Future Relationship Between the UK and the EU

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

May I begin by apologising to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to the Secretary of State and to the shadow Secretary of State for not being present at the start of the debate? As Mr Speaker was aware, I was questioning the Prime Minister as a member of the Liaison Committee on the subject we are debating now.

I listened to the speech by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and respect the passion with which he advocates his position, although I profoundly disagree with it. I do, however, gently say to him that I think it is unfair to seek to blame civil servants for the situation in which we find ourselves as a nation when for two years they have had to watch the spectacle of Ministers, including Cabinet Ministers, openly arguing among themselves about the right course of action, and it was not until Chequers that the Prime Minister tried to bring them together.

[Mr Baker]

I did not mean to blame civil servants. I mean to blame the broadest governing class, the establishment, which is well represented in here and which clearly does not believe in leaving the European Union. I have paid tribute to civil servants over and over again. The people I have worked with have been the most outstanding professionals and I am proud to have worked with them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

I am sure that those with whom the hon. Gentleman worked will appreciate that, but there are particular civil servants who appear to have been singled out for his criticism, which I think is unfair. When we hold elected office as Ministers—there are many in this Chamber who have had that experience—it is our responsibility to take decisions and to lead. If things go wrong, we cannot blame the people who support us in our work. That responsibility falls on our own head.

I also say to the hon. Gentleman, although this is a debate for another day, that the European Union is by no means perfect, and that we need to find a new balance in our relations between self-government and international co-operation rather than destroying it, because the challenges that we face as a world will absolutely require co-operation between nation states in order to solve them. This is about balance; it is not about destruction.

We have certainly arrived at a particular moment in the Brexit process. It would be churlish not to acknowledge what the Prime Minister did at Chequers to bring most of her Cabinet together, but whether we are any further forward in practice is debatable. The truth about the White Paper is that it is a political construct as much as it is an economic one. Just as the Prime Minister is hemmed in by the disagreements within her own party, so is her proposal hemmed in by the red lines that the Government have laid down. The question that arises is: if the proposal does not fly, where on earth is the Prime Minister to go? There are two great questions, in the light of the White Paper. First, is the EU going to agree to what has been put forward? Secondly, is there a majority for it in the House of Commons?

The first question arises particularly in relation to the facilitated customs arrangement. Bluntly, will the European Union agree to let a third country—because that is what we will be when we have left—collect tariff revenues on its behalf? I have yet to be persuaded that it will agree to that. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) talked about bureaucracy, and about whether any such arrangement would be ready in time for the end of the transition period. There are many of us in the House who think that remaining in the customs union would be a much better way of achieving the frictionless trade that many of us want to see.

When I questioned the Prime Minister earlier, she indicated that the Government were hoping to get most of the arrangements for the facilitated customs arrangement in place in time for the end of the transition period, but the Minister will be aware that previous Ministers, when talking about its antecedents—its parents, if you like: the customs partnership and max fac—openly acknowledged that they would not be ready until some time after the transition period had come to an end. This is very novel, and it is untried, untested and not yet agreed, but if that proved to be the case, will the Minister tell us what would fill the gap?

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns about the White Paper, and I share some of them, but I think that it is a deal worth fighting for. If the Prime Minister succeeds in getting the European Union to agree to this, is he seriously saying that the Labour party would vote down a deal that was good but not perfect, and walk through the Lobby with some of my hard-line Eurosceptic colleagues so that we would end up with no deal at all, given that we both know the economic consequences that that would have for this country? Will he accept the deal or not?

[Hilary Benn]

I will be delighted to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question when we have a deal—[Interruption.] We do not have a deal. We have a proposal. It is an opening bid. The time for the House of Commons to make that judgment, as the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said, will be when the House takes the final decision. At that time, the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton) will see what stance each individual Member takes.

[Vicky Ford]

Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that in order to move the negotiations along it would be helpful if those on the other side of the negotiating table understood whether Labour Members were prepared to vote for a deal along the lines of the White Paper? By not answering the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton), the right hon. Gentleman creates greater uncertainty for the negotiators.

[Hilary Benn]

I will not allow the hon. Lady to get away with putting the responsibility for the difficulties that the Government and the governing party are in, which are of their own making, on those of us on the other side of the House.

[Owen Smith]

Or are we the governing classes now?

[Hilary Benn]

I am not going to enter into that debate, either. The fundamental truth is that those in Brussels look at the chaos on the Government Benches, created by the efforts of Conservative Members of Parliament, and that weakens our ability to get a deal that is in the national interest. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) voted in favour of the customs union amendment yesterday.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

She asked you a question.

[Hilary Benn]

I answered it. I do not know how the hon. Lady voted yesterday, but the customs union amendment would have been a way of providing much greater certainty to those with whom we are negotiating.

On Northern Ireland, the White Paper basically says nothing more about the backstop, and the reason why we do not yet have a withdrawal agreement is that there is no backstop proposal. All the discussion about the facilitated customs arrangement and the political declaration is for later, because if we do not get a withdrawal agreement, we will not get on to that, and we will not get a withdrawal agreement until we have a backstop proposal from the Government. They produced one in June and said, “There’s a bit missing,” which related to the rules on regulation, so will the Minister say whether, now that the Government have embraced a common rulebook, they plan to apply that to the backstop? It would be helpful if we could understand that.

On services, I echo what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras said. Free movement apart—I accept that issue—I do not really understand why the Government have turned their back on a common rulebook for services, especially given what the Prime Minister said in her Mansion House speech about trying to maintain the same approach. On the free movement of people, we will obviously have to wait for the White Paper, but that is one of the single most important issues raised with the Exiting the European Union Committee by those who have given evidence.

The question of sovereignty goes to the heart of all of this, because the objection is that we are somehow going to enter into a state of vassalage—a word that I was not familiar with before it was uttered by the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). However, the truth is that this country, which has never ceased to be sovereign, chooses to enter into agreements with other countries in which we agree to abide by the rules of the relevant organisation. That is true of the United Nations, it is true of the European convention on human rights, and it will be true of the WTO if we end up retaking our seat as an independent country. Are we really going to impale the future prospects of the British economy on red lines that arise from an utter state of dispute about the question of our sovereignty and how we need to exercise it?

The Prime Minister now needs to build a consensus, but she will not do so by giving in at the first rustle of incoming letters to the chair of the 1922 committee. I believe that there is a natural majority in the House for a sensible Brexit that ensures frictionless trade, protects the economy, keeps an open border in Northern Ireland and maintains sensible co-operation on defence, foreign policy, security, the fight against terrorism, consumer safety, scientific research, the exchange of data and broadcasting. Our task now is to enable that majority—there is no majority for no deal—to give expression to itself. The sooner the Government seek that out, the better it will be for the country’s future.

[Several hon. Members rose—]