European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Wendy Morton Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but I am perplexed: I was not suggesting that anyone had been pulling his strings. I was simply wondering whether it was his own political inspiration that had led him to table the new clause. However, both the new clause and the Government amendment are damaging and irresponsible. They are also pointless, in that the Government could, of their own volition, choose to change the end date. I have to wonder whether they would not in fact seek to do that if they were close to a deal just days or hours away from the deadline.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that we are coming out of the EU and that this is not a game of hokey-cokey, with one foot in and one foot out?

[Tom Brake]

We do not often play games of hokey-cokey in this Chamber, and I certainly would not want us to do so today.

We are debating what is without a doubt the most serious issue that the United Kingdom has faced in the past 50 years, but I am afraid that the Government are not conducting themselves terribly efficiently. The Prime Minister’s amendment secured one or two newspaper headlines, but I was pleased that it did not succeed in stemming the Tory resistance. I would like to encourage the use of the word “resistance”. I do not know whether many Members have read Matthew Parris’s article, in which he suggests that we should use the term “resistance” in relation to ourselves when some Conservative Members prefer to describe us as remoaners—or, indeed, traitors.