European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

Amendment (a) has already been much discussed in the course of this debate, and I do not want to detain the House long. First, though, I wish to say what it is trying to do and what it is not trying to do. It is not some kind of massive constitutional revolution, although I know that some of my hon. Friends and others have suggested that it is. The truth is that, as you said yourself earlier in the debate, Mr Speaker, the House has since its inception owned its Standing Orders. In fact, under the principle of comity—one of the most fundamental principles of our constitution—the courts have never sought to intervene in the proceedings of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and have recognised that the House in each case controls its own proceedings.

As a matter of fact, the idea that it is an ancient constitutional principle that the Government should control the Order Paper is slightly anhistorical, if that is the right word, because the practice started in 1906, so it is not, as far as I am aware, part of our ancient constitution. For about 400 or 500 years, things that either were the House of Commons or were very much like it controlled their own Order Papers. That changed at the beginning of the 20th century, but what did not change was the fundamental point that the way that Standing Orders are decided is by a majority vote in the House of Commons, and therefore they can be adjusted by such a vote and, if so adjusted, the adjusted version is what applies.

Every time there is a private Members Bill Friday, astonishingly, the Government do something that we are apparently now entreated to regard as utterly revolutionary—they hand over to private Members the opportunity to put forward Bills. According to this soi-disant constitutional theory that has been invented, that must be a kind of revolution, because it is not the Government putting forward a Bill, but in fact we have been doing it perfectly happily for years. So there is no revolutionary intent behind the amendment at all.

The second point I wish to make is about what the amendment does do. It does exactly what has been described in the debate; namely, it provides an opportunity, simply and nothing more, for the House of Commons to begin—I stress, to begin—the process of working its way towards identifying a way forward that can command a majority in this House.

I wish to reflect for a second on my own personal history in this matter. I find sometimes from the communications, not always utterly polite, that I receive from various quarters on my iPhone, that it is supposed that I have from the beginning attempted to destroy the Government’s efforts to carry out an orderly Brexit. That is obviously a more amusing story than the real one, but the real one is very sad and ordinary. I started as an entirely loyal member of the Conservative party. I had never voted against the Conservative Whip in my entire parliamentary career—not once. What is more, although I voted remain in the referendum, I was absolutely determined that we should continue our proceedings by ensuring that we fulfilled the mandate of the British people and left the European Union.

For a long while, although I personally thought from the very beginning that the Prime Minister was unwise to set out her red lines, I swallowed my concerns about them and utterly supported her in her endeavour to get her version of leave across the line. Indeed, on frequent occasions, as several of my right hon. and hon. Friends will recall, I acted as a kind of broker to try to bring together my European Research Group colleagues with other colleagues who now sit in various parts of the House, to produce results—some of which are now encoded, as a matter of fact, in section 13 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act. It was my endeavour to make this a process that enabled the Prime Minister to get to the end of the road successfully.

I have fulfilled that endeavour by trying to vote with the Prime Minister on every occasion on which she has brought a section 13 motion to the House. I apologise to Opposition Members for saying that I will do that again if the Prime Minister brings forward a meaningful vote 3, or 4, or infinity. I will go on voting for the Prime Minister’s deal, because I happen to think that it is perfectly okay. I am very conscious that many Members do not agree with me.

The problem we have faced—all 650 of us can agree on this—is that we have not been able to get a majority for the Prime Minister’s deal. That is the fact, and it is a problem, because if there is no majority for that deal and we want to leave the EU, we are forced down only one of two possible tracks, one of which is to find an alternative and the other of which is to have no deal. It was at the point a few months back when I surmised that there was a real possibility that the Prime Minister, I think by mistake rather than on purpose, was going to end up taking us out without a deal and without having adequately prepared for that, that I became so concerned that I started to work on a cross-party basis with many colleagues on both sides of the House to try to find a solution. This modest attempt to provide the House with an opportunity to vote in the majority in favour of an alternative way forward is simply part of that process.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

There is a sentiment in the House that we need somehow to compromise. Earlier, I said to the Prime Minister that it was previously unthinkable for me ever to vote for a Brexit deal. Why is it so unthinkable for Government Members to agree to support a people’s vote on whatever Brexit deal we come together for?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

If we go through the process that I hope we can inaugurate this evening, one thing we will all have to do is seek compromise. We almost know that if we all vote for our first preference, we will never get to a majority solution. I do not believe there is a majority in favour of the first preferences of any person in this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Gethins]

The right hon. Lady knows the Conservative party much, much better than I do, and it shows. She makes a very valid point. The small, elitist group of Conservative MPs—all men, incidentally—who were invited to Chequers have failed, and failed spectacularly, on their pet, lifelong political project. I would not let that lot anywhere the TV remote in my house, never mind the most important decision that we have had to make for generations.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Would the hon. Gentleman extend that to listening to a mob of people who will apparently rebel if we ever do not deliver on this vote of the people? Nobody listens to the peaceful 1 million people and 5 million people who want to revoke article 50. They are not giving us death threats or mobbing us; they are just peaceful people. Yet we are worried about the keyboard warriors who threaten us from the security of their homes. Is that not also wrong?

[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. Lady makes a very powerful point about the way that millions protested peacefully on Saturday. I am delighted that our First Minister joined them, as did the leader of the Liberal Democrats, colleagues in the Labour party and even some Conservative colleagues. They were right to have done so.

The Prime Minister is effectively out of power, and we need to move on. Her deal has been rejected twice, overwhelmingly, which means that it becomes more and more pointless to debate it with every passing hour. The Opposition spokesperson was right to point that out. The House of Commons must seize control of this process tonight so that we can hold those indicative votes and start—start—to find a way out of this mess. We know from the UK Government’s own warnings that her deal is not in the best interests of anybody in the UK, and we know that no deal is not in anybody’s best interests either. This Parliament has come together and comprehensively rejected both her deal and no deal. Having wasted almost three years, the Government have run out of options and run out of ideas, and we need to step up.

Where we are today is not a farce: it is a tragedy, and a tragedy that is taking us all down with it. I assure colleagues that, as somebody who fundamentally wants Scotland to be an independent state, it really gives me no pleasure when I speak to colleagues overseas and find that the UK’s international reputation is broken. That hurts us all. When I was working in the European institutions, I saw that overall in the EU, the UK could be a real force for good. Although I did not always agree with everything that it did, I acknowledge many of the positive contributions made by UK citizens to the EU project. It is right that we all acknowledge that.

What was more striking, however, was the way in which the UK and Ireland worked as the closest possible allies and partners in the European Union. For the first time in that troubled history, there was truly a working as a partnership of equals alongside other European states. Now—again, this gives me no pleasure, nor, I suspect, the Irish either—the boot that has historically been on the foot of the UK is now on the other foot. As Robert Cooper wrote in the Financial Times:

“The smallest insiders (Dublin in the case of Brexit) matter more than the biggest outsider (us).”

That tells us everything about solidarity in the workings of the European Union. Yet even on this, the Irish do not crow but have been honest brokers. The best friends any of us can have are our most critical friends—the ones who tell us the truth when we want to see it the least. I have heard, when these matters of truth have come out, Brexiteers getting enraged and annoyed at the truth that people dare speak from Dublin.

Let me remind all Members that Ireland is independent and is not coming back—and it is not difficult to see why. Independent states thrive in the European Union. That is a means of strengthening democracy and sovereignty. The EU is a partnership of equals in a way that the UK simply is not. I want to see Scotland as a full and independent member state of the EU. That would be healthier in our relationship as a modern outward-looking nation in the same way that it has been healthy for the Anglo-Irish relationship.

Here in the UK, people are seeing through this mess. At the weekend, as we have heard, hundreds of thousands of people from the length and breadth of the UK marched for our collective future. Since then, at the last look, the revocation of article 50 petition has been signed by 5.5 million people, including 17% of the electorate in my own constituency—and that is not even the highest figure in Scotland. Millions of people can see what this Government cannot. What this Government clearly cannot see, but these people can, is that when you are careering towards the cliffs you slam on the brakes—that is what they are there for. Let us not forget that Parliament has that power, as was recognised by the courts, because the UK Parliament throughout this has retained, and always will retain in these circumstances, sovereignty in a way that the Scottish Parliament does not. Spot the difference, everybody: the UK Parliament, as a member of the EU, retains sovereignty; the Scottish Parliament, as this process has shown us, does not. This may provide a mechanism to stop doing untold damage to those we all represent.