EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Was the hon. Gentleman as surprised as I was to hear that no costs had been incurred in this? He has highlighted the £800,000 that was paid out to consultants, but there was also the cost of dredging the port. We were told by the permanent secretary that that was paid for by Seaborne, yet the contract was cancelled. Is the hon. Gentleman as surprised as I am that Seaborne bore the cost of that itself—or was it borne by someone else?

[Alan Brown]

I am actually very surprised at that. I put in a written parliamentary question asking how much the Department for Transport had paid towards the dredging of the port at Ramsgate, and the answer I was given was that it had paid nothing, so I shall be challenging that further. We need to get to the bottom of this, because we know full well that that operation was not done for nothing and that the Transport Secretary was lobbying Thanet Council to keep the port open because of his negotiations with Seaborne. There is more to run on this, and I thank the shadow Secretary of State for bringing it up.

Returning briefly to Eurotunnel, we know that the out- of-court settlement was effectively a Government cave-in. The thing about that Government cave-in is that we have learned that they are going to keep 10,000 documents secret for reasons of commercial confidentiality, which will make it much harder for us to get the bottom of this. We know that they had no confidence in their own position because they settled out of court.

We also need to understand why the Health Secretary came to the Dispatch Box yesterday to tell us that this was such an important contract as it would keep medicines coming into the UK. He said that that was why the Government had negotiated the £33 million settlement with Eurotunnel. He suggested that it was not about compensation but about vital services and improvements. I repeat that we need clarity on this. If that £33 million was related to the provision of vital services, why did Eurotunnel take the Government to court? Why was Eurotunnel not identified as a reputable provider before, when the Government were looking at Seaborne Freight? How much of that £33 million compensation for Eurotunnel has gone forever? What services are we going to see? What updates will the House be given on the progress of those vital services that the Government have procured?

The Transport Secretary has been lax on updating the House from start to finish. We had one ministerial statement at the outset, which he thought would head off the bad press about Seaborne Freight. We have subsequently had to table three urgent questions, and we are now having this emergency debate. And of course, he has sometimes not even turned up to the Dispatch Box. The fact that he is unwilling to come to the Dispatch Box, state his case clearly and leave himself open to questions from Members says everything about his confidence in his own competence.

A procurement matter that I touched on yesterday is that it looks as though Bechtel is going to sue the Government over the HS2 tendering process, so will the Secretary of State identify what other departmental risks exist in relation to procurement? What review of the procurement process has he instigated? Who is heading up the review and when will it report on this matter? It is quite clear that some sort of procurement review is absolutely vital.

I will finish by again describing the Transport Secretary’s litany of failures. We heard about the near £600 million cost of privatising the probation service following his time at the Ministry of Justice.

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[Chris Grayling]

I can absolutely confirm that, and I think it is absolutely right and proper that we took the steps necessary to ensure that continuity of supply. We did so with a collective decision across the Government, taken by Cabinet Committees.

[Andy McDonald]

Does the Secretary of State not understand and accept that today he is laying bare the advice that he received—and that he acted in contravention of that advice and he lost? We are not asking for an absence of preparation for contingencies; we are asking for a modicum of competence, and he has singularly failed.

[Chris Grayling]

We did not receive legal advice saying, “Do not do this.” We received legal advice saying that there was a risk in taking the approach, and we judged collectively across the Government that it was a necessary risk to take in the national interest.

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[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

It is good to see the Transport Secretary finally in his place today, after I tried and failed to bring him to the House yesterday. Instead he sent the Health Secretary as his human shield, but that came as no surprise, considering how the Transport Secretary has made a habit of treating this House with disdain. Perhaps he will reflect upon that.

I thank the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) for securing this debate. Understandably, the Health Secretary was not able to answer the questions put to him yesterday, so I am going to have another go at getting some answers out of the Transport Secretary, but I am not holding my breath. In the papers filed at court in the weeks before the case was due to be heard, the Government lawyers described Eurotunnel’s case as “embarrassing”. They were bullish and confident, yet in the early hours of the morning of 1 March a settlement was reached between the Government and the company. This sequence of events raises many still unanswered questions.

[Joanna Cherry]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is at least an apparent conflict between the reported out-of-court settlement of £33 million and the Secretary of State’s claim that the £33 million is to pay for “improved security”, and that we ought to be trying to get to the bottom of whether that is accurate?

[Andy McDonald]

The hon. and learned Lady makes an important point on an issue to which I will be returning in a few minutes.

[Alan Brown]

I tried to intervene on the Transport Secretary on this point. Was the hon. Gentleman as surprised as I was that only after an out-of-court settlement with Eurotunnel had been agreed was this suddenly all about medicines? We had all the other urgent questions and medicines were never mentioned, yet we come to the Eurotunnel settlement and suddenly this is a health-led initiative. Does he share my surprise?

[Andy McDonald]

Yes, I was greatly surprised, but the hon. Gentleman has to concede that there had to be some justification for bringing the wrong Secretary of State to the Dispatch Box, and if a hook could be found to hang that on, that was as good as any. It was a nice try, but it failed totally.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend noticed that every time the Government get something wrong through their incompetence, the excuse is that it is “in the national interest”, yet when Labour Governments make mistakes it is a different thing altogether?

[Andy McDonald]

My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. I am just astonished that people can hide behind what they perceive as being the national interest; I fail to see how it is in the national interest to pour millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money down the drain. I do not call that being in the national interest at all.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I understand that the hon. Gentleman is about to turn to some of the questions he would like the Secretary of State to answer, but does he agree that one of them should be about the due diligence process that was carried out? The company that carried out that due diligence says that it could not ask the normal questions of Seaborne Freight because it was such a new entity. So how could the Government be in any way confident in their risk aversion in awarding that contract to Seaborne in the first place?

[Andy McDonald]

That is a very good question, and I have raised the point myself. Those who were inquiring into the bona fides of these companies were restricted in the scope they were given. Why on earth they did not look into the track record of the individuals concerned at Seaborne is beyond me, as these things are well known. A mere cursory search of Google tells us about the track record of Ben Sharp in his dealings in the Gulf, but seemingly that was not considered. The hon. Gentleman makes the point well.

Let me return to the settlement that was achieved on 1 March. I want to know why the Department for Transport was so confident about winning the case only a week before. What brought the sudden change in strategy towards the legal challenge? The Department clearly thought it could win. Who intervened? What was the view taken by other Departments—the Department of Health and Social Care Health, the Treasury and Downing Street? Why did they take a different view from the Department for Transport? Why did the Government not settle earlier? Why did they leave it so late? Why did they continue to employ Monckton Chambers and a QC and two barristers, who do not come cheap? How much was spent on this case, both on Government legal fees and Eurotunnel’s fees? Will the Secretary of State say who made the decision to settle with Eurotunnel over the £33 million provision of emergency medical supplies in the event of no deal?

[Chris Grayling]

I will give a very specific answer to that question: a Cabinet Committee.

[Andy McDonald]

I am grateful for that clarification that it took a Cabinet Committee to make such a mess of things. Can the Secretary of State specifically say what is in this standard settlement—or are there other clauses within it? Ordinarily, when such cases are settled, they are done by reference to a consent order, in which there would be a paragraph dealing with the sum of money to be paid. In these circumstances, it may say “£33 million” and it may say the date upon which that sum is to be paid. It may also say that the costs are to follow the event. So we want to know the answers to those questions.

[Joanna Cherry]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be highly unusual in an out-of-court settlement for the party settling to stipulate how the party receiving the settlement would spend the money?

[Andy McDonald]

I absolutely agree with the hon. and learned Lady on that. Having been in practice for the thick end of 30 years, I have never entered into a settlement where the defendant has told me what I am going to spend the money on. That is absolutely ludicrous, so we need to know the answers.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Earlier, the hon. Gentleman said that the Secretary of State was being used as a human shield. Is he aware that many Conservative Members have considerable sympathy with the Secretary of State? We believe he has been urging his colleagues for the past two years to undertake contingency planning for no deal but was frustrated by other people, perhaps in the Cabinet, who did not want to do that. If mistakes are to be made because these decisions have been taken at the last moment, it is not the fault of the Secretary of State, but he is too much of a gentleman to argue that in his own defence.

[Andy McDonald]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that revealing clarification about the obvious chaos that the Government are in over these important issues. They do not speak with a concerted and singular voice, and people are falling out with each other left, right and centre. That comes as no surprise to me whatsoever.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman clearly has a lot more experience than I do in matters of collective responsibility. Let us take the previous intervention at its word. If a Secretary of State is clear that the collective responsibility of the Government is preventing him or her from doing the job properly, is not the only honourable course of action for that Secretary of State to resign? So what the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) has done by speaking in his defence is say that the Secretary of State should not resign now, as he should have resigned months ago.

[Andy McDonald]

That is a fair observation. We have heard that the Secretary of State was prevented from undertaking contingency planning in the first place because of disputes in the Government and that it took the Government to make a collective decision because nobody could come forward to take a decision on this settlement themselves. That really does characterise a Government in chaos and meltdown. Can the Secretary of State say which Departments contributed towards the £33 million? Yesterday, the Health and Social Care Secretary did not know whether his Department had contributed, so will the Transport Secretary please clarify which Department or Departments paid that bill?

[Charlie Elphicke]

Although I do not agree with the action that Eurotunnel took, it has to be said that this £33 million is clearly being invested in border infrastructure. I would like to see and have been calling for similar investment in Dover. Does it not occur to the hon. Gentleman that this money could have been very well spent as “no regrets” spending to improve our border security and trading links?

[Andy McDonald]

I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that that is a ridiculous proposition. Is he saying for a single second that this is wise investment and that it takes a court case for people to come to the right conclusion about investing in our border provision? Is he really suggesting that that is the way to drive public policy? Is he suggesting that we drive Government policy through the litigation process, whereby a claimant puts a case to the Government to say, “This is what you should be doing.”? He cannot possibly sustain that as an argument.

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

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[Andy McDonald]

I know the hon. Gentleman wants to get to his feet to retract that comment, so I will let him intervene again.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman is making a facile point. My point is simply that the Secretary of State, confronted with opportunism, has made the best of a bad job to make sure that the investment is used to the good of the country, not to fatten the profits of Eurotunnel. In a difficult situation, he has done the right thing, trying to act in the national interest while being consistently undermined by the Labour party, the Scots Nats party, the TIGgers and everyone on the Opposition Benches, who have been continually trying to undermine this country’s leaving the European Union.

[Andy McDonald]

If the hon. Gentleman really thinks that expending £33 million when the Government did not want to or need to is a sensible way forward and a sign of success, I really do not want to see what failure looks like. That is outrageous. Saying that £33 million was the maximum amount to be paid implies that payment was conditional on particular outcomes being achieved. There is a lack of clarity on whether the Government can claw back money from Eurotunnel if it is not used on Brexit preparations. So do such provisions exist?

On that point, was the permanent secretary at the DFT correct to say of the Seaborne contract award:

“I am confident that our process was lawful, and obviously the Department and I acted on legal advice in determining how to take that process forward”?

Has the Secretary of State’s Department therefore thrown £33 million of public money down the drain by not contesting Eurotunnel in the courts? Or is it the case that because of the Prime Minister’s catastrophic Brexit negotiating tactics, which have brought us right up to the cliff edge with 24 days to go before we leave with a default no-deal Brexit, the Government’s failure to plan for such a devastating outcome has meant that they have given themselves no option but to pay out this money to Eurotunnel? Surely nothing says more about the shameful and destructive Conservative party than how, in the year 2019, a UK Government are having to make such costly decisions about prioritising medicines over food supplies. This disaster is only of the Conservatives’ own making.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was wrong to claim that yesterday’s urgent question was not related to Seaborne even though the legal action was brought about in response to the award of a contract to Seaborne Freight. He did not explain why, if it was not related, as he stated, an agreement was reached with Eurotunnel now rather than in November or December. It is one way or the other.

[Chris Grayling]

rose—

[Andy McDonald]

I am happy to take an intervention. Hopefully the Secretary of State can come to the Dispatch Box and correct his human-shield colleague, because the urgent question was directly related to the Seaborne contract.

[Chris Grayling]

Once again, the hon. Gentleman has conveniently forgotten that 90% of these contracts for the things on which the NHS is depending are with DFDS and Brittany Ferries. I wish that at some point he would be frank with the House and explain the full gamut of what we are talking about.

[Andy McDonald]

That is not the first time the Secretary of State has put up this false argument, as if 10% of the goods flowing into this country through these ports and by this method are somehow irrelevant and unimportant. It is a ludicrous proposition. If damage was caused to 10% of the trade coming in, we would be in an incredibly difficult position.

[Chris Grayling]

rose—

[Andy McDonald]

No, I have already let the Secretary of State intervene on this point. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] Come on then, get it over with!

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman cannot add up. This contract brought 8% of the equivalent, in total, with DFDS and Brittany Ferries, and the contingency buffer was made up by Seaborne on the basis of buying tickets in advance that we would not pay for unless the ship sailed.

[Andy McDonald]

I cannot add up? I really think that is pot calling kettle. The Secretary of State has not been able to count for years; he is costing us a fortune.

Andrew Dean from law firm Clifford Chance warns that this may not be the end of the matter. Mr Dean, who used to advise the DFT and is a procurement specialist, says it is quite likely that the Eurotunnel deal will be challenged. What contingency planning has been done in relation to such a challenge, and what public funds, if any, have been allocated as part of such plans? The Secretary of State talks about having received legal advice and listened to it; perhaps he could tell the House what advice he has received about the risk of yet further satellite litigation because of the deal he has done.

The Government talk about the UK maritime industry being market-led. Is it not the case that the Secretary of State’s blundering interventions have directly undermined the industry? He promised to ensure continuity of supply for six months in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Key to that was not increasing traffic around Dover, yet the Eurotunnel/Getlink route still goes through the same bottleneck road network on either side of the channel.

The Secretary of State appears to be puzzled by the anger of the House. Allow me to explain why Members and the public are so furious: this latest fiasco would be enough to warrant the resignation of the Secretary of State even if it were an isolated incident, but it is not a one-off; rather, it is the latest costly error in a series of blunders—blunders that could have been avoided were a different, more competent Secretary of State in post.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a really good point, but my constituents are also very cross about the sheer waste of money in all this, and at a time when we are told that we do not have any money for anything else.

[Andy McDonald]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. An awful lot of people are looking at these eye-watering sums and thinking about what else could benefit from such interventions. That really makes my point for me: the Transport Secretary’s record is that of a departmental wrecking ball. Almost every decision he made as Secretary of State for Justice was damaging and eventually reversed, at significant cost to the taxpayer. As Secretary of State for Transport, he has repeatedly thrown our transport networks into chaos, wasting obscene amounts of public money. A £2 billion bail-out for Virgin Trains on the east coast line; his failure to prepare airports for drone attacks; his awarding of contracts to Carillion when the company was on the verge of collapse; the rail timetabling chaos; the privatisation of probation services; the banning of books from prisons—the list goes on and on.

Research into the total cost of the Secretary of State’s mistakes, both in his current role and at the Ministry of Justice, found that he has cost the taxpayer £2.7 billion. That money could have paid for the annual salaries of 118,000 nurses or 94,000 secondary school teachers. Instead, it has been squandered. He has even wasted more money than the Prime Minister offered as a Brexit bribe to towns. Shamefully, all this has been allowed by the Prime Minister, who keeps him in post because she is short of allies in the Cabinet. The country is being made to pay a heavy price for her political weakness. This would be unacceptable at any time—

[Chris Grayling]

This is really poor.

[Andy McDonald]

The right hon. Gentleman says, “This is really poor” from a sedentary position, and I agree with him: this is really, really poor. It would be unacceptable at any time, but it is especially outrageous following the years of austerity and neglect that have left our towns and communities hollowed out and our public services in crisis.

[Joanna Cherry]

The hon. Gentleman is giving an excellent speech. Does he agree that if the SNP Government in Edinburgh or the Labour Government in Cardiff were guilty of this sort of profligacy with public money, we would never hear the end of it from Conservative Members?

[Andy McDonald]

The hon. and learned Lady is exactly right: it is one rule for the Tory party and another for everyone else. [Interruption.] No, it is not a funny issue. The right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Front Bench would condemn such waste, and with some justification; they really cannot complain when other people hold them to account for their continuous errors and wastefulness.

There are now 8 million working-age adults in poverty, while child poverty has grown to more than 4 million and rising; councils have had their funding slashed by half; violent crime is rising; and school budgets are seeing cuts for the first time in 20 years. In my constituency and many others throughout the country, there is appalling poverty and people are struggling. We are told that there is not the money to properly fund our schools, hospitals or social care services, yet the Prime Minister always finds the money to indulge the Secretary of State’s latest blunder. A further £1.9 billion has been spent on planning for a damaging no deal. For some, it seems, austerity is over. It is one rule for Tory Ministers and another rule for the rest of us. This cannot be allowed to continue. On behalf of the country, I implore the Secretary of State to resign.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) on securing this debate. He has been far more efficient and effective than the official Opposition, who did not seek this opportunity.

It seems to me, representing one of the channel ports as I do, that the issue is that the people of Britain voted to leave the European Union. Some 17.4 million people voted to leave and we need to make a success of it. They voted to leave because they believed in Britain and in the kind of land of opportunity that we could build. They believed in the kind of future that we could make outside the European Union. That vote needs to be respected.

Having backed remain myself, after the vote I listened to my constituents, who said, “Let’s leave,” and I spent time on contingency planning. Two years ago, I set out a detailed report about how we needed to be ready on day one, deal or no deal; how we could overhaul our entire customs systems, our road infrastructure and our border infrastructure; and how that investment would be no-regret spending because a more efficient border system would provide economic growth. That is not just my case; it is what Jon Thompson, head of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, said in evidence to the Treasury Committee when I raised the possibility of a single Department for borders. That is why I say that it is no-regret spending to invest in our borders, our border security and our border systems.

The shadow Secretary of State rejects as absurd the view that we should make such an investment. No doubt it would not be made by a Labour Government—they did not make it last time, so they would not do it now. They are not serious about border security, and they have a leader who believes that every single migrant should be allowed to wander into the country.

[Andy McDonald]

In case the hon. Gentleman wants to cite my words accurately, I said that the litigation route was a peculiar way of going about investing in infrastructure. Waiting until somebody sues us before we decide what to do—surely to goodness, that is not the way we should go about business when developing policy in this country.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The Labour party failed completely to invest in many things, including border infrastructure, when it was last in power, and it has not been serious about border security and border control ever since.

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[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Shortly after the Secretary of State awarded contracts to ferry operators as part of his no-deal contingency planning, the Transport Committee, which I chair, received two submissions to our inquiry into freight and Brexit alleging that the Secretary of State had acted illegally in doing so. Although it has already been published, I would like to make the House aware of the written evidence submitted by Dr Albert Sanchez-Graells. He is a reader in economic law at the University of Bristol Law School, a former member of the European Commission stakeholder expert group on public procurement, a member of the European Procurement Law Group and a member of the Procurement Lawyers Association Brexit working group, so one would think that he probably knows what he is talking about.

Dr Sanchez-Graells was clear in his evidence to our Committee that

“The award of three contracts for ‘additional shipping freight capacity’ in the context of the Government’s ‘No-Deal’ preparations raises important illegality concerns.”

He said that, under regulation 32(2) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015,

“‘extreme urgency’ only exists where an unforeseeable event renders impossible the observance of the time-limits laid down for calls for tenders.”

He said that the award of the three contracts for additional capacity seems “likely” to be in breach of that regulation,

“as there was time to comply with the 60 calendar days’ time limit required by alternative, transparent competitive procedures with negotiation.”

He went on to say:

“Even if it was accepted that there was no time for alternative competitive procedures… the award to Seaborne Freight (UK) Ltd still raises issues of potential illegality. The Secretary of State for Transport has justified the award as an act of support for a new British start-up business. This fact, coupled with…the lack of readiness of the port infrastructure…undercuts the rationale of the extreme urgency of the procurement and heightens the likely illegality of the award.”

We now know that the Department faced a legal challenge from Eurotunnel and that settling the case has cost UK taxpayers at least £33 million.

I am afraid that the Secretary of State has shown a repeated failure to operate in an open and transparent manner. He avoided questions in the House yesterday, but as I said, that does not mean that these questions go away. I understand why he is not in his place. However, I expect to receive written answers to these questions, as I assume that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who is sitting on the Front Bench, does not intend to respond to them this afternoon.

These are the questions that I want to raise. It is reported in The Times today that the Secretary of State wanted to fight Eurotunnel’s legal action over the award of contracts to ferry firms but was overruled. Is that true? What legal advice did the Government receive on the likely success of Eurotunnel’s action? How was the sum of £33 million arrived at? Is the fact that the Secretary of State was overruled an indication that he does not enjoy the confidence of the Prime Minister or his Cabinet colleagues? I believe he mentioned that it was decided by a Cabinet working group.

When the Secretary of State was not here yesterday, we had the rather ludicrous spectacle of the Secretary of State for Health trying to cover for him and explain. He said that

“the purpose of the decision is to ensure that unhindered flow of medicines.”—[Official Report, 4 March 2019; Vol. 655, c. 700.]

However, he failed to answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) about how much of the £33 million being paid to Eurotunnel is being contributed by the Department of Health and Social Care. We still need an answer to that question, and I expect to receive one.

I will not be surprised if my Committee has additional questions. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), who unfortunately is not able to be here for this debate, has described the level of this settlement as “absolutely outrageous”, so I am sure he will share my wish to understand how it was arrived at. How much of Eurotunnel’s £33 million settlement will be spent on border measures in Calais, rather than in the UK? Is it right that the UK taxpayer will be paying for these measures, rather than Eurotunnel or the French Government?

[Andy McDonald]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the settlement may amount to an entirely fresh procurement process, and if that has not been done correctly, there is a real risk of yet further litigation and cost to the taxpayer?

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We would like to receive further information about the basis on which this settlement was reached and the legal risks that it entails.

Finally, I return to the question I asked yesterday, to which I received nothing but bluster. If there is a Brexit deal, or if indeed there were no Brexit, how much of the taxpayers’ £33 million do the Government expect to recover from Eurotunnel? I take it from the Secretary of State’s earlier response that the answer is none. I would be grateful if we received answers from him to those questions.

It is essential that the Department for Transport is subject to proper scrutiny and held properly accountable for its waste of public money. It is very disappointing that the Secretary of State once again had to be dragged to the Chamber. At least on this occasion he was here, but we still do not have proper answers on these important matters, which the public deserve.

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[Joanna Cherry]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, because he actually reinforces the point that I sought to make. The National Audit Office has that information, and the House of Commons has had it today and yesterday, but my point is that on repeated occasions when I asked a number of Ministers from different Departments what the explanation was for this urgent need to tender non-competitively, not once did any of them mention what we are told was a collective decision to do it for a particular purpose. I therefore question whether that explanation has been invented after the fact.

[Andy McDonald]

The hon. and learned Lady is doing a brilliant job of exposing the facade that has been put up to excuse this reprehensible behaviour, but is the bottom line not that the Government knew that they were in breach of their own procurement rules and that Eurotunnel was going to win? That is why they settled the case.

[Joanna Cherry]

That is the bottom line. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

I am going to draw to a conclusion, because I know that others want to speak. The history of this whole event, which the Government now say that they all knew about as it was a collective decision, has been one of evasion and obfuscation. I and others are left with the inevitable conclusion that they are trying to cover up a monumental error of staggering negligence in their preparations for a no-deal Brexit, which is costing the British taxpayer a lot of money. I would like to point out that Scottish taxpayers did not even vote for all this nonsense in the first place, and their representatives in this House have, apart from the Scottish Tories, done their best to try to get a no-deal Brexit off the table.

I came to the House this afternoon planning to ask for the resignation of the Secretary of State for Transport. That has been asked for by others already. But now that we know that this was a collective decision and that the Government are taking collective responsibility for it, let me say that in any normal, healthy and functioning democracy this scandal would bring the Government down.

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[Drew Hendry]

My hon. Friend, who, along with other colleagues here, has been at this since the beginning, has made the point that the Transport Secretary takes no responsibility. He is willing to accept none of the criticism. I would say that he is Teflon, but the public know that he is not, because all this sticks to him. However, he has not had his just deserts: either being sacked from his job, which should have happened, or resigning from it.

[Andy McDonald]

The point about the Transport Secretary’s intervention in his other lives is well illustrated by his attitude to judicial review. He did not like people taking the Government to court, so he made it more difficult for them to do so. Is that not consistent with his attitude to this matter?

[Drew Hendry]

I agree with the shadow Transport Secretary. It is indicative of the way in which the Transport Secretary has performed throughout his ministerial career, and, indeed, it is now indicative of the Government themselves.

The Government’s settlement with Eurotunnel confirms what everyone except, it seems, the Transport Secretary knew: that flouting EU law on the basis of so-called unforeseen events was a completely untenable position. The only development that was foreseeable was that he would make a hash of anything that he touched. He now even has his own website, tracking how much money he is costing the taxpayer. That becomes a great deal less humorous when we see the amount: £2.7 billion as of this morning, although—as we know from the Transport Secretary—that may have gone up while I have been speaking.

Before the Government’s settlement last week, Eurotunnel said:

“It appears …that the secretary of state is seeking to maintain extensive claims to confidentiality in relation to large numbers of disclosed documents and appears to intend that large parts, if not all, of the trial should be held in private.”

Moreover, we have again seen a failure to disclose answers to the questions asked in the Chamber.

Let me end by asking some more questions. The Transport Secretary says that there has been a changed assumption. No, there has not; there has been complacency and arrogance. There was an urgent question about this issue yesterday, following a weekend of silence from the Transport Secretary. Why did he duck it, and send the Health Secretary to answer it in his place? Has he any shred of respect for the principle of ministerial accountability?

The question remains why Eurotunnel was overlooked in this first place. As I have said, the secrecy is of real concern. How much documentation is still hidden from public view? If the no-deal contract is not invoked, how much money will still be paid to Eurotunnel? With engineering firm Bechtel set to sue the Government over the HS2 tender process, what other departmental procedural risks still exist? Is it not the case that any other individual working on a business deal would have been sacked by now for wasting the amount of money the Secretary of State has wasted to date? What message does that send to the public? The message it sends is that failure, waste, ignorance, complacency, arrogance and contempt for the public are to be rewarded by the Tories.