Leaving the EU: Business of the House

William Cash Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, I am sorry that I surprised you. I am not sure that I wrote in beforehand, but I shall endeavour to be brief. I intend to be brief because there are not many complicated issues here.

The first issue to which I want to respond is the procedural point that the Secretary of State wisely tried to retreat into, citing a few constitutional experts saying how outrageous it is for the House of Commons to try to take control of the Order Paper. Indeed, that very rarely happens but, with great respect to much more distinguished experts than me, such as Vernon Bogdanor, we have already demonstrated once that procedures already exist, which can be used—as they were by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)—in very exceptional circumstances, for the House as a whole to take command of a day’s business. Of course, the reason it did not happen for many years is that most Governments have had a comfortable majority on every conceivable subject, so there was not the faintest prospect of their losing control of the Order Paper and nobody challenged them. However, we are in exceptional times and the precedent we have already created is a perfectly valuable one.

[Sir William Cash]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Mr Clarke]

I will when I have finished my first point.

This cannot bring down the Government. Of course, if the Government are defeated, it will be open to someone to bring a motion of confidence tomorrow. However, at present, the Government would carry a motion of confidence, so all we are doing—the majority of the House, if we do—is insisting that we want to bring some clarity to the present debate, and I would say some sanity. We want to give some reassurance to people in business up and down the country who are very worried and take the opportunity again to rule out the idea of leaving with no deal. We certainly want to rule out the idea of proroguing Parliament indefinitely, so that the Prime Minister of the day can run a semi-presidential system for a bit and put in place what he or she wants, without any parliamentary majority.

This is not a great threat to the constitutional foundations of the country. This does not actually threaten the future stability of Governments. and I am sure that, if we were in opposition, we would be supporting it without the slightest demur.

[Sir William Cash]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Mr Clarke]

I will give way, but I am about to finish the procedural point.

In fact, when we were in opposition, David Cameron asked me to chair a committee to advise him on a lot of constitutional issues—with Sir George Young and Andrew Tyrie, who have now moved on to the upper House, and others—and to make recommendations. We actually advocated, and David Cameron in opposition accepted, that we should give the House more control over the business of the House. We started, eventually, this business of the Backbench Business Committee determining the business of the House for a day.

In office, we took a slightly different perspective. I am afraid that was then reduced to the Backbench Business Committee producing harmless motions and the Government never voting on them, with only one-line Whips. In my opinion, one day, there might be a Government and a Parliament so adventurous as to contemplate giving more control to the House as a whole over its own business. However, this Parliament seems to prefer to get steadily weaker, rather than stronger, and I do not think that day has yet dawned. At this stage, as that is all I am going to say on the procedural point, I will give way.

[Sir William Cash]

On that procedural point, the reality is that Standing Order No. 14 gives precedence to Government business for very good reasons. It is in accordance with our constitutional conventions and the Standing Orders that the Government have a majority and that, in those circumstances—[Interruption.] They do. With the confidence and supply agreement with the DUP, we have a Government and that is the point. We have a Prime Minister. This motion does no more than open the door to the possibility that, by some permutation or other, there may be some argument about a Prorogation or, indeed, about no deal. But that is not what this motion is about; it is an open-door policy—nothing more or less.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable). Much that needed to be said has already been said, so I shall not tediously repeat it. I want to make two points that I do not think have been sufficiently brought out so far in the debate and that might influence hon. Members who are still undecided about how to vote in a few minutes’ time.

First, almost everyone who has spoken has agreed that it would be wrong for the UK to leave the EU without a deal, without Parliament having the chance for a decisive vote. We have no way of telling in advance how that vote would go, or whether Parliament would have an alternative. It has rightly been pointed out that without an alternative we could not prevent no deal from occurring, and it also is questionable whether there would be a majority for any alternative. However, almost everyone has agreed that we need to leave open the option for Parliament to make its mind up in such a decisive vote.

It has been pointed out repeatedly that one possible means of preventing such a vote is a Prorogation. I am indeed concerned about that, but I accept that we might be in luck and have a Prime Minister who does not seek to use that route. However, I want to draw hon. Members’ attention to a point that has not come out so far, which is that Prorogation is not by any means the only way in which an incoming Prime Minister who was determined to leave with or without a deal—as many have put it—could avoid having a decisive vote. They would not need to go to the lengths of Prorogation; in fact, they would not need to do anything. If they introduced nothing to the House of Commons to give us an opportunity for such a vote, the House would not, in the absence of this motion and what follows it, have any such opportunity.

[Sir William Cash]

My right hon. Friend has just referred to this motion “and what follows it”. This is a phantom motion about a phantom Bill. Will he illustrate exactly what we are meant to be talking about, as he did before, because a few months ago there were five Bills—we ended up with a No. 5 Bill? Will he please tell us what specific wording he would import into this motion if it were to be carried to the next stage?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

My hon. Friend will not need to wait very long. If, but only if, this motion is passed today, it will be proper for those who put it forward to publish a sixth Bill, which it will be the job of the House to inspect and on which the House will take a view. It could be that the Bill will be defeated, but that will be a question for the democracy of our Parliament.

[Sir William Cash]

rose—

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I will not give way. I am sorry.

The point I am trying to make is that it is not necessary to prorogue to prevent a vote. The incoming Prime Minister would simply need to avoid taking any action. In those circumstances, we would leave on 31 October, and only after that would we need emergency legislation to catch up with the fact that we had left—

[Sir William Cash]

rose—

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

rose—

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I will not give way. I am terribly sorry, but I promised Mr Speaker that I would be quick and I am going to be quick.

We would then all be forced to vote for that emergency legislation because we could not possibly leave the country exposed to the fact that it had left without a deal and without due legislative preparation. So it is perfectly possible for an incoming Prime Minister to avoid any decisive vote unless we force one, and that is the purpose of reserving the day.

My second point relates to that, and again I do not think it has fully come out in the debate so far. My right hon. Friend the Brexit Secretary has said that there is no reason to act now because there is no emergency—we are not facing immediate withdrawal without a deal, as we were when the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and I put forward measures to prevent that and to ensure that we sought an extension—and of course he is right: we have until 31 October. That sounds like a long way away, but in parliamentary terms it is not. If we do not do these things now and on 25 June, and in the House of Lords thereafter, and if we do not have in place a process that leads to forcing a decisive vote in this House in early September on whatever the new Prime Minister puts forward, there will be no legislative time to do this, because the House traditionally sits for only two weeks in September and a couple of weeks in October.

That is well known to incoming Prime Ministers, and all the candidates are filled with sagacity and understanding of Parliament, so they will know perfectly well that they only have to occupy four weeks with doing nothing and we will be out. So, although it is not a fast-burning fuse, it is a bomb, and the fuse is already burning. If we do not put the fuse out now, we will not be able to disassemble the bomb in September or October.

[Sir William Cash]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am terribly sorry, but I will not.

That is why it is wrong to say that this proposal is premature. It may be right or wrong to vote for this motion this evening, but it is the only time we are ever going to get, and I hope that my hon. Friends and Opposition Members who are wavering about whether to support it recognise that they will have to look back if they do not support it now. If we fail, as we may well do this afternoon, they will have to look back on that as the direct cause of, in all likelihood, our leaving on 31 October without a deal. It is because I do not wish to have that on my conscience that I have taken the uncomfortable step of signing a motion that has at the head of it the name of the Leader of the Opposition, whose party I do not follow and with whose policies I generally profoundly and radically disagree. However, this is an issue so important that it transcends party politics, and I owe it to my fellow countrymen to ensure that we do not descend into a no-deal exit without Parliament having had a decisive vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Ind)]

Two groups of right hon. and hon. Members will be finding today’s vote especially difficult. Many friends on the Conservative Benches will feel torn between their loyalty to their party and their clear understanding of the national interest. I know as well as anyone the great strain that they may be feeling this afternoon. I, too, was an instinctive loyalist—someone who towed the party line, ambitious for high office. I did not see anything wrong in that, and on most questions, I still do not see anything wrong in it, and nor is there anything ignoble about the desire to stay on good terms with the members of one’s local party.

For each of us, however, there comes a moment and an issue that demands that we put such concerns to one side and do the uncomfortable thing, because we know that our constituents’ best interests demand it. I do not believe that any hon. Member with a concern for the welfare of sheep farmers or for people working in car factories will be able to look them in the eye after a no-deal Brexit has led to the decimation of Britain’s lamb exports and the destruction of thousands of highly skilled and well-paid manufacturing jobs. That is surely reason enough to support the motion today.

The other group for whom today’s vote is hard is Labour Members who represent constituencies that voted by a clear majority to leave the European Union. They feel that they are duty bound to ensure that the UK does leave the EU and are worried that a vote for today’s motion will be misrepresented as an attempt to block Brexit. My constituents voted the same way, and I feel the same obligation, but today’s motion does not block Brexit—not even close. Today’s motion would secure an opportunity to debate a Bill on 25 June, so that Parliament, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) said, can vote in September on the new Prime Minister’s plan for Brexit.

[Sir William Cash]

The hon. Gentleman refers to a Bill, but he does not know what it will contain, or perhaps he does. Will he enlighten us? Does it not really attempt to unwind the repeal of the 1972 Act, in so far as it deals with the question of deal or no deal? That is what the law says.

[Nick Boles]

The right hon. Member for West Dorset answered that question very adequately. The Bill simply provides Parliament with an opportunity in September to vote on the new Prime Minister’s plan for Brexit so that we do not leave with a no-deal Brexit on 31 October, as the law currently provides, without Parliament having had a chance to vote.

If my old friends on the Conservative Benches, the true champions of one nation, and my new friends on the Labour Benches, the representatives of thousands of decent leave voters in the midlands and the north, find a way to support today’s motion, much more than a day of the Order Paper will have been won: this House will have seized the chance to defend its rights and freedoms against an arrogant Executive hellbent on implementing an extreme policy; the British people will have been given the opportunity to slow their leaders’ lemming-like rush towards a no-deal Brexit; and the world will have been given reason to believe that the psychodrama of the Tory party’s leadership contest does not define us as a nation, that Britain has not taken leave of its senses and that the House of Commons is a place in which grown-ups come together to take responsibility for securing the future of our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Basically, I have already described this as a phantom motion for a phantom Bill. We do not know what the Bill will contain. We have had various suggestions that it may contain some elements of what has been proposed by some of the so-called leadership candidates. I do not know what they will propose by the end of the process.

What I can say, however, is that this is, as I said earlier, an open-door motion. It opens the door for any Bill, of any kind, to take precedence over Government business, which is inconceivable as a matter of constitutional convention. I put it to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) that the reality is that there is not a single constitutional authority he could cite to disprove the proposition I have put not just once over the past six months to a year on this very question, which is that our constitution operates on the basis of parliamentary government and not government by Parliament.

[Dr Whitford]

The hon. Gentleman has just said that he has no idea what a future Prime Minister will propose, which is exactly the point of this motion. A future Prime Minister could prorogue Parliament or, as the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) pointed out, simply tie us up and do nothing. This motion would simply prevent either of those options.

[Sir William Cash]

I have great respect for the hon. Lady—she sits on my Committee, and I am happy that that should be the case—and I understand what she says, but, as I said earlier, the reality is that this is a phantom motion for a phantom Bill. The real objective is to unwind the provisions set out in article 50, which is supposed to operate according to our constitutional requirements and, subject only to an extension of exit day, provides for the repeal of the 1972 Act. That Act is a bundle of all the laws, all the treaties and all the provisions, including the Lisbon treaty Act, which is part of our domestic legislation and prescribes that when we get to the end of the two-year period, that is it—subject only to an extension of exit day.

For practical purposes, there is no other way to interpret what may be in the pipeline. We all know that, and I do not know why we need to be coy. It is perfectly clear that this is an attempt by the Labour party to make political capital during a leadership election, and I do not blame it for having a shot at that. However, it is utterly irresponsible to use this procedure in a way that would enable the unwinding of the law of the land, as expressed in an Act agreed on the basis of a referendum that was itself dependent on the authority of a sovereign Act of Parliament to give the people the right to decide whether they were to leave or to remain in the European Union. That was passed in this House by six to one. It was then followed by the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017, which was passed by some 499 to 120.

With great respect to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), we now move on to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. I very well remember what he said to me as we were coming to the Third Reading of that Bill, and I do not think he would disagree with this fair description of our conversation. He said, “You know, I’ve never actually voted against a provision of this kind before. I’ve never voted in a way that would be against the interests of what I perceive to be the European Union and its objectives.” I understand that, because he has been totally consistent, and I respect him for that. But the reality is that he did vote for that Bill on Third Reading and so did every other Member on the Conservative side.

The phantom Bill is all about attempting to unravel all that, although we have not yet seen the wording. We did see it before when we had Bill Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, which ended up with the one that was passed by a minuscule majority. This is an attempt to unravel the process. I understand why people might want to do that, but the question is one of legitimacy. I also add that the role of the House of Lords in this context is completely unacceptable, as it has no legitimacy whatsoever to deal with a matter of this importance, given its unrepresentative character; the House of Lords is not elected, and this is essentially an issue about the election of Members of Parliament and the wishes of the electorate. That is what the referendum Act was about and it was what the manifestos were about.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman arguing before the House today that it is illegitimate for the House of Commons, if it wishes to pass this motion today, which will happen only if the majority vote for it, and then pass any legislation that is introduced on 25 June, which will get through only if the majority vote for it, to seek to prevent the Government from taking us out of the EU without a deal? It strikes me that if that is the will of the House, it is democratic for the House to seek to do that.

[Sir William Cash]

I have to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, for this reason: the decision that was taken as I have just described and the vote that was passed by a significant majority on 23 June 2016 was authorised by an Act of Parliament. Therefore, the voters were given the opportunity because this House decided to abrogate its right to make those decisions. That was a deliberate choice taken by this Parliament, by six to one, to ensure that those people have the right to make that decision. That is the basis on which I rest my argument, because ultimately any attempt to bypass that raises the most dangerous questions relating to the nature of our democracy. We have had many warnings as to what might happen if this were to be unwound, and it is my concern that this phantom Bill will do just that, for the reasons that lie behind the right hon. Gentleman’s question and intervention. He does not want Brexit at all, and I said this on Second Reading of the withdrawal Bill; I did not believe that Members of this House who were pretending that they were prepared to allowed Brexit had any intention of allowing it to take place. That is what this is really all about.

I also take the gravest exception to what is being done by some Conservative colleagues who voted in line with the Government’s policy in the manifesto to pass enactments that led to our ending up with the withdrawal Act, which I happen to have drafted in its original form, early in 2016. To have that completely undermined and unwound by their reversing their votes is completely unacceptable. It is unacceptable for people to vote for a vast and important question of this kind and then to unravel it completely by subsequent manoeuvres, including the use of phantom motions and phantom Bills. I believe very strongly that that is unacceptable. It is completely inconsistent with our constitutional role as the mother of Parliaments. It is inconsistent with every single aspect of our constitutional conventions, and therefore as far as I am concerned the motion should not be passed.

It would be unwise—I will go further and say it would be a disgrace—for Members who voted for the withdrawal Act to turn around and say, “But we’re going to try to reverse it” on the basis of a Bill that does not even exist at the moment yet about which they have prattled on right the way through these proceedings.