UK Exit from the European Union

Debate between Robin Walker and Geraint Davies

Monday 17th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Robin Walker)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. May I also thank the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) for his earlier chairmanship of this wide-ranging debate? When studying these petitions, I recognised there was a wide range of views reflected in them. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) did an excellent job of reflecting on those views in his introduction. As we have seen, the debate has gone even wider in some respects, touching on a number of things beyond even the six petitions we are debating.

I thank the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) for her kind welcome and assure her that I take the responsibilities she referred to very seriously. As someone who, like probably the majority of Members in the Chamber, campaigned on the remain side in the referendum, but who now recognises that we have to reflect on the mandate of the British people and deliver on that, I am determined to make sure we do that in a way that addresses some of the concerns that I and other Members raised during that campaign, but that delivers on what the British people have voted for.

As others have pointed out, it is a healthy development in our democracy that petitions that receive substantial support should be debated in Parliament. This is not the first petitions debate we have had; indeed, we have had some excellent debates already on issues such as the devolved Administrations and on having a second referendum. I am sorry that my hon. Friend—sorry, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies); he was my friend when we served together on the Welsh Affairs Committee—was not there for the debate on the second referendum, because he might have been the only speaker in that debate to support what the petition called for. There were 13 speakers, including many from Labour and the Scottish National party, who all accepted that rerunning the referendum was not the right approach. Perhaps we missed his eloquent advocacy on that occasion.

[Geraint Davies]

I did not speak in that debate because I was speaking on behalf of socialists from 47 countries, as a member of the Socialist Group in the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. I spoke about the monstrosity and disaster of Brexit—the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) was there as well—and explained the reason we might need a second referendum, if what is negotiated by the Minister and his Department does not resemble in the slightest the reasonable expectations of those who voted to leave.

[Mr Walker]

I am grateful for that illustration of the hon. Gentleman’s views, but I think it is important that, in responding to this debate, I focus on the six petitions before us today, which were described with typical eloquence by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) as a “six pack”, with a wide variety of flavours.

To cover the full Government response, let me first reiterate the Government’s approach to this important process. It is a process we have only one opportunity to get right, so it is right to take the correct amount of time over it. We have been consulting with a broad range of stakeholders following the referendum result, which it is right to do, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam pointed out. We are consulting with the devolved Administrations, with the overseas territories and crown dependencies, with businesses and with other interest groups to build a national consensus across the whole of the United Kingdom on our negotiating position. We will continue to involve the devolved Administrations in preparing the UK’s position.

The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and the rest of the ministerial team have already heard from a wide variety of sectors and stakeholders. We will also be holding a series of roundtables in the coming weeks on a variety of topics, including aviation, life sciences, financial services, agriculture and fisheries and many more. Engagement will continue through a range of bilateral meetings, visits across the United Kingdom, and the Joint Ministerial Council, which engages senior figures from the devolved Administrations. That process is about building an informed and strong negotiating position for the whole UK, and I do not share the pessimism of the hon. Member for Swansea West on that position. I would gently point out, to a colleague for whom I have great respect, that the petition he spoke to, which had 4 million signatures, was not advocated or defended by any Member who spoke in that debate and does not appear to have the support of his own Front-Bench team or many Members of the House.

Three of the petitions we are discussing today concern article 50, when we will invoke it and how. Let me be clear: the British people have voted to leave the European Union, and their will must be respected and delivered on, but the process for leaving the EU and determining our future relationship is complex. I acknowledge that the largest petition we are debating—as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam pointed out, it is the only one that would have reached the attention of the Petitions Committee on its own—calls for us to exercise article 50 with immediate effect. However, by not triggering article 50 immediately after the referendum—as the leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), originally suggested—we have given ourselves the time to develop a UK-wide negotiating strategy and to avoid setting the clock ticking until our objectives are clear and agreed.

It is also right that the Government should not let things drag on too long. We have had pressure both internally, as we can see from the petition, and externally, from some of our counterparts on the continent, who are clear that they want us to get on with the process. As the Prime Minister made clear, we will trigger article 50 before the end of March next year. That should reassure those who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam probably rightly said, signed the petition thinking article 50 might never be invoked that we are getting on with the process and preparing the ground to make sure we can do that in the most effective way possible.

[Geraint Davies]

If I could ask for some clarification about the timing, is the objective of the Minister’s Department to try to reach certain negotiating goals, which are private at the moment, before the March deadline? If they do not reach those goals, is there any flexibility to manage the deadline in order to maximise the benefits for the British people, or is it just a hard Brexit—“You get what you get; that’s tough”?

[Mr Walker]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, but as for setting out negotiating goals, he should be clear about what the Commission and Council have said about the article 50 process: that they do not want negotiations before it has started. Of course we need to prepare the strongest possible position for the UK, and we will engage where we can to make sure we set the terms for those negotiations, but it is not possible to pre-negotiate any particular deal ahead of the formal article 50 process, so I think he is perhaps setting unrealistic expectations.

[Geraint Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?