Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 16th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Let me just deal with new clause 36. If the Government are saying that they will accept it, I do not understand how that does not rip a hole right through their White Paper. New clause 36 explicitly states that we cannot collect customs and excise duties at the border on behalf of another country unless that country is going to do the same for us, but the White Paper states:

“However, the UK is not proposing that the EU applies the UK’s tariffs and trade policy at its border for goods intended for the UK.”

That is the opposite of what is said in new clause 36. Have the Government ripped up their own White Paper in the space of a couple of days? This is a chaotic approach to a matter that is so serious, and it shows a ridiculous wobbling in the face of a small group of people who I do not believe speak for the majority in this country.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

That phrase in the White Paper describes a perfectly sensible arrangement. If we adopt the new clause, 27 other countries will face the prospect of searching for new technology and setting up their own bureaucratic arrangements to accommodate the Brexiteers in my party. We urgently need these EU negotiations to start with partners who can rely on us to stick to a consistent line, and it could be very damaging to change the basic position on such an important matter within one week.

[Yvette Cooper]

I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right on two counts. First, I think that this inconsistency and buckling in the face of objections from what I consider to be an unrepresentative group is the wrong approach. Secondly, I think that these customs arrangements are immensely important.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is exactly right, and I will defer to him to set out his amendment and describe its impact. The idea that we should make a confidence issue out of every single adjustment to the Brexit process or to the withdrawal Bill is just nonsense.

If we have a Bill before Parliament, it has to be possible for Members of Parliament to table amendments to it and to vote on them. In a hung Parliament, that is even more the case. The Prime Minister asked for a mandate to do all this her own way, but she did not get it. She got a hung Parliament. That puts even more responsibility on us all to work together to find something that will build consensus across Parliament and across the country. In a hung Parliament, the Government sometimes lose votes because Parliament has to do its job to build the right kind of consensus and to get the right kind of outcome.

In the end, this is all about Parliament and democracy. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to our constituents not to hand over, share or give up our authority and our sovereignty, but to exercise our responsibility to get the very best deal. For centuries, Members of Parliament have fought tooth and nail to defend democracy and the powers of Parliament against Executive power. We cannot be the generation that just rips that up and hands over all the power to the Executive. We have a responsibility—now more than ever, given the gravity of the decisions before us—to use that power responsibly and to try to build consensus. To be honest, if the Government cannot build a broader consensus in Parliament, there is no chance of their building a broader consensus in the country, and if they cannot do that, we will end up with everybody rowing over the Brexit deal for a generation to come. For the sake of all of us who want to get back to discussing our schools, our hospitals and all the other issues that face our Parliament, I urge Ministers to accept either amendment 7 or new clause 3, and to start trying to build a consensus that can get us a sustainable Brexit deal.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I rise to support new clause 3 and amendment 7. As mine is the second name attached to amendment 7, which was tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who is mainly responsible for it, I also incline to the view that it is slightly the better drafted, but I will support either proposal if one or both are put to the vote.

I might well succeed in being reasonably brief, because I agreed with every word of the speech made by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and I will not repeat what she said. A welcome note of cross-party consensus exists across a large part of the House, and it represents the cross-party consensus that is in favour of what is lazily called a soft Brexit and of having the best possible close relationship with the European Union after we leave.

The main issue in this debate seems to turn on what we mean by a “meaningful vote”, which relates to our discussion on the role of parliamentary sovereignty in a situation of this kind. I accept that today the Prime Minister—not for the first time—promised us a meaningful vote, but she later went on to qualify that slightly by talking about the need for statutory instruments to be brought forward during the period of the Bill, within the extraordinary powers that the Bill gives Ministers to enact, by regulation, even changes to British statute law. We have to be clear what a meaningful vote is, and the key is the timing. It is quite obvious that if the British Government are to be responsible to the British Parliament, the vote must take place before the Government have committed themselves to the terms of the treaty-like agreement that is entered into with the other member states. Any other vote will not be meaningful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

This has been a thoughtful debate that has shown the strength of this House, but the thoughtfulness and strength of this House are exactly why the House needs to have a meaningful statutory vote on the withdrawal agreement before the extremely extensive powers in clause 9 are used. The Minister had an hour on his feet; we have had six hours of debate today and many months of debate beforehand, and he still has not come up with a manuscript amendment to clarify what he will do, nor have we had a commitment yet from the Government that the vote will in fact be a statutory one. The only reason that the Minister could give as to why there should not be a statutory vote on the withdrawal agreement was the timing, and yet there are so many examples of when this Parliament has used expedited procedures to get a statute in place just as fast as any resolution.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

My understanding is that the Minister has just said that the Government will use clause 9, and will start legislating statutory instruments, long before the due day; it is just, having been legislated, they will not come into force until the due day. That is some kind of concession, but does the right hon. Lady agree that something better might be arrived at in the later stages of this Bill?

[Yvette Cooper]

I certainly think that something much better is needed, because the powers in clause 9 are unprecedented, and Parliament should not hand over such unprecedented powers to the Executive blindfold, without our knowing what the withdrawal agreement will be. There have been so many examples, whether it is the Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Act 2013, the Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011, the Loans to Ireland Act 2010, the Mental Health (Approval Functions) Act 2012, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 or the Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointments and Regional Rates) Act 2017, Act after Act that has been through an expedited process—they can be done within a week. We can do this if we need to. Timeliness is not a problem.

That is why we need a vote, and that is why Ministers should just stop arguing. They should either ditch clause 9 and agree to new clause 3, or agree to amendment 7.

In order to support the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 9

Implementing the Withdrawal Agreement

Amendment proposed: 7, page 6, line 45, at end insert “, subject to the prior enactment of a statute by Parliament approving the final terms of withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union.”—(Mr Grieve.)

To require the final deal with the EU to be approved by statute passed by Parliament.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Home Affairs and Justice

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend, who is the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, makes an extremely important point. I wanted to come on to that report, because, overall, we can see the queues getting longer while Ministers do not seem to have a clue what is going on.

Last Monday, the Minister for Immigration claimed the maximum queues were an hour and a half and accused the media of making “wild suggestions”. By Tuesday he was admitting the wild suggestions were nearer the truth; by Wednesday we were told the Prime Minister was getting a grip; by Thursday and Friday the queues were getting worse and worse. There were two-hour waits at Stansted and three-hour waits at Heathrow, reports of trains delayed by queues at Paris, Customs checks stopped at Heathrow and reports that staff from Manchester were being put on a plane, told to work for a few hours at Heathrow and put on another plane back again.

Finally, this week, we got the truth from the borders and immigration inspectorate. Passport staff at terminal 3 have been cut by 15%, shortages mean that they cannot cope with the queues, and management changes brought in under this Government are making things much worse. The Minister for Immigration charmingly told us that the report was out of date because action had been taken since September to sort it out, but since September things have got worse, not better. The report says the staff are all on at the wrong times—more when the airport is quiet and fewer when all the planes are coming in.

It is just baffling to everyone that the UK Border Force and the Minister for Immigration do not seem to be able to work out what time of day it is, but at least they are doing better than the Home Secretary, who is still rather challenged by the day of the week. I know that the Home Secretary is not on Twitter and she might have missed the attempts to cheer her up through the difficult time that she is having. They have started to suggest songs, such as “ Sunday, Wednesday, happy days,” “I don’t know why I don’t like Tuesdays,” “Eight days a week” and—clearly—nothing by The Police. How about Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Not leaving on a jet plane and I don’t know when I’ll be back again”?

Getting the date wrong in a case such as Abu Qatada’s, however, could have been very serious. Everyone is very relieved that the European Court decided to reject Abu Qatada’s appeal not because of the date, but because of the merits of the case. We should all welcome that decision. We all want him deported as soon as possible and the case has been repeatedly and thoroughly considered at every level in the courts, but lessons also have to be learned at the Home Office too. Three weeks ago the Home Secretary came to the House and was adamant that she had got the date right. Twelve times she told the House the deadline was Monday. In scathing tones she said to me:

“We are talking about a simple mathematical question.”—[Official Report, 19 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 509.]

Sadly, it was a mathematical question that neither the Home Secretary nor her Ministers seemed able to answer.

The Court was very clear in its judgment that the deadline was Tuesday and Court officials said so at the time. It is no good the Home Secretary’s saying that the Foreign Office is now complaining that the Court’s guidance was not clear enough. If it was not clear enough, why not ask questions at the time? Why did they not ring up the Court and ask the question? Why did they not listen to the media and to the others who were raising with her the point that the Court was saying very clearly that the date was Tuesday, instead? Why take the risk?

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

It is all irrelevant now.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Justice Secretary likes to chunter from a sedentary position that that is all irrelevant now, but the trouble is that it is not. The Home Office makes these serious decisions every day of the week. If it cannot even get what day of the week it is right, how can we have confidence in its decisions about the future? How can we have confidence when the Home Secretary next comes to the House and tells us categorically that she is right and that the Home Office advice is right when we still do not know why they got it so catastrophically wrong this time around? Surely she should now come to the House and explain why the Home Office got this so wrong, why it could not ask the right questions and why it did not take advice, listen to it and avoid taking the risk—a risk that could have added further considerable delays to this process.

[Yvette Cooper]

We still have a problem in that we all want Abu Qatada deported but he has not yet been deported. I agree that the process has taken far too long in the British courts and in the European Courts. I even agree with the Justice Secretary that reforms need to be made to the European courts to try to speed things up although there are considerable questions about the progress he has been able to make. I do not think, however, that we should have self-inflicted problems with the Home Office creating additional delays by getting something so basic wrong. This is about the serious decisions the Home Office takes and if it is unable to learn the lessons of the past or to recognise the errors it has made there will be serious problems in the future.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

Do I gather that the right hon. Lady welcomes the fact that we got 47 countries to agree to get rid of these arrears so that there are not years and years of delay before things can get on? Does she welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has just won her appeal, which has not been delayed, and that we are now able to resume the ordinary deportation process? Why is she getting bogged down in procedural niceties that are now quite irrelevant and why did not her Government do anything about this for eight years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) has just asked?

[Yvette Cooper]

It is indeed gallant of the Justice Secretary to leap to the Home Secretary’s defence. They are huge friends—this is obviously a change of relationship between them. We are delighted to see their rapprochement.

I agree with the Justice Secretary that it is important to get rid of the arrears and try to deal with the backlogs at the European Court. That is a problem and I hope that some progress can be made. We are all very pleased that the Court rejected Abu Qatada’s appeal, but I must say that the Home Secretary made that more difficult, not easier. Abu Qatada should not have been able to appeal and she could have delayed her decision by a single day. The procedures matter because we do not want the Home Office to screw up important procedures. Whether it be in situations such as that when Raed Salah walked into this country because the Home Secretary did not get the procedures right to enable his being stopped at the border when she wanted him to be stopped, or whether it is about getting the date right, it does matter because this is not just any other omnishambles for this Government. It is not like a pasty tax or queues at the petrol pumps—this affects our national security. Whether about counter-terrorism or police on our streets, these decisions affect public safety. Whether on our borders or in our courts, these decisions affect our national security.

When we have 16,000 fewer police, a 10% increase in personal crime, 1,000 fewer foreign criminals being deported and this latest report showing 100 more illegal immigrants absconding according to the most recent figures, people are anxious. They are already worried about their jobs and their financial security and they do not want to have to worry about crime and public safety as well. This Queen’s Speech is failing the people of Britain just as the Home Office is failing on policing, border security and public confidence. It is a Queen’s Speech that offers no change, no hope and no direction from a Government who are not listening or learning. They should change course before it is too late.