European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between William Cash and Iain Duncan Smith

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 2nd sitting
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

The hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) said, “What is this sovereignty?” It is terribly simple; it is the ability to make our own laws in our own Parliament, in accordance with the electoral decisions taken by the people in line with a manifesto and with their constitutional arrangements, which have been in place for many generations. It is this for which people fought and died in world wars. The very simple reality is that sovereignty is about whether or not we can govern ourselves.

My rebellion against the Maastricht treaty was based on the simple proposition that that treaty created European government. In 1971, we entered into arrangements—then enacted through the European Communities Act 1972—on the basis of a White Paper that said we would never give up the veto under any circumstances, and furthermore that to do so would be not only against our own national interest, but contrary to the fabric of the European Community itself. Believe it or not, it was understood in Government circles at that time that the veto enabled us to retain the actuality and reality of the ability to make our own laws. Gradually, over the next 30 or 40 years, that veto was whittled away to extinction, and the processes that I have to deal with day in, day out in the European Scrutiny Committee—and have been doing so since I first went on the Committee in 1985—have demonstrated to me that, in fact, we have not been governing ourselves. That is why I entered into opposition to the Maastricht treaty and then to Nice, Amsterdam and ultimately Lisbon. The reality of what has been happening is that the individuals who sit on these green Benches have simply had their ability to make the laws that they are entitled to make on behalf of the people who vote for them reduced to rubble.

In return, we have been faced with an increasingly dysfunctional European Union that did not work in the interests of the British people, and that is why we got the result we did in the referendum. It was the people who voted. Interestingly, when the decision was taken to hold the referendum, it was decided by six to one in the House of Commons. We voluntarily agreed that we would abdicate our right as Members of Parliament and let the people of this country make that decision on their own behalf. All the resistance we have seen over the past three years from the Opposition Benches and from a number of our recalcitrant colleagues, many of whom are no longer in the House, was based on a complete failure to understand that the decisions that were taken in that referendum were authorised by Parliament and, indeed, by themselves.

Section 1 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018—I did the first draft of the Bill, which was accepted by the Government—said that the European Communities Act 1972 would be repealed on exit day. That is now in fact implementation period day, but for practical purposes it comes to the same thing. The Opposition religiously—or irreligiously, depending on how one cares to put it—decided that they would oppose that Bill in principle, as they did on Second Reading and on Third Reading. Every single Conservative, even my recalcitrant colleagues—even Kenneth Clarke—voted for the withdrawal Act on Third Reading, but the Opposition denied not only the sovereignty that was being restored by the repeal of the ’72 Act but the democracy that went with it. That is a fundamental issue. They destroyed their credibility with the British people, and I believe that the ordinary man in the street—the people who voted in the last general election—understood that.

I have already made the point that European laws are made behind closed doors by a majority vote. Nobody can say that the decisions that were taken, which we had to accept because we had no alternative, were laws made by our elected representatives. I have never heard such trash coming from a Front Bench as the suggestion that the fact that these people happen to be elected Members of Parliament in the Council of Ministers conferred upon them some form of democratic right to decide.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is making absolutely the right case about sovereignty. I mentioned Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL. The point about those two cases is that they were judicial statements. One was about direct effect and the other was about the whole idea that European law had supremacy. They were never voted on in this House. Nobody agreed to them. Nobody said, “This is what we wanted.” That led to something quite interesting—the imposition of the extension of welfare payments to EU migrants who came here was the result of a judicial review of something that we had never voted for, and it cost us a lot of money.

[Sir William Cash]

That is a very good point. Those cases happened before we came into the European Union, and they invade the very concept of the constitutionality of this country and of other countries too, because they say that we are obliged to obey not just any law, not just all laws, but even constitutional laws. That is the point. It is an utter invasion. It is a complete and total destruction of the decision of people through the ballot box in general elections. That is the problem. Sovereignty and democracy are intertwined at the heart of our constitutional system. The hon. Member for Bristol West ought to reflect on the rather absurd propositions in her speech, because she cannot prove a single point that she made.