European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: Second Day: House of Commons
Wednesday 17th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The points I hoped to make in my speech are being put to me by others, which may have the welcome effect of shortening my contribution. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend has not given us many numbers so far, and the one he has given us is wrong. We have actually had eight days in Committee and two days on Report, and we had an extensive debate on Second Reading in which many of these larger issues were strongly reviewed. We had very detailed short-term forecasts from the Treasury of what would happen in the year or so immediately after the vote if we voted to leave. We now know they were comprehensively wrong in forecasting a recession, a big rise in unemployment and a big fall in house prices. Why were they so wrong, and what has he learned from that?

[Mr Clarke]

My defence is that I did not use any of those arguments in the campaigning I took part in during the referendum. The referendum campaign was somewhat taken over by the then Chancellor and the then Prime Minister, both friends of mine and people with whom I politically agree on Europe, and I would not have made the same choice of arguments. I thought at the time that they were spinning the short-term forecasts far too far and, with hindsight following the rather narrow result, they rather discredited the remain campaign. Surprisingly, I am rather in agreement with my right hon. Friend.

My right hon. Friend may not have been here in time to hear me begin by saying that all attempts to produce a precise forecast of any change in economic arrangements are fraught with peril. I would have preferred the referendum to have been fought on arguments about the benefits, in the opinion of those on my side, that membership of the EU has brought to this country in enabling us to develop a powerful political role in the world as one of the leading members of the EU, in helping the bloc to hold its own against America, China, India and the emerging powers and in the considerable economic success that we achieved for most of the 47 years of our membership. There is no doubt that the common market and then particularly the single market have made a considerable contribution to our prosperity.

That enables me to return to the point of my speech, which is the economic consequences and how the House might be enabled to hold the Government to account for the likely economic consequences—properly and cautiously anticipated—when they have a policy on the eventual outcome they are trying to negotiate and then, because it will inevitably change in the real world, when a deal is ultimately negotiated.

I would prefer us to continue in the single market and the customs union. The point has been made, including by me, so I will repeat it in only one sentence, but at no point in the referendum campaign did the leavers say that one of the advantages of leaving is that we will leave the single market and the customs union. Most of them never mentioned it, and the ones who were reported in the national media did not mention it. It was all about Turks coming here to take our jobs and about extra money for the health service. Both sides used equally foolish arguments, or at least the national media only chose to report the foolish arguments. The people I debated with in town halls did not use such nonsense.