Oral Answers to Questions
John Hayes Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Steve Barclay
The hon. Member is absolutely right, and I hope that colleagues across the House will see that I always try to take a tone that reflects that. I have often talked about the fact that in my own family, notwithstanding my personal role, my eldest brother is an official working for a European institution. I know that many families were split on this issue.
To answer the hon. Member’s question directly, one thing that we have done is establish a £9 million fund to support outreach groups and charities. We have worked with embassies in particular. Within that £9 million, £1 million is specifically for the settlement scheme, as I am sure the Minister for Security detailed in Committee on Tuesday, and there have been 2.6 million or 2.8 million or so applications, so the scheme is working very effectively free of charge. But the hon. Member is right that some people will have concerns, and one thing that the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill does is guarantee the rights of citizens and address many of the concerns that some of his constituents have shared.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
In celebration of this important occasion in our nation’s history, will the Secretary of State arrange for Union flags to be flown from all public buildings across our kingdom? That would be a fitting tribute to the decision the British people made to leave the European Union. We will remain unafraid of our patriotism, unabashed about our departure and unwavering in our determination to make our future even greater.
Steve Barclay
I know that, like me, my parliamentary neighbour always takes pride in seeing our Union Jack flown, and any opportunity to do so is one that he and I would always celebrate. Given my right hon. Friend’s penchant for poetry, I cannot be alone in thinking that such an occasion might inspire him in due course to write something fitting.
European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill
John Hayes ExcerptsThursday 9th January 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 8 January 2020 - (8 Jan 2020)
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
May I welcome you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to your place? I look forward to your wisdom and benevolence.
In our age, hyperbole is commonplace. Exaggeration permeates debate and colours discourse. Superlatives litter our language. Yet there are few in this House who would disagree with my claim that it is almost impossible to exaggerate the significance of the Bill and what it facilitates—our departure from the European Union. The case I make today is that even more important than the Bill’s provisions is its purpose. Even more important than leaving is the reason that we are leaving. That is the people’s rejection of the prevailing political paradigm that the chatterati and glitterati, the denizens of the liberal elite, believed for years was beyond question. At the core of this perversity was an attachment to pan-nationalism and a consequent affection for supranational governance. This led, among the liberal establishment, to a diminished sense of meaningful place. They came to regard it as not just permissible but desirable to erode the familiar touchstones of enduring certainty.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir John Hayes
I won’t right at the moment; perhaps a little later. I know the hon. and learned Lady will want me to repeat that poetic phrase: the familiar touchstones of enduring certainty, epitomised by a spirit of local allegiance and a sense of national pride. The truth is that the bourgeois liberals—and at that point I give way to the hon. and learned Lady.
Joanna Cherry
I am not going to deny that I am a bourgeois liberal, but many people in Scotland who are not bourgeois liberals voted to remain in the European Union. Will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the situation he is describing pertains in England but not in Scotland, where 62% of the population voted to remain and where my party, which I do not think really could be described as a bourgeois liberal party but does contain some old bourgeois liberals like myself, won 48 of the 59 seats? Will he do us the courtesy of acknowledging that he is talking about England, not Scotland?
Sir John Hayes
I congratulate the hon. and learned Lady on her honesty. She separates herself not only from most of her party but from most of the voters. She says that she is part of the bourgeois liberal elite, but they are not.
Joanna Cherry
The right hon. Gentleman has made a very personal comment about me separating myself from most of my voters. Would he like to explain why, if I have separated myself from most of my voters, my majority over the Conservative and Unionist party went from 1,000 to 12,000 votes in the general election?
Sir John Hayes
One day, if the hon. and learned Lady continues, and maybe she will for many, many years, she just might attain the 30,000 majority that I got in South Holland and the Deepings, but I think it is very unlikely indeed.
As I say, the bourgeois liberals find it hard to stomach that hard-working British patriots do not share their affection for globalisation and their preoccupation with diversity.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir John Hayes
No, I won’t give way, because I want to make some progress as others want to speak.
Those hard-working patriots prefer tradition, order and established values to the politically correct, poisonous cocktail of egalitarianism and assertive individualism. This paradigm shift is at the heart of the message broadcast first in the 2016 referendum and then still more loudly in the general election at the end of last year. GK Chesterton spoke of the people who had “not spoken yet”. Well, the people have now spoken. They have spoken loudly, clearly and decisively. They have sent a message that this House had better hear. On the Conservative Benches I think we have. Indeed, not only have we heard it, we have rearticulated it and we are proud to do so.
Sir John Hayes
I have the greatest regard for the hon. Gentleman and so on that basis alone I will happily give way to him.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He is being very kind in giving way. I would not want to puncture his balloon too much, but here goes. The reality is not as he paints it. The reality is that 43% of people voting in a first-past-the-post system is why all this is happening. It is not that the great British whatever he wants to call them decided it, but that 43% in first past the post and the winner takes all. It is not the great sweep of the proletariat or the bourgeois, or whatever he wants to call it.
Sir John Hayes
I do not want to go off on a tangent. Despite what I described earlier as your wisdom and benevolence, Mr Deputy Speaker, you would not let me, but I will just say this to the hon. Gentleman. This Prime Minister went to the people, at some risk to himself and to others on the Conservative Benches, and put a very clear message to them. He essentially said, “I cannot make progress in the current parliamentary arrangement because of the arithmetic. Do you want me to deliver Brexit? Do you want to get Brexit done or don’t you?” The British people said, “That is exactly what we want you to do.” They have sent us here to do just that. Any further prevarication or hesitation will, frankly, ring hollow in the ears of those people. I simply advise the hon. Gentleman that in victory the test of character is humility, but in defeat the test of character is being wise enough to learn the lessons of that defeat. One or two people on the Opposition Benches have learnt those lessons and have made that clear, but others need to do so very quickly indeed.
I know that others want to contribute, so I will bring my remarks to a conclusion by saying this. The Bill is the first step not on a trip to a different place but on a return journey: a return journey for this United Kingdom to hope, to patriotism and to greatness.
Mr Paterson
No. I’m not giving way. We know where the Scottish nationalists are coming from, because they make the same point every time. Just to keep them happy, though, I will give them a little anecdote.
In the town where I was born, Whitchurch, we have six polling stations in one building, the civic centre. On referendum day, people came up to me off a building site, covered in dust, and said, “It is good to see you here, Mr Paterson, because it’s about them”. I asked, “Who’s them?” They said, “We can get rid of you, we can vote you out, but we cannot get rid of them”, and then they made the very telling point, “You can do nothing about them either”.
We had an interesting debate yesterday about this. We can do absolutely nothing about European law, which is imposed upon us. I had the honour to serve on the European Scrutiny Committee with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. One day, a Labour Member was ill and a Liberal Democrat got stuck in the lift and we managed to vote that a measure on the dairy industry—of great interest to my constituents—would be passed for a vote on the Floor of the House. It would not have been amendable, but we could have made our points. What happened? The Leader of the House at the time, the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), turned up at business questions and said, “You’re not even having a debate”. That was the amount of scrutiny we had. I find it extraordinary that people do not welcome the chance to scrutinise Ministers. From now on, they will be able to harpoon Ministers who make bad decisions. They can have Adjournment debates and criticise law. We can get law amended and repealed. None of that will apply to European law until we pass the Bill.
There are so many areas where European law has damaged this country, but the winner by a mile is still fish. In 2005, as shadow Fisheries Minister, I wrote a green paper called “A Consultation on a National Policy on Fisheries Management in UK Waters”. It is the paper on which we fought the 2005 general election. For the first time, a serious political party proposed repatriating a power. I come from North Shropshire. One of the most fascinating experiences of my 22 years here was going all around the coast of the UK—right up to Whalsay, right down to Cornwall and Dover—but above all going to the maritime nations of Norway, the Faroes, Iceland, Newfoundland in Canada and then down the east coast of the United States. I also went to the Falklands. It was extraordinary to see how modern techniques could bring thriving fishing communities—some of the most remote communities in the world—wealth, prosperity, jobs and investment.
By contrast, in this country we have utter devastation. This wonderful occupation delivered wealth and jobs for centuries until we were stupid enough to give the power to the continental level, and we now have the shameful, wicked waste of 1 million tonnes of fish thrown back dead into the sea as pollution every year, and yet Opposition Members this afternoon are defending staying in the EU and the common fisheries policy.
Sir John Hayes
My right hon. Friend will remember that I was shadow Fisheries Minister before him. I was very good and he was even better. The truth is—this is the question that Opposition Members in particular need to answer—that the CFP was not only disastrous for fishing communities and fishermen; it was also a conservation disaster for our oceans. Anyone who signs up to the EU signs up to the CFP and the decimation of our oceans.
Mr Paterson
My right hon. Friend is quite right. The opening line of my paper said:
“The Common Fisheries Policy is a biological, environmental, economic and social disaster; it is beyond reform.”
Today we are giving ourselves the power to reform it and take back this power. I would like those on the Front Bench to remember that this is a crucial, totemic issue. We have to take back full power and complete control over our exclusive economic zone and all the marine resources within it.
European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill
John Hayes ExcerptsTuesday 7th January 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir George.
It has been mentioned that I am the only Labour Back Bencher in the Chamber, which is a double privilege. First, I think I am the only Labour leaver from the last Parliament left in the House. Secondly, the hustings for the start of the Labour leadership election are going on upstairs, which is important. One of my party’s problems is that although many of our supporters voted to leave the EU—and are enthusiastic about leaving—they are very poorly represented in the Labour party itself.
There is an element of tilting at windmills in this debate. I do not believe the catastrophe theories about the next 11 months or so. The public want us to get out, and it is in the mutual interest of the EU and its member states and the UK to get as good a deal as possible, so I do not believe the catastrophic predictions. I voted against the previous Prime Minister’s deal three times, and against the current Prime Minister’s deal—in November, I think—but I did so because there were not simple majorities and I believed there was a better deal out there. Going through the Lobby, I was aware that some were voting against because they wanted a better deal—one we believed would better represent the decision in the 2016 referendum—but that others were voting to delay the process because they wanted, either by measures in this Chamber or by a second referendum, to overturn the 2016 decision itself.
I am pleased we are now to leave the EU on 31 January, but I am less pleased that, because of tactical mistakes made by my colleagues, we are in a minority against the Conservative Government and look like being so for some time. I take issue with both the philosophy and the detail of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) from the Front Bench. The debate about whether we should remain in or leave the EU was never simply about the economy. Much of the debate—certainly this is one of the things that has motivated me since the 1975 referendum, when I voted to leave—is about the democratic argument. I believe it is better for both the economy and our society if people in this country elect the people who make our laws rather than letting unelected and appointed people in other countries make them. That is a fundamental principle of democracy. Without it, we simply do not have a democracy. I also think that making our own regulations and laws for our own industries is likely to make us economically more efficient and proficient.
The other side of my hon. Friend’s argument is that the Conservatives want a race to the bottom. They might or might not. I am in the Labour party, not the Conservative party, because my philosophy differs from theirs on many issues, but it is better in a democracy if we argue those issues out in general elections such as the one we have just had. If the Conservatives, as they tend to, want a more free-market approach, they should argue for that, and if we want a more interventionist approach, we should argue for that, and whether we win or lose the argument is up to the electorate. At present, however, our ability to support our own industries depends not on whether we or the Conservatives win an election, but on rules for state intervention and support set down by the EU.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
As always, the hon. Gentleman is making a compelling argument. I congratulate him not only on his insight but on his consistency. In the end, this is a question of who exercises power and from where, in exactly the way he describes. For too long, too many people on both sides of the House have seen this argument through an economic prism, but it is actually about who decides our destiny, and it should be the British people through those they choose to speak for them here.
European Union (Withdrawal) Acts
John Hayes Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)
I was planning to be brief anyway, Mr Speaker. I campaigned to leave, but at every stage of the campaign, I argued that we should leave on good terms with our friends and neighbours and leave with a deal. I supported the previous Prime Minister in what she sought to achieve, and I pay tribute to this Prime Minister for what he has done in bringing forward a deal. After a year of turbulence in this place, when we have not really come near to finding anything a majority in this House can agree on, it is absolutely clear today that we are much closer than we have been to something that this Parliament is willing to give its support to. I pay tribute to the Prime Minister for achieving that and strongly urge the House to unite behind this agreement.
I want to talk specifically about the amendment from my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), and I want everyone on both sides of the House to think about this. I know him well—he has his reasons for tabling it—but the consequence of it is that this House, at a moment when the nation is watching us to see what decision we will take about the deal that has been brought back from Brussels, may decline to form an opinion. That is the consequence of passing the amendment—that we will not decide today whether we support the deal.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
My right hon. Friend and I are Brexiteers of long standing—in my case, going back to my boyhood—but the truth is that the public are saying to us, “Enough is enough. Get on, get out, so we can get ahead.” It is as simple as that.
Chris Grayling
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. To my mind, that is the crux of the issue with this amendment. Are we really going to say to the public today, “We are not going to make up our minds. We are going to yet again defer the decision”? Every Member will have to go back to their constituents and explain why today, at the first Saturday sitting since 1982, we were not able to take the decision about whether we support the principle of the deal or not. I think that would be deeply damaging to our democracy and to the reputation of this House and of every individual in this Parliament. I strongly urge everyone here, whatever their views, whether they are for this deal or against it: let us not put ourselves in a position today where we are simply not taking a decision and saying to the public, “Do you know what? We’ll put it off to another day.” I do not think that we can afford to do that, and I urge everyone in this House not to allow that situation to happen.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Hayes Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Suella Braverman
The hon. Gentleman raises a crucial point relating to the development of our domestic space strategy, and Scotland has a strong heritage in the sector. For example, Glasgow has built more satellites in the past two years compared with other European cities, and we also have the Prestwick aerospace park, Strathclyde University and many companies breaking new frontiers. We want the UK to reach space from our own shores, and we recently passed the Space Industry Act 2018, which is the first key step towards licensing the first missions from the UK into space. Brexit will not pose a barrier to our journey into space.
Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
The ancients named the planets after their gods. In affirming that the United Kingdom will continue to lead geo-galactic enterprise and innovation across the continent, will the Minister explain how, goddess-like, she changed her name and tell us what role she intends to play in promoting the United Kingdom in this place, in the Government, on earth and across the cosmos?
Suella Braverman
My right hon. Friend sets the bar very high. I thank him for his question, for his stellar contributions and his work with the space sector, and particularly for his work on the Space Industry Act, which, as I said, has paved the way for our domestic policy. His reference to my goddess-like status is slightly exaggerated, but I would expect nothing less of him. Even in this space age, it takes a brave woman to follow tradition and change her name following marriage. He is right to suggest that the UK’s historic strength in the space sector will be secured as we leave the European Union and develop our own new partnership with our allies across the channel. It is in that spirit, boldly going where no woman has gone before, that I can tell the House from the Dispatch Box that, as of today, I am pleased to be known as Suella Braverman.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill
John Hayes ExcerptsWednesday 17th January 2018
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 View all European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 17 January 2018 - (17 Jan 2018)
Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
Since the hon. Gentleman raises public trust and legitimacy, would he acknowledge that the extension of that argument is that, were we to say to the British people that their express will in a binary choice to leave the European Union were to be frustrated through obfuscation, prevarication, delay and confusion, the trust between this House and the people would be broken in a way that would be very hard to mend, to the cost of not only everyone here, but our whole system, for a very long time indeed?