Debate on the Address

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have to say to the hon. Lady that the reason why I am not welcoming the former right hon. Member to this House is because he was beaten by a Conservative in the election.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury showed great skill and tenacity over his three years of negotiations on the common fisheries policy. The process started with the UK as a minority of one, and ended with the EU unanimously supporting a reform agenda, the principles of which will be at the heart of the fisheries Bill in this Queen’s Speech. He was also the Minister who secured cross-party support for moving our canals and waterways from the public to the charitable sector, creating the Canal & River Trust, one of the biggest and best endowed charities in this country. He made an excellent speech today in the finest traditions of this House.

The motion was brilliantly seconded by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng). He is a distinguished political historian and a prolific writer, as the Leader of the Opposition pointed out. I understand that my hon. Friend has a particular interest in female Prime Ministers. Indeed, Members may know that his most recent book profiled the most testing six months for our country’s first female Prime Minister. It ran to 272 pages; I fear his next book could be somewhat longer.

My hon. Friend is also widely regarded for his good looks. In fact, The Sunday Telegraph once described him as a Tory “heart-throb”, and during his time on “University Challenge”, I gather he even made it to page 3 of The Sun. Perhaps most significantly, he is confounding the Daily Mail, which cited the 1995 “University Challenge” winning team of which my hon. Friend was a member when arguing that

“all too often the brainy winners of the BBC’s flagship programme sink without trace after their moment in the spotlight.”

I could not disagree more. The House has today seen his talents on full display. He gave a tremendous speech with flair, substance and wit. He brings an historian’s wisdom to the challenges and opportunities that our country faces, and I have no doubt that he will make a major contribution in the years ahead.

Let me welcome the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) as the new leader of the Scottish National party here in Westminster. I am also, of course, particularly pleased to welcome to the Conservative Benches my 13 Scottish Conservative colleagues. It is good that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will not have to put up with any more jokes about pandas.

Turnout at the election was higher than in 2015, including many more younger people. While those of us on this side of the House would have preferred more of them to vote for us, more young people going to the ballot box is something that we should all welcome.

Let me also welcome the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) back to his place as the Leader of the Opposition. He fought a spirited campaign and he came a good second, which was better than the pundits predicted and than many of his own MPs hoped for.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister is celebrating her immense triumph following the recent campaign, but I could not help but notice something as she and the Leader of the Opposition went off to listen to the Queen’s Speech. Thinking back to when I was at school and we came back having not seen people for six weeks, I thought, “Has she shrunk, or has he grown?” [Interruption.]

[Christian Matheson]

I was hoping that the Prime Minister might answer my—

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[Mr Clarke]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins), but then I will not give way again unless somebody is particularly pressing, if hon. Members will forgive me.

[Toby Perkins]

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. He is absolutely right that the economy should be a priority. He has mentioned some of the things that might have to wait until further down the line, but he did not talk about immigration. Having spent a lot of time speaking to people in Chesterfield over the last few weeks, I know that if we end up with some kind of deal whereby we leave the EU but nothing changes in terms of immigration, many of the Brexit voters will feel that their vote for leaving the EU was very much given under false pretences.

[Mr Clarke]

I understand the political background to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but I get concerned that more and more Labour Members—perfectly reasonable ones—who represent constituencies in the north of England or the north midlands are now suddenly finding reasons for sounding rather anti-immigrant and putting forward that interpretation. We have a problem with immigration—I will address it—but we should not start feeding nonsense like the idea that EU nationals have lowered our living standards or are taking our jobs. The political temptation to start sounding a bit like the erstwhile UKIP opponent should be resisted, particularly by people in what used to be safe Labour seats in the north of England.

Let me turn to the question of the single market and the customs union. We are going to have to seek some compromise, so I start from the proposition that, as far as I am aware, there is not a single protectionist Member of Parliament sitting in this House. Everybody here declares their fervent belief in free trade. It was never always thus in this House. The only real protectionist on my side of the House was the late Alan Clark, which was rather odd as he was Minister for Trade at the beginning of the Uruguay round, although he was exceptional in many matters. The left wing of the Labour party in the days of Michael Foot was ferociously protectionist, as it was ferociously Eurosceptic—it was united with the old imperialist right in our party in opposing the European project.

I am never quite sure where the present Leader of the Opposition has gone to, because he and I have rather consistently stuck to the sort of views we both had when we entered this House many years ago—he a little later than me, but not much. He was one of the stoutest Bennite Eurosceptics in the House of Commons—it was a capitalist plot in those days. He has not exactly had a Pauline conversion. It is not bad, but I kept finding that he was speaking on the same side as me in the recent referendum, although he only seemed able to find arguments about resisting obscure threats to workers’ rights, which I could not see were remotely an issue in the referendum we were holding. But I will accept what he says and his party’s position, so I think that now he probably is in favour of free trade.

Particularly in the referendum, both sides in the campaign were united on the principles of free trade and open trading links with the rest of the EU. I think that everyone would agree that the leave side was led very robustly by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. He in particular was very anxious to dismiss the suggestion that the future of our trading relationships was remotely going to be affected by our leaving the EU—it was said that that was the politics of fear and scaremongering. He repeatedly explained that, as the Germans needed to sell us their Mercedes cars and as the Italians needed to sell us their Prosecco, our trading relationships were obviously going to remain completely unchanged. Indeed, at times, he and one or two others in the leave campaign seemed to imply that we did not really need trade agreements in order to trade in the modern world, as we would simply go out there and sell things. However, if we leave the European Union with no deal and we do not have all the EU trade deals that we have helped to negotiate over the years, we will for a time be the only country in the developed world that has absolutely no trade agreements with any other country. My right hon. Friend, with his usual breezy insouciance, seemed quite undisturbed by that spectacle, but I do not think that that is where we are now.

Let me begin by dealing precisely with the key issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) raised. I hope that I can take it as a given starting point across the House that we will seek to achieve no new customs barriers, regulatory barriers or tariffs between ourselves and the rest of the European Union. Tariffs are important, but they are not as important as the other two for quite a lot of aspects of a modern economy. I take it that all sides agree that we shall not seek to put any obstacles of that kind in the way of future relationships.

In the present circumstances, I am anxious to demonstrate my agreement with our friends in the Democratic Unionist party. I share all their fervour that we should have an open border in Ireland. It would be an absolute catastrophe if we found ourselves closing that border again, with all the threats to the stability of Ulster and the Irish Republic that that would entail. Given that no one would argue in principle with what I have just said about no new tariffs, regulatory barriers or customs barriers, I find it odd that those on the two Front Benches are ostensibly agreed that we are going to leave the single market—that is difficult to understand in the case of Labour—and perhaps the customs union as well. I can only assume that either that is mere semantics, or that we are going to see considerable ingenuity in how we achieve what is to people of common sense on both sides of the channel a desirable goal, while at the same time withdrawing from the single market and the customs union.

I repeat that when we received our instructions from the people—to use the kind of phrase that the Eurosceptics are fond of—in the referendum, I do not recall the question of leaving the single market and the customs union being even remotely seriously raised. Certainly in the rather good debates that I had with intelligent Eurosceptics in village halls and so on, none of them ever suggested that we would do that. This is in line with my experience throughout my time in this House, during which every Eurosceptic has argued that there is nothing wrong with the common market. Every right-wing Tory has always been totally in favour of having close and open trading relations with the rest of Europe. The sole basis of their opposition was the politics of Europe, or their version of what they thought that was.

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[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I thank all the voters of the Chesterfield constituency who, for the third time, have done me the honour of sending me back to this place. As the final speaker in today’s debate on the Queen’s Speech, it comes as little surprise to me that today we have learned that the Prime Minister’s head of policy is the latest adviser to leave the sinking ship. Not only did today’s Queen’s Speech tell us that this is a Government in search of a programme, but it was the first ever Queen’s Speech that was more noted for what was not in it than for what was.

Never before have we seen a more charmless and negative prescription from any party than the one that we saw in the most recent election, and today we see what is left: a Prime Minister who is in office but not in power, and a Government without a majority or much of a plan for what they want to do with the power they cling to. They are neither strong nor stable, nor particularly able, and they are not certain of whether they even have a partner with which to complete their programme.

I was intending to spend a little time talking about some of the measures that all those votes for Labour MPs have prevented, but the passion and lucidity with which the Conservative programme was savaged by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), who stood on it, suggested to me that if we cannot take apart the Tories’ manifesto as passionately as they can, perhaps we should just leave that part of the equation where it is. It is true to say that a strong and stable Tory Government implementing the manifesto that they stood on would have taken money from pensioners, would have taken school meals from infants, would have taken homes from bereaved families and would have further weakened our public services, so today we celebrate the Labour victories, because although they left us short of the victory that we wanted, they have made a real difference to the programme that is in front of us.

Although the Queen’s Speech lacks ambition and detail, it is a Queen’s Speech that has the shadow of Brexit looming large over it. There will be considerable debate about the shape of Britain’s post-Brexit future. It is right that this should be an opportunity for the Government to stop and think about how they can deliver a Brexit that works for the 48% as well as for the 52%.

I know that colleagues on both sides of the House—many of them Labour Members—are keen to try to maintain Britain’s place in the single market as the key priority, but I have to say that it would be premature for us to go down that route. We may well find in a year’s time that the Norway option is the best solution, but we have not yet started the negotiations in any meaningful way. If all we can say to those who voted leave is that they have to accept that we will continue to have freedom of movement throughout the EU, they will absolutely believe that they have been misled about what they voted for in the referendum.

We need to proceed with tremendous caution. Let us see whether the Foreign Secretary can deliver the kind of Brexit that he promised in advance of the referendum. If he cannot, he will have to come back and explain why that cannot be achieved, and we will then have to ask whether the single market is indeed the best option for us to pursue.

There is no doubt in my mind that if there had been no prospect of our immigration rules being changed, there would have been no victory for Brexit in the referendum. It is important that the Government confess to and admit that. Yes, there were people in Chesterfield who recognised the massive benefits that immigrants have brought to our country. I was disappointed that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said that any talk about immigration made somebody anti-immigrant. I am not remotely anti-immigrant. Many of the people in my constituency who voted leave want the German anaesthetist here, the Kenyan heart surgeon here and the Singaporean nurse here, but they also want us to have some controls on that immigration. If, as has happened all the way through, anyone who raises the question of immigration is automatically said to be against the immigrants who have made such a great contribution to our society, we should not be surprised when the voters think we are not listening to them. I was therefore disappointed when the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that in his speech today.

I recognise the extent to which a better educated, more highly skilled, more diverse and more outward-looking country has been the result of the immigration we have had, and so would many people in my constituency. I regret that all of us in this place have not done more to discuss the economic benefits that immigration has brought to our country. I speak to pensioners who say, “I’ve worked all my life. I’ve paid into my pension.” I respond, “No, you’ve worked all your life and you’ve paid your mum and dad’s pension. Now someone has to pay yours.” Immigrants come at working age, when they are young and healthy, and make an important contribution.

I hope that the immigration Bill that the Government bring forward will enable us to conduct a full and detailed analysis of the economic and social implications of future immigration policy. If, as a result of cutting immigration—the Government have spoken about that over a long period of time, but have not achieved it—we will be poorer, it is incredibly important that we make people aware that that is what we are saying. The truth is that the immigration policy for those outside the EU has failed to achieve the immigration target that the Government have set, so we need to be candid about what faces us. I will welcome the new immigration Bill, but only if it allows our country to have the discussion we should have had long, long ago. The vast majority of my constituents welcome skilled labour in the workplace, recognise that hard-working, young, fit and skilled employees offer a financial benefit to our country, and want Britain to send out the message that we still want to attract such people so that we have a chance of competing in the 21st-century race.

Voters in Chesterfield who voted to leave expect us to continue trading, to control who comes into the country, and to stop contributing to an institution that we are no longer a part of. That was the promise they were made by the Foreign Secretary and others during the campaign. If that promise can be delivered, the mandate for Britain to leave the EU is clear. However, if it cannot be delivered—if the Government are going to make it more difficult for British businesses to compete in the global marketplace, if they are not going to have the controls on immigration that they promised and if the post-Brexit Britain they promised was a cruel illusion—there will be no mandate for the Government to carry on with a programme that fails to keep the promises they made.

The Government will shamble on, with or without a DUP deal, until the end comes. If the Government were a horse, they would be on their way to the glue factory. There is important work ahead for all of us. I urge the Government to adopt a cross-party approach to Brexit. Most of all, I say to the Government that if they run out of ideas, they should get out of the way and hand over to a party that has not.

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, the last contributor to our debate, for saying so explicitly to the House what he really thinks.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Chris Heaton-Harris.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.