European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

George Howarth Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

My right hon. and learned Friend’s preference is obviously for Parliament to be asked its opinion before any agreement has been signed with the Commission, on the authority of the Council. Does he accept that the 11th hour problem can easily be got around? In the tortuous process of European negotiations, stopping the clock is hardly unknown. If all the member states agreed that the British Government had to be given time to get the approval of Parliament, they would allow two or three weeks to elapse.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend also agree that we need something on paper to clarify these highly important points? Does he join me in inviting the Minister to table an amendment in the House of Lords to give precise effect to whatever the concession is meant to mean? If we pass either new clause 99 or new clause 110, it could be replaced by that Government amendment, if Ministers were to come up with a better clarification. What we cannot do is leave the debate to continue for the next two years on what the Minister did or did not mean when he made his statement to the Committee today.

[The Temporary Chair (Mr George Howarth)]

I say for the benefit of other Members that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has had a very long career—so long, in fact, that he is capable of recognising the difference between an intervention and a speech.

[Mr Grieve]

I am delighted to hear from my right hon. and learned Friend. I do not think it would necessarily be unhelpful—in fact, it would be very helpful—if the Government were in a position to amplify the Minister’s brief statement. However, I acknowledge—I think my right hon. and learned Friend knows this—that doing that by means of an amendment would be rather difficult. I know that Government draftsmen have extreme ingenuity and, indeed, that this issue might be taken up in the other place, but there are difficulties because there is a whole series of conditionalities. I certainly do not wish to fetter the Government in their ability to carry out the negotiation. It has always seemed to me that it would be a great error to do that, because we might undermine the ultimate outcome, to our own detriment. That has worried me throughout the process.

I do not want to take up more of the Committee’s time. Although I have had great difficulty over this matter today and in the days leading up to this debate, my inclination, for the reasons I have given, is to accept the assurance given by my right hon. Friend the Minister, which seems to me to be a constructive step forward. However, he has to face up to the fact that this issue will not go away. Even when we have enacted this Bill and triggered article 50, this will be a recurrent theme throughout the negotiating process that will come back much, much harder as we get closer to the outcome and as it becomes clearer, from all the leaks that will come from Brussels, what sort of deal or non-deal we will have, so the Government had better have a strategy. If their strategy is to avoid this House, I have to say to the Minister that they will fail miserably. I do not want that to happen. I want to guide this process as best I can, as a former Law Officer, towards a satisfactory conclusion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[The Temporary Chair (Mr George Howarth)]

Order. There are four hon. Members who still want to contribute and who have given their names to amendments. However, the Government are likely to come back at 6 o’clock. If everyone takes less than five minutes, I might be able to squeeze in at least four more speakers. It is a gentle reminder; there is no time limit. I call David Lammy.

[Mr Lammy]

I will try to be brief.

I am now entering my 17th year in the House. In that time, it is usual to strike up relationships across the House. I want to make a confession: I have a relationship with the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith)—I am sorry that he is not in his place—who has the unusual honour of also being a fan of Tottenham Hotspur. There have been occasions when we have been at White Hart Lane together, talking about his favourite subject: the sovereignty of this Parliament and the European Union. There have been occasions when my eyes have glazed over, because I do not see the issue in the same way.

In the past few months, as I have grown increasingly depressed about the direction of travel on which we are now set, I have looked for a silver lining. The silver lining is, of course that, in the 17 years that I have been an MP, we have been in the European Union—effectively, we had decided to pool some of our sovereignty with Europe, which meant that I had less power. Well, the power is now coming back, and, as a result of all the work of the right hon. Gentleman, the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and others, I will be a powerful Member of Parliament. Yet we are now in a situation, in this important time, in which we need that sovereignty, and the very same people who were asking for it now stand up to argue that we should put that power somewhere else.

Many hon. Members who have been Back Benchers for some years argue that we should put the power with the Executive, and that the Prime Minister and her Cabinet should make all the huge decisions about our economy and direction of travel. They argue, perversely, that the power should solely be with the 27 other countries of the European Union, and that they should determine our direction alongside the European Commission, the Council and, ultimately, the European Parliament—power everywhere else except here. And who will suffer as a consequence of this Parliament not acting? Our constituents. That is why this is not the time to play party politics and why I was happy to vote against my party last week. This is absolutely the time to stand up for our constituents.