European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between David Lammy and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I will give way in just a second, but let me finish this point.

That means that a meaningful vote cannot take place until a detailed agreement has been arrived at about certainly the precise nature of our trading and economic relationships with the single market of the European Union, and actually quite a lot else besides, because we still have to embark on the security discussions, the policing discussions and the discussions about which agencies we are going to remain in and which agency rules we are going to comply with. This is, we all agree, a huge and complex agreement, and it is going to determine this country’s relationships with the rest of the continent of Europe and the wider world for generations to come. Can that happen before March 2019?

We face the genuine difficulty that it is quite obvious that we will not be remotely near to reaching that agreement by March 2019, and we have to think through what that actually means. The negotiators have been very optimistic in saying that they will have first a transition deal and then a deal by 2019. I am sure that they will try, but they have not a chance. I think that what they are actually saying—certainly the continental negotiators—is that they might be able to have some heads of agreement on the eventual destination by March 2019, which we can all carefully consider. They will certainly have to agree a transition deal of at least two years within which the rest of the process will have to be completed.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford that everybody wants things to be speedy, because one of things that this country is suffering from most at the moment is the appalling uncertainty caused by the fact that we have taken a ridiculous length of time to reach three obvious conclusions on the three preliminary points that had to be determined as the basis of our withdrawal. At the moment, however, we do not quite know what the British Government are going to be seeking as their end goal in the negotiations that are about to start, because the British Government, within the Cabinet, have not yet been able to agree exactly what they are seeking.

If I may say this to my desperately paranoid Eurosceptic friends, it is not as if I am somehow trying in some surreptitious remainer way to put a spoke in the wheels of the fast progress of the United Kingdom towards our destination. The Government do not know what leave means. Nobody discussed what leave meant when we were having the referendum. Our overriding duty is not just to our political allegiances and so on; it is to provide this country with a good, responsible Government who face up to the problems of the real world and, accountable to Parliament, can produce the best new order that they can for the benefit of future generations.