European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

During the referendum, I was a reluctant remainer. I appreciated that our relationship with the EU was not perfect. I acknowledged that many of us would like to see changes. Like so many people, I felt that the EU was often a remote and arrogant bureaucracy.

But there is no doubt in my mind that the deal brought back by the Prime Minister is not what was promised to those who voted to leave. It means not taking back sovereignty but giving more of it away, desperately accepting rules that we have no control over in order to cling on to access to our largest trading partner for goods, and to keep our countries together, while completely ignoring services, which make up 80% of our capital’s economy. Why should someone in Liverpool, Newcastle or Sunderland care about London’s economy? Because right now, London and the south-east are the only regions that generate more taxes than they spend, so if London gets hit, so do the hospitals, schools and services of our other great cities. Perhaps it should not be that way, but it is.

The idea that we can make ourselves smaller as globalisation becomes faster and stronger, while comforting, is unlikely to be successful. As a block of 28 nation states standing together against the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon, we are a far more effective bulwark against the worst excesses of these amazing global companies who can have extraordinarily negative impacts on some of the most vulnerable towns and people. I have been amazed by the politicians and commentators who blithely suggest that our economy taking a hit would be a price worth paying. We all know that the people who get hit first are always the poorest. I do not believe that anybody voted to make us poorer, I do not believe that anybody voted for us to debate for two and a half years and choose a worse deal than the one that we currently have, and I certainly do not believe that anybody voted to see our country opt for a monumental act of self-harm.

We have thousands of people sleeping rough on our streets—the number is higher now than at any point under this Government. We have over 130,000 children who will wake up trapped in unsuitable temporary accommodation on Christmas morning. At my local A&E, we already have patients queuing out of the door, indicating that last year’s winter crisis will be but a preface to the problems that lie ahead this year. Yet, meanwhile, here we are still debating the level of uncertainty and destruction that we should plunge our economy and our country into. Take the plans to reopen the Wilson Hospital in my constituency, halted after the funders pulled out due to Brexit’s economic uncertainty. Why would we choose to give ourselves self-inflicted wounds costing billions of pounds when we still have the chance to say no?

So what is the alternative? Looking back to 2016,1 know so much more about the impact of leaving the European Union than I did then. I suspect that is true for all of us. We gave the responsibility for deciding on whether we should leave the EU to the people of this country, and now we know the terms of the deal on the table, those same people deserve to have their say. Now that the practical consequences of Brexit are there for all to see, almost two thirds of my constituents support a vote on the deal. The costs and complexities are clearer now than at any stage during the referendum, and it is evident that there is no majority in Parliament for this deal, because the one thing that unites both sides of the debate is that nobody voted for the deal that is on the table. Parliament is in gridlock, but there is a clear solution: let the people decide.