European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Dominic Grieve and Paul Farrelly

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

[Paul Farrelly]

Is not the advantage of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s very helpful amendment that it would give certainty? It would nail down, in black and white, what we have agreed and would place a legal responsibility on the Government. We would then avoid a situation whereby what people think has been agreed simply becomes a statement of intent within a matter of hours and days.

[Mr Grieve]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I hope that I will be able to develop some of those points in a moment.

As was rightly said by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the Government had a notion when this debate started that it was possible to pull out of the European Union by use of the royal prerogative. Fortunately, time, common sense, debate and a small amount of judicial intervention has pointed out that that is not possible. As a consequence, my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench have correctly begun to understand that in fact there has to be a proper process. I appreciate the points that have been made about a meaningful vote and how we can actually get that in the context of Brexit; it is a real, live issue. Nevertheless, I greatly welcome the written ministerial statement, which sets out what appears to be a constitutionally tenable process for Parliament approving or considering the deal by motion, and then moving on to implement the deal by primary legislation.

Of course, the Government know that they must proceed by primary legislation because, in view of the comments during the Miller case, it is blindingly apparent that there must be a serious risk of legal uncertainty if anything other than a statute were to be used to take us out of the EU at the end. That is the last thing that my right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench should want, because that will cause even more trouble and difficulty than they already have in the challenges they have to face.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Dominic Grieve and Paul Farrelly

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Farrelly]

I welcome the amendment tabled by the right hon. and learned Gentleman that would remove the Alice “Through the Looking-Glass” absurdity of there being different exit days for different purposes. I was an early signatory to all his amendments because they are eminently sensible. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) described entertainingly the reasons for the remarkable metamorphosis of the Bill, from one that allowed Ministers to name an exit day or different days by regulations into one that names a day and a specific time. It was a sop to the denizens of what he called the fourth row below the Gangway. Has the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield reflected on what such a fundamental change signals to our partners in the European Union about how serious we are and how carefully we have thought through this crucial process?

[Mr Grieve]

There is no doubt that some of the problems we have are not going to be helpful in our negotiation. Equally, it is right to say that the more we can have mature, considered and sensible debate in this House, the more we improve our ability to negotiate with our EU partners.

I have tabled a number of amendments. As with all amendments, some are multiple choice—we have to do this in this House, because it is how we go about looking at and examining legislation—and some are probing amendments. Some are, in my view, more important than others. I tabled the one that hon. Gentleman highlights because the Government did not really explain that they wanted multiple exit dates. I wanted to tease out why and to suggest that one exit date might be better because of the consequences for the use of Henry VIII powers thereafter, but there might actually be a justification for what the Government are doing. All that needs to be worked through in the legislation, and that is what I have sought to do.

I say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench that over past weeks we have had some really sensible, constructive discussions on some of the areas covered by the amendments that I have tabled. I hope very much indeed that we can achieve some degree of consensus, in which case some of the amendments, whether on triage or the way we treat retained EU law, might not be required. I do not wish to get diverted into all that; I shall come back to it in later debates. The trouble is—I repeat this—that it all gets marred by events such as those last Friday, when extraordinary amendments are suddenly magicked out of the blue that simply do not make any sense at all.

When I read the amendments and those consequential on them, which I must say I saw only this morning, I saw another problem: as has already been highlighted, one of the consequentials seemed to me to totally undermine the purpose of the main amendment, to the point where the conspiracy theorist in me made me think it was a sort of double deceit or double bluff—that it was intended in some way to give the impression to some of my right hon. and hon. Friends who really worry about this that they were being offered this tablet of stone on our departure, but it was in fact teasingly capable of being shifted. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General sent me a text earlier that said that I was mistaken and that that was not the intention—that it was the very reverse.

I am not a parliamentary draftsman, and I know that there are always different ways in which an amendment to a statute can be read. I remain of the view, though, that the wording is very peculiar indeed if the intention is to exclude the possibility of playing around with the exit date, which is being offered as a talisman. I must say to my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General that I did naughtily begin to wonder whether in fact the parliamentary draftsman was so appalled at the folly of what the Government were doing that he had sneakily altered amendment 383 to try to offer them a lifeline in case they came to regret what they had done. I am sure that that is being very unfair to the parliamentary draftsman, whom I know always does what is requested of him or her.