European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

For these reasons, the Government have tabled their amendment in lieu. We have listened to concerns in the other place, and we do not disagree with the substance of Lord Dubs’s amendment. Indeed, we have provided assurances in this House and in the other place that it will be our priority in the negotiations to safeguard the rights of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and I am pleased to confirm that we will accept amendment (ii) to Lords amendment 24, tabled by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the Solicitor General’s acceptance of my amendment (ii). I also pay tribute to Lord Dubs for tabling the original amendment, and to my colleagues on the Home Affairs Committee and to Members on both sides of the House who have pressed for this change. May I urge the Solicitor General again, however, to accept amendment (i) as well? I have a case involving a 12-year-old from Eritrea who was in an adult hostel in Italy and whose 17-year-old brother was in foster care here in Britain. The foster carers had said that they would take his 12-year-old sister as well, so I wrote to the Home Office. It accepted that, under the Dublin III arrangements, those two siblings should be reunited. They have been through all sorts of awful things that none of us would want our teenagers to go through. Under the Solicitor General’s current provisions, however, those teenagers would not be covered, so I urge him to accept amendment (i) as well.

[The Solicitor General]

I anticipated that the right hon. Lady would come back for more, and I quite understand the position that she and my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) have put forward, but the key consideration here must be the best interests of the child. Bringing children to join underage relatives might well be in their best interests sometimes, but not always. It is highly unlikely that the relative would be able to provide care, and there is an issue about pressure on our domestic care system—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] No, no—we have to be careful to maintain the balance between the need to support families and allow family reunion, and unintentionally incentivising the sort of dangerous journeys that everyone in this House is extremely familiar with. That is why it is important to understand, as we approach the negotiations on the basis that is currently the requirement under the Dublin regulation, that extended family members—grandparents, aunts and uncles—will need to be able to demonstrate that they have adequate resources to care for the child effectively in order for a transfer to be made.

[The Solicitor General]

My hon. Friend is kind and compassionate, and I think that all Members of the House are kind and compassionate people, but the interests of the child in our domestic law lie at the heart of the courts’ consideration. The paramountcy of the best interests of the child is what the Children Act 2004 is all about, and I have to apply that.

[Yvette Cooper]

The best interest test still applies. It is still in our legislation. Nothing in my amendment (i) removes the best interest test; all it does is replicate the existing arrangements, which are already covered by the best interest test. All the Solicitor General’s arguments are completely spurious.

[The Solicitor General]

I respectfully disagree with the right hon. Lady. There is still an issue with the applicability of that particular amendment and with how it would mesh with our domestic law. We must not forget that such changes are not about the conferral of rights. The passage of such amendments does not confer direct rights upon people. This is about the Government’s negotiating position. [Interruption.] I cannot give way anymore, because I must bear in mind the Speaker’s strictures. I have gone a minute beyond the hour and still have more work to do.

Moving on to Lords amendment 4, one of the key principles of the Lancaster House speech and, indeed, the Government’s manifesto was to maintain and enhance workers’ rights—[Interruption.] I have been more than generous in giving way. I pride myself on giving way to Members from whichever corner of the House they may come, and I am sorry if hon. Members feel that I am being ungenerous, but I must respect time, too. That is why I want to press on.

The Bill deals in many places with the status of retained EU law, but much of our debate has turned on how that retained EU law is amended once we have left the EU, hence the core of the concerns about Lords amendment 4. The Government and Opposition are more united than divided here. We both clearly want to maintain the protections and rights that are established in EU law. Our amendments in the Lords have done this for EU regulations and for all the directly effective rights established in the treaties by making them akin to primary legislation—the highest protection we can possibly give in the UK system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Grieve]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I understand it—it is a feature of this place that we sometimes debate and vote on issues that are peripheral to the main point—but there comes a point when one has to stand up and be counted. If it is not this week, it has to be next week, and the truth is I am really anxious for my constituents and anxious about our general direction of travel. I respect the decision in the referendum, but we are closing off options as to how we conduct future relationships, in ways that are utterly damaging to ourselves. In a sense, some of our debates yesterday, and the negotiation I am going to conduct—successfully, I hope—in a moment, are all linked to these fixations, and the consequences for us are really damaging. Yes, of course, the EEA amendment is rather flawed, but it has the merit, unlike Labour’s “motherhood and apple pie” amendment, which I cannot possibly support because it is motherhood and apple pie, of at least having some bite, and today is the day I shall be voting for it.

[Yvette Cooper]

I will start with Lords amendment 24 and the point I raised when the Solicitor General was speaking. This is not a remain or a leave issue. This is not a party political issue. He will have heard the support from both sides of the House for simply continuing with the family reunion arrangements for child refugees that we have right now. I am unable to put my amendment to the vote, because of Standing Orders and the ludicrous programme motion, but I think if I did it would command majority support across the House. It would help a very small number of some of the most vulnerable child refugees, so I urge the Minister to look again at that amendment, simply to continue with the existing arrangements. Whatever arguments we have on both sides of the House about Brexit structures and options, surely we should be able to come together with a humanitarian agreement not to allow Brexit to turn the clock back on this vital help for child refugees.

[Frank Field]

May I just record that some of us who voted leave joined my right hon. Friend on this point? We have always had a good policy. We know, in looking after these children, that there will always be abuses, but they are far outweighed by the importance of looking after the most vulnerable.

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right. There is agreement across leave and remain, and I hope that this is an issue that can unite the House and that the Government will reconsider.

Last Thursday, I was in Berlin discussing Brexit with a German Government Minister, and he asked me what I thought the Government would do next on customs and trade. It was hard enough to talk about—would it be max fac, buffer zones, double-hatted regulations, backstops, front-stops, any possible customs arrangement or partnership, and so on? What was even more embarrassing, however, was that, even as we were speaking, I had to admit that I did not know whether by the end of the meeting the Brexit Secretary would still be in place—he was in and out of No. 10, apparently about to resign—and the Foreign Secretary was promising meltdown and telling us all, “Don’t panic!”. We are embarrassing ourselves across the world with this “Dad’s Army” version of Brexit. We are in danger of turning ourselves into a national joke by not facing up to the real issues.

The Government say they do not agree with the Lords amendments on the customs union and the EEA, but we still do not know what they want instead. As others have said, the new customs arrangements amendment is a further fudge that just kicks the can down the road again, even though the road is running out.

Ministers should accept that, although they have been wrestling with this issue and with each other for 18 months, none of their customs options works, either for Northern Ireland or, crucially, for manufacturing industry, which is the spine of our economy. The technological max fac will not be ready for years; it does not solve the problem of rules of origin checks, nor can it avoid camera infrastructure at the Northern Ireland border. It will leave businesses with what Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs now says could be a £20 billion annual bill for the bureaucracy involved in explaining where all the ingredients and components come from in a fully integrated supply chain.