The Government's Plan for Brexit

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I am going to press on. Thirdly, the plan must provide enough detail to enable the Office for Budget Responsibility to do its job properly. As Members across the House know, the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011 sets out the role of the OBR: it is the duty of the OBR to examine and report on the sustainability of the public finances. Its charter states:

“The OBR’s published forecasts shall be based on all government decisions and all other circumstances that may have a material impact on the fiscal outlook.”

The Government are responsible for all policy decisions and policy costings, but it is for the OBR to provide independent scrutiny and certification of the Government’s policy costings. It states whether it agrees or disagrees with the Government’s costings, or whether it has been given insufficient time or information to reach a judgment. It is an important check and balance in the system on the spending of public money and on costings.

In its response to the autumn statement this year, the OBR made the following comment on assumptions about the cost of Brexit. In the foreword to the response, it said that it asked the Government for

“a formal statement of Government policy as regards its desired trade regime and system of migration control, as a basis for our projections”

on Brexit.

“The Government directed us to two public statements by the Prime Minister that it stated were relevant”.

The OBR was trying to do its job and obtain sufficient information to carry out its statutory functions, and has asked the Government for the relevant information. It has been directed to two public statements by the Prime Minister. In its report this year, the OBR said:

“Perhaps understandably, the Government’s response leaves us little the wiser as regards the choices and trade-offs that the Government might make during the negotiations”.

It is perhaps understandable in the early stages why that may be the case—I concede that, and this is not intended to be a cheap shot based on the OBR report—but it is important that the OBR should be able to do its job properly over the next two years or more. Unless it has sufficiently clear objectives, it cannot do so. It is wrong in principle for the OBR to be disabled from discharging its functions properly. There should be enough detail for that scrutiny to be carried out.

Fourthly, the plan must have enough detail to enable the relevant authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to be assured that their particular and specific concerns are addressed. Other Members will speak about those concerns far more authoritatively than I can, but they include concerns about the single market and, in Northern Ireland, concerns about the border and related issues. The detail must be sufficient for those authorities to be assured that their concerns are understood and are being addressed. Over the past few weeks, I have visited Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland to speak to the devolved Governments as well as to businesses, trade unions and the public in meetings. I can assure the House that “Brexit means Brexit” does not come close to answering the concerns I heard or to addressing the huge, complex challenges that Brexit will pose across the UK.

Fifthly, the plan must have enough detail to build genuine consensus. That is an important point, because the future of this country is bound up with the negotiations, and it is wrong in principle for the Government to act solely for the 52%—to base its approach on the 52% or a group within the 52%. The vote on 23 June was not a vote to write those that voted to remain out of their own history. They have a right and an interest in these negotiations and they have a right to have a Government who give weight to their interests as well as the interests of the 52%. I have said this before and I will say it again: the Government must act not for the 52% or the 48% but for the 100%, acting in the national interest. That can be achieved only if we have a national consensus.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I am fascinated by the focus on the plan and the amount of work that the hon. and learned Gentleman will invite the OBR to do. He does understand, surely, that no plan survives engagement with the enemy. [Interruption.] That is a military metaphor from assaults. Our negotiating hand is clear, and it is clear that it is not compatible with the position taken by our 27 partners. This will all change in the course of the negotiations, and we will have to leave it to the Government to make those decisions.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is an illustrious Member of the House as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, but even so the intervention was too long.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

The motion before us, moved by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the shadow Secretary of State, calls for a plan before article 50 is invoked. Since 23 June, the resistance to such calls, for reasons of “no running commentary” or not giving away negotiating positions to what the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), unwisely referred to as our enemy—

[Crispin Blunt]

The faux outrage that has followed the use of a metaphor is not worthy of the right hon. Gentleman, so I invite him to desist.

[Mr McFadden]

We are all responsible for what we say, and I do not believe that our European partners are our enemies.

Behind all that resistance lies one emotion. It is not the confidence of those who won the referendum campaign, but fear about the contradictory statements made during the campaign, about the exposure of divisions within Government and about the enormity of some of the decisions that must be taken. On one level, I sympathise with Ministers, because the dawning realisation of what they are facing and what must be decided is in some ways something to which I can understand a response of fear. However, that does not serve well either democratic debate or our negotiating position.

To pick up on a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), an assumption has been made that, if we say what we want, that weakens us, but that is not necessarily the case. If we say what we want, that can strengthen our hand, which is precisely why the Secretary of State called for a White Paper in the article he wrote back in July. It is important for Ministers to understand that 23 June was not just a decision by the people on whether we stay in the European Union—although it was obviously that—but the passing of political responsibility for the consequences of that decision to those who led the leave campaign, many of whom now occupy senior Government positions. Despite the fear, there is no place to hide. There is a duty to both leave and remain voters to set out the principal negotiating objectives. There is also a responsibility to accept the consequences of post-referendum decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I come to this debate straight after returning from the United States, where I have spent three days meeting Congressmen, and I can say that the remarks made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) are absolutely right. There is terrific support in Congress for a free trade deal between the United Kingdom and the United States, and that view is shared by the President-elect. There is a terrific world of opportunity out there as we view our emerging role in the world.

Last week at Chatham House, the Foreign Secretary gave the first in a series of speeches outlining our global role. I recommend it to right hon. and hon. Members because it should lift their eyes from the rather parochial preoccupation with the British plan. The point that I was trying to make in my intervention on the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), was not that I somehow think that Europeans are the enemy. Of course I do not, and anyone who knows me knows that I do not believe that. I was making a graphic point about the plan. The whole quote goes on to say:

“When your plan meets the real world, the real world wins. Nothing goes as planned. Errors pile up. Mistaken suppositions come back to bite you. The most brilliant plan loses touch with reality.”

I do not see any particular difficulty in discerning the key elements of the British plan. I heard nothing from Opposition Members or anyone else to suggest that we should not be taking back sovereign control of immigration, which was a key issue in the vote. That does not have any implications for what immigration policy will mean, but the idea that this process of leaving the European Union will end without this House having sovereign control of immigration is for the birds. Everyone understands that, but that result has implications.

We have heard in recent days from Michel Barnier and from the German Chancellor, who have made it perfectly clear that we will not be allowed to cherry-pick our relationship with the European Union. This is where we come to the key element in the negotiations. Were we to cherry-pick, we would of course want full access to the single market on current terms and sovereign control over immigration, but we would not want to pay into the budget or to have the European Court of Justice overseeing our courts. There is room to manoeuvre in all this, such as around money and what items in the relationship we might think it appropriate for the ECJ to adjudicate on, but my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) made the point that that relationship would be different from the one we have now.

The problem in the negotiation lies not on our side; the 27 states have an immensely difficult task. Their interests lie in the continuation of the closest possible relationship with the United Kingdom. Their interests are in our making sense of a continued British engagement in the EU’s common foreign and security policy. Ireland’s interests are absolutely engaged in this discussion. A difficult deal for the United Kingdom is a catastrophic deal for the Republic of Ireland.

[Mr MacNeil]

I met the Irish Foreign Minister this morning, and one of the concerns that I left with was the possibility of Northern Ireland being encircled by the sea and a hard border. That is a real possibility, particularly if we end up on WTO terms, because there is no plan from any side to say that that would be dealt with in the island of Ireland.

[Crispin Blunt]

The hon. Gentleman, who now chairs the International Trade Committee, will be out of work if we remain in the customs union on the same basis, so the fact that he has a Department to oversee sends a firm signal that we are going to be negotiating our own trade agreements.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, because the interests of the Irish Republic are so tied up with a successful Brexit for the United Kingdom, we will have one ally in the negotiations? The same could apply to a whole range of nations across the EU.

[Crispin Blunt]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. However, the principal nations of the EU, which are facing populist insurgencies in their politics, are anxious about the message that is sent. If the UK gets a really good deal, that will encourage other movements to seek the same arrangements for themselves. They have an explicit choice to make between their interests, which with the current balance of trade are to continue trading with the UK as we are, and the political message that might be sent.

[Mr Grieve]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s analysis, but is it not also the case that the whole negotiating thing is about human relations, and the difficulty that we face at the moment is that the message we put out to our European partners is deeply offensive, which is going to make securing our deal with them much harder?

[Crispin Blunt]

My right hon. and learned Friend is, of course, absolutely right. We have to try to take the temperature down, which is why people should not exploit it when I may have said something inadvertently and I was actually saying something totally different. We are talking about our allies—most of them allies within NATO—and, in the words of the Foreign Secretary, we need to be a “flying buttress” to the future of the European Union from the outside. One reason I supported Brexit is my belief that the UK will have a much happier relationship with the nations of the EU by being outside and having engaged their support, rather than by having to fight battles as our interests diverge from those of the states that had the currency. We could see that that was going to happen over the decades. Our country has taken this decision in its medium and long-term interests, and it should be seen in that guise. It is on the other side of the table that the principal negotiating challenge sits, as the 27 nations have to reconcile all this. My right hon. and learned Friend may say that the interpretation of positions from here is difficult, but Mr Barnier and Chancellor Merkel made a mistake in rejecting the reciprocal arrangement to try to address the situation of EU citizens here and UK citizens there, and in saying that nothing must be agreed until everything is agreed. That has played into the British position, which is helpful, as we have very much to offer the EU and it needs—

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

The sad context for today’s debate is that far from coming back together as a country since the referendum, we are probably more divided than ever. The blame for that lies not with the public, but with the way in which Parliament and the Government have responded in the six months since. In the referendum, the public were issuing a sharp rebuke to the political class, which they feel does not listen to them and is not straight with them, but what has the Government’s response been? They have been saying that they want to keep the citizens of this country in the dark about their plans for Brexit so as not to give anything away to the other side—or, as the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) said, “the enemy”. That is simply unacceptable. In these anti-politics times, it is hard to imagine a more politically inept approach.

[Crispin Blunt]

Let me just correct that. I did not say that they are the enemy and I made it crystal clear in the speech I have just given that that is not my position. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to wind the temperature up in this debate, he can go on like that, but I suggest that everyone should try to calm it.

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Gentleman used the phrase “the enemy” and he needs to clarify what he meant by that. I do not think it helped to raise the tone of this debate.

The Government’s politically inept approach of saying that they can keep the public in the dark has, first, bred suspicion among remain and leave voters alike, making them think a fix is going on. Secondly, it has cast the negotiation in an unnecessarily aggressive light and has fuelled even more bad feeling towards Britain among its EU partners, in turn meaning that it will now be more difficult to get a favourable deal once article 50 has been triggered. At the moment, we are not getting a hard Brexit or a soft Brexit, but a botched Brexit. For all our sakes, the Government need to get their act together, which is why I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) on forcing their hand.