not happen, there is nothing to be done. There is no sanction; there would just be a shrug of the shoulders, and we would have to turn our back and ask the hon. Member for Nottingham East what we are supposed to do next if we cannot manage to comply with his amendment. It really is nonsense. I know the hon. Gentleman has ambitions within his party, but he will have to do a little bit better than produce stuff like this.

Again, new clause 179 on protecting current levels of funding states:

“In negotiating and concluding an agreement in accordance with Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, Ministers of the Crown must have regard to the desirability of protecting current funding from the European Union.”

Funding to whom? Which funding? All funding? The funding that we send? The funding that comes back? Defence spend? Funding to us, or funding to other countries? The vagueness of these new clauses is extraordinary.

Again, new clause 183 on membership of the single market including EU-wide reform of freedom of movement states:

“secure reforms of provisions governing the free movement of persons between EU member states in such a way as to allow for greater controls over movement of people for member states”.

That is all very vague, as is

“maintain the highest possible level of integration with the European single market.”

What does that mean? What is the highest possible level of integration? Perhaps that means membership.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I want to speak to new clause 193, which is in my name and the names of my hon. and right hon. Friends. I tabled it in the hope that the Minister would take it on board. I want to give the Government a chance this afternoon to set out their pro-European credentials.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton) so eloquently put it, the Prime Minister has said that, yes, we may be leaving the European Union, but that we intend to be good European neighbours. New clause 193 is an opportunity for the Government to set out how we, in this country, will remain determined to stay a member of one of the most important European clubs, the European club that we helped to found—the Council of Europe, the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights.

We moved the new clause because one of the most significant consequences of this divorce from Europe is that we will leave the European Court of Justice. Indeed, an important part of the leave campaign’s argument was that we must escape from the tutelage of these terrible European judges and that only British judges are good enough for us—unless, of course, they happen to want to give this Parliament a chance to debate this Bill, in which case they instantly become enemies of the people.

This idea that foreign judges are anathema to this place is, of course, complete fiction. This very afternoon, the Government have solicited our support for CETA—the comprehensive economic trade agreement—replete with the new investor state dispute mechanism, a new court populated not with British judges but with foreign judges. The idea that foreign judges are about to be removed or extracted from the body politic in this country is nonsense, and that is why I think we must argue that one of the most important tribunals that oversees the law in this country should remain in place. That court is the European Court of Human Rights.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a fundamental point about our sympathy not only with our European partners but with our common European heritage, stemming straight out of Judeo-Christian theology through the Enlightenment and various schools at Paris and the Sorbonne, into the concept of rights that has emerged. Those rights were not simply created by the Council of Europe, as he seems to be claiming, but rather by British judges over several hundred years—admittedly taken from French and other traditions—and were re-imposed on Europe in the aftermath of the second world war. Although that heritage is important, as he rightly claims, would it not also be appropriate to recognise that some of those judges today are Moldovan and Russian and have been rather more prone to look for dictatorial abuse than to guarantee rights?

[Liam Byrne]

There is a reason why Russia has had its credentials suspended by the Council of Europe, and that is that it is not prepared to honour the great European Magna Carta that British civil servants helped to draw up under Churchill’s inspiration in the years after the second world war.

The Conservative manifesto—