Legal Advice: Prorogation

Wayne David Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

The hon. Lady will know that I cannot disclose whether I gave advice or the content of any such advice. It is covered by the Law Officers convention. The question, “Was the advice shown?” presumes that there was advice. It simply contradicts the Law Officers convention. I wish I could answer her question, but I cannot.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I presume that following yesterday’s Supreme Court judgment the Prime Minister got in touch with Buckingham Palace and offered his apology to Her Majesty the Queen for giving unlawful advice. Did the Attorney General speak to the Prime Minister before that conversation took place?

[The Attorney General]

I did not, no.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Wayne David Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I have looked very carefully at the provisions in the EEA agreement, and there has been a lot of discussion about articles 112 and 113 in particular. I have to say that my reading of those articles is that they are what are called “in extremis” provisions, which actually do allow some flexibility on all obligations under the EEA agreement, but only in extreme circumstances and for a short period. The argument that others have put to me is that there is a different interpretation, but we are still discussing that matter.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

rose—

[Keir Starmer]

I will give way once more and then I really will have to get on.

[Wayne David]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the EEA would become a viable option only if Britain were able to negotiate fundamental changes to the EEA agreement, which would be a huge challenge for the United Kingdom?

[Keir Starmer]

In fairness to those who advocate joining the EEA, there is a recognition that the EEA agreement, unamended, would not be the right deal for the UK, but the argument is that it could be amended.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). I shall also follow him in not taking interventions, because many Members wish to speak. I wish to talk about the EEA amendment tabled by our Front Benchers and the EEA amendment that came from the House of Lords, and to explain why I shall be voting for both.

Time is running out, not just in the debate this afternoon but for the country. For far too long over the past two years, we have wasted time with a lot of dreaming—dreaming about the easiest trade deal in history, dreaming about us holding all the cards and dreaming that we will get the exact same benefits. The moment when that finally came to an end was when the Prime Minister spoke at the Mansion House and admitted that it was not really going to be like that. This is the moment when we need to tell each other the truth: there are choices that we face; there are trade-offs that we have to accept; and there are decisions that need to be made, which is the point just made by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe.

If I may use an analogy, it seems to me that we have decided as a country to disembark from a liner in the middle of the ocean, and we have two basic choices: we can jump into the sea, which is what a hard no-deal Brexit would mean, or we can climb down into a lifeboat and decide where we are going. What are those in the Cabinet doing at the moment? They have spent two years arguing, first about how to create a deep and special lifeboat. They are trying to come up with a lifeboat that will not breach their red lines, and they have broken up into working groups, probably discussing the size, colour and shape of the lifeboat. The only thing that has not happened yet is a Minister getting up at the Dispatch Box and announcing that no lifeboat is better than a bad lifeboat. I tell you, Mr Speaker, it is not funny. The truth is that it is extremely serious indeed.

What does all of this mean? It means that we have not yet agreed as a country what we want for the future of the relationship. Not only is the promised White Paper now not going to appear until next month, but we learned this week that there will be a two-day away day in Chequers where the Cabinet tries to thrash things out. That means there will be one European Council left on 18 October—one—at which to sort out all the things we have been debating yesterday and today and to agree the political declaration, which is all about the future of our country. As a result, we have barely begun to discuss what might be in that political declaration at a time when, as the Prime Minister said in her G7 statement on Monday, the international rules-based order is under a threat that it has not been under at any time since it was created at the end of the second world war.

We are in a perilous place. Business is losing patience; we know that. The EU is frankly bewildered about what is going on in this country. The British people, to judge by the polls, think the whole thing is going very badly. The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) made the point really well—it is true—that in this place and outside, people have whispered conversations in which we say, “What on earth is going on?”

The consequences of getting this wrong for the country will be deeply damaging for our future and for the jobs, livelihoods and public services that depend upon our economic strength. That is what we are debating. There is so much at stake that it is frankly difficult to overstate it. Let me say it plainly: we have had enough of management in the party interest. What we desperately need now is leadership in the national interest.

That brings me to the EEA amendment and the question of our future relationship with our biggest, nearest and most important trading partner: the 27 countries of the EU. The truth is that on both sides of the House we are all debating, and sometimes disagreeing on, what kind of framework would be best. The Government now accept that we will be staying in a customs union and, in all likelihood, aligning with the rules of the single market for quite some time to come, because nothing has yet been agreed that can possibly replace the benefits we derive from both.

The same outcome will inevitably result from the proposed Northern Ireland backstop, although it is currently silent on the question of regulations and the internal market, which is why I described it last week as half a backstop. That omission will have to be remedied between now and the end of this month, because half a backstop will not do the business when it comes to getting the European Council to agree with it. And by the way, it is ludicrous to debate whether the backstop is time-limited, because the truth is terribly simple: the backstop will remain in place as long as necessary, until something else comes along that can replace it and achieve the same objective, which is maintaining an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I am afraid that was about politics, not about policy.

That is also true of the debate about maximum facilitation and the customs partnership, although both ideas strike many people as costly, bureaucratic, burdensome and reliant on technology that is not yet in operation. However, being a generous soul, let me say that even if the Cabinet, on its away day, manages to reach agreement on one or the other, and even if the EU negotiators said, “Okay, let’s give it a go”—I do not think there is any prospect of that whatsoever—we all know that neither of them could be put in place by December 2020. It is too late: too much time has been wasted. That is why the transition period, or a transition period, is going to have to be extended by one means or another, whether that is with the backstop or an agreement on a way forward. That is where we are heading by default, so the question is: what form should the next transition, from January 2021 onwards, take? This is where the EEA comes in, because that would be one way of doing it.

Let me turn to the amendment moved by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and Lords amendment 51 on the EEA. Both are about a future framework and the internal market, and the difference here—apart from the free movement issue, which I will say a word about in a moment—is really quite small, and I very much welcome what was said by my right hon. and learned Friend, who leads for the Opposition, about having an open mind. I will of course vote for his amendment, because who could argue with the notion of full access to the single market? If it is not successful, I will vote for the EEA amendment, because we need to keep our options open. To return to my analogy, it has the one great advantage that it at least looks like a lifeboat, and I have to say that the closer we get to October, the less inviting the cold sea appears to those thinking of jumping off the side of the ship.

I am the first to acknowledge that the EEA option is not perfect. I do not want us to be like Norway, and I am not arguing that we should have a deal like Norway’s. Apart from anything else, we want to remain in a customs union. As Michel Barnier repeated yesterday, it would be an option to have the EEA plus a customs union. Let us acknowledge that.

We should seek some changes to the way in which free movement currently operates. Some of those could be made within the current rules of the European Union, which we will be leaving. Others would involve discussion of the emergency brake, which is why my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and I have tabled amendment (b), which refers to “safeguard measures”. The Exiting the European Union Committee, which I have the honour to chair, drew attention, in its report on the future UK-EU relationship, to the possibility of additional flexibility on free movement. We need to make sure that our agricultural and fish exports can continue to move freely.

[Wayne David]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Hilary Benn]

I will not give way, because of the time.

Who knows whether the EEA option may turn out to be a temporary state, but as a potential starting point, with a customs union, it would provide a means of solving the Northern Ireland problem, keep goods flowing freely, ensure common standards, maintain the flow of data, protect employment and environmental rights and enable us to continue to co-operate in really important areas such as aviation, consumer safety, medicines and space research. Crucially, it would also gain us a place in the room when some future decisions are being taken. In the EEA, not all EU legislation has to be transposed, and there are consultation mechanisms and a separate court. When it comes to EU agencies, in many of which UK regulators have led the way, we could continue to influence what happens because we would be part of the conversation, even though we would not have a vote, which is not the case under the transition period that we will shortly be entering.

The EEA option would diminish in part—I acknowledge that it would do so only in part—the rule taker problem. However, given that we are leaving, I see no outcome in which the United Kingdom will be a rule maker. We will have to follow the rules of our biggest export market for goods and services because so much of our prosperity depends on doing so. I think the Solicitor General accepted that in his answer to my earlier question, although he tried to couch it—and I see the argument—in terms of us, as a free sovereign country, being able to choose to follow the rules of other people. Indeed we can, and the same is true of the European Court of Justice and any other part of the agreement that we may seek to reach.

Leaving the EU: Scotland and Wales Continuity Bills

Wayne David Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I think that would be a better way forward, and I hope it is the way taken.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Do the Government not accept that this “legal uncertainty”, as it is called, is causing enormous concern to the business community? Would it not be better for the Government to recognise that there is a political choice that needs to be made and that the onus is on them to make it in favour of the devolution settlement?

[The Attorney General]

The hon. Gentleman is right that, as I have said, we need to provide certainty wherever we can, and he is right too that there is a political job to be done as much as there is a legal one. I have indicated to him that I take the view that the political way forward is better than the legal way forward, but there is a necessity to resolve the difference of opinion that currently exists over the way forward. If we cannot do that politically, we will have to do it legally, but I know which way I would prefer.

Legal aid

Wayne David Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I understand and appreciate that there is some merit in the Government’s decision to simplify legal aid and that the costs in recent years have spiralled and become unsustainable, particularly at a time like this. Considering what the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) has said, however, I feel that the decision has not really been fully thought through. The impact to local legal services could be devastating. In my constituency, the changes will mean that only two legal firms can continue to provide vital, high-quality family law legal aid services—previously, it was nine. Those two firms will now be taking on the work that nine firms undertook formerly, so the effectiveness and speed with which sensitive family issues are dealt with will be compromised.

We will also lose expertise in what, from my perspective, is one of the most challenging areas of law—that which deals with divorce and child custody. From a legal aid perspective, people from disadvantaged backgrounds will be hardest hit, which will be a challenge in Eastbourne.

I recently met a constituent who was unable to find legal representation in Eastbourne, because, of the two remaining firms that would have been able to offer legal aid, one was representing her ex-husband and the other her son. Due to a possible conflict of interest, she had to look elsewhere, to either Rye or Brighton, which is a round trip in excess of 50 miles. That does not sound very far, but the constituent, whom I know quite well, is disabled and unable to travel by public transport. She would have had to travel by taxi; I do not need to tell anyone here that a taxi fare is not an easily affordable luxury for someone in receipt of disability living allowance.

As well as the threat to legal service provision in my constituency, I am profoundly concerned that the proposals include the removal of funding for large areas of specialist social welfare-related help and guidance. That is often delivered by local community-based charities, such as BHT Eastbourne Advice and the Eastbourne citizens advice bureau in my constituency. They complement that specialist help and guidance with a more general advice service provided by volunteers. There are such crucial service providers in every constituency. In Eastbourne, those charities risk losing in the region of £230,000 to £250,000 per annum of legal aid funding.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s sympathetic comments, but what would he say to my constituents in the Bargoed area of the Rhymney valley, 375 of whom claim legal aid for welfare benefit issues and 450 of whom stand to lose access to legal aid for debt issues?

[Stephen Lloyd]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Although the overall legal aid budget has spiralled out of control, I have real concerns about the Government’s proposals—they are based on the previous Government’s proposals, which is one of the ironies—for changing legal aid. I do have concerns, which I why I am here this morning.