European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Baroness Beckett Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)
It is, as ever, a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), although I should perhaps place on record that I totally disagree with what he and the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) said on one issue, because I feel that the only way we will resolve this situation peacefully and in a way that brings people together is by going back to the people for confirmation of whatever decision this House makes. Otherwise, I fear we will be seen as engaging in an establishment stitch-up, thinking of something that we will then foist on the people. It is essential to seek their view.
I am very conscious that today’s is a crowded agenda. Amendment (f), standing in my name and those of others on both sides of the House, is so straightforward that it practically speaks for itself, so I intend to be brief. I am also mindful of how many others want to speak.
I recognise, of course, that the House has voted on more than one occasion against the UK leaving the EU without a deal; indeed, the Prime Minister has acknowledged that. I am also well aware that there are nevertheless Members who feel that, whatever the evidence to the contrary, leaving with no deal would not cause us major problems, and that there are even some who actively support our leaving without a deal or at least regard it as a desirable outcome. Surely, however, few if any believe it would be desirable that the UK should not make such a decision but drift or fall into it by inadvertence—almost by accident. That would be the very definition of irresponsibility.
We still have a very tight timetable, which presently encompasses, in addition, a potential recess period. As I said, my amendment is extremely simple and straightforward. It seeks to ensure that the UK can leave the EU without a deal only with the explicit consent of the House of Commons.
Yvette Cooper
My right hon. Friend is making a very important speech about the risks of no deal. The Prime Minister said today:
“Unless this House agrees to it, no deal will not happen.”
However, she has not provided for any process to ensure that those safeguards are in place. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we therefore need her amendment, otherwise there is a danger that we will drift by accident into the kind of chaotic, damaging no deal that both the CBI and the TUC have warned against?
Margaret Beckett
My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point, in line with the many contributions she has made on this issue. I will come to that in a moment.
The amendment guards against a no-deal withdrawal that lacks the clear and evident consent of the House. It also allows for the possibility of the House being in recess when such a danger arises and provides for the seeking of any necessary extension of the leaving deadline. I was originally very encouraged by the Prime Minister’s statement today, as my right hon. Friend said, that
“Unless this House agrees to it, no deal will not happen.”
That is what the amendment says, so my hope was that the Government might be prepared simply to accept it. That would seem the logical thing to do—I am giving the vehicle by which they can give effect to the statement that the Prime Minister made today.
I listened with care to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I think he said that, despite the fact that the Government are not taking any steps, as my right hon. Friend just pointed out, to prevent us from simply running out of time, the amendment was not necessary. He said the problem with my proposal was that there would be only two options left before the House, and the legal default would be that we leave without a deal. That is the point—that is why I tabled the amendment. Although I appreciated the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’s explanation, I know that otherwise, we would leave by legal default without a deal. He agreed that the Government will need to come back to the Dispatch Box to deal with these issues. I suggest that the Ministers on the Front Bench pass on to their right hon. Friend that the very simple thing to do—it need take no time at all—is to accept this amendment and ensure that the House does not run the indefensible risk of stumbling out of the EU without a deal.
Stephen Barclay
We are in danger of rerunning the opening of the debate. Indeed, the shadow Brexit Secretary asked whether the Government would give a binding commitment to respect and adopt whatever was passed, even though the Opposition, who made that request, were not willing to give that commitment. We cannot give a blank cheque when we do not know exactly what those votes will be—I am sure that, when the Father of the House was a Minister, he would have taken the same line.
The real issue is the constitutional significance of amendment (a) because it is unprecedented in its nature. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has already addressed the kernel of the matter, which is whether the Government will make time available this week. Indeed, he set out at the beginning of the debate that, in good faith, we will have discussions with my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset, Opposition Front Benchers and Members from across the House on how the process should look. Amendment (a) does not set that out in detail, so the Government have undertaken to have that process and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster addressed that in his opening remarks.
On amendment (f), I reassure the right hon. Member for Derby South that the Government will return to the Dispatch Box in the event that the withdrawal agreement is not approved this week. We will also return to the House to consider plans for the week of 5 April after any indicative voting. As the right hon. Lady will know as a senior Member of the House, the decision on whether to enter recess is in the control of the House. Although we do not think it is sensible to try to set the Order Paper now for a date in two weeks’ time without knowing what will happen in the interim, I hope that she is content that the House will certainly have a say on the matter.
Margaret Beckett
I will not detain the Secretary of State. If what I have suggested is acceptable, why does he not just accept the amendment?
Stephen Barclay
As I said, we cannot anticipate the business in two weeks’ time, but we have given a signal from the Dispatch Box on behalf of the Government about our position.
Let me turn to amendment (d) in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. The shadow Brexit Secretary said that many Members want to break the current deadlock, yet his amendment raises no objection to the withdrawal agreement and, as he well knows, it is the withdrawal agreement, not the political declaration, that needs to be approved to meet the tests that the European Council set for an extension to 22 May. He went on to criticise the Government for not giving a commitment to be bound by any indicative votes, yet, as I pointed out earlier, when the Father of the House challenged the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras on that very issue, he was unable to give such a commitment for Her Majesty’s Opposition to be bound in that way. Indeed, despite many of his own Members pressing for free votes from the Government in respect of those votes, he was again unwilling to give such a commitment on behalf of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition’s amendment notes that the Government’s deal has been defeated, but it is silent on the fact that his own deal has also been rejected by the House.
Regardless of any other votes, if the House does not approve the withdrawal agreement this week, it risks a longer extension, potentially resulting in Brexit being revoked, at odds with the Government’s manifesto. The uncertainty of any longer extension would be bad for business confidence and investments. It would also have lasting implications for our democracy, including our reputation around the world as a country that respects the votes of its citizens.
If this House can find the resolve, we could be out of the European Union in a matter of weeks. This is the ultimate mandate: the one handed to us by the British people; the one that reflects the manifestos that the Labour party, as well as the Conservative party, stood on. The Prime Minister’s deal is the way to deliver what the people voted for in 2016 and 2017. That is why it is right that the Government maintain control of the Order Paper, in line with constitutional convention, and why the amendments this evening should be defeated.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Baroness Beckett Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)
Over 20 years ago, as the new President of the Board of Trade, my first overseas visit to a major trade partner—Japan—was dominated by the most overwhelming concern. Business and politicians alike wanted reassurance that the then new Labour Government would not be leaving the European Union. They were polite, but they were blunt. They had invested in the UK because the UK was in the European Union, and if we left, so would they. Just today, their ambassador re-emphasised their nervousness.
So in 2016, I could foresee serious economic harm to Britain’s interests, but I accepted that we had to abide by the referendum result and concentrate our energies on damage limitation. Despite the mixed messages from the Government, I voted to trigger article 50 and the process of withdrawal, but frankly, since then, it has been downhill all the way. First, it became clear that those who had clamoured for us to leave the European Union had not the faintest idea what to do next. There was no concrete plan for the nation’s future—just a series of sweeping assertions about how easy, swift and painless leaving would be and the golden future that awaited us.
Then we saw that the Prime Minister’s decisions were being taken not in the best interests of the country, but to satisfy her Brexit extremists. The withdrawal Bill then proposed that the control we were taking should be returned not to Parliament but to Ministers, with little, if any, real parliamentary scrutiny. Asserting Parliament’s legitimate role has been an uphill struggle, as we saw in the most recent Division today.
Article 50 allows only a two-year window for negotiations, so I expected the Government to seek the fastest possible progress. I agreed with them that withdrawal and future partnership were best considered side by side, but when that was rejected, concluding negotiations on part one—the withdrawal agreement—became all the more urgent. Leaving is one thing; what matters more is where we are going and on what terms, and that dialogue has yet to begin in earnest.
If anyone had said that we would reach the end of our two-year window struggling to reach any deal at all, I would never have believed it. But it is hard to negotiate successfully if we cannot agree on what we want, wilfully throw away our negotiating flexibility and sack people who tell us what we do not want to hear.
Over these two years, while the Government have wrangled endlessly about how to proceed, one disastrously unforeseen consequence of leaving the EU after another has been revealed. Government Members keep insisting that everyone who voted knew exactly what they were doing and what the possible consequences would be. It may be so. All I can say is, I did not.
When I heard the Prime Minister pontificating about escaping the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, it never crossed my mind that that meant leaving Euratom—the watchdog not just for cancer treatment, but for the safety of nuclear power stations. I know from ministerial experience that we have, and have had for years, a shortage of people across the world with those skills and capacities, and we are about to leave behind some of those on whom we presently rely. However, whatever I did not know, I did know how much we rely on Dover for our import and export trade. I had not focused either on the losses to our scientific and medical research, or things such as the Galileo project.
As each of these problems emerges, I keep hearing that it is all right because the Government will continue all this investment—for example, to support our farmers—all on our own, so clearly the Prime Minister has found another of those magic money trees. Much of our consumption—for example, our food consumption—relies on the frictionless trade that we now enjoy; so, too, does modern manufacturing. Key goods and components are perpetually whizzing around the European Union and back to the UK, and thousands of jobs across Britain depend on this just-in-time delivery. That is why I was appalled to hear the Prime Minister announce, casually, that Britain would leave both the single market and the customs union—and, what is more, that these were red lines.
The economist Professor Patrick Minford declared the other day that just as the Thatcher years saw the demise of major industries such as coal and steel, so, too, leaving the EU, which he nevertheless supports, will probably—and, in my view, disastrously—see the end of what is left of UK manufacturing. I know that, nevertheless, most of the business community urges us to vote for this deal to provide the certainty that business always, understandably, seeks. I understand that totally; I have dealt with it for years. But no one should be under any illusions. Bluntly, these are not commitments to invest or stay in Brexit Britain. These are perfectly justifiable attempts to keep business going for the next two to three years to give them a breathing space, without disruption, to make their long-term decisions, which may not be in our favour.
I recognise, too, the concern that staying in a customs union may restrict our ability to negotiate other trade deals, say, with the United States. Personally, I am not starry-eyed about such deals. For a start, it is frankly inconceivable that any American President, let alone this American President, would do a trade deal with the UK without making it a key condition that giant US health corporations be allowed unfettered access to our national health service. I can well imagine that that might suit some right wingers who hanker after a privatised NHS and would let those companies use a free trade deal to accomplish exactly that, along with in other public services, while leaving the hands of Tory politicians clean. Equally, we would face demands to admit chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-fed beef, and no doubt other delights on which we have not yet focused.
Other trade deals would not be consequence-free either. India and China, to name but two, would, again understandably, want additional visas for their citizens—I have no quarrel with that—but the Prime Minister’s emphasis on the end of free movement may give some people the misleading impression that she is offering an end to immigration. She is not. According to the most recent figures, it is non-EU immigration that is increasing.
Not satisfied with the grave red lines misjudgement, tying her own hands and restricting her room for manoeuvre, the Prime Minister added to that the crass folly of selecting a date—not just a date, but a time—for our leaving and, to please and reassure her Brexiteers, she put it into the Bill. As that self-inflicted deadline approached, some began to say that it would be best to leave the EU at the end of March, giving up our prime negotiating cards and our strength, and work out afterwards what would be in our interests in future. I do not think that I have ever heard anything so criminally irresponsible from any Government or the supporters of any Government.
The Prime Minister says that people just want it to be over. Of course they do. Heaven knows, I think we all probably share that sentiment. But it is a con, perhaps the biggest con of all. If we pass the deal, it will not be over. The really serious stuff has not even started and it will go on for years.
Of course, to guide us, we have the political declaration. We have already heard from the Governments of France and Spain how binding they believe its warm words to be. The point is that it settles nothing. All is to be “explored”, “continued”, “considered” or “discussed”. Nothing is settled.
From the outset, the Prime Minister resisted the idea that this sovereign Parliament should have the chance to vote and express its opinion on any deal she might secure. She forcefully resisted the notion of a meaningful vote, and now that we have one, she is doing her utmost to make it meaningless by insisting that there is only one way for MPs to vote: for her deal.
The outcome of the series of votes is unpredictable and could well be indecisive. I have seen such a thing happen in this House before. Should there now be a further people’s vote? I hear “no” from most Conservative Members. But I am in no doubt that I know infinitely more now about the potential consequences of leaving the EU than I did in 2016, and I think, having been in the Cabinet for some 11 years, I probably knew a little bit about it before. I know, too, that what leave campaigners promised is not on offer, mostly because it was undeliverable.
The hon. Members for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and for Bracknell (Dr Lee) have reminded us that a major medical intervention must be preceded by an assurance that informed consent has been given. Consumer protection law gives a 14-day cooling-off period for people to make sure they know what they are doing. This time, the very future of our country is at stake.
There has been a determined effort to keep people in the dark. Economic assessments of Brexit’s impact prepared for Ministers were withheld, like the Government’s legal advice. The real-life consequences of leaving with no deal, which clearly still attracts some Conservative Members, are not being fully spelled out. The Chancellor, like the Governor of the Bank of England, publicly accepts that we would be economically better off staying in the EU, but he points out—and this is fair—that many who voted leave thought that a price worth paying to recover our sovereignty. But the deal on offer, which the Prime Minister says is the only deal on offer, does not recover our sovereignty. It leaves us rule takers from the European Union without any voice in shaping those rules. It represents what may well be the biggest transfer of sovereignty ever proposed by any British Government, because this time sovereignty is not being shared—it is being surrendered.
None of us can know today just what decisions or options, if any, will emerge from next Tuesday’s votes. The Prime Minister demands—she repeated it today—of all MPs that, when we vote, we do so not in any party or personal interest, but for what we honestly believe to be the interests of our country. I shall, Mr Speaker, and it will not be for this deal.
Several hon. Members rose—