UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

We are in a desperate position. That has been reflected in many serious speeches today—too many to list—but that of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was a real highlight, and we support his amendment (j).

In her closing remarks yesterday, the Prime Minister said that the House needed to say not what it did not want, but what it did want. It is a fair point, but the problem we face is due to her refusal to give us that opportunity at the start of the process. She herself went to the EU27 not with clarity on what she wanted, but with red lines on what she did not want. Those red lines boxed her into a corner and produced this damaging deal that fails the country and has been rejected twice by historic margins.

What is the Prime Minister’s reaction? To try again. It was my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) who coined the phrase “meaningful vote” when seeking to ensure that Parliament had a role in this process, and it is a phrase that the Prime Minister has embraced. We have had meaningful vote 1 and meaningful vote 2, but how, as the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) asked, can meaningful vote 3 be meaningful in any sense of the word?

On 26 February, the Prime Minister set out the process for this week: vote on her deal, vote on no deal and then vote on an extension. She set out the options to be considered at that stage—her deal, no deal, another deal or a public vote. This week we have ruled out two of those options, so we should now be looking at the other two and seeing what consensus can be built, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (James Frith) and for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), among others.

The Chancellor was right when he reminded the nation on the radio this morning that the 2016 referendum decision was carried by a narrow margin—a painfully narrow margin—and was not the overwhelming mandate that some Conservative Members claim. It was a vote to leave, but not an instruction to rupture our relationship with our closest neighbours and allies. If there was any doubt, the Prime Minister gave the people a second vote: she called a general election, accusing this House of trying to thwart her plans and seeking a mandate for a hard Brexit—and she lost her majority. She could then have reached out to build a consensus.

The Prime Minister could also have done so after her deal was defeated in January, but she did not. Yes, she spoke to people across the House, but she did not listen to what they had to say. She focused on the backstop, which may be an obsession of the party within her party, but is not the primary concern of the majority of the 432 MPs who voted against her deal. Of far more concern to us is the way that deal damages our economy, damages jobs, damages livelihoods and damages public services, and does not offer the certainty that business needs. The political declaration is deliberately ambiguous, and we know there are those on her Benches who intend, if she gets her deal over the line, to remove her and to rip it up.

Last night, the Prime Minister had another chance to reach out and build consensus, to deliver on the expectations that she had given the House, and to create the opportunity to explore all the options and find a way forward. The Government’s shameful decision to go back on their word and frustrate our democracy with this motion should be rejected by the House. Our amendment (e) provides the way forward that this House expected and wanted, and it would not have been necessary, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) pointed out, if the Government were doing their job.

The Prime Minister should also listen to her Chancellor. However much he proclaims support for her deal, he recognises that it is dead and that she should reach out across the House to look at the sort of deal that might be forged around a customs union, single market alignment, membership of the agencies and partnerships we have built together and, indeed, a further public vote between a credible leave option and remaining in the European Union—a vote that we support. An extension needs clear purpose—a purpose of building a consensus, which the Prime Minister has failed to do. An extension should be as short as possible but as long as necessary, because we have seen the folly of fixed deadlines.

We warned the House and the Prime Minister that throwing red meat to her Brexit extremists by fixing 29 March in law was a mistake. Now she must legislate to remove that date. We should also reject her new bullying tactic, which states that failing to back her deal means UK participation in the European elections. It does not, as many Members—notably the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke)—pointed out. Powerful legal voices have been cited, but let me quote a Minister on this issue. The Advocate General for Scotland said in another place on 27 February that

“the noble Lord’s point that the EU Parliament could sit without the UK having had an election…is correct”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 February 2019; Vol. 796, c. 292.]

We must not be deflected by threats. We cannot succumb to the Prime Minister’s obstinacy. Her deal has been rejected. No deal has been rejected. We must now seek the extension of article 50 that is needed to move on and consider the remaining options: a different deal, or a further public vote.