EU Membership: Second Referendum

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

Like other hon. Members, I am a little surprised at the level of attendance at this afternoon’s debate. I can never tell with these things whether it is a lack of empathy across the House for the sentiments behind the petition or whether it is just that the Attorney General is bigger box office than this discussion, but we are where we are.

The way I see it is this: I do not think that in a free, open and democratic society we can say that people do not have the right to change their minds. Of course they do. A group of people voting in a referendum one day in history cannot forever bind people for the future. Any of us would be on very thin ice if we were to get into a situation of saying, “You can never have a second referendum on this question.” On the other hand, we have to accept that with big questions of governance and constitutional politics, we cannot go changing our mind every day, or every month, or even every year.

Therefore, we have to ask ourselves in what circumstances it is legitimate to consider a second referendum, a so-called people’s vote. There are three tests that need to be applied before the legitimacy test is passed. First, it must be demonstrated that the information on which people made their original decision is in some way compromised, either because it was wrong or because it is now obsolete and has been superseded by further developments. With regard to the Brexit referendum, I do not think anyone can argue other than that the information on which people based their decision was fatally flawed.

In response to the statement by the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), I am not one of those who blame the electorate; I do not say that people were stupid or did not understand the question. I say they that were deliberately misled by people. I say that they were given information that was false, and deliberately so. In many ways the mendacity in that campaign was on an industrial scale. That is why people were conned in many ways into making the decision they did in June 2016.

Now we have an awful lot more information about what is at stake and what the consequences are, so we move on to the second test: have a significant number of people changed their minds on the question? By “significant”, I mean enough to produce a different result, were the question put again. Again, that test is met. It is consistently clear from opinion polls over three or four months—the latest one only today—that a large number of people have changed their mind on the question, sufficient to produce a different result were the question put again. The Prime Minister and the Government are fond of saying that 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU, the biggest number in our history that have ever voted for anything. That is true, but here is the inconvenient truth: at least 2 million of them have now changed their minds. I think it is disrespectful to those people not at least to consider whether the circumstances are such that they should be consulted again.

The third test is that the Parliament or legislature charged with discharging the mandate from the referendum is either unwilling to do so, or incapable of doing so. We are not at that point yet, but I am fairly certain, and I have no reason to change my view from the speeches so far today, that next Tuesday evening Parliament will reject the withdrawal agreement that has been put before it by the Government. In those circumstances, we will be entering a period of unknown chaos, where the Parliament may well be incapable of making any decision. That political gridlock or stasis can perhaps only be resolved by putting the question back to the people who started the process in the first place—all the citizens of the country. I say therefore that a people’s vote should not be regarded as an alternative way of agreeing the withdrawal deal. It is going to happen, if it does, as a consequence of the failure of the Parliament and the Government to prepare a withdrawal deal.

I speak for the Scottish National party, the third party in the United Kingdom Parliament, so it would be remiss of me not to try to give some sort of perspective from north of the border. Scotland, as colleagues know, took a different view from the rest of Britain.

[Graham Stringer]

I am following but do not agree with many of the points that the hon. Gentleman is making. On his final point, that there is a failure of Parliament, is it not primarily a failure of the Government? If the Government fail, should not the Government go back to the electorate?

[Tommy Sheppard]

The hon. Gentleman predicts my next point, but let me first say something about the situation in Scotland, where 62% of the people voted to remain in the European Union. By all polling evidence, if that question were asked again it would be more like 68% to 70%, so the opinion is quite different in Scotland from in England and Wales.

The attitude of the minority SNP Government in Scotland, when faced with a question of what to do with this result, where Scotland had voted one way and the rest of the United Kingdom had voted another way, is interesting. We had tried, as colleagues will remember, in the debate on the European Union Referendum Act 2015 to get some provisions in the Act itself that would recognise the different nations within the United Kingdom, but we failed in that endeavour.

The Scottish Government did not say, “Oh well, we don’t recognise the result in the UK because we are against Brexit and this is the Scottish position.” Quite the contrary: a Government that believed in and aspired to an independent Scotland and membership of the European Union produced a detailed document that advocated neither of those things. “Scotland’s Place in Europe”, published in December 2016, was a detailed and comprehensive policy analysis of how Brexit could take place in a way that would not have such effects on the Scottish economy and would better respect public opinion in Scotland. We were basically arguing, as we still argue to this day, for a compromise on what has become known as a Norway-plus position, where we aim to stay in the single market and the customs union. We have not yet been successful in that endeavour, but it is interesting that for 24 months the Scottish Government have been trying to offer this compromise and to get a discussion going about it, and for 24 months they have effectively been ignored.

That brings me to the point about how the Government have managed this process. Here we are, 30 months after the original referendum result, a result that was, by any observation, a narrow and divided one, with the country clearly split. A better Government would have taken that result and tried to steer a course that respected the majority of public opinion to leave the European Union and no longer formally be a member of it, but also recognised that almost half the country valued their European citizenship and tried to find some compromise that would allow Brexit to take place in a way that minimised the depression of their European identity.

The Government did not do that—not at all. The Government took an absolute position and said, “This is clearcut, it is black and white; the 52% won and we are now no longer going to talk about the 48%.” They were written out of history as if their opinions did not matter. That is one of the things that has caused so much resentment and anger and is now fuelling the demand for a people’s vote. In fact, it is even worse than that, because the 52% were disrespected as well; we had every right-wing cause in the country trying to tack its ideas on to the 52% as if that was a mandate for what they wanted. Many people in the 52% were misrepresented as well.

If we had had a Government that could have been more inclusive in their approach and had a dialogue with people, with Opposition parties, with local government and with the national Governments in the devolved legislatures, we might be in a slightly better position. We might have had more of a consensual approach that could possibly command support on the Floor of the House next Tuesday. But we are where we are; we do not have that, and we have a Prime Minister who, Canute-like, seems to be just ignoring wave after wave of concern and opposition that is expressed.

Over the next five days we will spend a lot of time talking about the detail of the 585-page withdrawal agreement and the 24-page framework document, so I will not go into that here. However, the Government getting themselves into this position is calamitous. It did not need to happen. Even at this eleventh hour they could pull back. They need to understand that, by setting their impossible red lines in the first place, they put themselves on a course to deliver a product that was never going to command the support of the House and, worse, does not really seem to satisfy anyone in the country, never mind the 52% who voted to leave in June 2016.

In many ways, the Government have to think again. It seems to me that, once we get past next Tuesday, giving people the opportunity to vote again on this question may provide the Government with a lifeline to try to get out of the mess they have created for themselves. If they do not do that, I certainly agree that the time has come for this Government to get out of the road and be replaced by a Government that will do a better job.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

I am delighted to stand here, on my first outing as a Minister to represent the Government and make the Government’s case, under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone; I am very pleased about that. This has been a very interesting debate. As has been observed, more right hon. and hon. Members could have participated, but I think that quality is better than quantity. That has always been a principle of mine, and I was delighted to hear as many speeches as I did.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I also thank all those who participated in the debate. The petition brings up a very important question—the idea that we should have a second referendum. I want to make it as categorically clear as possible that this Government will respect the result of the referendum and we will not—I repeat, we will not—hold a second referendum. Let me go into some of the reasons why we do not want to do that.

The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) made a very good point when he referred to the levels of condescension and the idea that people were too stupid to understand what membership of the EU meant and what leaving it would mean. It is ridiculous to assume or to think that people in this country, who have been debating this issue for 45 years—it has been an issue ever since we joined the EU—were too stupid to understand the question on the ballot paper. It is also offensive—it is ridiculous and offensive.

Then we heard the other idea. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) said, “Well, people weren’t stupid, but they were conned.” That is like me saying to a friend, “When you lost your money, you weren’t stupid, but you were conned.” Essentially, it is saying that, for whatever reason, people were misled; they were gulled into making a choice, which they actually knew perfectly well about. They simply did not want, as an electorate, to stay in the EU, and it is the job of the Government, as it always has been, to deliver on the vote.

Let me give my personal point of view. I was in the Vote Leave campaign. I represent a constituency that voted 60% to leave the EU. My sense, as a constituency MP talking to people, is this. A large number of remainers are very quiet. They voted remain for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps some of them believed that the fear and uncertainty were too great. But now that the electorate as a whole have embarked on this course, many of those remainers want to see it through.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East suggested, “Oh, the polls have changed wildly.” They have not. If we look at the polls a week before the campaign started in 2016, we see that they were exactly where they are now. Remain, as I recall, had a 10-point lead and, in the course of the campaign, its lead was reversed.

[Tommy Sheppard]

I take the Minister’s point, but does he not accept that there is a considerable difference between the result in June 2016 of 52:48 and the average of polls now, which is 55:45 against?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My very point was that the hon. Gentleman should not place too much credence in the polls. If the polls had been right, this would never have happened. If the polls four months before the actual result had been right, remain would have won by a huge margin. I question the notion that because the polls are essentially saying exactly the same thing as they did four months before the last referendum, that means that the public have changed their mind; I dispute that. The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to suggest that we cannot simply relitigate this issue year after year. The previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, made it very clear that the result would be respected. It was a close result, but a clear and authoritative one.

I was musing on this question during the hon. Gentleman’s speech. If, by some misfortune, the Scottish National party had got its wish and won the independence referendum in 2014, how enthusiastic would it be about another referendum on that question? It would simply have shut down the issue.

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[Tommy Sheppard]

That is a good debating point, but let us be clear: the 2014 Scottish referendum was conducted, as has been said, on the basis of a campaign and discussion that lasted more than two years, a vast debate and a 670-page White Paper that spelled out exactly what the proposition was. Surely the Minister is not drawing a comparison between that and something that was based on a slogan on the side of a bus?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I will absolutely make the comparison and I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Economic Community and now the EU had been a top-line issue for 45 years. If it had not been, why was there a referendum in 1975, the year I was born? This issue has gone on for two generations, so I suggest respectfully to the hon. Gentleman that the electorate did have a sense of what they wanted.

We cannot go down the route of simply relitigating referendums when we do not like the result, because that essentially is what this boils down to. That is essentially what is driving the call for a second vote—the so-called people’s vote. Former Prime Minister Mr Blair has said as much. He makes no bones about the fact that he thinks that Brexit is a disaster and the way to reverse Brexit is by means of a second referendum. It is an instrument by which one can reject the will of the people as expressed in June 2016. Let us not be fastidious or naive about this. The people who generally are driving for a people’s vote and a second referendum want to reverse the result. They think—mistakenly, in my view—that the way to reverse the result is to get a second referendum, which will confirm or reconfirm our membership of the EU. I think they are wrong and, as I have said, the Government have made a clear undertaking that we will not have a second referendum.

The question on 23 June 2016 was clear; it was absolutely unequivocal. The question was simply:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”

Many of us in the Chamber took part in the referendum campaign—some with Vote Leave and some with the Stronger In or remain campaign. It was a very hard-fought and widely trailed discussion. Some people have said that the quality of the debate was not good enough or that some pieces of information were withheld, but generally it was an extraordinary exercise in democracy. As has been said many times, it was the single biggest vote that this country had ever seen in a general election or any other kind of election. And as we all know, 17.4 million votes were cast to leave the EU. That was the highest number of votes cast for anything in UK electoral history.

What those calling for a second vote—the so-called people’s vote—are saying is that the people should think again. Essentially, they are saying, metaphorically, to the electorate, “Your homework was not good enough. Please do it again.” As the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton suggested, the electorate—certainly in my constituency—are quite a cussed lot. I do not see the floods of support for remain described by others. I strongly suspect—this is my personal view—that a second referendum would not deliver a different result.

That is irrelevant, however, because the Government are tasked to enact the will of the majority of the people, as expressed in the 2016 referendum. All major political parties were committed to respect the outcome. We fought a general election on the basis that we would leave the EU. As has been said, 499 Members of this House voted to invoke article 50, which we all knew would involve a two-year process, at the end of which we would leave the EU. All of that is in the public record and everyone understood the consequences of it. Furthermore, the Labour party committed in its 2017 manifesto to leave the EU and the customs union. More than 80% of the British people voted either Conservative or Labour in the general election. They voted for parties that were absolutely committed to respect the 2016 referendum result. That is exactly what the British people expect us to do.

I fully understand the emotional impetus behind the call for a second referendum, but I think it is a ruse by which people seek to stay in the EU. We are pledged to leave the EU. The full democratic process of the referendum delivered a clear directive, which this Government hope to deliver. The call for a second referendum opens up a huge question about the levels of trust in our Government and our democracy. We have to respect the will of the people. To do otherwise and say, “We will have a second referendum and try to reverse the result of the first referendum, because you got the wrong answer first time,” is not only an abnegation of democracy, but profoundly disrespectful of the electorate. As a Minister, I would not want to see that.

We have to look at the nature of the referendum itself. It was a long, four-month campaign, but we cannot just think of the referendum as those four months in 2016, because this debate had been going on for decades, not only in my party but in the Labour party. I am old enough—just—to remember the 1983 general election, in which the Labour party was pledged to leave the EEC. That created great divisions and caused great debate within the Labour party. My own party has been a scene of great discussion and lively debate on this issue. It is not right to say that those four months of the referendum campaign in 2016 encapsulated the whole debate, because it has been ongoing for 45 years and more.

I sense that I am in a room of clairvoyants, because everyone has told me that the Government will lose the vote on Tuesday. I have been in the House long enough—let us see what happens. People have asked, “What about plan B?” If I knew plan B, I would not divulge it in this Chamber—I assure hon. Members of that—so the question is redundant. I remind hon. Members that the choice is between a deal and no deal, because, as others have suggested, the hourglass is running quickly. We are running out of time. Article 50 was invoked on 29 March 2017. It does not take a mathematician to work out that 29 March 2019 will be the end of our formal membership of the EU. Nor does one have to be mathematically gifted to work out that there are fewer than four months between today and exit day. In that timeframe, the notion that the Government will throw off their policy of the last two and half years and then bring in some parliamentary device for a second referendum to take place before the exit day is, frankly, ridiculous. We do not have the time to do it and people would feel that it would be extremely irresponsible to do so.

I could spend the next hour and three quarters trying to convince hon. Members of the merits of the deal. I do not want to do that, because they probably want to do other things. However, I will say that the deal does precisely what the electorate voted for. On immigration, we have heard about restrictions to freedom of movement.