Leaving the EU: No Deal

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Adrian Bailey

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), who in many ways encapsulates the voice of reason on the Government Benches. I only wish that voice had been more prominent and had prevailed at an earlier stage in the negotiations.

I support my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) in this approach, but we have to recognise that we are now engaged in one of the most dangerous and difficult exercises in parliamentary brinkmanship possible. Looking at the way in which the Prime Minister has conducted these negotiations and the measures that have been announced overnight, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the Prime Minister is trying to drive us towards a situation where Parliament has to make a choice between a bad deal and a disastrous one. If the Prime Minister were genuinely to start to take the necessary measures to avoid a no deal Brexit, it would have been necessary to take them two years ago. As my right hon. and learned Friend has made quite clear, it is actually too late to get the necessary infrastructure and the measures that would be required for a no-deal situation.

What we have now is something that is profoundly damaging—above all, damaging to businesses and to the economy that is sustained by them.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Is it not absolutely necessary that the Government now knock these Brexit fantasies on the head and do not continue to give the hope or the impression to the people of this country that something is possible when it is clearly the most damaging thing that this country could face?

[Mr Bailey]

Yes. I am going to come to that in a moment.