Customs and Borders

Debate between Matt Warman and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

I would like to agree with my hon. Friend, in the sense that if the European Union were to offer an option that said, “Remain in the customs union and remain in the single market, but you don’t have to have freedom of movement and you do have the ability to go and strike your own trade deals”, then a lot of us would think that that was a very attractive move. However, that would make it a better deal to be outside the EU than to be in it.

I simply do not see how it is a sustainable, coherent position to think that the European Union would offer us that sort of compromise, so we have to live, as Opposition Members have so often said, in the real world. That requires us to say that people did not vote for the European Court of Justice to continue to have its rulings being valid in this country when we play no part in that organisation, and people did not vote for us to have no remedies on our trade policy. What people voted for, whether some in this place like it or not, is a clean break, because that is what allows us to have the control that they wanted. Many Conservative Members accuse the Opposition of trying by subterfuge to force us to remain in the European Union. However, the more we pursue the line that we can remain in the customs union but also do our own trade deals, the more we not only undermine faith in the referendum result overall but undermine faith in democracy as a whole, and we have to preserve that above all else.

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

Rubbish!

[Matt Warman]

My right hon. Friend proclaims, “Rubbish!”, from a sedentary position. I think he knows me well enough to know that I am not an ideological hard Brexiteer, by any means. However, surely we all have to accept that we should be ideological about preserving the primacy of democracy. If we in this place are not all democrats, then we have a real problem.