European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Grieve]

The examples could be endless—[Interruption.] Well, if there is an established rule by which, for example, EU law is currently being applied, a Minister could say that, in future, that should be disapplied because notice should not be taken of its previous application.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that it is not correct to compare the direct application of EU law with Henry VIII powers? When EU law is made, we all sit around the table. EU law is not other people’s law but our law. We sit at the table when EU law is being made, so it is an incorrect comparison.

[Mr Grieve]

I do actually agree with the hon. Lady and, I am afraid, disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). Of course, membership of the EU implies a pooling of sovereignty, but the decision-making process by which law has been created in the EU is one that is done not by faceless bureaucrats, but by the Council of Ministers. There is absolutely no doubt about that at all—

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[Paul Blomfield]

rose—

[Wera Hobhouse]

Are we not in a discussion about who interprets what? Is it not therefore time that we asked the people: what did they mean?

[Paul Blomfield]

We will come to that point in the second half of our debate today, and I will take the opportunity to comment on it then. However, to answer the right hon. Gentleman, the point I was making was that he sought to interpret the leave vote in a way that, on the basis of the research he cited, was flawed.

Analysis he might look at of nearly 3,000 British people, which was conducted by the NatCen Social Research, found that concerns about immigration were the driving factor for 75% of leave voters, which should not surprise him, because that was something he put very much at the centre of his arguments during the leave campaign.

If we know what the vote was not, let us remind ourselves what it was: it was simply a vote to leave the European Union. The campaign was hugely divisive. I spoke at dozens of meetings during the campaign, and the very last question of the very last meeting, in a local church, was, “How are you going to put our divided country back together again after all this?” Sadly, that question is as relevant now as it was then, as some of the abuse faced by Conservative Members after the vote last week demonstrated.

Meeting that challenge is a responsibility for us all, and it starts with us recognising that the majority in this House speaks for the country in wanting a sensible approach to Brexit. Instead of fuelling division, the Government should reach out and seek to build on that consensus for the next phase of the negotiations, in a way that will bring people together.

Last week’s drama should have been unnecessary. We should have been able to readily agree on the sovereignty of Parliament and on a meaningful final vote for this place. Labour amendments 348 and 349—when we come to it—which seek the publication of any impact assessment conducted by the Government, should be as uncontroversial as the idea that Parliament should have a say.

Clearly, events have moved on since these amendments were tabled, but real issues do remain. We obviously brought a motion on the issue to the House on 1 November, asking that impact assessments should be passed to the Exiting the European Union Committee. We did that for the same reason that the House voted last week: we want proper transparency and accountability in this process, but that is not what we got.

The Government neither amended nor opposed our motion, but they hoped to sidestep it. When Mr Speaker confirmed it was binding—

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am extremely grateful for the humility being shown by my distinguished right hon. and learned Friend, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who admits that some of the Bills brought forward by his own former Department are incomprehensible to the lay reader. It is a broader problem of legislation, but it has been a particular problem of European legislation. That is why I have some sympathy for the new clause. As EU law is brought into UK law, which is widely accepted as the right starting point for when we leave the European Union, the Government ought to seek to do it in a form that is intelligible and easy to understand. This is one of the areas where I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, who said that that is one of the principles of the rule of law. As we do this, we should of course be sticking to principles of basic constitutional fairness.

It is glorious that the second argument of the Eurosceptics has been accepted in this new clause. The first argument is the basic one of taking back control, but the second is that the fundamental nature of the way in which the EU created law, and the whole body of the acquis communautaire, was not comprehensible to most people, was not subject to satisfactory democratic control, and was a bureaucratic monster that rolled on and on regardless.

[Wera Hobhouse]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Of course I give way to the hon. Lady, whose constituency I encircle.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, for giving way. Has he ever tried to put any legislation in front of an ordinary person and ask him or her whether it is comprehensible? Our discussion demonstrates our difficulty, as parliamentarians, in making comprehensible to the people who elect us what we are actually about.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

In North East Somerset, we do not have ordinary people. We have only exceptional, brilliant and talented individuals of the highest and finest calibre. I have a serious point to make in that: we, as politicians, should never use the term “ordinary people”, implying that we are some priestly caste who understand the mysteries of legislation, whereas ordinary people do not.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I apologise for the use of the term “ordinary people”. I accept that it is possibly not a very good way of describing the people who elect us.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for that. I think the point is important, and we should try to remember it.

A lot of the legislation that we pass can be explained to everybody—even to ourselves—in an understandable way. If we look at the Treasury Bench, we see some of the finest brains in Britain. They get up at the Dispatch Box and explain to us what is going to be passed into law, in terms that even Members of Parliament—including those of us who are not learned Members—can understand. I think that laws can be explained simply, and that is a worthy ambition.

New clause 21 makes the important point that during our period of membership, the EU increasingly turned out law that people did not understand. We have a golden opportunity to improve the quality of the legislation that we pass, improve people’s general understanding of it and improve our own understanding of it. Clarity is just and fair. I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, that we want to apply this to our own work as well. There is no point in complaining about the European Union in that regard, but making our own laws incomprehensible. As an aside to what he said, one of the reasons why there is so much tax avoidance is that tax law is written in so complicated a manner.

Amendment 348 is important, and as the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) rightly said, it touches on the subject of the Humble Address that was brought forward on 1 November. The Government have dealt with the matter, and it is important to look at what they have done in response to the Humble Address. Many Conservative Members have opposed the European Union on the grounds of parliamentary sovereignty and an understanding of the nature of our constitution. We must recognise that a Humble Address motion is unquestionably binding. That has always been the tradition of this place. It is quite clear from “Erskine May” that there is a profound duty on the Government to fulfil the terms of any Humble Address. It will be interesting to see how often the Opposition use that procedure over the next few years to try to get information from the Government.

It is worth noting why the Humble Address procedure fell out of practice. I think the real reason was that Governments tended to command sufficient majorities in the House that a Humble Address motion they opposed would not get through. In the situation of a very slim overall majority, with the help of our friends from the Democratic Unionist party—

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I did go to see the documents, as a member of the Exiting the European Union Committee. I was lucky; I was not told that I had to hand over my mobile telephone, my secret spyglasses or whatever other kit I might have borrowed from James Bond and brought with me so that I could try to take these secret bits of information out to the wider world. I did not have to suffer the great indignity that some other hon. Gentlemen have suffered. I was allowed to sit down and plough through the documents.

I must confess that on that afternoon, I would have been happier reading a P.G. Wodehouse or a similarly entertaining document. I also confess that there was not a great deal in the bit that I read that could not have been found out by somebody with an able researcher or competence in the use of Google. None the less, the information had all been brought together in a usable fashion in one place, and it was an analysis of the sectors covered. It may not have been exciting, it may not have been the read of the century and it may not have won the Booker prize. None the less, it was a detailed sectoral analysis and it more than met the requirements laid down by the Humble Address, which asked for something that did not exist.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The hon. Gentleman is extremely generous to give way again to me. I asked the Secretary of State in the Select Committee where and when he thought the misunderstanding had arisen, but I do not think I got a very satisfactory answer. He had plenty of opportunities in the House to correct us and say, “These are not impact assessments; they are sectoral analyses.” He never chose to do that, and I am still waiting for the answer. Why does the hon. Gentleman think that the Secretary of State did not have the opportunity to clear up that misunderstanding?

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[Mr Leslie]

We will have to see what happens there. I think that about 2.5 million lorries a year go through the port of Dover; just think about the volume of traffic we are talking about.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The Brexit Select Committee actually visited Dover and we then met a representative of the port of Calais. Although this country is prepared to build a lorry park, the French side will not build a lorry park because it has a migrant crisis. The port of Calais will just close under these circumstances, so where will we export to and import from?

[Mr Leslie]

I know that the Minister will answer all these questions as soon as he sums up this debate. He has the answers in his pack and he is not one to shilly-shally; he will give us specific and detailed responses to these questions.

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[Mr Leslie]

The hon. Gentleman will know that there are concerns. He said Norway was a “vassal state”—I think that was his phrase. I do not think the Norwegians would see it that way, but they have had to simply take instructions, in many ways, in terms of the European Union arrangements on a lot of these questions. With many of our products, particularly in the manufacturing sector, the customs union has given us great opportunity to thrive, and we have done particularly well in recent years on the back of that.

[Wera Hobhouse]

On that point, the Norwegian border is very interesting. Norway is in Schengen, so it does border checks on goods, but it does not need to do border checks on people. The main problem, of course, is that we are not in either. We need, at some point, to address the issue of how we check that lorries are not bringing into this country people we do not want to be here. I know that taking back control of our borders is a very important point, but there will be important discussions to be had about how we make that possible. Container ports will be okay, because we can seal the loads, but it will be a lot more difficult with lorries, because they take separate loads from separate consignments, and they need to be opened several times. So the issue of people smuggling is becoming quite potent.

[Mr Leslie]

The hon. Lady deals with the point incredibly well.

If we end frictionless trade or introduce barriers, with potentially the return of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, very significant problems will arise. The Government are either deluding themselves by saying, “There’s some miraculous blue-skies technological solution to all these things”, or deluding others because of the fudging and obfuscation that is going on, when, in moving from the phase 1 to the phase 2 process, they put in a form of words that seems to be interpreted in almost as many different ways as there are people reading them. They have kicked the issue into the long grass for now, but we are not going to be able to get to a decent deal without this unravelling.

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[Stephen Gethins]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Huge efforts have gone into covering up these assessments and the fact that this is a flimsy job indeed. The point I was making again highlights why we need to protect our place in the single market. That is the primary concern for businesses that benefit from it, and it was not on the ballot. Vote Leave did make a number of promises, one of them being that Scotland would get power over immigration. That would help towards ensuring that Scotland could remain part of the single market. What Scottish National party Members have said is that we are still open to compromise. We have tabled new clause 45 and are clear that the Act must in no way give the UK Government a green light to drag the UK out of the single market—that was never on the ballot, and we have to be clear on that. We were promised powers over immigration and that would go a long way, if the UK does not want to take our compromise as a whole, to Scotland remaining part of the single market. We also support new clause 9, which would have the same effect.

We are about to spend £40 billion for a worse deal with the European Union, at a time when a Tory Government are cutting public services across the UK. Let me touch briefly on a second referendum. We think that people should have a right to look at the outcome of the negotiation. I have a great deal of sympathy for the Liberal Democrat calls for another referendum. However, I say to our Liberal Democrat colleagues in the spirit of friendship that the immediate challenge must be for us to work together and help the UK stay in the single market and customs union. That is the compromise we have suggested. It is not my preferred option—my preferred option would be for Scotland to remain part of the EU—but that is the nature of compromise; we all have a little bit of give and take in this process.

It should be said, however, that a referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal will be difficult to resist if the uncertainty around negotiations persists. Any second referendum must not replicate the 2016 campaign, and it is essential that Scotland’s constitutional place is protected in a second referendum. We do not want to be in circumstances where we are dragged out against our will for a second time.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Of course this is not going to be a second referendum. I want to clarify once and for all that it is the language of the other side to say that we want a second referendum; we want a referendum on the deal—on what is going to be negotiated. It will be a confirmation—an update—of what the people have said, because only the people can end what they have started. That can be dealt with only through a referendum.

[Stephen Gethins]

I have enormous sympathy for the hon. Lady’s position and what she says, but the people of Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the EU and we are concerned that there would be no recognition of Scotland’s place in any subsequent deal, and we want to leave open, even at this late stage, the possibility of seeking a compromise. We all have a responsibility in this House to do that.

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[Mr Baker]

I am very grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. For all the fire and smoke that we have had over the course of this debate, there has been quite a lot of consensus.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the Minister give way?

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[Mr Baker]

As the hon. Gentleman should know, my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General promised a Report stage, and we will indeed have that Report stage and we look forward to it.

[Wera Hobhouse]

rose—

[Mr Baker]

I will give way to the hon. Lady; she has been so patient.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the Minister for giving way. He is generous. As a new MP, I must say that I am very surprised about how little constructive dialogue there has been. In fact, the comment that those on the Government Benches could deal with all of this without having to deal with the Opposition was alarming. We are all here to make constructive comments, to improve the Bill and to make compromises. The comments that they could deal with it all without having to listen to the Opposition or to have constructive dialogue were both alarming and disappointing.

[Mr Baker]

The hon. Lady reminds me of how much I miss the days of coalition on some occasions.

The clauses and schedules that we are debating in this final group contain a number of detailed, necessary and technical provisions. In many cases, they are standard provisions that one would expect to see in any Bill.

Clause 14 is a technical and standard provision that sets out important definitions of many key terms that appear throughout the Bill, such as “EU tertiary legislation” and “EU entity”, and clarifies how other references in the Bill are to be read. Clause 15 complements clause 14, setting out in one place where the key terms used throughout the Bill are defined and noting where amendments to the Interpretation Act 1978 are made under schedule 8. Together, clauses 14 and 15 will aid comprehension of the Bill.

Clause 18 provides that the Bill will apply to the whole UK. In addition, because the European Communities Act 1972 currently extends to the Crown dependencies and Gibraltar in a limited way, the repeal of that Act must similarly extend to those jurisdictions to the extent that it applies to them. The Bill also repeals three Acts that extend to Gibraltar, all of which relate to European parliamentary elections. The powers in clauses 7 and 17 can be used to make provision for Gibraltar as a consequence of these repeals. The approach in clause 18 has been agreed with the Governments of Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar in line with usual practice.

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[Ian Murray]

This of course brings us to the crux of the Government’s ideology, and no Government Members can ever stand up again and confidently pronounce that the Conservative party is pro-business.

The Government’s strategy and the red lines they have drawn in relation to the Bill are destroying business and are anti-business. Every sector that gives evidence to the Health Committee, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee or the International Trade Committee—and on and on—tells us that the only way to resolve these problems is by staying in the single market and the customs union. If such sectors—the people who create the jobs, employ the people and create the wealth in this country—are telling us that, we should listen to them, rather than to those on the extreme right wing of the Conservative party. They claim to be free traders, but they want to throw out 57 trade deals for some aspirational trade deals—no one can yet tell us whether anyone is even in the queue or wanting to speak to us about them—which is surely anti-trade and anti-business, and is destroying the fabric of the economy of this country.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Is there not a deep misunderstanding among those who say they want free trade agreements but to be outside the customs union? Creating a customs border is independent of how much we actually raise tariffs, because there will still be a border and there will still be checks. However freely or not freely we trade, creating a customs border will lead to delays, checks, regulations and so on and so forth. People say that we will have a great free trade deal, but we will still have a border, and that is what will be damaging.

[Ian Murray]

That intervention—I will finish on this point—gets to the crux of new clause 13, because we will have to have a border.

I will keep making in this House the same argument that the Minister and his colleagues in this House made when they stood on the same platform as me during the Scottish independence referendum. They consistently said that if the UK was split up and Scotland came out of the UK single market, there would have to be a border at Berwick. Why? Because there would be different arrangements for customs, regulatory matters, the free movement of people and goods.

How can Ministers now stand at the Dispatch Box with a straight face and say that none of this now applies either to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland or indeed to Gibraltar? There is no answer to that question because, again, the Government’s red lines and their narrative do not fit with where they want to go on the final negotiations. We cannot have frictionless free trade while having differential arrangements on customs or regulatory alignment: it just does not work. If the Minister wants to intervene on me to tell me how it will work, rather than just using narrative and rhetoric—and anybody can understand how it will actually work—I would be happy to agree with him.

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I therefore urge hon. Members across the House to think carefully and deeply about the fundamental democratic and constitutional role and functions of this House before they walk through the Division Lobbies this evening. I urge them to think carefully about the spirit and purpose of Walter Bagehot’s work. It is 150 years since the publication of his words about the expressive function of this House, but they are as relevant today as they were then—perhaps even more so, because the principles of our parliamentary democracy are at stake. Give the populists and ideologues an inch and they will take a mile, and when the Government are prepared to collude with them, that is a potent force indeed. That is why amendment 43 is so important and why I urge hon. Members to vote for it this evening.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I rise to speak to amendment 120. Since I arrived in this place in June and started taking part in the Brexit debate, one thing has intrigued me: have the Prime Minister and many other remain MPs changed their minds? We all know that the Prime Minister supported remaining in June 2016. Has she changed her mind since? This is important because she and her Government use one big argument for pressing on with Brexit: it is the will of the people. Is it? For the Government and the hard Brexiteers, the referendum result is fixed forever. The people cannot change their minds. The Prime Minister and other MPs can change their minds, but the people cannot.

As the months go by and the Government’s legitimacy for implementing their version of Brexit becomes less and less legitimate, obeying the will of the people becomes the last remaining legitimacy, but nobody bothers to find out what the will of the people is now. Indeed, the last to be asked are the people themselves. Hon. Members are right to say that Britain is a parliamentary democracy, but now we have had a referendum, there is no obvious mechanism for updating, confirming or reviewing the referendum result. The 2017 general election provided no mandate for overturning the referendum result. It is obvious that 650 MPs cannot update, confirm or review the decision taken by 33 million people, but the people themselves can, and the people themselves should be allowed to change their minds, in either direction.

There are people now who voted remain who feel that the decision has been taken and the Government should get on with it. There are others who voted leave who fear that they will be let down by politicians who have used them for their own ends. The will of the people is a mixed bag. The Government are legislating for a Brexit in the name of the people. Their problem is that they might find themselves pressing ahead without the people’s consent. Last week, Parliament voted to give itself a vote on the deal. This was a welcome step forward, but what started with the people must end with the people. The people must sign off or reject the deal. Only the people can finish what the people have started.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 61. CF Fertilisers owns Britain’s only two complexes still making fertilisers in this country. Its comments are simple enough. David Hopkins writes:

“Right across the country, the chemical industry has made a huge investment into REACH compliance. It is not perfect – far from it. It is however becoming an international standard, and our compliance with – and involvement in – such a regulation is essential in enabling us to continue trading effectively across border, both from an import point of view but much more significantly from an export perspective.”

Neil Hollis of BASF says:

“BASF does not take a rigid view on whether REACH is the best possible regulation for current and new chemicals, but it is established, tested and most importantly, a requirement for selling chemicals within the EU. Regardless of what model of Brexit any of us prefer, that isn’t going to change…Our supply chains, operating between ten UK manufacturing plants, and many more across Europe, require clarity that materials can be legally processed and sold, in transition, and after the UK has left the EU.”

Philip Bailey, general manager of Lucite International, reminds me of the investment that takes place in my constituency. He says:

“We have many concerns about the implications of Brexit on our ability to trade effectively and competitively within the EU, where we export 60-70% of our products.”

The Chemical Industries Association reminds us that UK companies hold 6,364 registrations covering 2,563 substances. In that respect, the UK is second only to Germany. The association says:

“The UK Government’s decision to leave the single market will have significant implications.”

On Monday I raised the issue directly with the Prime Minister after her EU summit speech. I asked whether she could offer some reassurance to the chemical companies that the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals regulation would apply after we left the EU and beyond the implementation phase. Sadly, she had no such reassurance to give, dismissing my concerns and those of the industry as just another area for negotiators to talk about. This is about so much more than that. The very future of our chemical industry is at stake. I fear that if we do not retain a system that enables our chemical companies to remain within REACH, some of the forward planning that we hear about will not be for the UK; it will be for elsewhere, and we will pay for that in terms of investment and jobs.

For Teesside, which leads the world in so many ways in chemicals, the outcome could be particularly bad. We need Ministers to spell out very specifically how the UK will ensure that our chemical companies have the business environment and associated regulations that will guarantee their future trade.