European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Andrew Percy

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I start by welcoming some of the words of the Prime Minister from yesterday. She said as part of her announcement:

“This is a difficult time for everyone. Passions are running high on all sides of the argument”,

and that debate and division is

“putting Members of Parliament and everyone else under…pressure…and…doing damage to our politics.”

I think we all recognise the pressures that she is talking about and the efforts that Members on both sides of the House, and with all kinds of different views on Brexit, are making to do the right thing in the national interest, to do the right thing whatever their different views on Brexit, and to do the right thing for their constituents. I hope that the very respectful and thoughtful tone of the debate that we had on the programme motion will be continued in this debate.

We have put forward this cross-party Bill to avert no deal on 12 April. We have done so for fear of the damage that no deal would do to all our constituencies. We understand that the Cabinet Secretary and National Security Adviser to the Government, Sir Mark Sedwill, told the Cabinet yesterday that no deal would make our country “less safe”. The Cabinet has a responsibility to listen to that advice and I am extremely glad that it did. We understand, too, that the Cabinet was warned that food prices would go up by 10% in the event of no deal. Again, I am glad that it listened to that advice because that would have a huge impact on overstretched families across the country.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I endorse and thank the right hon. Lady for the tone in which she has brought in the Bill. However, given that she has been one of the people who has most vociferously argued for long periods of scrutiny over our decision to leave the European Union, why does she think that it is acceptable to take off the table a way out of the EU that very many people who voted to leave it believe to be the way in which we should leave? Given her previous demands for a long scrutiny process, why is this all being done with only a few hours of debate in this place?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is right that there is a tight timetable for the Bill. That is because there is a tight timetable for the House, facing the deadline of 12 April and the European Council meeting that will take place. I will be honest: I could never have imagined when we started these debates that we would be in a situation where, nine days from Brexit day, nobody knows what is going to happen. That is causing huge concern and anxiety for businesses, families and people across the country. I will come on in a minute to the damage that no deal would do to my constituency and many others. We have a responsibility to ensure that we can avert it.

Home Affairs

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Andrew Percy

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

The shadow Secretary of State came to my constituency recently. She did not give me notice of her visit, but she may have heard from residents in Goole of their concerns about immigration. The visit did no good: the Labour vote completely collapsed in the Euro elections. Will she now take this opportunity to apologise to residents in Goole for what happened in 2007, which led massive numbers of immigrants to come to our town and put huge pressure on schools, housing and our public services?

[Yvette Cooper]

I must tell the hon. Gentleman that, unfortunately, public concern about immigration is much higher now than it was at the time of the general election. I hope that he will apologise to his constituents for backing a net migration target and promising that it would be met by the time of the next general election, but utterly failing to meet it.

The Government are not setting out the practical things that they could do. For example, they could stop agencies recruiting only from abroad, close loopholes in the minimum wage, go much further on unfair zero-hours contracts and make serious exploitation a crime. All those are things that the Government could do.

In response to my hon. Friends’ questions, the Home Secretary commented about the Passport Office, but I must say that her answers were incredibly complacent and simply do not reflect the experience of MPs right across the country. She claimed that all the targets are being met. From what she said, we would think that everything was absolutely fine. Tell that to James Bowness from Cumbria, who nearly missed his chance to qualify for the Commonwealth games because his passport did not arrive in time; pensioner Eileen Shepherd from Darlington, who missed her dream cruise because her passport did not arrive; or the Vernon family from Coventry, who missed their first family holiday abroad. They all applied in time, but the Passport Office let them down.

Police

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Andrew Percy

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. This is happening from Merseyside to Norfolk and Gloucestershire; it is happening right across the country. We have been warning that the Government should reopen the funding formula for not only the Met, but other forces across the country, because the Minister’s plans are doing nothing for those other forces, which are facing those pressures. We have to wonder what the chief constables in other parts of the country have to do to get a break. Do they have to put on a blonde wig, jump on a bike and become a struggling Tory candidate to get the money they need? The Home Secretary should be more concerned about public safety than about the safety of Boris Johnson. This is a con for Londoners, it is a rip-off for the rest of the country and it is pork barrel politics at its worst.

[Andrew Percy]

The shadow Secretary of State will, as ever, wish to be honest with the House. If she were Secretary of State today, would she be coming to his House to cut the budget for Humberside police, in my area—yes or no?

[Yvette Cooper]

As we made clear, we believe that the force should have a 12% cut over the course of the Parliament. So, yes, forces would face reductions and would have to make savings, but that figure has been supported by chief constables across the country, by work done by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and by work that the former Home Secretary did before the election. That is why we think that ours is a reasonable approach to take, as opposed to making the deepest cuts in police funding seen for a generation—cuts of 8% in one year alone and cuts of 20% altogether. The hon. Gentleman’s local force is losing 500 police officers as a result of his Government’s plans. Will he be putting that on his election leaflet?

[Andrew Percy]

Does the shadow Secretary of State therefore agree that it may be seen as a little dishonest of local Labour politicians, who did not oppose police cuts in Humberside in 2009, under a Labour Government, to be on the streets now campaigning against police cuts, given that she has just admitted to the House that if she were Secretary of State she would be cutting my local police force today?

[Yvette Cooper]

Let us, again, be clear that Labour would not be cutting by 20%—we do not think that that is right. We think that the Government are going too far, too fast. They are hitting the economy and pushing it into reverse, but they are also hitting policing. The hon. Gentleman did not say whether he would be putting the cut of 500 police officers on his election leaflet, but I can tell him that we will be putting it on ours.