UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I have not had the pleasure of reading that legal opinion. However, there is a critical difference between the scenario that we are describing in respect of the United Kingdom and that of Croatia in the case that my hon. Friend describes. In that case, Croatia was a third country in the process of joining the European Union, and the treaties allow accession states to go through a transition process. What she has described was part of that transition process embodied in the accession treaty negotiated by Croatia with the existing states of the European Union. In the case of the United Kingdom, we are talking about us beginning to move from being a full member of the European Union with both the rights for citizens and the obligations that go with that full European Union membership. Without treaty change, there is not a legal mechanism that simply allows those rights for EU citizens to be set aside. That is the brutal truth that this House needs to recognise.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

If the Government were, for the first time, to be prepared to support and to facilitate some processes for indicative votes and so on, I think it would actually be possible to take some decisions quite quickly. The Minister will understand that his credibility in making these arguments about the timescale needed is rather undermined by the fact that, as of a couple of weeks ago, he was saying that we were going to be able to get everything through, including all the legislation, by 29 March, but now we apparently need three months in order to do so.

Specifically on the European parliamentary elections, I wonder whether the Minister has seen the comments by Eleanor Sharpston, an advocate general of the European Court of Justice, who has said, in response to the arguments that he is making,

“This is an oversimplified and ultimately fallacious presentation of the situation”,

and sets out a range of ways in which this issue could be resolved, saying that

“if the political will…is there, a legal mechanism can be found”.

[Mr Lidington]

Though I have the utmost respect for Eleanor Sharpston, that view is very different from the views that have been expressed to us very clearly by the institutions of the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Normally it is a pleasure for me to follow the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), and normally he is warm and inclusive, but I must say to him that I think that was a divisive speech that was not the right one to make in these circumstances. I will refrain from asking him whether by the global elite, he meant Eton-educated millionaires at the heart of a European Research Group campaign for no deal who can afford to move their assets around, because that is the kind of discussion we get into when we start those sorts of speeches. I do not actually think that is going to help us to come together, and we are going to have to come together somehow, somewhen.

In fact, it is the failure of the Government to attempt to bring people together since the referendum that is why we are in this mess now. It is the failure of the Government and the Prime Minister to put any deal to this House until 22 of the 24 months of article 50 were already run down. They have been running down the clock, just putting the same deal back to us again without actually listening or ever giving this House and the country the opportunity to properly debate what kind of Brexit we should be pursuing—whether it should be nearly Norway or close to Canada—and what really we should be talking about. We have a responsibility now to find a way through this very difficult situation.

That is why I think it is so important to back amendment (i), tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), which is about trying to set forward a process for Parliament to do what the Government, frankly, should have done ages ago. We should have had indicative votes ages ago. It was good to hear the Minister putting forward proposals for indicative votes, but this is way later in the process than it should have been. Also, I do not accept the conditions that he put on us having the indicative votes in the first place, and that is what I want to address.

The Minister seemed to be arguing that to be able to have a proper debate on indicative votes—or whichever kind of approach it is in order for the House to come together on what we should be for—we either have to have a very long extension or we have to have European elections, or we have to do both. I do not accept that we have to do that, because I do not think the Government are credible in their use of time. They make time a political issue, rather than a sensible issue. Time is a weapon that they use to somehow say that they can do everything incredibly quickly when they are using brinksmanship to get a vote through, but then they say the process will take an incredibly long time when they want to get the same meaningful vote through that we have already debated and rejected twice, basically because so many of us on both sides of the House think that it will weaken us for the negotiations ahead. We want an approach that can be a strong one for our country, not a weak one.

I think that it should be possible for us to come to some decisions much more quickly than the Minister suggested. I think that, in the interests of securing consensus on some steps forward, the House should support the amendment to amendment (i) tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). I also think that we should have an opportunity next week to debate what a sensible process should be. Let us bring some common sense back into this process so that we can get some agreement.

The issue of the European elections is important. It makes no sense for a state that is in the middle of article 50—a departing state—to have to hold European elections. A letter from President Juncker suggested that we would have to hold elections if the extension went beyond 23 May, which is clearly an inappropriate approach. That is why I think that what has been said, and tweeted last night, by Eleanor Sharpston, an advocate general at the European Court of Justice, is so significant. I urge Members to look at that tweet if they want to see the details. She has said that

“were there to be an extension of the Article 50 period, it would (clearly) be inappropriate for the UK to hold EP”—

European parliamentary—

“elections in May”.

However, there are precedents; there are approaches that could be taken. Eleanor Sharpston says that article 50 is the mirror provision of article 49, which was used as a basis for special arrangements for Croatia so that it did not have to hold European elections at the time of its accession. She points to other possible mechanisms as well.

None of this is easy, and I wish that we were not in this position, but the reason we are is the way in which the Prime Minister has handled things up to now. We must find a way forward that respects our constituents and enables us all to come together. I hope that we can do that, rather than just going round in the same circles time and time again.

[Several hon. Members rose—]