Business of the House

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) for the business of the House motion, and I hear what the Leader of the House has said. We are living in unprecedented times, and that is why this business of the House motion has been moved by the right hon. Gentleman. It saddens me to look around the Conservative Benches and see some of the most wonderful, fantastic former Ministers, who have now left the Government because they are frustrated and do not see a way forward.

We on this side of the House are going to support the motion. We know that these are unusual circumstances. The House has decided that it wants to proceed in this way, and all hon. Members that I have spoken to today have made this decision. They are Members who have been working here for a long time, including a former Attorney General, the Chairs of Select Committees, the right hon. Member for West Dorset—who has written manifestos for the Conservative party and played a vital role in it—and a former vice-chair of the Tory party. They are excellent people, and they all agree that something has to be done. Mr Speaker, it is you who has to control the business of the House. I am not talking about personalities; I am talking about the office of the Speaker.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for giving way. The Leader of the House claimed at the Dispatch Box that she spoke for this House in Government. How can we possibly take that at face value when she would not take a single intervention, even though the House has made it clear that the business today was to be decided by the House? And this is where it becomes jaw-droppingly hypocritical, when she says—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not make a personal charge that impugned the integrity of the Leader of the House. Members can make a wider political charge, but not a personal charge.

[Wes Streeting]

Out of respect for you, Mr Speaker, and for the rules of the House, I will certainly withdraw the word “hypocritical”. However, it was pretty jaw-dropping to hear the Leader of the House claiming that it was the Speaker’s responsibility to select every amendment when she herself believes that we should not vote on a single amendment today and when she will not be casting a vote one way or another on any of them. Is this not just a complete farce?

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Hon. Members have mentioned that the House is listening and that the Prime Minister is listening. The Prime Minister has met hon. Members, but she has not listened to them. The fact is that we are in unusual times. This is a hung Parliament, and the Government are governing on the basis of a confidence and supply agreement and nothing else.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

There is one reason and one reason alone why we are debating this business of the House motion, and that is the vacuum created by the Government through their total lack of leadership in this process. There was a very simple way for the Government to defeat the proposal put forward by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), but the Government, who were given the opportunity again and again to set out their own path and their own plan for indicative votes, rejected it at every single point.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I find the rewriting of history rather bizarre. On Monday, I asked my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office whether the Government would provide their own pathway towards indicative votes this week, and he said yes. That is the basis on which I said it would be better to have the indicative votes led by the Government, which is the best way forward. If we are to hear the voice of this House, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be good if we got to vote on all the suggested options, not just some of them?

[Wes Streeting]

The selection is a matter for the Speaker, as the hon. Lady knows. To be clear, she is right to say that the Government said they would lay out their own path, but when they were asked, by Member after Member, on what day, for how long and on what basis, there was not a single response. The heart of the problem is the Government’s making it up as they go along.

The Government have to decide which charge they are laying at the feet of the House: either this is a remainer Parliament trying to overturn the will of the people, as the Prime Minister has claimed again and again, particularly with her incendiary statement last week, or, more accurately, this is a Parliament in which the vast majority of Members who voted remain also voted to trigger article 50, as I did, in the trust and understanding that we would have a Government who would competently manage the negotiations and reach out across the House and try to build consensus among Members of Parliament and, most importantly, the electorate.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

The nub of this issue is that this entire Parliament has lost trust in the Government, which is why we do not trust them when they say they will bring back motions for debate. Is not the crux of this issue that had the Government wanted to prevent any kind of historical precedent for Parliament taking control of the Order Paper, all they had to do on Monday night was simply accept the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin)?

[Wes Streeting]

I wholeheartedly agree.

With the limited time I have, I wish to say something about the trust that the public have in us as Members of Parliament and in the House of Commons. It is difficult, particularly when the country voted one way and some of us, myself included, voted a different way. It has been a difficult process trying to navigate our way through something that is completely unprecedented in the history of our country—trying to remove ourselves from the most sophisticated political and economic alliance the world has ever seen. It took seven years to organise a two-week sporting event, the London Olympics; it is not necessarily surprising that it has taken more than two years for us to try to negotiate our way out of the European Union.

What is completely unforgivable is the way the Government have botched the negotiations at every turn and failed to try to achieve consensus. At every single stage, when amendments have been tabled, whether on the single market or the customs union, or on different negotiating priorities and different principles, the Prime Minister has said, “It’s my way or the highway.” That is why we are in the bind we are in now. Whatever our particular views on the referendum, we all have a responsibility to try to break the deadlock, which is what the right hon. Member for West Dorset is trying to achieve—to test the will of the House to see whether there is some way to achieve consensus and to try to find a way through this damaging and unprecedented period of our history. That is the responsibility that now rests on our shoulders. All of us, when we go through the Division Lobby imminently, have a responsibility to show our country that Parliament is taking control of the process, and that we are determined, as Members of Parliament, to act in the interests of our constituencies and our countries at every point.

Whether we voted leave or remain, and whichever options we choose to vote for, we do so for one reason and one reason alone: the furtherance of our national interest—defending the jobs, livelihoods, hopes and prospects of the people who send us here. Whatever our differences, I think that this House is full of people with honour and integrity. We have the opportunity in the coming days and weeks to show that to be true.