Customs and Borders

Peter Grant Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I have previously severely criticised Parliament’s inaction as seen in its failure to properly scrutinise the Government’s approach, for example through the European Scrutiny Committee, but today we see Parliament doing what it should be doing. It is just a pity that we knew before we started that the Government will not listen. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) called for everybody to get together behind the Government. How about the Government just once getting themselves together behind the overwhelming will of Parliament and behind what they know as well as we do is the overwhelming will of the people?

Let us stop this nonsense about a referendum vote to leave the customs union and the single market—no, there was no such vote. There was a vote to leave the European Union, and we have been told that that became a vote to leave the single market because that was what the losers said would happen. I am fascinated by the idea that, after an election, the winners are expected not to implement their own manifesto but to bring about what the other side said would happen if the eventual winners got in. Tory Members might want to look at what the Tories said would happen if the SNP ever won an election in Scotland, as we did in 2017, 2016 and 2015, and on many other occasions.

It is dangerous to give the people a binary choice but then to claim a democratic mandate to interpret the infinite number of variations of what that binary choice might mean. I do not have the right to say that the people who voted leave wanted to stay in the single market and the customs union, and nobody has a right to say that those people wanted to leave, but what I do have the right to say is that 62% of people in my country voted to stay in the European Union. Those who insist that we should be working for the best Brexit for the people of Scotland have to accept that the sovereign people of Scotland have said that the only good Brexit is no Brexit. If we must have Brexit, we want Brexit to hold us as close as possible to the European Union.

[Luke Graham]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that I do not have time to take interventions.

A lot has been said about the Irish border. Let us remember that it is now 15 months since the Prime Minister promised, as a matter of priority and as soon as possible, to bring forward her practical solution for the Irish border that was consistent with leaving the customs union. We have seen nothing. None of us has any idea what that practical solution will be. None of us even has any idea of when the Government will have any idea of what that solution will be. It is deeply offensive to a great many people of good faith on all sides and in all communities in Northern Ireland to accuse them of blackmail when all that they are saying to us is, “For heaven’s sake, please do not destroy the great work that has been done,” which I think was perhaps the greatest act of reconciliation and peace-building that certainly these nations—these islands—have seen, and that perhaps has been seen in the whole of Europe.

We talk about taking back control of our trade, but we cannot take back control of our trade. Every trade deal has to be bilateral. We are not in the empire anymore; we are in the Commonwealth. We are a community of nations and we have to treat other nations with respect. We are in the best trading partnership in the world; why would we want to leave?