In future it may be necessary to do all sorts of things, but surely the powers in this Bill should not be used to impose new charges on businesses that are not being paid at the moment.
This Bill, first and foremost, is about exiting the European Union successfully, with certainty, continuity and control, as the right hon. Gentleman will know. I draw his attention to schedule 2(7), which makes it very clear that in the event that a provision imposed a fee or charge, or conferred a power to sub-delegate, it would go to the affirmative procedure and this House would have the opportunity to vote on it. I turn to amendment 339 on sub-delegation. It is right that this House keeps strict control over all financial matters, but this Bill is about ensuring continuity. I remind the Committee that this power is available only if the public authority is taking on a new-
Thank you, Mr Hanson. The power is available only if the public authority is taking on a new function under this Bill, and the fees and charges must be in connection with that function. The amendment would force Ministers to exercise this power on behalf of public authorities, such as the Financial Conduct Authority, which this House has made statutorily independent from Ministers. The Government believe that it is right that where Parliament has already granted the power to set up rules within these independent regulators, fees and charges of the type envisaged by this power should continue to be exercised by those public authorities. For good reasons, they have been made independent of Government, and Parliament should have the option to maintain that status quo. I stress that the terms on which any public authority would be able to raise fees and other charges will be set in the statutory instrument that delegates the power to them; and that, as I said, any such delegation would trigger the affirmative procedure, ensuring that this House considers and approves any delegation of the power and how it would be exercised. Amendment 340 on cost recovery has the disadvantage that it would prohibit what I hope Labour Members would consider to be progressive principles of ensuring a spreading of the burden of regulation. It also might not allow regulators to cover the cost of enforcement. Clause 12 and schedule 4 are about delivering a successful EU exit with certainty, continuity and control. Clause 12 is not about enabling the payment of any negotiated financial settlement, and neither is schedule 4 about subverting the normal process of raising taxation. The amendments muddy the waters of what these provisions are for. These provisions are simply about ensuring that the financial aspects of taking back control and preparing to take a fully independent position on the world stage are put on a sound and proper footing.
The Minister said that he thought that all the amendments muddied the water, but he has also said that it was right that Parliament should have a vote on the money-on the divorce bill-and that there should be parliamentary oversight of any additional controls. Why then is he not going to accept amendments that simply ensure that that is the case? Just what kind of control is he seeking to take back?
As the hon. Lady would expect me to say, what I want is Parliament to have proper control over our laws, our money, our borders and our trade policy. Having expressed my gratitude for her intervention, I hope that I have tackled right hon. and hon. Members' concerns, and I urge them not to press the amendments.
I have heard what the Minister said. In fact, he even had the gall to use the phrase, “take back controlâ€ while simultaneously telling Parliament that it cannot have a separate, free-standing vote on this massive divorce bill, which will potentially cost the constituents of every single Member in the Chamber-every man, woman and child-up to £1,000 a head. They expect accountability for those decisions, and I want all those hon. Members, particularly those who advocated a hard Brexit, and who still potentially advocate going over the cliff edge into World Trade Organisation terrain, to walk through the Lobby and be held accountable for the amount of money that it will cost taxpayers for decades to come. That is why I do not wish to withdraw new clause 17. I believe that Parliament should exercise control over those amounts of money. Let us take back control and have accountability for those sums of money. I wish to push this to a vote.
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
We were told that we were bringing powers back to this Parliament so that this Parliament could take decisions. Why, then, are the Government trying to introduce something similar to the Henry VIII clause? Does it not make a mockery of their promises?
Exactly. People voting in the referendum might have been moved by that slogan “take back controlâ€, but I do not honestly think many voters thought that that meant taking back control from a European Executive and handing it to Ministers of the Crown, outwith the powers and scope of Parliament to do much about it, yet that is effectively the proposal in clause 7. I want to emphasise that this is not simply an exercise in transposing technical and necessary measures. The Government have extended the scope of the Bill into policy-making capability, which brings in the question of divergence. We have heard a lot recently about concepts of full alignment and this notion of diverging from rules and policies. The way clauses 7 and 9 have been drafted would allow Ministers, by order, through negative statutory instruments that we rarely get the chance even to vote on in this place, to make policy changes that could affect policy functions and the rights of our constituents-perhaps as part of a deregulating agenda-if that is indeed what the Government of the day sought to achieve.
My hon. Friend, like me, will have read in the newspapers about the Cabinet split opening up on divergence, with various Cabinet Ministers backing divergence and others not. How does he think this squares with the Prime Minister's promise to our European partners and the Government of the Republic of Ireland that we will stay in full regulatory alignment after we leave?
I suspect that the European Commission and the Republic of Ireland Government saw the phrase “full alignmentâ€ and thought that full alignment meant full alignment. It turns out from the Prime Minister's statement yesterday that full alignment does not quite mean full alignment. She said it only meant aligning the areas in the Good Friday agreement protocol, but of course that predates the notion of our leaving the single market and the customs union, so the Good Friday agreement did not cover such narrow issues-I say that sarcastically-as goods and manufacture trade. The list of issues that she thinks full alignment covers does not include trade in goods, which is a staggering thing, because of course if we do not cover trade in goods, we end up with that hard border, which is absolutely the point we have got to.
I do not want to digress at this stage. I want to focus particularly on the powers that Ministers are taking in clause 7, if my hon. Friend will allow me to do so.
I cannot resist.
Ministers have assured us that if they want to change policy-if, for instance, they see a need for a new fishing policy, or a new customs and trade policy-there will be primary legislation and full parliamentary debates in both Houses. Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that? We are dealing with a very narrow set of provisions, relating only to statutory instruments to deal with technical matters which, of course, the House can ultimately determine in any event.
It is touching that the right hon. Gentleman takes those assurances from Ministers at face value, but the Ministers may not be here for very much longer. Who knows? If we are going to make policy changes, that should be done in a Bill that comes before Parliament, or in a statutory instrument subject to affirmative resolution. I now invite Members to pick up their copies of the Bill, because I want to deal with a couple of provisions in clause 7 which I think contradict the understanding of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) of the scope of the order-making powers that are being taken. It is, in fact, fairly wide. Clause 7(4) states:“Regulations under this section may make any provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament.â€In other words, a provision in a statutory instrument could have the same effect as one in primary legislation.
When statutes are being considered and Bills are being drafted, there does on occasion come a point at which we must accept that assurances given, for example, at the Dispatch Box will have to complement the inevitable small grey areas. However, that should not prevent us as a Parliament from scrutinising legislation and insisting that, so far as possible, it is drafted in conformity with the purpose for which the Government say that they intend to use it.
That is why Members often say in the House, “Let us place it on the face of the Billâ€, which means “Let us put in writing, in black and white, something that can then be held up in a court of lawâ€, rather than a mere verbal promise from a Minister who, as I have said, could be here today and gone tomorrow. These things matter, and if we are to do our job properly we need to get our statute right. It is not an exaggeration that clause 7(4) represents a massive potential transfer of legislative competence from Parliament to Government. It is a sweeping power that would make Henry VIII blush if he were to see it today. My amendment 57 would delete the sweeping nature of clause 7(4), because Ministers have not ensured that their powers are as limited as possible; on the contrary, they have ensured that they are as exceptionally wide as possible.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) referred to Bills relating to, for instance, trade and customs. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that those Bills are very likely to contain the very same Henry VIII powers?
Indeed. There are, I think, eight pieces of subsequent legislation which are also opening up this precedent. Effectively, Members of Parliament are being patted on the head and told, “Do not trouble yourselves. We will sort out all these areas of policy. We will just go away and if you really object, you can petition us about it.â€ That is not good enough. Let me now turn to clause 9. We are not voting on it today, but the grouping of the amendments allows us to discuss issues relating to it. Subsection (2) states:“Regulations under this section may make any provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament (including modifying this Act).â€If, having gone through all the rigmarole of debating the proposals that are before us today and made all sorts of promises, Ministers then say, after Royal Assent, “Actually, we did not like that bit of the Actâ€, they will be taking order-making powers to amend this very provision.
It is not just a question of assurances given from the Dispatch Box. In clause 9, Ministers are proposing to take a power that would enable them, after the event, to get rid of what they have described as safeguards in the Bill if they feel like it, by means of the mechanisms provided in that clause. Does that not undermine the confidence that the House can have in those safeguards, given that they may no longer be in the text of the Bill when it becomes an Act?
It is almost an Alice in Wonderland “down the rabbit holeâ€ concept: the notion that we are passing an Act that hands powers to Ministers to amend not just any other Act of Parliament, but the Act itself. It is completely ridiculous. I know that Conservative Members will say I am making the point because I am sceptical about Brexit or something, but this is a constitutional issue. It is about ensuring that Parliament is sovereign, and that Members of Parliament can override the executive and curtail excessive behaviour. I shall be astonished if clause 9(2) is still there after Royal Assent, because if the House of Commons does not deal with it, the other place will certainly have to do so.
I have some sympathy with the points that the hon. Gentleman is making, but why did he not raise these objections when his own party was passing legislation that could be self-amending in exactly the same way, without a sunset clause-for example, the Scotland Act 1998?
I am not sure whether there is anything comparable to the sweeping nature of the policy scope of a Bill that says that order-making powers can include powers to modify the Act itself.
There is the Scotland Act!
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that those who draft legislation go off to Government Departments, show the draft and ask whether that covers all the things that need to be covered, and are then inevitably told that the Department is worried that something has not been covered? Perhaps this should be an encouragement to those on the Treasury Bench to go away and think again about whether the list they have produced is not in reality exhaustive. If it is not, perhaps they would like to identify during today's debate where they think there might be these extra powers that take them beyond the limits they have listed.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman and any other Member who has had the privilege of serving as a Minister will know exactly what civil servants will advise, which is, “Well, you don't know the exact circumstances, so seek as wide a power as you can possibly get away with through Parliament, if it will turn a blind eye to it. We can deal with the consequences thereafter.â€Unfortunately for them, Ministers will not be able to get away with that on this occasion, because we have spotted this land grab attempt. It is not appropriate; if they feel that there should be exceptions or that certain circumstances should be accounted for, those must be set out in the Bill, not just left in these current loose terms. Current Ministers might feel that they are responsible stewards of Government, but I invite hon. Members to imagine circumstances in which we end up with a malign Government of some sort, shape or variety, such as some sort of extreme Administration-who knows what might happen in years to come? These Henry VIII powers are extremely sweeping. They will be available to Ministers in years to come and could leave the door open to some quite arbitrary near-autocratic actions of a future Government. For example, if a future Government sought to lift the 48-hour working week provisions that EU law currently gives to employees in this country, Ministers would by order potentially have the scope to do that under the powers in clauses 7 and 9. If Ministers wanted to require the banking sector to have more capital requirements under these provisions, they would be able to simply make those orders. If Ministers wanted some sort of aggressive or inappropriate state intervention to distort competition, favouring one producer over others, they would be able to do that through the provisions on these order-making powers.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a real concern across the UK in relation to workers' rights, particularly as many in government at present were saying during the EU referendum campaign that the roll-back of workers' rights was one of the reasons why they advocated a leave vote in the first place?
The Bill's provisions are so wide-ranging that the protections that our constituents have enjoyed to this day as a result of European regulations and rights could be at risk-not from Parliament, but from a ministerial sweep of the pen, through the making of an order: a negative statutory instrument.
We had a good test of that some time ago in relation to trade union rights, through what the Government did to the Trade Union Bill during its passage through Parliament. Does my hon. Friend agree that the big test will be something the Government are being evasive about: will this Parliament get the final vote? We were told during the referendum campaign that Parliament would have its say and everything would be brought back here, yet the Government are doing everything in their power to avoid giving Parliament the final vote on this.
The offer from the Government has been a binary yes or no motion at some point when we see the withdrawal agreement, and then-potentially after the fact, post-signature by Ministers-a Bill later on down the line. That is obviously not good enough, but we will come to many of those issues in tomorrow's debates. For now, there are further deficiencies in the way clause 7 has been drafted to be addressed. Clause 7(5) talks about the functions and public services that the regulations can amend. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield has spotted in amendment 5, as I have in amendment 61, that these powers could allow Ministers to sweep away a public service function currently undertaken by an EU agency without making alternative provisions; Ministers have talked about a function being not only “replacedâ€ or “modifiedâ€, but “abolishedâ€. Ridiculously, Ministers have snuck in this phrase, under which by order they can abolish a whole area of public service activity through the powers they are granting themselves in subsection (5). That could affect lots of obscure and small areas of public policy that do not matter to all our constituents but will certainly matter to some, including chemical safety certification, medicine risk assessment activities, aircraft airworthiness, preparedness for disease prevention and control, aeronautic research, energy market trading, and maritime pollution. There are lots of functions that EU agencies currently fulfil. Some Members might say that they should be fulfilled within the UK, which is a perfectly good argument, but clause 7 would allow Ministers to abolish those functions entirely by order. I do not believe that is appropriate, and that is why I think amendment 61 and certainly amendment 5 are necessary.
My hon. Friend has talked about the many agencies that we currently rely on to regulate all manner and aspects of our national life, but he has neglected to mention the regulatory and enforcement functions carried out by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. Does he share my concern that, particularly in the environmental sphere-which I will talk about in my speech-removing the Commission as an enforcement body could be very detrimental to standards in all areas of regulation?
My hon. Friend has done important work as Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee on some of these questions. These are not small matters; they are important functions that over the years we have developed and grown to expect. Some of them are provided by EU agencies, but they should not be able to be abolished simply by order-by the sweep of a ministerial pen-without reference to this place and without the House of Commons having some ability to decide.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government might well find other ways of delivering these functions, but the key point is independence? We need the authorities that deliver these safeguards and regulatory activities to be independent of Government and to be accountable to the people.
Indeed, and there are good arguments for having independent provision of many of these assessments. We might feel that many regulatory activities currently undertaken by EU agencies need to be undertaken by our regulators here in the UK, rather than being brought into a Government departmental function, to give them that further arm's-length independent status. I want to talk about some aspects of that shortly. I want to make reference, too, to the Procedure Committee's set of amendments that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and others have tabled to try to deal with what could be thousands of negative statutory instruments-orders by Ministers that do not automatically come up for a vote in the House of Commons. I totally respect the work of the Procedure Committee, and it is important that it has gone through this process, but I do not believe that the proposed committee would be an adequate safeguard. I do not believe that it would fulfil the concept of what a sifting committee ought to be. We need a Committee of the House that can look through the hundreds of statutory instruments that are currently not for debate and be able to pick them out and bring them forward for an affirmative decision. The Procedure Committee's amendments would not quite do that; they would simply create a committee able to voice its opinion about the designation of an order as a negative statutory instrument. That could be overruled or ignored by Ministers. Indeed, if a Minister were to designate such a negative statutory instrument as urgent, it would not even need to be referred to that committee. That is a pretty low threshold, and a pretty weak concession.
Is it my hon. Friend's understanding that the committee would have an automatic Conservative party majority, because of the changes to Standing Orders?
I am not sure whether such a provision exists. Perhaps members of the Procedure Committee will have a view on that. I certainly think that that would be unfortunate.
We will look at the composition when we look at the Standing Orders. It is not covered in the contents of the amendments today, but people will have an opportunity to debate that issue on another occasion.
That is true, but it deserves to be debated today as well. If we are creating a committee, it is perfectly legitimate to argue that we need to know whether it will have teeth and exercise bite, or whether it will be reluctant to do so. The question that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) asked about its composition is perfectly reasonable.
For that matter, the Procedure Committee has regularly suggested changes to Standing Orders that the Government have refused to move forward. I have seen the right hon. Member for Broxbourne more furious than anyone else in the Chamber because the Government have refused to act on that, so it is inadequate to suggest that Standing Orders might make arrangements in this regard.
My hon. Friend's point is well made. Again, it goes to show that if we are to assert ourselves as the House of Commons and create a committee to deal with this flood of negative statutory instruments, that needs to be done in a way that has teeth. We will debate the Bill and kick it around and it will go to the House of Lords, but we need to ensure that it has teeth when it comes back.
My hon. Friend mentions the single market; I wonder whether he noted the research published today by the Rand Corporation in the United States that made it clear that any kind of fantasy deal with the United States while President Trump is in charge would do nothing for us compared with remaining in the single market and the customs union.
Yes; I think many hon. Members are under the illusion that free-trade agreements are an okay substitute for the single market arrangements that we now have. Our economy is 80% service sector. We take for granted the frictionless movement of goods, parts and components, and amendment 124 would-
I absolutely do, Madam Deputy Speaker. Amendment 124 talks about protecting the single market provisions, and that is why, in today's debate, as well as getting into constitutional areas such as protecting Parliament's rights, we also have a duty to talk about the single market. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington's amendment addresses this point. This is something that many of us feel very strongly about, and we are not going to give up without a bit of a fight.
The point also enables us to remember that this was in the Conservative party manifesto in 2015.
Who could possibly forget that support for the single market was once a key aspect of Margaret Thatcher's policy making, as well as the policy of subsequent Governments?
The hon. Gentleman is right when he says that Margaret Thatcher was pretty much the authoress of the single market. Does he agree that, as trade develops, the best places to do business will be those nearest to us-not those far away, which mean that goods have to be conveyed over huge distances?
We are putting a lot of effort into trying to get free trade deals with New Zealand, Australia and other countries, and much as I would love free trade deals with all of them, the fact is that our biggest markets are our nearest neighbours. Having that single market and that customs union is incredibly important, which is why amendment 124 should not be dismissed and I believe Members should support it. We also need to pay attention to the powers and rights that Parliament must now assert if we are to ensure that the Executive do not take back the control that many of our constituents thought was coming to their representatives after the referendum.
I just worry about this whole business of relying on the Government saying that they will always go by a recommendation that comes from a Committee. Several times I have heard Ministers stand in the Chamber and say that if the Opposition demand a vote on the annulment of a Standing Order, there will always be one. However, over the past few years, there have on repeated occasions been no debates or votes, even when demanded by the Opposition and a large number of Government Members. It is almost sweet of the right hon. Gentleman to place such confidence in Ministers, but they are sometimes not to be trusted. We just put temptation in their way.
The hon. Gentleman is a doughty defender of his party interest and of the House of Commons. On this occasion, if such an assurance is given from the Dispatch Box and if the advice of the committee is not followed, people on both sides of the House will cause a sufficient fuss to ensure that the House does have the opportunity to debate instruments under the affirmative procedure.
Will my right hon. Friend clear up one other uncertainty created by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie)? Is it not the case that the powers that we are debating are strictly time limited to two years from the date of departure? This is not a long-term issue.
One of the most striking moments of hyperbole was when the hon. Member for Nottingham East asserted that the situation would last for many years. He will of course know, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) points out, that the provisions are sunsetted.
Unfortunately, that is not true because the Government are able to change the Act by statutory instrument.
Except of course it is, because if the amendment is accepted, as the Government intend, the committee will be empowered to make a recommendation to have something debated by the affirmative procedure in the House should such an eventuality arise. In those circumstances, if we have an assurance from the Dispatch Box that something will be so debated, the hon. Gentleman and I will be able to join forces to prevent such a thing from happening. That is a genuine lock, and this debate depends on whether we want to engage in party political games or whether we want a serious approach to ensuring ministerial accountability. Amendment 397 is serious, and my hon. Friends and I are keen to ensure that its changes are made. I note that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) has also put his name to the amendment, which gives me great comfort that it is a serious effort to cure the problem.
On the point made by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) about amending the Act, which I will refer to in my own speech, I just want to draw the Committee's attention to paragraph 6 (2)(g) of Schedule 7. For us to amend the Act, any change would have to relate to the withdrawal agreement and its implementation and would be subject to a vote in both Houses.
That is indeed true. I suppose that Opposition Members would tend to argue that only the courts could enforce that, which is an oddity with the principle of comity, but I think we are dancing on the heads of pins here. I am confident that the Government do not intend to use that power to get rid of the constraints within the Bill. I am equally confident that the serious issue here is whether significant changes are proposed by the negative procedure and, I repeat, the Procedure Committee amendment seems to handle that serious issue, which is in contrast to the highly hypothetical considerations that have already been put before the Committee. Amendments 62 and 63 were, in a different form, the subject of some serious discussions earlier in Committee. They relate to how we bring the important environmental principles in the treaty on the functioning of the European Union into English law at the time of withdrawal and to how we replace the useful role that the Commission has played in being an independent enforcement agency for environmental law that is governed by those principles in its procedures and substantive actions.
Is the right hon. Gentleman referring to new clauses 62 and 63 or amendments 62 and 63?
New clauses 62 and 63. I do apologise. I am very bad at remembering the nomenclature, but I know which ones I am talking about. They are the ones that relate to the environment-their proponent, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), is sitting behind the hon. Lady-and we had a long discussion about them earlier in Committee. Since those discussions inside the House, many of my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), and I have had considerable conversations outside the House with various people, such as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, green non-governmental organisations and others. I am now confident that the Government will bring forward proper new primary legislation to create an independent body outside the House with prosecutorial powers that will replace the Commission as the independent arbiter to enforce environmental rules and to ensure that the Government are taken to task in court without the need for the expense of class action lawsuits.
May I continue for a second? I may anticipate what the hon. Lady is going to say, but I will give way if I do not. In addition to such a body being put on a statutory basis, I am confident that included in the relevant legislation will be a direct reference to the principles, so that it is clear that the policy statement, which will be mandated, must look to those principles and must explain how the Government of the day intend to carry forward the principles into action. The policy statement will then become justiciable and will, under the forthcoming legislation, receive support in the form of a resolution of this House and will therefore attain a statutory force of its own.
I will give way to both hon. Ladies, but I will just say one last thing in case they were going to make this point. Many people have raised the question of whether all this work will be done in time-I see the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) nodding and I suspect that she will want to raise that point-and I see that if there was doubt about whether it was, that would be a reason for legislating here, as opposed to waiting for a proper new statute. I am delighted to say that we have talked sufficiently to Ministers to be confident that they will be bringing forward both the consultation and the legislation in time to ensure that it is in place before we exit the EU. Of course, I would also want to wait until January to see the consultation to ensure that that engagement is fulfilled, and I am sure that the other place will want to look at what is said in the consultation and to assure itself that the new statute is coming forward before it consented to allow this Bill to proceed without the amendments that are being proposed. I believe that the right way to do this is in separate legislation. It is not about this business of Brexit; it is about trying to get the right answer for the environment. It is much better that we should do that in a fully fledged Bill that will be properly debated and contains all the relevant provisions and powers, which will never shoehorn into this Bill. I genuinely believe that that is the best way forward.
I am pleased about the measures that the right hon. Gentleman outlines, to which the Government are apparently committed, but I am still worried about time, and I do not share his confidence that, given the amount of business that the Government have to get through in a small amount of time, we can be absolutely sure that the new body will be in place in time. Why can we not have a belt-and-braces approach? I agree that the Bill is not the ideal place to put such a provision, but it is an awful lot better to have it in the Bill than nowhere. I do not share his confidence that it will definitely get through Parliament in time otherwise.
I do not suppose that I will succeed now in persuading the hon. Lady. I do not wholly disapprove of the idea of her and others pursuing aggressive amendment tactics here and in the other place to ensure that the Government continue to respond effectively and rapidly. Once the consultation paper emerges and the Secretary of State has made further statements about this, and once legislative time has been allocated in the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee, assuming it is still called that, we will have that confidence. I would prefer to rest on that, because it would be at the least inelegant and possibly positively damaging to pass one piece of legislation and then introduce another that repealed or amended it. That sounds to me like a recipe for confusion. Should we become sceptical at a later date about whether the Government will bring separate legislation forward, it would be open to the House of Lords to table amendments in the other place, which would come back to us. I, for one, would want to see those amendments made if the Government did not intend to put something in place before EU exit day. I am currently confident that they will, and that is the only basis on which I will not be voting for the new clause this evening.
I do not share the right hon. Gentleman's confidence that all this will be done in time, and I share the concerns of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). We have been waiting two and a half years for a 25-year environment plan, which will be a 22-year plan by the time it is published. We have had promises of legislation on fisheries and the common agricultural policy, and today a draft animal sentience and animal welfare Bill has been published. There is already a legislative logjam in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as a result of the decision to leave the EU, and at the moment there is a reporting gap. Although there may be a new body in the future to do some of the enforcement, I do not believe that it will be up and ready at the point of leaving, when all our reporting obligations, which currently rest with the European Commission, will fall.
My right hon. Friend makes a brilliant speech. I cannot disagree with a single word that he has said. I strongly agree with him. The main sticking point is not the aspirations of the Secretary of State to build an independent body that is sufficiently resourced to hold the powerful to account in the way that he has described. The issue is timing and trust. Exactly the same arguments were used just a couple of weeks ago in relation to animal sentience. Sceptics in the House questioned the commitment of the Government to deliver a sentience Bill and said that if it was delivered, it would be a watered down version. We have proof this morning of the Government's intent; we have a sentience Bill that goes way further than anything in EU law. It applies to all animals, all sectors, all parts of government. It takes us forward in a dramatic and meaningful sense, and that is what I hope we can expect from the initiative of the Secretary of State. I apologise for speaking for so long.
I agree with my hon. Friend. He is being unduly modest, because in large part it is due to pressure from him that the Government have introduced such an effective and incisive Bill in a timely fashion. I agree that that gives us considerable confidence about what will happen on this other, even wider ranging matter.
I am pleased to see the change on animal sentience, but to correct the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), the debate a few weeks ago was about whether we needed new legislation to provide for animal sentience when we left the EU. The Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and said that we did not need new legislation as it was already covered by existing UK domestic legislation. So I am pleased to see a screeching U-turn, but let us not pretend that it was not a screeching U-turn.
I have steadfastly resisted for 21 years engaging in meaningless partisan debate, and I am not going to abandon a career's worth of effort in that direction to answer that point. Animal sentience is built into English law in various ways already, but the new Bill will vastly strengthen the position compared with what it is today under European law. That is a huge advance for our nation, one that many people on both sides of the House can be happy with. As my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park was pointing out, there is an exact parallel with what we and the Government are seeking to do in relation to environmental regulation. I really believe that if we could lay aside both the inevitable divisions about Brexit itself and the inevitable play of party politics, and simply focus on what is going to do the best thing for our environment, we would see that the programme we have before us is a huge advance and one we should gratefully welcome.
We might think that the most extreme legislation that would be on the statute book allowed for emergency powers. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 makes it absolutely clear that, when Henry VIII powers are to be used, the Minister must explain why they are important, why they are necessary and that they have met an appropriate level of proper jurisdiction beforehand, but none of that is available in the Bill. Is it not therefore important that we have measures such as amendment 17, which adds to the clause?
I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent forensic examination of what is at fault in the Bill. Does he agree that there is deep suspicion and mistrust because we have heard speeches from Members who might seek to form the Government at some point-particularly the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) and others-who have made it clear that they want a deregulated race-to-the-bottom economy and society? It is all very well to have assurances from the current team of Ministers, but what if others were in their place?
Before the hon. Gentleman moves on, I think what he says about the devolved authorities is incorrect. As I understand it, the Secretary of State made it perfectly clear that, if possible, he would like the devolved Administrations to come along with the process and share in the institutional framework. Of course, that is not a decision he can make; it is up to the devolved Administrations.
I am happy to take that on board. I learn more about Government environmental policy from the right hon. Gentleman than I do from his Front-Bench colleagues, so I happily stand corrected.
What the Secretary of State announced to the Environmental Audit Committee on 1 November was the beginnings of an idea. During that evidence session, the one new environmental body morphed into four potential environmental bodies, which have yet to morph into a consultation, which has yet to be published. At the moment, we are chasing chimeras-I do not know whether I have pronounced that correctly. I thank the genius of the group, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), for helping me with my Greek pronunciation. What I have described stands in stark contrast to the hop, skip and jump on the animal sentience legislation that has been rushed out before Christmas-the triple jump on animal welfare legislation. The issues relating to devolution are further complicated by the promise to the Republic of Ireland on full regulatory alignment on agriculture, water and waste, which is now going to continue regardless.
My hon. Friend makes a series of good points. I do not take the Government's commitment in this policy area lightly and I do not take issue with it. What is at issue is the scope and powers of the watchdog and the timing. I share the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend and by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about whether the new watchdog will be up and running in time and whether it will have the powers necessary to carry out the same functions as the institutions and agencies that currently exist. New clause 63 would ensure that robust new domestic governance arrangements for environmental standards and protections were in place before exit day. It would also ensure that the body tasked with filling the governance gap was established by primary legislation before that date and that its scope, powers, functions and institutional design were shaped by public consultation.
Before the hon. Gentleman moves on, I am interested to understand whether the purpose of new clause 63 is a UK-wide set of policies that would apply in Scotland and Wales, which would therefore remove a competency on the application of environmental law from the Scottish Government to Westminster.
The scope of new clause 63 is for the environmental watchdog in England, as we have already said. There would have to be agreement between the devolved Administrations and the UK Government about whether they choose to take the same approach.
One point that my Committee has specifically made on the devolution settlement is that business does not want to deal with four regulators setting up four different sets of rules and regulations on waste, on water and on chemicals. It wants one set of regulations to deal with, and it has made it consistently clear that the set of rules that it would like to continue to abide by is that set by the European Union.
My hon. Friend has made an absolutely essential point. Fundamentally, does he agree that if this process is to be about taking back control, it must be about Parliament and the representatives of the people taking back control, not a Government, and certainly not a minority Government, taking back excessive powers?
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. That is why strengthened scrutiny procedures for approving secondary legislation made under this Bill are so important, and it is also why long-standing conventions must be honoured, so that in the rare cases where the Committee might recommend an SI be subject to the negative procedure but the Opposition disagrees, there is a chance to bring the matter before Committee.
I have been listening very carefully to the right hon. Gentleman. He is resting on the word “technicalâ€, which he has used repeatedly, but that is not what the Bill says. If the Government had come forward with something saying that they will only be able to use secondary legislation in technical changes, we might have been interested in looking at it. But that is not what it says; it is a widely drawn list. The right hon. Gentleman may well have perfect confidence in the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Chipping Wycombe. Sorry, he is the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker)- Well, the constituency used to be Chipping Wycombe. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) might have confidence in this particular Minister, but it may one day be another Minister. I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman thinks that the Leader of the Opposition is a Marxist revolutionary in a Venezuelan style. Well, he might yet be a Minister who will be making precisely these decisions, and that is why we should always legislate with caution.
I am intrigued to hear that characterisation of the hon. Gentleman's leader; it is not a phrase that I have ever used in this House. I find that very interesting, but I do not want to take the conversation into that party political realm. We are trying to explore the proper constraints and controls to put on Ministers through this primary legislation, which will drive our democratic processes for this transfer of law. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response because I want reassurances-of the kind I think he will be able to give me-that this power is well meant and is designed to prevent Parliament from being clogged up with literally hundreds of rather minor drafting changes. Such minor changes are simple consequences of going from being a member to being a non-member that we do not need to worry about too much, so we need somebody to do them for us. The Bill says that Ministers are going to do it for us. Various Members are a bit sceptical about that for some surprising and interesting reasons, such as that we have just heard. There is also a suggestion, which has a lot to recommend it, that there be a sifting mechanism so that Parliament is involved in the process and can say to Ministers, “We do think this matter is a bit more than technical, so we cannot have the negative resolution procedure. This has to be a proper debate and a proper vote in order to preserve parliamentary process.â€
On that point, does the right hon. Gentleman think that the draft Animal Welfare (Sentencing and Recognition of Sentience) Bill, which was published today, is a technical measure or something that merits scrutiny on the Floor of the House-and, ditto, the new environmental body that has been proposed by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs?
My right hon. Friend is making an important point because he is exposing the very fact that, despite the fine occupant of the Front Bench today, one cannot be 100% certain of the quality of the procedure that is being carried out from the ministerial office. This House is fundamentally the custodian of the public purse and the taxpayers' money, and we must be absolutely certain that no cheques are blank and signed and left on Government desks.
I am glad we agree about that. I am trying to make a helpful suggestion for the future on this issue and a wider issue to which we need to return at some point. We need a system that establishes parliamentary control-as I have explained, all the methods we are discussing today are parliamentary control of one form or another-but we may need to think about how we improve processes for the future when that control is a statutory instrument.
My right hon. Friend is making some important points. If I may say, I have signed up to the amendments tabled by the Procedure Committee because they are a reasonable compromise, but they are most deficient in the absence of a revision mechanism to ask a Minister to reconsider. My right hon. Friend may agree that, even at this stage, those on the Treasury Bench could go away, reconsider the issue and bring a further amendment forward on Report to deal with it.
That may be hanging a bit too much on this piece of legislation. I think this is a wider issue, which Parliament may need to consider, so I was not going that far in my recommendation. However, Ministers would be well advised, if by any chance they did make a mistake in a draft instrument, not to do what the previous Government did and just drive it through, but to accept that they needed to withdraw it and to come back with a corrected version, which would make for better order. The Bill as drafted, with the amendments to provide a process to make the task of parliamentary scrutiny manageable, is a perfectly sensible package, and I look forward to hearing sensible promises from Ministers on the Front Bench, who I am sure will want to exercise these powers diligently and democratically.
I rise to speak to amendments 264, 222, 73, 234, 239, 240, 266, 269 and 272, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), and amendment 233, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray). I will also speak in general terms to amendments 206, 268, 271, 274, 216, 265, 207, 208, 205, 267, 270 and 273, in the names of my hon. Friends, which are grouped for debate today, but which will be voted on tomorrow. May I also say that I hope the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) will push his amendment 158? It was debated earlier in Committee, but it is very germane to this debate. I read that list out because I could not possibly memorise it. As I said on Second Reading, we are in a dilemma of our own making. We are discussing the possibility that all these powers should be given to Ministers simply because we have not adequately prepared for the process of leaving the European Union. It is three months now since Second Reading, and we do not appear to have gone one step forward in terms of knowing what the effects of that process will be on the body of legislation that already exists in the United Kingdom.
It is really quite important to understand that this is the process of leaving the European Union, and it has nothing to do with being unprepared in any way. It was always known-well, in as much as we ever knew anything about Brexit-that this was the sort of thing we would have to do to convey this huge body of EU law into domestic British law, and, on that, we are all agreed.
The right hon. Lady has much greater faith in the Government's intentions than I perhaps do. What I am trying to suggest-I thought she might possibly agree with me-is that, by this stage in the process, we ought to have some definition of which Acts of Parliament will require amendment, because there are anomalies in them with regard to the body of EU retained law, and we ought to have narrowed down the number of areas in which we have to give Ministers the power to use their discretion and to bring forward changes through delegated legislation to our existing legislation. The fact that we have not narrowed that down and that we are still talking about giving Ministers quite sweeping and general powers is quite alarming, and I only hope that, as we go to the next stage of this process, we will get more clarity. Ministers' defence is basically to say, “Trust us to rectify these anomalies and to get things right,â€ but Opposition Members are saying, “Well, we would be better able to trust you if we were able to get a reassurance that you are not going to use these powers in certain areas.â€ Yet, Ministers are resisting every attempt to qualify and limit the exercise of these powers.
I would like the hon. Gentleman to cast his mind back to before 23 June last year. Can he recall prominent leave campaigners suggesting at any stage during that campaign that there would, in fact, be this very large power grab and that taking back control meant the Executive taking power away from Members of Parliament?
No, the implication was clearly given that control would be taken back by the people. In fact, it seems that control is being taken back by the Executive. In as much as power is going anywhere, it is not coming into this Chamber, certainly at the moment.
I was struck by the rather sweeping statement by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), in reference to clause 7, that we apparently all know what “appropriateâ€ means and that the courts will know what “appropriateâ€ means. Does my hon. Friend, like me, look forward to hearing from the Minister what “appropriateâ€ means, and does he, like me, agree with such distinguished lawyers as those at the Law Society of Scotland and JUSTICE that “appropriateâ€ gives far too wide a discretion to the Government?
I do indeed, and I will come on to that in just one moment.
I just want to back up the hon. Gentleman's request for more information from the Government. In our report, the Procedure Committee called on the Government to publish“as soon as possible...an outline schedule for the laying of instruments before the House.â€The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we still do not know what the Government have in mind.
The hon. Gentleman is making some excellent points, and I would like to back him up on them. Would it be worth reflecting on the fact that, rightly or wrongly, being in the European Union means that we make some colossal policy assumptions? On environmental matters, one of those assumptions is that it is right that we invest public money in farming to make sure that we protect our countryside. However, we also, without ever having a debate in the House about it, assume that it is right to, effectively, subsidise food in this country. We may now be in a position where we are about to accept that assumption or to move away from it, with colossal consequences for the whole of our society.
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point that is a further illustration of the dilemma that is now facing us.
I will give way in a moment, but I want to give a third example, which the Minister may also wish to talk about, regarding the common agricultural policy. At the moment, Scottish farmers are waiting on £160 million of refund payments under the CAP because of the way that it was changed in recent years. The way in which those payments are to be distributed is currently the subject of EU regulations, but what if the Government felt that that was somehow unfair and they wanted to change it? Then, without reference to primary legislation and or to Parliament, they could do so, and the material amount of money that farmers would get would be different from what they expect now. That is just a simple illustration of how these policies could change. I now happily give way to the Minister if he still wants to intervene.
Could the hon. Gentleman revisit each of the examples he has given and explain why he thinks that they would be deficiencies arising from our withdrawal from the EU, because having listened carefully to him, I do not think that, as my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General is saying, any of them could be classed as deficiencies arising from our withdrawal?
I do not think that they are deficiencies-that is not my point. My point is that a Minister or a future Minister might regard them as deficiencies, and therefore might change the law in this way.
The hon. Gentleman has talked about the importance of language in this debate. Should we not all be worried by the actions of this Government over the latest rise in tuition fees, where they refused a vote in this House and ignored an Opposition day debate? The actions of this Government should worry us all when we look ahead to these future arrangements.
Indeed so. There is always the danger that some of the policies that Government may wish to get through, and would run aground were they to try to introduce them through primary legislation, may be sneaked through the back door in a salami-style way. We do not know. The point is that we are being invited to give Ministers the power whereby these things could happen.
I understand and sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's point on deficiencies. Does he agree that over the weekend we have seen varying interpretations of the meaning of full regulatory alignment, which seems to mean all sorts of different things to different people as the Cabinet tries to have its fudge and eat it?
Indeed. While I am tempted to digress into a debate on what happened with the phase 1 agreement and regulatory alignment, I think I had better stick to the subject in hand. With regard to defining “deficienciesâ€ properly, amendment 264 calls on the Government to provide reassurance by bringing forward clear definitions of what they might mean by “deficienciesâ€. If we had that, we might be better able to consider whether to give them these powers.
I do not know whether it would be possible to find definitions that would help. However, the hon. Gentleman seems unwilling to accept, or certainly has not alluded to, the fact that secondary instruments, as opposed to primary legislation, are justiciable. Our courts are quite used to concepts like deficiency and appropriateness. Is that not what we are relying on-the action of the courts?
I accept that these things may be challenged, but I am trying to argue for a democratic process whereby it is the elected representatives of the people who debate and choose the policy direction in various areas.
Is the point not really that, as has been pointed out by JUSTICE and the Law Society of Scotland, the term “appropriateâ€ is so wide that it gives the courts a breadth of discretion that they themselves have told us that they do not want?
Indeed. That takes me nicely to my next point, which concerns the word “appropriateâ€.
I commend the hon. Gentleman for all the remarks that he has just made. I, too, have visited many camps and spoken to unaccompanied child refugees. Does he agree that the case he is making serves as a reminder that our acting honourably and decently, as a country and a continent, does not constitute a pull factor-we are simply responding to the push factor of the appalling circumstances from which those people are fleeing?
The hon. Gentleman's interest in this subject, like that of most others in the House, is exceedingly well founded, but I do not want to confuse the Dublin scheme with other schemes, about which we have had debates in this country. This approach is aimed at-Government policy is also, quite rightly, aimed at-trying to keep children who have lost their parents or become separated from them in places of safety. Where possible, such places should be close to their places of origin, from where they may, if possible, be repatriated to countries such as Syria. They can be housed in communities who speak the same language and have similar cultures, which will provide some degree of continuity in their otherwise traumatic, ruptured existence. When that is not possible and there are family members in other European countries, the children can be given stability with them. I do not want to get into the schemes, such as those set up in the past by other countries, that I am afraid have acted as a magnet for children who, at the hands of people traffickers and others, have taken to boats in very dangerous circumstances. The policy of this Government has been the absolutely right one of trying to keep such children out of the hands of those who want to profit from human misery and take advantage of their desperate circumstances.
It may disturb the hon. Gentleman to know that I have signed his new clause, and I agree very much with him and the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on this issue. This weekend, I was in Calais, where a 10-year-old is sleeping rough because we do not have the systems in place under the legislation to be able to assess his right to be in the UK. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what is so important about the amendments to protect the Dublin process is not just its principles, but its practice and what happens if and when we leave the European Union?
May I take it therefore that my right hon. and learned Friend is offering his services on this committee?
I am already the Chairman of another Committee of Parliament, and I think it might be undesirable to burden me with extra work. Indeed, there are plenty of other people in this House who are capable of doing this work. Obviously, if somebody wanted to ask me, I would give it consideration, but I am always conscious of being rather too thinly spread as it is, so I do not put myself forward.
Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman set out how he thinks the process of scrutiny will be improved for outside organisations? Many of them feel that they are excluded from this process.
Such organisations can be summoned before the new Select Committee. They can come along and provide input to the committee on anything that has been tabled; that has been my understanding of how it would work and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, sitting to my right, has just confirmed that. There is a mechanism here. Obviously, to come back to the point I made earlier, this depends on the quality of the committee and shows why it will be so important. It also comes back to the Procedure Committee and how it works. For all those reasons, I think that this is a workable arrangement.
On the quality of the committee and the scrutiny process, the committee will be scrutinising changes to detailed pieces of European legislation. In my experience, in other countries' Parliaments, an expert committee often does the scrutiny. So financial experts would consider a piece of finance legislation; environmental legislation would be considered by environment experts; and a judicial piece of legislation might be considered by those involved with their justice committee. Does he agree that it would be sensible to include Members with expertise in the underlying legislation, as well as in British legal practice, on the committee?
That would be a very sensible course of action. As I say, the burden is on the Government to show some common sense and inventiveness in how they approach this. My understanding is also that, as was mentioned earlier, the committee will not have a Government majority-
Eight and eight.
As ever, I am considering what my right hon. and learned Friend is saying with enormous care. Much of it has enormous force and makes a great deal of sense. However, if his objective in amendment 2, which inserts proportionality and reasonable tests, is to avoid resort to the courts, I should point out that the insertion of a clause of that kind is more likely to encourage resort to the courts than to deter it.
My hon. and learned Friend is right. Of course it is true that, although such measures have a history of being introduced into legislation, amendment 2 raises the risk of legal challenge, because ultimately these issues can usually only be resolved in courts.
More often.
Such measures may act as a constraint, but once Ministers have taken the plunge, there will not be much that we can do. That is precisely why there is a menu of options. I personally would prefer Ministers to do a proper exercise of asking themselves whether they really need individual powers in their current extensive form. That would be the easier course, and it would provide much greater certainty and avoid the lawyers, although it might do my hon. and learned Friend out of a brief fee or two, but lawyers on the whole ought not to benefit from defective legislation in so far as possible. I am grateful to the House for listening, and I look forward to hearing the response of my hon. Friend the Minister.
Is my hon. Friend aware of the fact that at least half of the approximately 42 EU agencies that exist offer no provision for the participation of third countries? Could she perhaps ask Members on the other Benches how the Government can possibly build the necessary capacity when we are unable to participate in those agencies?
May I reassure the hon. Lady that it is the made affirmative procedure that is available for urgent instruments, so the instrument would have to be laid before both Houses.
But that would still be the negative procedure-
No, it is set out in the schedule. It is the made affirmative procedure, which means that once the instrument has been made, it must be laid for a resolution of both Houses.
The thing is that the hon. Gentleman's Committee is chaired by a man who is respected by both sides of the House and much loved by many people in all parts of this House, yet his Committee has regularly produced reports that have been completely and utterly ignored by the Government. That is the problem: he is still asking us to trust the Government in the end.
I count the hon. Gentleman as a great friend, and say to him that yes, all too often I have come to this place in a state of high dudgeon, deeply depressed by the performance of my Government's Front-Bench team, but on this occasion I assure him that the Government have accepted amendments and tabled draft Standing Orders, which are available today for all colleagues to read, so progress has been made. I also remind the hon. Gentleman that the report had the support of every member of the Procedure Committee. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) expressed concern about what teeth the sifting committee would have. It is absolutely right that, as he identified, the committee would not be able to insist that the Government change a negative statutory instrument into an affirmative one, because if it could, the committee could just turn around and say, “Right, we want every single negative SI to be affirmative, and that's the end of it. Be on your way and we'll see you in a couple of years' time.â€ I do not think that would be sensible. The political cost to my Front-Bench colleagues of going against a sifting committee recommendation would be significant. The committee will have to give a reason why it is in disagreement, the Minister will be summoned to explain his or her Department's position, and it will be flagged up on the Order Paper if a particular SI has not been agreed between the sifting committee and the Government. That will result in a significant political cost, because what we do most effectively of all in this place is to generate political cost. When a Government fail, or even, indeed, when an Opposition fail, there is a cost to their credibility and reputation. It is important to highlight that.
I congratulate my hon. Friend and the Procedure Committee, and I really welcome its proposals. Does he think that this idea should be extended to all statutory instruments?
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker). He has set out a system, which will be tested the first time the Government refuse a recommendation from the Committee. Then we will see whether the system works in practice. There are many, many amendments, cross-party in nature, which I will be supporting if they are pressed to a vote today, including amendments from the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), who opened this debate, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and many others whom I do not have time to mention. That underlines the cross-party nature of this whole matter. There are a number of amendments in my name-a disparate group, ranging from EU citizens and the single market to EU agencies and their UK successors, and equality and human rights legislation. I shall focus principally on the single market and the equality and human rights legislation. Amendment 124 is on the single market. Members here will know that I am very much after red meat when it comes to the single market: I think that the UK should stay in the single market permanently. However, in case Members here are reluctant to support the amendment, I wish to point out that that is not what it actually brings about. It is quite specific in ensuring that the Government cannot use regulation-making powers in a way that would lead the UK to diverge from the single market. On that basis, I hope that Members on both sides of the House will not see it as seeking to lock us into the single market permanently, which of course is what I would like to do; it is slightly less wide-ranging than that.
May I take it from what the right hon. Gentleman has said that he is arguing that we should indeed be keeping all options on the table, including the single market, and that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed?
I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will get a lot of support from the Labour Benches if his amendment is pressed to a vote. To be fair to our Front Benchers, they have made it clear that they think the option of staying in the single market and the customs union should remain on the table after the transition. The right hon. Gentleman was not quite fair in his description of our Front-Bench policy as I understand it.
May I introduce you to Bill Cash?
I did not hear what the hon. Lady said, but I am sure that Hansard did, so I will move swiftly on. I say to those on the Treasury Bench, and anybody else who might be listening to this speech, that the profound difference between those people and people like me-right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, right across these green Benches-is that we have accepted the result, although it may break our hearts to do so. That is quite a dramatic statement, but many people are genuinely upset that we are going to leave the European Union. Nevertheless, they have accepted the result even though it goes against everything that they have ever believed in. They have not only accepted the result, but then voted to trigger article 50. One of the things that saddens me as much as it saddens me that we are going leave the European Union-probably more so-is the inability of the people who supported and voted for the leave campaign to understand and respect those of us who were remainers, who voted to trigger article 50, and now genuinely say that we are here to help deliver this result to get the best deal that we can as a country, putting our country before our own views and before our party political allegiances. It may be that some leavers, especially some people in Government or formerly in Government, cannot accept that because unfortunately-I am going to have to say this-they judge people like me by their own standards. For people to say that by tabling an amendment one is somehow trying to thwart or stop Brexit is, frankly, gravely offensive. That level of insult-because it is an insult-has got to stop. People have to accept that there is a genuine desire certainly among people on the Government Benches, and on the Opposition Benches, to try to come together to heal the divide and get the best deal for our country.
Does the right hon. Lady accept, too, that a significant proportion of the voters who voted leave would agree with her that the hijacking of the leave argument by a small minority is damaging the debate?
More.
He says, “More.â€ I do not criticise him for doing so. I bet he has never been called a Brexit mutineer-well, he would not have been called a Brexit mutineer, but I am as sure as anything that he has not been abused in the same way as other people who have had the temerity to table an amendment and see it through. The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) rebelled, I think, some 30 times between 2010 and 2015. He and the Secretary of State will understand how important it is for us, having made our case clear to our electorate, to be true to the principles on which we stood and got elected. When we come here, if we do nothing else, we must surely uphold those principles-our mandate-by tabling amendments and voting for them. If the Government are genuine about getting a good deal and healing the great divide-I very much hope that Ministers understand the damage that is still being caused to our country and the importance of healing the divide-they must reach out tomorrow, if not today, and do the right thing so that we get the right result. That will enable us to build on the consensus that broke out on Friday and move forward with delivering Brexit to get the best deal for everybody in our country.
Does my hon. Friend think that the fact that we are disproportionately represented in that way reflects the UK's status as both a transit point and a destination for people trafficking? It would be abhorrent if the process of leaving the EU afforded less protection to such survivors.
Absolutely. I cannot give with any real certainty the exact reason why Britain uses the orders more than anywhere else, except for the fact that-I can definitely say this-our human trafficking rates are much higher compared with other European countries. The issue that worries me is that British Governments of many colours over many years have prioritised domestic violence services and protection orders in relation to human trafficking, and it would be a real stain on what is not a bad reputation for this Government-certainly on human trafficking-if we undid some of the protections that we rely on very heavily in the realm of human trafficking. While the number of EPOs granted since their inception is still quite small, because the framework is very young-let us say that, in its infancy, it is the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley compared with the hon. Member for Stone-there is no telling how the uptake may increase in the future. We must certainly not deprive survivors making use of the orders of what they have been guaranteed so far, otherwise they will continue to be vulnerable and to be abused. Amendment 385 would ensure that, at the very least, UK courts continued to recognise EPOs issued by EU member states. There are a great many other ways in which the UK co-operates with the EU on issues such as human trafficking, female genital mutilation and forced marriage. Such issues are prevalent in many parts of the country. For example, in 2010, up to 900 schoolgirls across Birmingham were at risk of FGM. One in five children in Birmingham will have experienced or seen domestic violence before they reach adulthood, and at least 300 forced marriages take place in the west midlands every year.
Will the Minister clarify from the Dispatch Box that Opposition Members' assertions that it would be possible under the provisions for the Government to introduce secondary instruments that changed the safeguards in the Bill are misplaced because no court would allow that to happen under the provisions of appropriateness and deficiencies?
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. I will come on to the specific differences between clause 7 and clause 9 in relation to the power to amend the Act, but I will say now that the Act itself cannot be amended under clause 7. I will come on to develop that point later. Clause 7(5) lists some possible uses of the power. These could range from fairly mechanistic changes to correct inaccurate references, to more substantial changes to transfer important functions and services from EU institutions to UK equivalents. Both types of change are important to keep the law functioning appropriately. At this stage, we do not know for certain what corrections might need to be made. The negotiations continue and there is a large volume of law to correct in a short space of time.
Will the Minister give way?
The Minister mentioned clause 7(5) in relation to the regulatory powers to replace, modify or abolish public service functions. He will know that one of my amendments would delete the Government's ability to abolish functions by those orders. I wonder whether he could give us examples of public service functions or regulatory activities currently undertaken that the Government may wish to abolish.
I understand that, and I realise that I am setting a bit of a challenge. Of course, amendment 1 is only one way to deal with this. Interestingly, amendment 1 is the least justiciable route because of its clarity. Other amendments, such as amendment 2, do raise the issue of justiciability. One way or the other-I put this challenge to my hon. Friend-the Government will have to come back with something that tempers the starkness of these powers. I leave it to my hon. Friend's discretion, which is precisely why I have not tried to fetter him over this.
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for that intervention.
I wonder whether my hon. Friend might be attracted by this idea. At the moment, as drafted, the clause gives an inclusive, non-exhaustive list of examples, but I wonder whether the principle of ejusdem generis might not assist us if it were slightly redrafted. One could draft it so that any extensions beyond the inclusive list had to be of the same kind or species as those that were listed. That might give some comfort, if they have to be of a similar character to those enumerated in the Bill.
I am extremely grateful to my hon. and learned Friend, and I would be happy to meet him, our legal team and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield to take their suggestions on board. I am keen to address this, and I know that the Secretary of State is keen to do so, but I am not in a position today to have tabled or accepted an amendment. I ask them to bear with me and have further meetings with us and our legal teams to try to find a way through.
The Minister is being very generous and carefully considered in his responses. May I just check what he has said? Is he saying that he intends, if he can, to bring forward an amendment, perhaps on Report, to fix this, after these conversations have taken place, given the sympathy he says both he and the Secretary of State have for the amendments, or is he unable to give that promise to the Committee?
I will be very straightforward with my hon. Friend: we are keen to move on this issue, but, as several hon. and learned Friends have acknowledged, it is a tricky issue, so we will need to reflect further on how a movement might take place. The Attorney General, who is in his place, and the other Law Officers are well aware of this issue, but we are conscious of the imperative of being able to deal with deficiencies in the statute book, as well as of the advice of hon. and learned Friends.
I am sure that the Minister will deal with this on some of the other amendments, but the other limb of this is whether certain categories of retained EU law need special protection. All that, I suggest, needs to be looked at as a whole. I am convinced that if the Government do that, they will probably be able to come up with the right solution, and one that commands the confidence of the House.
I will come to that a little later, but I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will allow me to move forward.
Will my hon. Friend allow me to intervene?
I will give way once, but then I will make some progress, because I am 15 minutes in already.
My hon. Friend has taken several interventions. Some of us have loyally supported Ministers throughout this process, and we want him to be robust, keep his lead in his pencil, deliver the Bill and ensure that none of our laws are left in limbo. I encourage him to the last.
In the absence of the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), whose proposal this is, does the Minister envisage introducing the enhanced sift procedure-the mechanism for informing other Select Committees or Members with a particular interest in a subject-on Report?
The hon. Lady has put her point on the record, but what we are doing is accepting the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne. I also draw her attention to the Standing Orders. A number of Members have referred to the general need for a reform of the scrutiny of statutory instruments. I spent a very informative weekend reading the Hansard Society's book “The Devil is in the Detailâ€, which I recommend to any Member who wishes to be fully apprised of the case for the reform of delegated legislation, but I must add that this is not the moment for a complete reform of secondary legislation. What we need to do is accept the amendments from the Procedure Committee, and to move forward.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not. I am very conscious that I am only 20 minutes into my speech.
May I ask my hon. Friend to give way on this point?
I will do so just the once.
May I make a very brief observation about the sifting committee and the expertise? In my experience, the scrutiny of detailed European legislation is sometimes best performed by people with expertise in it. That is why the House of Lords EU Committee has sub-committees on financial affairs, external affairs, energy and environment, justice, home affairs and so forth. Would my hon. Friend at least consider using a sub-committee of that kind, given that it might enable him to complete the sifting process more quickly?
I think that my hon. Friend has made a strong case for her membership of the sifting committee. I hope that, if the Whips Office has heard her appeal, she will become a member in due course and will enjoy it very much indeed. Let me now deal with amendment 2. Conditions similar to those in the amendment, tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, are proposed by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) in amendment 48. Again, we have significant sympathy with the intention behind the amendments. However, they would introduce new terms into the law and invite substantial litigation, with consequent uncertainty about the meaning of the law as we exit the EU.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
May I just finish making my case? I must point out to my right hon. and learned Friend that I can speak for two or three hours if I take all the interventions, or I can press on. I hope to give the Committee some reassurance. Any provision made under clause 7 must be an appropriate means of correcting a deficiency in retained EU law arising from withdrawal. It is a strong test, and it represents a significant limit on the provisions made under clause 7. The limit can ultimately be guarded by the courts, although I note what my right hon. and learned Friend said about that. However, the right place in which to determine which changes in the law are appropriate is Parliament, which is why I hope Members will accept that their concerns have been addressed by the provisions that we have made for greater scrutiny and transparency in the case of each statutory instrument.
I have noted my hon. Friend's comments, and I appreciate them, but may I take him back for a moment? All these issues are linked. I acknowledge the contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), but let me return to the discussion of amendment 1. One possibility might be that the list could only be added to by a statutory instrument. After all, given the extensive powers in the Bill, it would present a double lock. If the Government wanted a new power, or area of power, they could secure it through an SI anyway, because of the extent of the power that we are giving to them. The Minister might like to consider that point.
It is my understanding that the Minister is saying that courts that were told that Ministers had two options, both of which might be necessary solutions to a particular problem, would therefore say that neither passed the necessity test because Ministers had chosen between the two of them. That sounds utterly ludicrous as a way in which the courts would make a decision. Will the Minister elaborate by providing a case law example of a situation where the courts have been given such a necessity test and have decided to rip up all necessary options on the basis that there were too many necessary choices?
I will see whether, before I sit down, my memory can be jogged on an example of case law, but I am only a humble aerospace and software engineer and I do not mind saying to the right hon. Lady that I have sometimes observed that we dance on the head of a pin over particular words. In order to protect the law and the public purse, I think the Law Officers would require me to take appropriate advice from lawyers on the nature of these words and to abide by it as we proceed through the legislation.
Earlier in our debate, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) said that we all know what “appropriateâ€ means and so would a court. Can the Minister tell us what “appropriateâ€ means in this context?
I think what we would say to the hon. and learned Lady is that “appropriateâ€ will follow the plain English definition, which she will find in various places, but what I want to do is move on. I want to set out why it is important that the test of appropriateness extends to the use of the power in clauses 8 and 17, to which the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber has tabled amendments 205, 207, 208 and 216. For example, leaving the EU, the customs union and the single market may alter the way in which the UK complies with its international legal obligations in relation to taxation, and there will not always be a clear single choice about how to comply with those obligations. Clause 8 will give Ministers the flexibility, as necessary, to make those changes. Using the word “necessaryâ€ would risk constraining the use of the power to the extent that where it is appropriate for the UK to adjust our domestic legislation to ensure compliance with international obligations but where there are multiple ways to do so, we might not be able to ensure compliance with our important obligations under international law, thereby undermining the core intention of clause 8.
I shall be here for some hours if I take too many interventions, but I will give way to my hon. Friend.
I will endeavour not to try my hon. Friend's patience too much; he is being very generous. I want to clarify one point. I think that his previous response on the difference between “necessaryâ€ and “appropriateâ€ will have suggested to the plain non-lawyerly listener that he was accepting the principle that there should be no greater powers than are necessary to ensure that EU law is ported across correctly, and that the only argument he is making is that there might then be a legal interpretational problem when he has more than one choice. Will he at least confirm that he does not wish to bring in, for himself or for any other Ministers, powers that are higher than “necessaryâ€ as a basic principle, and that he will therefore try to find words that will give him that minimum level of-
The Government have rightly excluded the Human Rights Act. I just want to understand why the Equality Act 2010 has not also been excluded.
I will come on to the Equality Act within a page. Amendments 52, 266, 267, 268, 370, 371 and 372 have been tabled by the right hon. Members for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, for Ross, Skye and Lochaber and for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake). They would prevent any changes to the Equality Act. As part of the Government's clear commitment to maintaining equalities protections throughout the process of EU exit, we have tabled amendment 391, which will ensure that the amendments that will be made to equalities legislation under this and certain other powers in the Bill are transparent, and provide confirmation that the Minister has had due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited under the Equality Act. Indeed, hon. Members may not be aware that the Government have already published a document on our website setting out the changes that we intend to make to the Equality Act, making it clear that they are limited to technical adjustments that are designed to ensure that the protections established in the Act continue to operate after exit. Let me just run through them for the right hon. Gentleman. They include: references to the European Parliament; references to future EU obligations, including new EU obligations implemented under the European Communities Act 1972; references to EU law as a generic term and harmonisation measures; references to specific EU directives which are set out in the paper; and, finally, references to the UK as part of the European economic area. So I commend that paper to right hon. and hon. Members who are interested and/or concerned about it. With that in mind, as changes are necessary, as set out in the paper, I urge right hon. and hon. Members not to press their amendments.
I can understand the Minister's point on timing, but the reality is that the terms of amendment 13 are ones with which the Government must be very familiar, as they appear in lots of other legislation. So I find this slightly difficult to follow.
I am grateful for the Minister's clarification, and I do hope that we can make some progress in, say, an immigration Bill. Nevertheless, will he explain to me why it requires the co-operation and agreement of 31 other countries for the UK to be able to say that we will take genuine unaccompanied asylum-seeking children with relatives who are legitimately in this country but who happen not to be their parents?
My hon. Friend makes his case with particular force. I am sorry to have to tell him that I am not in a position to accept his new clause on that basis. I ask him to work with members of the Government on the immigration Bill that will contain the measures that he and the rest of us wish to see to ensure that we meet our humanitarian obligations.
I will give way to the hon. Lady once.
The Minister's colleagues gave a statement on 1 November 2016 that made the commitment to take children from Europe, and it is those children whose rights under the Dublin regulation would be taken away. Can he understand the concern about the fact that he has just announced that the requirement to work with 31 other countries would supersede that? Will he give a cast-iron guarantee that the commitment made in that statement on 1 November 2016 to take children from Europe and to do our fair share for refugee children will be honoured in full?
These are matters for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Bills for which her Department is responsible. I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me and understand that it is with the Home Office that these matters need to be taken forward. This Bill is about how we leave the European Union with certainty, continuity and control in our statute book. Amendments 15 and 16 are on the power to deal with deficiency-
I just say to my right hon. and learned Friend that I am 51 minutes into my speech and I am only around halfway through it. I would prefer to press forwards.
I am grateful for my right hon. and learned Friend's intervention, which has disappointed me neither in the sympathy that he expressed for my predicament nor in the sting in its tail. The Bill is the responsibility of the Department for Exiting the European Union, with the collaboration of other Ministers who are assisting in its passage. He is absolutely right that it covers a wide range of issues. I believe that I have given an answer on the particular point raised. On two points of technical legal detail, I have asked for my memory to be jogged in the course of the debate, and I very much hope that I will be able to give an answer before I sit down. My right hon. and learned Friend will understand that I am not, like him, a learned Member of this House; I am a humble aerospace and software engineer. It is necessary for me to go through the clauses of the Bill that relate to parliamentary scrutiny and do not require technical legal expertise.
I will not give way, because I need to make progress and to keep my remarks to some form of limit. Amendments 15 and 16, tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, seek to narrow the categories of deficiencies arising from our withdrawal from the EU. The removal of clause 7(8), as amendment 16 proposes, would restrict our ability to keep the law functioning as it does now. Subsection (8) is about deficiencies arising not only from withdrawal, but from how the Bill works. For example, the Bill does not preserve directives themselves, as we have already debated, but instead preserves the UK law, which implements them. In some instances, there are provisions in directives, giving powers or placing restrictions on Government or on EU institutions or agencies, which it would not have made sense to transpose in UK law, but which then need to be incorporated in order for the law to continue to function as it did before exit. For example, the Commission currently holds a power to restrict the disclosure of confidential information in the financial services sector, which is referenced by UK implementation of the capital requirements directive 2013, but which will need to be transferred to the UK. We might also want to transfer powers that the Commission currently has to define what counts as hazardous waste, which is currently in the waste framework directive. Subsection (8) allows the clause 7 power to correct deficiencies that arise from that withdrawal together with the operation of the Bill. For example, it might be appropriate to lift a relevant part of a directive and insert it into UK law in order to keep the law functioning as close as possible to how it does presently.
If I may say to the Minister, he has actually provided a totally coherent and helpful answer, which dealt with a probing amendment that I tabled. I am most grateful to him for it.
Well, I am extremely grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, who I am very happy to see does remain my friend, as well as my constituency neighbour. I cannot tell him how happy I am to discover that that is the case. Earlier, my right hon. and learned Friend asked me why Government could not accept additional protections requirements in amendment 13, given that that appears in other legislation. A similar test does appear in the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, but the powers in that Act are rarely used, in part because of its complicated requirements. Moreover, the detail of that Act and its powers justify such a test as it is about deregulation. We consider that the existing restrictions in clause 9 are the right ones. I move forward to amendments 131, 269 to 271, and 359 on restriction of the powers relating to EU citizens' rights. Since those amendments were tabled, we have secured much-needed agreement on citizens' rights through our negotiations. I hope Members will be glad that we have now made sufficient progress, subject to the European Council meeting, and that we will be able to move forwards. The final agreement with the European Union on citizens' rights is still subject to our negotiations with the EU. However, of course, we expect to give effect to those in the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill. The House will therefore have both a meaningful vote on the agreement and on its debates on the primary legislation necessary to implement it. I therefore invite hon. Members to withdraw their amendments.
On amendment 359, we seek clarity on the current wording in relation to deficiency by means of a loss of reciprocity. We want to clarify that the Government do not intend to use it in a broad sense-in theory, it could be used in a very wide sense. In fact, it is intended to be narrow, so that major changes to policy, such as citizens' rights to work or to come to this country, will be effected by primary regulation, not by regulation under clause 7.
I understand my hon. Friend's point. Just to reassure him: it is our firm intention to carry through the agreement, which he can read in the joint report of the negotiators, into legislation so that citizens can rely on it in the United Kingdom through that withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill, which I hope we can put before the House in due course. Amendments 31, 32 and 57 seek to remove so-called Henry VIII powers. I can confirm that amendment 32 is not necessary because the power in clause 7 cannot be used to amend the Act itself. It would be outside the scope of the power-ultra vires. Neither can the power in clause 8 be used for this purpose. Let me be clear: only the power in clause 9 states that it can amend the Bill. None of the other powers in the Bill make that statement. As I said earlier in an intervention, in the event that the use of a clause 9 power is proposed to amend the Act, it would be subject to the affirmative procedure.
My hon. Friend touches on an important issue. Might it not be the case that any such power done by regulation ought to be done by affirmative resolution? I just suggest that that might be the solution to dealing with tertiary powers, because of their unusual nature. In view of the list he has given us, it seems to me that, in all likelihood, these things would be done by affirmative resolution, but that is something the Government might like to consider between now and Report.
I just draw my right hon. and learned Friend's attention to paragraph 1(2)(c) of part 1 of schedule 7, which would require that the affirmative procedure be used if a provision“provides for any function of an EU entity or public authority in a member State of making an instrument of a legislative character to be exercisable instead by a public authority in the United Kingdomâ€. So instruments of a legislative character coming across would trigger the affirmative.
I take it, therefore, that that covers all the points my hon. Friend has just raised at the Dispatch Box.
There are also some matters in relation to fees and charges, which we discussed earlier in the debate. What I would say to my right hon. and learned Friend is that, where he has doubts, we have agreed to the sifting committee, and if he is concerned, I hope he will consider membership of that committee so that he can play his part in seeing through this set of measures.
May I apologise, as Chair of the Procedure Committee, for arriving late to my hon. Friend's speech? I thought I had missed all of his speech, then I realised I had missed half of it, but it now seems that I have only missed a third of it. However, I do apologise for arriving late, and I hope he accepts that apology at face value.
I am grateful to the Minister for devoting that portion of his speech to the detail on financial services. That is important for the City, as he knows, and the proposal to publish draft statutory instruments is a well-tested and welcome route.
I thank my hon. Friend.
I have a quick question about financial services legislation and deficiencies. I want to get it clear in my head, as a non-lawyer, that deficiencies would not cover material policy changes. For example, European banks, including British banks, currently do not have to hold any capital against sovereign debt issued by EU member states. Changing that could be considered to be dealing with a deficiency, because we will no longer be a member state, but it would be a policy change. Will the Minister confirm that that sort of amendment would be picked up and would go through the affirmative procedure?
The first point to make relates to my hon. Friend's last point. We have agreed to the sifting committee, which will be able to recommend-
It will be very busy.
The committee will be busy, and that is why I am so grateful for the fact that several hon. Members-presumably including the hon. Gentleman-seem to be volunteering to do the important duty of serving on it, which no one should take lightly. I say to my hon. Friend that we have been extremely clear that any major change will come through primary legislation, but I cannot say that there will be no policy changes at all, however minor. The reality is that if a function comes back to the UK and we have to make a choice about whether it is allocated to the PRA or the FCA, that could be described as a policy choice. I want to be clear with the Committee. I cannot say that there will be no policy changes whatever, but I can say that the Bill is about certainty, continuity and control. It is about making sure that the law works the day after we exit in substantially the same way as it worked the day before, from the point of view of those who are subjected to it. I can see that my hon. Friend brings great insight to the matter.
On a related point about the new sifting committee, will the Minister outline the Government's view-this is partly a matter for Standing Orders-on how the chair of that committee would be appointed and whether Parliament could have a role in the election of the chair, rather than the post being appointed by the Government?
The hon. Gentleman has been generous enough to say that he appreciates that that is a matter for Standing Orders. I am very sensitive to the role and powers of Parliament, which we have discussed throughout proceedings on the Bill. As a Minister, I really do not want to stand at the Dispatch Box and trespass-in this debate, of all places-on Parliament's right to set its own Standing Orders.
We based the model on the European Scrutiny Committee, in which the Chairman is appointed.
I hear what the Minister is saying and I take on board that this has to go through the new negotiations. What I am trying to do with the amendment is to ask Ministers to remember that this needs to go through the negotiations, because it was completely missing from the White Paper on the earlier negotiations.
Will the Minister give way?
Before I conclude my opening remarks, I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
It is possible that I switched off, or perhaps nodded off, during the past hour and 20 minutes, but I do not think I heard the Minister refer to my amendment 124 on the single market, which I assume means that the Government are supporting me.
The right hon. Gentleman enjoys a jest, but I hope that the Committee will understand that, as I set out at the beginning of my speech-I have now been on my feet for an hour and 20 minutes, compared with an indication that I would take an hour, so I needed to pare down my remarks-it is not the Government's policy, as he knows, to remain in the single market and the customs union. In the interests of allowing other hon. Members to contribute to the debate, I will conclude my remarks. We face an unprecedented legislative challenge, to which the power in clause 7 is the only practical solution. The power is only a temporary solution to achieving our key objective: a functioning statute book in time for exit day. The Government believe that we have made significant concessions on the issue, both with the sifting committee and by putting into statute the requirement to include certain information in the explanatory memorandums. I hope that those concessions have tackled the concerns expressed throughout our consideration of these amendments. I am conscious of the commitment I gave to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield in relation to the scope of the powers, and I look forward to working with him. I will finish by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne for all that he has done, with the unanimous support of the Procedure Committee, to ensure that the House has the proposal for a sifting committee.
I will have to check the record-I was just flicking through my speaking notes-but I am sure that when I said that there were no policy decisions, that was about a 10,000 page document about how institutions were to comply with regulations. On the particular point about tertiary legislation and the financial regulation system, I feel sure that when the hon. Lady and I served together on the Treasury Committee she would have been as indefatigable a defender of the independence of the Bank of England as I would have been. Surely she does not want to undermine that.
I do not wish to undermine that. I just want the Minister to present what I believe to be a more accurate picture to the House about the content of tertiary legislation. That is the point that I am making. It simply comes down to the fact that clause 7 gives Ministers too much scope. That brings into doubt whether the stated intention of the Bill, which is, simply, to translate the body of European law on to the UK statute book, is all that can happen once the Bill is passed. That is the problem with it. The thing that will probably most concern our constituents is the proposal to abolish the functions of the EU agencies. That is extremely worrying and we do not get clear answers from Ministers on individual cases. My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) spoke about this in relation to the European Environment Agency and the European Chemicals Agency. The Minister will have seen, as I did yesterday, on the front page of the Financial Times the pressure from the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries over chemicals and medicines safety regulations. When we ask Ministers in other Departments what will happen, we do not get any certainty. This is not at all reassuring. There are big risks for the economy if we do not handle this much better than the Government are handling it now. The issue of the regulations of the agencies is the thing that can have the most significant impact on the economy. Whatever else people voted for when they voted to leave the EU, they certainly did not vote to lose jobs and be poorer.
But before I sit down, I give way to the hon. Gentleman.
I thank the right hon. Lady-I mean the hon. Lady-for her kind words. Why she is not right honourable escapes me! Perhaps that will be remedied soon. One of the important things to remember about the sifting committee, as she reminded me yesterday, is that if, as I suspect, there will be eight Government members and eight Opposition members, the chair, who will be appointed, will only cast a vote in the event of a tie. That is the very effective check and balance built into the committee. Yes, it might be-will be-a Government chair, but if all eight Opposition members vote and the seven non-chair Government members vote, the chair will not come into play. He or she will only come into play in the event of a tied vote.
The hon. Gentleman is displaying his usual charm in trying to make hon. Members feel that the Standing Orders put forward by the Leader of the House are peerless. I suspect that hon. Members will want to come back and debate the make-up and terms of reference at the time. I would also be grateful if Ministers could relay to the Leader of the House that we are disappointed that neither she nor her deputy have been present at any point in this debate, when we have been discussing something that concerns the role of the House. We hope very much that they will also be flexible if, when we have that debate, there is a consensus for changing the draft Standing Orders just published.
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words about the excellent work of the Procedure Committee. Does he accept that one of this House's great achievements has been the work of Select Committees and the cross-party consensus that they can find and build?
I absolutely accept that. Another important thing about the sifting committee will be that many of the other bits of Brexit-related legislation that are starting their journey through this House may contain large numbers of statutory instruments-potentially primary legislation-amending statutory instruments. What we agree for this particular Bill may well be an important template for how we treat those similar powers in subsequent pieces of legislation. We are doing important work here and it is crucial that we do it. I also urge my hon. Friend to broaden out the Procedure Committee's approach to look more broadly at SI scrutiny powers after all this is done; many of us would encourage him to do that. However, such an approach is perhaps too wide for this Bill right now.
Before my hon. Friend moves on from sifting, does he agree that it represents substantial progress that we have heard from the Dispatch Box today that the recommendations made by the Procedure Committee will be respected by the Government in their conduct in the House?
Is my hon. Friend sure that the source of the problem lies in the term “appropriateâ€? The more I have listened to the debate this afternoon, the more it has seemed that the problem may come from the word “arisingâ€. Perhaps we need words more like “entailed byâ€, which would limit the scope of appropriateness.
What my right hon. Friend has just demonstrated is the point that I was just about to come on to. We are going to need different words-in the plural-than we have at the moment and the discussions that have been promised from the Dispatch Box, even if an amendment has not yet been promised, will be essential to get the issue right. It is not right at the moment. During the debate this afternoon, three or four options have already been proposed from the Back Benches, by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) just now and by a couple of others. It is clear that there is no shortage of solutions; it will not be acceptable for Ministers to say, “This problem is too hard so we are going to stick with what we have.â€ There are enough brains in the room for us to get this right-there are certainly enough on the ministerial Benches and among advisers. So it ain't going to be good enough for Ministers to say, “We understand the principle and have already accepted it in our remarks today, but it is all too hard and we can't possibly manage it.â€ That will not fly. I have discussed this response with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield. We are content, based on what we have heard, not to press the amendments on scope that we have tabled here this evening. However, it will be essential before we get to Report to see some creative alternatives that solve the problems that hon. Members on both sides of the House have alluded to. People on both sides of the House can propose lots of possible solutions. We need to find some that work and make sure that Ministers are content to introduce them in the impressively constructive tone with which they have already addressed the issue of the sifting committee. That needs to be done before Report.
Does the hon. Lady believe that the British electorate were better protected when these powers resided in Brussels, as they indeed still do? Does she think the people making these decisions in Brussels were more accountable than Ministers will be in this House after we leave?
Did my right hon. Friend share my puzzlement at the answer that the Minister gave to that point at the Dispatch Box? It seemed an argument was being made that Dublin III requires co-operation that would be impossible to guarantee. As I understood it, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and my right hon. Friend herself are both recommending a change in our immigration law to ensure that we parallel the situation that currently obtains under Dublin III.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the proposed changes to the standing orders are particularly welcome in that they provide specifically for the new committee, as I understand it-I am looking for approval from the Chair of the Procedure Committee -to use the Select Committees that deal with each Department to look in detail at the departmental statutory instruments, so we will have real expertise available?
That is an excellent point and a very good idea. There has always been a wider call for the Treasury Committee, which I am privileged to chair, to look more broadly at finance legislation. The Minister had a difficult job this afternoon. There were a lot of amendments for him to deal with, many of which were very detailed and some of which were clearly not within his departmental remit. This proves the point that we do need Members of Parliament who have an expertise in their background, sit on a Select Committee or have held a particular ministerial brief. This is the time for them to offer their expertise to the House and the country in order to ensure that we get the law that we are bringing back from the EU correct.
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that although time is short and there is a great deal of urgency to get this done, it seems that the House is up for it, and that we will find the time and the sense of vim and vigour to really exercise our scrutiny function?
The hon. Lady says that the environment has been peripheral to the debate so far. I am sure that she will have seen the comments from the chief executive of Greener UK and the enthusiasm of that organisation regarding the debate that we had in this Chamber one evening two weeks ago when we spent four hours debating the environmental parts of the Bill.
Does the hon. Lady agree that the European Union has been a force for good for the environment? Through the European Union, this country has done things that it would never have done on its own.
Environmental standards have improved in this country because the European Union-particularly the single market-has employed the concept of the level playing field. We have been able to maintain high environmental standards because we are competing at the same level as every other member state and the majority of our trade is with the European Union. One can only think about what will happen if our doors are opened, in an unregulated environment, to imports of American beef, American cereal and all the rest of it. What guarantee can those on the leave side of the argument give us that we will be able to protect ourselves with environmental legislation in that context?
I agree with the hon. Lady that a great deal of European legislation on the environment has been a force for good, but I warn her against scare- mongering, because much of that great European environmental legislation was led by British influence. British MEPs led the habitats directive, the birds directive and much else. The Government have said that they are committed to keeping high standards and not introducing hormone beef, chlorinated chicken and so on.
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but she clearly was not listening to what I said. Of course the UK has led on many of those improvements, but why were they secured? Because we are in the single market, which is the reason why the standards work and have become embedded in the European Union. The single market helps us to maintain the level playing field that is necessary if we are to compete effectively in it, and leaving it will endanger the maintenance of those standards. If we fall back on WTO rules, certain standards cannot be properly assessed when a country makes its mind up about what it can and cannot import. We have to be careful about assuming that we have been some kind of marvellous leader in environmental standards in the European Union. Yes, we have, but the mechanism that has made that possible is the single market. As was pointed out earlier, a Conservative Government helped to put together the architecture for the single market, because they understood the importance of that mechanism for delivering the standards that we all enjoy. If any Member wants to put all that in danger, all I ask is that they think carefully about doing so, because the consequences could be really rather severe. That is why I will be supporting amendment 124. At the end of the day, it is really important that, as the Prime Minister has pointed out and as I said in my earlier intervention, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. On that basis, nothing in the Bill should preclude the possibility of the UK staying in the single market and the customs union. That is really important, and Parliament needs to take that point seriously.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hanson. I rise to speak to support new clause 24 and amendment 96, in my name, as well as amendment 104, also in my name, which relates to new clause 27 and others on institutional arrangements. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) intends to return to the Chamber to press new clause 27 to a Division, but it is an important clause about governance arrangements and I hope she does. It is welcome that the Government have accepted the Procedure Committee's amendments. There was much concern about the sweeping powers set out in clauses 7, 8 and 9, which, as many Members have said, would give Ministers excessively wide powers to make secondary legislation. There has been near universal recognition that we need to strengthen sifting and scrutiny powers, and there is huge scepticism about the process under schedule 7 for sifting through the 800-plus statutory instruments. There is a suspicion-I believe it to be justified-that it was to avoid much needed parliamentary scrutiny and that it could be used to weaken EU laws in the process of transposition. I understand what the hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) said, which is that there simply is not the time to work through them one by one, but that is why some of us voted against triggering article 50 when the Government chose to rush into it. We knew that this was an incredibly complex procedure and that it would not be easy in the way that some Conservative Members said it would be. We needed the time to do this properly. The reason we cannot do it properly is because we triggered article 50 too early.
Does the hon. Lady not accept that the European Union was very clear that until we triggered article 50 we could not begin any of the discussions to allow us to consider any of these matters?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I wish to speak about the many amendments that concern environmental regulation, specifically new clause 27, amendment 104 and new clauses 62 and 63. Like many other speakers, I have received some excellent briefing material from Greener UK, which encapsulates the ambitions of many in the non-governmental organisation community, and I would like to thank it for the enthusiasm with which it has engaged with colleagues on both sides of the House. It has made an excellent effort in seeking to make very clear what it expects. It is clear also that there is a consensus about what we are trying to achieve. There is just a slight disagreement about how exactly to legislate for it. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House, irrespective of what they think should be done to the withdrawal Bill, would congratulate the Environment Secretary on the excellent commitments he has made in recent weeks. They have shown very clearly that the ambition for environmental regulation after Brexit is not merely to maintain the status quo, but to take UK environmental regulation further. That is great news. We also want the environmental principles enshrined in UK law. We debated that point at length the other week, and there was some satisfaction that that was indeed the Environment Secretary's intent for the Bill he will bring forward. I agree with my near neighbour, the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), that it was a shame that Hansard could not record his nodding during the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), but there is no doubt that those of us in the Chamber clearly saw his acquiescence to the requests being made.
I think Hansard did record that the Environment Secretary nodded his assent, but I am not entirely sure that he knew what he was nodding his assent to.
For those of us with an environmental mindset, there is a temptation-and I may say more about this later-to think that it is almost too good to be true that the Environment Secretary should sit there and, quite unequivocally, nod to all those requests. People are not quite willing to accept that it is true, but I am not sure that the things that my right hon. Friend has been saying about environmental matters in recent weeks should do anything to discourage us from believing that it is. He really has been setting the pace. The non-governmental organisations have raised a number of matters. I agree with what they are saying, but I also believe that what we are already doing in the Bill and-much more importantly-our commitments beyond it will meet their expectations. Their concern about the governance gap is entirely justified. There needs to be a new body to reinforce the regulatory standards that we establish. Significant powers relating to our environment are being vacated by the EU, and we must, as a matter of urgency, ensure that those powers are allocated to either existing or new regulatory bodies. Those bodies must be independent, they must be accountable, they must be accessible to the public who are seeking redress, their processes must be transparent, and they must have teeth so that they can hold Governments and others to account. We all agree on that, and nothing that I have heard from the Environment Secretary suggests that his ambition for legislation on the environment post-Brexit will not deliver those requirements.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I will gladly give way to my diocesan neighbour.
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the environment does not stop at borders, and that international agreements on environmental protection are vital? The danger that I see is that the UK is going it alone. It is important that we all do this together-and, in fact, we have been doing it together, which is why we have the single market and the European Union.
As I said, the DEFRA consultation on the new enforcement body must be published urgently; I agree with the NGO community on that, and Members on both sides will want to encourage the Environment Secretary to do exactly that. I also agree that our ambition should be that the new Bill to establish this new body, and to make the UK's environmental ambitions post-Brexit clear, should be passed through Parliament by March 2019. We will all want some reassurance from the Secretary of State in the near future that that is indeed his ambition. Earlier, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset spoke at much greater length than I intend to on the detail of this, but he is absolutely right that the Environment Secretary is clearly meeting the ambitions of everybody who is contributing to this debate from an environmental perspective. Some might choose to put their fingers in their ears, say it cannot possibly be so and seek to manufacture disagreement where there is none, but the Environment Secretary-in this Chamber, in the press, in the speeches he has been giving to the environmental community, and in his meetings with NGOs, I believe-has been very clear about what he intends to do. Seeking to amend the Bill simply for the sake of amending it does not add anything to our ambition for stronger environmental regulations post-Brexit. We can be very confident that the Government are leading us in the right direction on environmental regulation. They are going far further than the EU currently does, and that is the key point: we should see current EU regulation merely as the floor for UK environmental regulation post Brexit, not the ceiling. I am confident that the Secretary of State has every intention of doing that.
Today's sitting has considered many important amendments on issues that I have long supported. New clause 27 in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and amendment 96 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) would ensure that we do not fall into a regulatory black hole when it comes to environmental protection. The Secretary of State's appearance before the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sit, did not assuage any of our fears in that regard. New clause 53 in the name of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) focuses on our obligations under Dublin III to help to reunite children and families who have been separated by war or persecution. I support those amendments and hope that they will be pressed to a vote. They are just three of a legion of amendments that show the true cross-party nature of the concerns about this Bill.
I am sorry-I love having discussions with the right hon. Gentleman, but I am aware that other people want to speak. I will come straight to the point. My case is that the right hon. Gentleman wants me to have enough faith in the Secretary of State and in the capacity of this Government to get through a whole new piece of legislation in time. The crux of this debate is whether the rest of the House is prepared to go along with the confidence the right hon. Gentleman demonstrates, or whether we want to have a belt-and-braces approach. The right hon. Gentleman said earlier that the idea of putting something in the Bill was inelegant. It may well be inelegant, but it is also a belt-and-braces way of making sure that, come the day we leave the EU-if indeed we do-we have all this legislation in an enforceable form on our statute book. If the Government are already saying, “Of course we're going to do it-why worry?â€ why would they be so afraid of putting this into the Bill too? I appreciate that it is not elegant, but I would rather be inelegant and effective than elegant and ineffective. That is why I want to press new clause 27 to a vote. It is a belt-and-braces way of ensuring with absolute certainty that when EU laws are brought into UK law they are properly enforceable and can be properly implemented. I had more to say, but to be fair to others, I will end now.
The point that the hon. Gentleman makes is absolutely right. Is it not also the case that the Government have tried to undermine the Welsh Government's efforts to protect trade unions by trying to strike down parts of that Act?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point for me. He is absolutely correct that that is what the Government are trying to do. Statements have been made in the House of Lords, including by the former chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament, who has previously called for the scrapping of“the working time directive, the agency workers' directive, the pregnant workers' directive and all the other barriers to actually employing people.â€That was said by Lord Callanan, now a Minister of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union-and the Conservatives ask us to trust them on workers' rights! I would not trust them enough to send them out for the rolls in the morning. The Tories cannot be trusted on workers' rights; if they were truly interested in workers' rights, they would accept the amendment.
This has been a very important debate. Some may feel that this is a dry issue of constitutional process and ask how it relates to the question of Britain's role in the rest of the world. However, it is fundamentally important to recognise Ministers' land grab in attempting to take very sweeping powers, by order-not simply to transpose technical and necessary EU laws into UK law, but potentially to take whole areas of public policy and make changes by regulation with the sweep of a pen. Anyone who looks at clause 7, the subject of this debate, will see a number of gaping holes that allow Ministers to drive a coach and horses through a whole series of policy areas. They can say that an order is “appropriateâ€, and that is all they have to prove-they are not “limitedâ€ to the areas that are set out. By the way, the Minister was not even able to describe what the word “appropriateâ€ meant. He was asked to do so in an intervention, and he could not. Ministers have also taken powers, by order, to abolish public services currently undertaken by EU agencies. This is a serious breach of the constitutional principle that Parliament should normally dictate what can be done by the Executive, who are trying to take very many powers. A lot of amendments have been considered today. I hope that we can vote on amendment 124, because it would make sure that nothing undermines the UK staying aligned with the single market after exit day, which is a very important principle. In her amendment 49, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) deals with some of the Henry VIII powers. Given that there are so many other amendments and I know hon. Members want to prioritise theirs, I beg to ask leave to withdraw my new clause 18.
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I rise to speak to new clause 3, which has cross-party support, but also amendment 7, which does something similar to my new clause, albeit, I confess, in a rather more elegant way. I defer to the drafting powers of the former Attorney General in drafting his amendment. This, on day seven in Committee, is really where we get to the crunch on this Bill. There are two big anxieties about the content of the Bill that finally come clashing together in clause 9. The first is the sweeping use of secondary legislation through Henry VIII powers, which, regardless of one's views on the overall legislation, have caused some unease in all parts of the House because of the way in which they concentrate power in the hands of the Executive and cut deep into our historic role in Parliament to hold the Executive to account. The second anxiety is about getting the final Brexit deal right and about making sure that Parliament has a real, meaningful say on the deal, which will define our country for generations, and that we decide together what “taking back controlâ€ should mean. Clause 9 is where those two anxieties come crashing together, because it allows a huge concentration of power in the hands of the Executive, and it does so over the final withdrawal agreement on the outcome of Brexit. Notwithstanding the commitments that the Prime Minister has made today and the written statement that we have seen, the reality is that clause 9 would allow Ministers to start to implement a withdrawal agreement entirely through secondary legislation and to do so even before Parliament has endorsed the withdrawal agreement.
Many of us hear what the right hon. Lady says about the Henry VIII clauses and the power grab, but does she not accept that the quid pro quo of that is that, while many in this House were quite happy for the EU to conduct a power grab, they seem less trusting of their own Government when it comes to these clauses?
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about parliamentary sovereignty, which was indeed a key issue that was debated in the referendum. In fact, many people argued in the referendum that what they were doing was bringing sovereignty back here, from having shared sovereignty with the EU. I do not think we are arguing that sovereignty should be handed over in a concentrated way to a small group of Ministers instead. That is the responsibility on us. We know that of course there are times when Parliament needs to give Ministers power on our behalf to use through secondary legislation, but we should do so cautiously and sensibly and make sure that the right safeguards are in place. That is the problem with the Henry VIII powers in this Bill, and not just in clause 9 but in clause 7. The challenge, too, is that we are being asked to do that on an issue that will define our country for generations. Each and every one of us will be judged on what we did in this place to get that Brexit deal right.
Does the right hon. Lady agree that it is most welcome that, since my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) tabled his amendment 7, it has been agreed that there does need to be an Act of Parliament? Is not the weakness of clause 9 that there is still no trigger requiring the consent of Parliament to the withdrawal agreement before the regulations can be laid and used?
The whole point of this Bill is that it is taking back power to this country and this Parliament, so that we can decide for ourselves what will happen. All the significant powers in the Bill are subject to the affirmative resolution and those that are not will now be subject to a sifting committee. We are recovering from a situation where, as members of the European Union, we had handed over all these decisions, lock, stock and barrel, to the European Union, so the Bill is a massive improvement, and to dress up this attempt to reverse Brexit as an argument in favour of parliamentary sovereignty is nothing but cant.
Oh my, what Stalinism is this?-that any attempt to disagree with the way in which this Bill is drawn up is somehow a betrayal of Brexit! What rubbish! How insecure are Members who object to any changes in the Bill, if they cannot see that it is Parliament's job-a job that they argued for when they stood up and tried to defend parliamentary sovereignty-to take some responsibility by scrutinising legislation and proposing amendments to it? That is all we are doing now. We are putting forward an amendment to the way in which the Brexit process-the withdrawal process-should take place. The idea that this somehow undermines the referendum decision is just a load of rubbish and the hon. Gentleman well knows it, and if he had any better arguments, he would put them, rather than using something that is so ridiculous.
The argument that we have heard from the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) and the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) is really quite ludicrous. They opposed what they described as a power grab by Brussels-by the European Union-while we were members of the European Union. They now seem to be advocating a power grab by the Executive, although they said that they wanted to take back control for the legislature of this country. If taking back control does not mean taking back control for the legislature, why on earth did we have the referendum in the first place?
My hon. Friend is exactly right. Let me say to the Conservative Members who seem to be suddenly so keen to give away powers from Parliament to the Executive, that part of our historic tradition has always been our objection to concentrations of power, and indeed our relationship with the EU was a sharing of power rather than a concentration of power. I realise that people objected to that, and this debate is not a rerun of the referendum; it is about how we implement the referendum result. However, it is also-or should be-about Parliament having the confidence to say, “We do not believe in concentrations of power, and we think that each and every one of us has a responsibility to do what we, as elected parliamentarians, think is right, and get the best Brexit deal for the country.â€
The power that the Executive will have in making regulations under the clause will be subject to Parliament, because secondary legislation comes to Parliament. These regulations are of a different order of magnitude from regulations made by the European Union, which can be made by qualified majority vote against the will of the British Government and are automatically British law. So this is, in fact, restoring parliamentary oversight to the making of laws.
The hon. Gentleman has himself been a strong advocate of the responsibilities and powers of Parliament, but it does not take long for him to become completely lost down a sidetrack and start talking about what our relationship with the EU has been for very many years. The point is that this process is about how that relationship will change. We know that it is due to change as a result of the referendum and the article 50 negotiations, but the responsibility for all of us is to determine how it should change. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do, and as well as every other Member in the House, that the giving of powers in secondary legislation concentrates powers in the hands of Ministers, and does not receive the same scrutiny. Furthermore, this is not just about the concentration of power through clause 9; it is also about the process through which the Government want to make the decisions on the withdrawal agreement in order to trigger clause 9.
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
I will, but then I want to make some more progress.
I assume that the right hon. Lady has read clause 9. Does she share my concern about the fact that some people seem not to have done so? Am I right to conclude that the clause means that the Government negotiate a withdrawal agreement-arguably one of the most important things that have happened for decades-which will not come to us here, but will be implemented by Ministers? As the Bill stands, that is it: apparently there will be no further involvement of this sovereign Parliament.
I do agree, and I think that goes to the heart of our concern. It ought to be possible for the Government to agree to my new clause 3, or to amendment 7. Let us think about the points that they have already made. First, they have recognised that there is a problem if too much power is concentrated in the hands of the Executive. They said so yesterday during the debate on clause 7, and I think that they recognise the importance of safeguards on the use of Executive powers. Secondly, they have said that there will be a meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement. I welcome that, but I think there is still a difference between us on what counts as a meaningful vote. Thirdly, they have said that there will now be primary legislation on the withdrawal agreement, and I welcome that as well. If we put all those three things together in the right way-the commitment to primary legislation, the commitment to a proper vote and say for Parliament, and concern about the concentration of powers-we get amendment 7 or new clause 3. It is the same thing.
Following the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), may I ask whether the right hon. Lady agrees that the statutory instruments that we are discussing relate to matters of constitutional significance-matters of the sort that we normally only debate on the Floor of the House? It would be wrong for those matters to be dealt with in Committee when the House has not necessarily even agreed to the withdrawal agreement.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is absolutely right. This is not the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, which was all about minor and detailed changes and consolidating legislation through secondary legislation-or that, at least, was its intention. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman says, this is about hugely constitutionally significant legislation and changes that will affect the course of events in this country for generations.
The right hon. Lady mentioned the different definitions of a “meaningful voteâ€. Does she agree that a vote that took place at a point at which, for instance, Parliament could not say to the Government, “What you have negotiated is not acceptableâ€ would not constitute a meaningful vote?
The right hon. Gentleman is exactly right. The timing of the vote matters, but so does its constitutional status. That is why I think it immensely important for this to be a statutory vote. Let me explain why the Government's words and the Prime Minister's words-in the written ministerial statement, in various letters and so on-are not enough, and why we need to vote on either amendment 7 or my new clause 3. First, the Government's unwillingness to put their promises on the face of the Bill is a problem. Parliament needs commitments in legislation before we can give the Executive such strong powers-such constitutional powers-and we need that commitment on the face of the Bill before and not after we do so. Secondly, there is still a difference between us on what counts as a meaningful vote. Without either new clause 3 or amendment 7, it would still be possible for Ministers to offer only a vote on a motion on the withdrawal agreement, and that indeed is the Prime Minister's intention. The written ministerial statement published this morning says:“This vote will take the form of a resolution in both Houses of Parliament and will cover both the Withdrawal Agreement and the terms for our future relationship.â€
Does the right hon. Lady share my concern about the fact that the vote on the motion of both Houses will come after the ratification of the treaty, and the fact that this House has no power or ability to change treaty terms under the ratification, which renders any vote on the motion meaningless?
I think the hon. Lady is right. The Minister will be able to clarify this later, but I think it is a key point that the vote on the primary legislation- on the implementation of the Bill-will not happen until after the treaty has been ratified. I think that there is still some confusion about whether the vote on a motion, or a resolution, will happen before or after the ratification of the treaty, but the main point I want to make about the weakness of trying to do this simply through a resolution is that it is the primary legislation that counts, and it is clear from what the Minister has said, and what has been said in the written ministerial statement, that the primary legislation vote, the statutory vote, will not happen until after the ratification and the whole legal process have been completed.
The written ministerial statement makes it very clear that the meaningful vote will come after the negotiations have been concluded, but before ratification. That is precisely why it was published today.
I think that there is a big difference between us on the word “meaningfulâ€. I shall be happy to give way to the Minister again, but I think that he should clarify the position, and confirm that the only vote that we will have before the ratification of the treaty is a vote on a motion. We are talking about a “take it or leave itâ€ deal, and about a “take it or leave itâ€ vote on the completed deal. That is the only thing that is there, even in the written ministerial statement; and there is no guarantee in the legislation, by the way. The Minister is not proposing to put that on the face of the Bill. Even if we take the written ministerial statement in good faith, and even if we rip up our commitment to putting things on the face of the Bill, all that the Minister has given us is the possibility of a vote on a motion, not a vote on primary legislation before the ratification of the treaty.
I would not take any consolation from what the Minister has said. The formal process of ratification of a treaty, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, is that the treaty is laid before the House by a Minister, and if the House has not annulled it within 21 days, it goes ahead. However, we can only have a vote on annulment if the Government allow it, and in recent years they have regularly chosen not to do so. It is perfectly possible, consistent with what the Minister has just said, that the only vote we would have-and this may be what he means by a meaningful vote-is the vote on annulment, which is a “take it or leave itâ€, completely meaningless vote.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that goes to the heart of this: in the end, the power is still concentrated in the Executive's hands, whether it is the power to give us a vote on the treaty at all or the power over the timing of any of these votes. That is all still in the Government's hands, with no reassurances in the Bill, and then there is still only this proposal simply to have a vote on a motion, not a vote on statute with all the scrutiny that brings.
I am conscious of time; I will give way again, but many Members want to speak in this important debate.
Has my right hon. Friend given any thought to the consequences of the possibility, under the Government's proposed procedure, of this House voting in favour but the other place voting against the motion?
That is clearly a possibility, but I think we should trust in the maturity of Parliament. It is possible for people to vote in different ways, but we have long-standing processes between our two Houses for resolving differences and debating them. My problem is that we are not actually being given the opportunity to have those proper meaningful votes through legislation, and instead we just have these motions, which have no constitutional status.
Can the right hon. Lady confirm that it is Government policy that this place will be given, to use their expression, a meaningful vote? For example, as the talks progress, some hon. Members might say, “Well, hang on a moment; my pharmaceutical industry is being excluded from this arrangement on trade under this particular head of agreement.â€ That is an example of doing something “meaningfulâ€-the ability of those of us in this place, acting on behalf of our constituents, to change some of the drift of the negotiations, to get a deal that suits everybody in our country.
I agree: it is hugely important that this vote has the proper status in Parliament, as well as our being able to debate the detail.
The point about a potential difference between the House of Lords and the House of Commons again makes me concerned that the Government are toying with only allowing a vote on an annulment motion, presumably tabled by the Opposition rather than the Government, on the original treaty, because then they would have sanction under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which determines what happens if there is a difference between the Lords and the Commons. So, again, I spy a rat.
My hon. Friend is right, and that again shows the importance of having these commitments in the Bill, so that there can be no doubt and no possibility of the Government using clause 9 to start implementing an agreement on which there has been no meaningful vote.
Can the right hon. Lady explain how the timing will work? If there is to be legislation to approve a withdrawal agreement before March 2019, what happens if the agreement is reached too late to allow that legislation to go through all its stages- -or is this a plan to delay the Brexit date?
I thought part of the way through the hon. Gentleman's intervention that he was finally coming up with a sensible point. I have no control over the timing of the Government's negotiations; I hope that they and the EU will get on with this quickly, because in particular we need the transitional agreement pinned down as early as possible, as businesses need certainty-and they need that as much in my constituency as in the hon. Gentleman's. So I hugely hope there will be plenty of time for all these debates to take place. In the event that, against the Government's will-they have said they do not want this-it ends up being a late deal, Parliament should have the opportunity to ask the Government to extend article 50 for a couple of months, to be able to implement it properly. In fact, the Government will have to do that anyway, because they will not be able to bring clause 9 powers through fast enough not to have to do so.
Is it not far more likely that the Government will have to do that long before then, because everyone, including the Brexit Secretary, recognises that it is simply not possible to get everything agreed within the next year, plus a few months?
The right hon. Lady talked about a delay of perhaps a couple of months, but if the treaty is not right in the eyes of this Parliament, a couple of months could turn into a couple years, and, indeed, some people would like it to be a couple of decades. Therefore, she talks about a meaningful vote, but what about the meaningful vote of the people of this country, who voted last June to leave the European Union? We need to get this done as quickly as possible, to deliver what the British people voted for.
We had a referendum on whether or not Britain should leave the EU. That referendum has taken place; that decision has taken place; and Parliament has respected that decision. Despite how individual Members might have voted in that referendum, or on which side we might have campaigned, as a whole Parliament has respected that referendum result. The referendum did not decide how we leave the EU, however, or what the Brexit deal or transitional agreement should be. That is the responsibility now for the Government in negotiations, but also for this Parliament. I point out to Members who claim that somehow we cannot have a parliamentary debate on this because it is an internationally negotiated deal-because, somehow, it is a done deal-that Parliament must be able to have a say in this process and we should trust Parliament to be mature and responsible. A lot of Conservative Members said that if we let Parliament vote on article 50, the sky would fall in because it would somehow stop the Brexit process, rip up the referendum result and get in the way of democracy. But actually, the Members of this Parliament know that we have a responsibility towards democracy. We have a mature responsibility to our constituents to defend the very principles of democracy. That is exactly why many of us, including me, voted for article 50, to respect the referendum result, but we do not believe that we should then concentrate powers in the hands of Ministers to enable them do whatever they like. We have a responsibility to defend democracy and those democratic principles. It is our responsibility as Members of Parliament to have our say and to ensure that we get the best deal for the country, rather than just give our power to Ministers.
The right hon. Lady might agree with me that what causes more consternation overseas among those observing what is going on are the signs that we as a Parliament and as a Government seem from time to time to completely lose our marbles and get involved in polemical arguments that are far removed from the actual matters that we are supposed to be discussing.
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 voteâ€, 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.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is demonstrating why he is Father of the House, so I hesitate to interrupt him, but on his point about having a meaningful vote prior to the Prime Minister of the day making the deal, does he agree, with his wealth of experience, that if we are to keep the country together, it is important that that Prime Minister has in the back of her head when trying to pull off that agreement, “I have to get this through my Parliamentâ€?
The right hon. Gentleman makes one of the points that I was going to make. The most important effect of passing either new clause 3 or amendment 7 -there is actually more to this than a meaningful vote, if we consider the various stages-and achieving proper parliamentary accountability is that that would affect the tenor of the negotiations. Like every other Head of Government in the European Union, our Prime Minister would need to have at the back of her mind, “Can I deliver to the House of Commons what I am thinking of conceding?â€ Every other political leader in Europe will do that, because they will have to sell what they sign up to to their own Parliaments. If we do not have a meaningful vote, we will be the only member state whose negotiators are not under a legally or constitutionally binding commitment to sell the deal, because they will be able to make the deal and then come back to the House of Commons and the House of Lords and say, “This is it. What do you think of it?â€
The Father of the House is absolutely right that the Bill essentially gives the Government a blank cheque. On timing, the only commitment I can see in today's written ministerial statement from the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union about what will happen before we leave the EU is that the proposed withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill will be introduced before we leave. That is clearly unacceptable. Any piece of legislation seeking to do what that Bill has in mind must be passed before we leave the European Union, even if that means extending the process to maintain parliamentary sovereignty.
I agree entirely, and my next point is linked to that. The nature of the parliamentary approval cannot just be a motion; it must have statutory basis, which is the route that the Prime Minister has followed. There are various reasons for that, but the obvious one is the extremely uncertain status of resolutions of this House under current parliamentary practice. The Brexit Secretary is only the latest example of someone saying that anything that is not statutory is not legally enforceable, but just a “statement of intentâ€. The House of Commons keeps passing all kinds of motions with which I ferociously disagree, but they get carried by this House and make all kinds of criticisms of what the Government are doing. We have moved into a new era in which the Government are allowed to keep saying, “Parliament may pass motions, but they are worthless expressions of opinion. They are not part of our being accountable to the elected body of the House.â€
Of course the original plan was not to have a Bill, but to rely on statutory instruments under clause 9 to effect changes of constitutional significance. It was then made clear recently-I think on 17 November-that we will in fact have a Bill. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that to try to make such changes by secondary legislation just is not on? It is very unlikely that the courts would say that such constitutionally significant changes could be made under secondary legislation.
Again, I agree entirely, and that takes me back to something that has occurred all the way through this process. I am obviously standing here in disagreement with the Government, of whom I am critical in many respects, due to both the policy and how it has been conducted, but I have had some sympathy with them since the election, because they are trying to carry through this enormous, controversial and historic measure when they do not have a parliamentary majority, except when they can persuade the Democratic Unionist party to turn up and support them. The process started with the extraordinary suggestion that the royal prerogative would be invoked, that treaty making was not going to involve Parliament at all, and that leaving did not require parliamentary consent. Rather astonishingly, that matter had to be taken to court, and it came to a fairly predictable conclusion. The next idea-I will not repeat what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) said-was that everything would be done by statutory instruments under broad powers. However, we are slowly getting to what I would have thought is the fundamental minimum that a real parliamentary democracy should be demanding: the country will not be able to enter into a binding treaty commitment until the details have received full parliamentary approval. How we get there is no doubt a matter of some difficulty, but it must be addressed.
My right hon. and learned Friend said earlier that other Parliaments across Europe will have a say and we will not, but I posit that that is not true. This is about the withdrawal agreement, which will be agreed under qualified majority voting by the European Council, so it is not true that every Parliament across Europe will get a say on this subject.
Qualified majority voting is an excellent innovation achieved by the Thatcher Government when we were explaining to the other Europeans how they could have an effective free trade agreement. The number of times that British Governments have ever been outvoted under qualified majority voting is tiny. Qualified majority voting could be extremely important in these negotiations, because otherwise a Government of some small state-I will not name any, because they are all friendly-could suddenly decide they have some great lobby group at home that does not want to concede to the British something that the British Government have set out to achieve. The whole thing could then be held up. The agreement will have to go to all the Parliaments. The Parliament of Wallonia will no doubt be allowed to have a say, which, if this Government have their way, this Parliament will not. The Parliament of Wallonia will be allowed to have a say, and I am not sure whether the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments will-that remains to be seen. European Governments will all have to take a view and defend that view to their own Parliament in each and every case.
On a point of order, Dame Rosie. I seek your guidance on whether this is misleading the Committee. It is simply untrue to say that each Parliament will have a vote.
Qualified majority voting means that each Government cast a vote and, if we get a qualified majority, that is the effective decision. Each Minister who takes part in that vote is, of course, accountable to their own Parliament, to which they go home and defend their vote. If it is on a difficult, controversial subject, any sensible Minister-all those Ministers-will take the view of their Parliament before going to cast their vote on behalf of their country. It is utterly ludicrous to say that this Parliament should be denied a vote and not allowed a role because qualified majority voting somehow replaces it. My hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) says that what I say is untrue and, with great respect, I would say that his argument is an absurdity.
I respect my right hon. and learned Friend's consistency on this issue. He is on public record as having once said that he looks forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament will be nothing more than a council chamber of the European Parliament. When my right hon. and learned Friend says that leavers did not know what they were voting for, he risks sounding very condescending, because we knew exactly what we were voting for: to reclaim our laws and to reclaim our finances. Although one accepts his point that one cannot predict the future in any detail, that is as much true for the EU as it is for this country.
My hon. Friend is not the sort who usually repeats the more scurrilous right-wing rubbish that fanatical Eurosceptics come up with about what I have and have not said in the past. I am not, and never have been, a federalist. I would not pursue a united states of Europe. It is social media stuff to start throwing in that kind of thing when we are in the middle of a serious parliamentary debate. When the public were invited to vote in a referendum, they were invited to take back control, which was not defined. It was mainly about the borders and about the 70 million Turks and all the rest of it. They were told in the campaign that our trade with the European Union would not be affected in any way. Indeed, that is still being held out as a prospect by the Brexit Secretary and others, who seem to believe that they will get unfettered trade without any of the obligations. The discussions we have had in Committee on previous days about the details of what “single marketâ€ and “customs unionâ€ mean, and so on, would have been a mystery to anybody whose knowledge of the subject is confined to the arguments reported in the national media on both sides. Those arguments are largely rubbish, and it is now for this House to turn to the real world and decide in detail what we will do.
The Father of the House is right that there will be a qualified majority vote on the withdrawal agreement. That agreement will not go to each individual Parliament in the same way that the actual trade agreement will. Does he share the concerns of many people, as that now dawns upon them? They had thought that this place would have some sort of say on the trade deal-the actual final relationship that we will have with the European Union-but, actually, we will have no such say because the deal will not be finalised until after we have left the European Union. Does he agree that that is now concerning many citizens across the length and breadth of this land who did indeed apparently vote to take back control?
I agree entirely. My right hon. Friend eloquently underlines the point that the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford raised and that I am trying to make. We must have a meaningful vote before the final trade deal-indeed, the whole deal-is agreed by the Government. Let me try to lower the temperature by going back, as I rarely do, to reminisce for a moment.
My right hon. and learned Friend and, I believe, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), both concede that amendment 7, at this crucial moment, is defective and would not work for a variety of reasons. I have indulged what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has said about scrutiny and responsibility and the rest, but does he agree that it is not appropriate to press such an amendment to a vote when, in fact, it would make a nonsense of itself? It would be a meaningless vote about a meaningful vote.
No doubt my hon. Friend will catch your eye, Dame Rosie, when he will be able to explain why he thinks the amendment is technically defective, but this is the kind of argument we have had against every proposition that has been put forward throughout the passage of the Bill. I heard the Prime Minister personally promise us a meaningful vote and then go on to explain how the Bill would have to be used to make statutory instruments; so we are talking about the very wide powers in the Bill being used probably even before the end of the article 50 period-I think that is what she said. This amendment would prevent that; it would prevent those powers from being used until a statute has been passed by this House confirming its approval and also giving legal effect to whatever final agreement has been arrived at. I bow to my hon. Friend's legal skill-he was indeed in parliamentary law when he practised-but I cannot for the life of me see why this is defective.
I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but is it really that unreasonable that the Government might need to avail themselves of these powers in clause 9 while the withdrawal and implementation Bill is proceeding through the House of Commons? If the timetable is compressed, that Bill would not be on the statute book and the powers there would not be available. So clause 9 is necessary for that purpose. Of course the withdrawal and implementation Bill could circumscribe the powers in clause 9 and indeed close them off once that Bill is on the statute book.
The hon. Gentleman has pre-empted a point I was going to come to. In the scenario he gives, there is no need for the timetable necessarily to be compressed. If it were squeezed, what would that say about the role that Parliament will have on the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill? In his scenario, there would also be no need for the secondary legislation in this Bill, which could be included in a similar form in the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill, when we would have a better idea about what it will be needed for and can more adequately circumscribe its scope. As for this idea that we have a withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill making its way through this House at the same time as secondary legislation implementing elements of that agreement hang over this place, such an approach would create serious confusion.
Has it come to the hon. Gentleman's attention that, were the Bill passed without either amendment 7 or amendment 4 being made, and were there then a change of Government to one who believe in a hard Brexit, we could leave the European Union on absolutely no agreement, with no deal and no recourse whatever to this Parliament to have any say in that, because the Bill is completely silent about what would happen in the event of no deal?
The right hon. Lady makes a very important point. Although I concede that amendment 7 provides for an additional check because it requires primary legislation, our new clause 66 highlights an important point: we would wish to bind the Government so that Parliament would get a say even in the event of a no-deal scenario. I shall return to that point later.
I cannot resist.
The hon. Gentleman is concerned about the potential for a compressed timetable and the consequences of what may flow from that, but is that not actually following from the will and vote of Parliament? Parliament passed into law article 50, which it agreed to by bringing the Lisbon treaty into law, so this is the natural consequence of what Parliament itself has determined.
The hon. Gentleman is right that the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 and the article 50 notification gave effect to their own timetable. That is why it is so important that we have transitional arrangements on current terms that allow us flexibility to negotiate the final deal. I will return to this point later, but there is no way that, before we leave in March 2019, we will have agreed the future relationship. We will have agreed heads of terms at best.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
I just want to clarify whether the hon. Gentleman means what I think he means by what he just said. Does he mean that if the House did not approve a withdrawal agreement, his view is that the Government should have to ask for an indefinite extension of article 50 until the House has approved a set-up that it finds acceptable?
I do not think that is necessarily the case, for several reasons. First, there is no reason why a withdrawal agreement cannot be reached, perhaps even sooner than October 2018-
You told us it would take a long time.
I think it will take a long time. The Minister can confirm this, but I assume the Government would be pleased to conclude the withdrawal agreement before October 2018, if possible. However, there are several things that might happen, one of which is that the Government go back to the negotiating table and try to improve on the deal. I cannot see what is unreasonable about filling in the gaps or asking for revisions, were that the expressed will of the House.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way yet again. I think that he has just confirmed not that it would necessarily follow that the Government would have to extend indefinitely, but that it would be possible that the Government, in his view, should have to extend indefinitely because this House had not agreed to the withdrawal agreement. In other words, he is saying, is he not, that, if this House does not approve the terms on which we leave, until and unless it approves the terms on which we leave, we should not leave. Is he saying that, or not?
What I am saying is that there is any number of options that might happen, but let us bear in mind there is a period after October 2018 for the Government to return to the negotiating table and seek to revise or improve the terms. It does not necessarily mean an extension of article 50-I know that the right hon. Gentleman is trying to draw me down that path.
I wish to make a little progress. That is why we tabled new clause 66, which would guarantee, by means of prescribing when exit day for the purposes of this Bill can be appointed, that both Houses have a meaningful vote on the terms of the UK's withdrawal from the EU and, just as critically, a vote in the event that no such agreement is reached and the Government are determined to take us out of the EU without a deal-a catastrophic scenario that would result in legal chaos, significant damage to our economy, the erection of a hard border in Northern Ireland and serious harm to Britain's standing in the world. We have consistently called for the Government to make it clear that no deal is not a viable outcome.
In the event of a no deal, people are concerned about falling into World Trade Organisation rules and tariffs, but will my hon. Friend confirm that, of course, the WTO does not cover services, which are the majority-in fact, 80%-of our exports and which require intricate, detailed negotiations? In the case of a car, two thirds of it are now services and often parts of the car go across borders. Therefore, does he not accept that having no deal would not be a disaster-it would be a catastrophe?
I agree with my hon. Friend's point about services. I say to all hon. Members who are happy to contemplate a scenario in which the Government walk away from the negotiations and this House is merely a spectator in that outcome, that that is not acceptable and this House should not accept it.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will make some progress, I am afraid, because a number of hon. Members wish to speak. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) will do so. New clause 66 would ensure that there is a vote on a motion, not just in the event of a withdrawal agreement being concluded, but, crucially, when no such deal has been concluded, should that be the case. That outcome appears less likely following the agreement the Government reached last week and the clarification that the default position in the event of no deal will be regulatory alignment, but it remains a possibility, and Parliament must have a say. As I have said, there are many, many ways of ensuring that Parliament has a meaningful vote. Amendment 7, tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), is very well drafted. I do not think that it is deficient. We would definitely support it and we would not press new clause 66 if he pressed it to a vote.
May I say now that that amendment either has to be accepted by my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench, or it will be put to the vote?
I am very, very pleased to hear that. We will support the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the amendment in that eventuality. I will conclude by saying that, subject to the kind of constraint that would be put in place if amendment 7 were incorporated into the Bill, we remain of the view that the power to appoint an exit day for the purposes of the Bill should be placed in the hands of Parliament, not Ministers, and also that the flexibility inherent in clause 14 with regard to exit day should be retained, because it is essential to finalising in some scenarios a withdrawal agreement and any transitional arrangements that need to be agreed to. We need only look at the mess last week to justify the need for such flexibility. As such, we believe that amendments 381 and 382 tabled by the Government with the aim of putting a specified exit date, and indeed time, in the Bill are an ill-conceived and unnecessary gimmick and on that basis we intend to oppose them if they are pushed to a vote. This whole debate is about whether right hon. and hon. Members are content for Parliament to be a spectator, a passive observer, of one of the most important decisions that has faced our country in generations. Parliament must have a grip on the process, which is why we have tabled our amendments and new clauses.
My right hon. and learned Friend will know that I have never participated in any of that sort of language. May I gently put it to him that amendment 7 leaves open at least the possibility that, given that the EU does not want any member to leave and that there is therefore no incentive for it to negotiate a good deal that would be acceptable to this Parliament, we could find ourselves in a permanent state of limbo, deadlocked in unproductive negotiations?
Is not the advantage of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's very helpful amendment that it would give certainty? It would nail down, in black and white, what we have agreed and would place a legal responsibility on the Government. We would then avoid a situation whereby what people think has been agreed simply becomes a statement of intent within a matter of hours and days.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I hope that I will be able to develop some of those points in a moment. As was rightly said by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the Government had a notion when this debate started that it was possible to pull out of the European Union by use of the royal prerogative. Fortunately, time, common sense, debate and a small amount of judicial intervention has pointed out that that is not possible. As a consequence, my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench have correctly begun to understand that in fact there has to be a proper process. I appreciate the points that have been made about a meaningful vote and how we can actually get that in the context of Brexit; it is a real, live issue. Nevertheless, I greatly welcome the written ministerial statement, which sets out what appears to be a constitutionally tenable process for Parliament approving or considering the deal by motion, and then moving on to implement the deal by primary legislation. Of course, the Government know that they must proceed by primary legislation because, in view of the comments during the Miller case, it is blindingly apparent that there must be a serious risk of legal uncertainty if anything other than a statute were to be used to take us out of the EU at the end. That is the last thing that my right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench should want, because that will cause even more trouble and difficulty than they already have in the challenges they have to face.
I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will forgive me if I appear pedantic, but does not this Bill and the enactment of article 50 take us out of the European Union at the end, whereas the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill legislate for the consequences?
Yes. If, indeed, we were leaving with nothing further to do, that might be a good point. But it seems to be a pretty universal view, even on the Government Benches-although this perhaps does not apply to my hon. Friend-that simply leaving to jump off the top of the tower block is not the best thing to do. Therefore, there will need to be primary legislation to implement the undoubted new constitutional order that we will have after 29 March 2019.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
May I just make a tiny bit more progress? As the Government's position has shifted, they have come up with a written ministerial statement, which seems accurately to reflect the right direction of travel. But the difficulty is that clause 9 is entirely incompatible with what the Government have set out.
I happen to agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that it would be undesirable for us to leave without an agreement. Indeed, I think that the Government agree with that. But I will go back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) a moment ago. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, in the event that it were not possible to reach a further agreement, it would then be the case that the actions of Parliament already taken-including in triggering article 50-would constitute a proper answer to the Supreme Court's point that Parliament, and Parliament alone, can remove us from the EU?
Yes, I think I agree with my right hon. Friend that the action of Parliament in triggering article 50 would do that. But it is not, I think, the intention of the Government to do any such thing, and never has been. Indeed, if it is the intention of the Government to do such a thing, I hope very much that they will tell me as soon as possible, because I think I might be withdrawing my support from them.
Is not the point that, everything else being equal, even if nothing else happens, article 50 has been triggered so we are leaving the European Union on a set date, unless 27 other countries decide to extend the date? Therefore, this argument is about the UK's internal process. It is not a question of the EU or anyone else holding things up.
There are a series of processes. I do not wish to get too diverted from my main point. We are intending, and will require, a further statute in order to achieve what the Government have set out. I hope very much that we do not leave with a no deal on anything, because we would not be able to fly off to Rome on the day after, we would have no security co-operation and we would, indeed, be mired in complete and utter chaos. The reality is that clause 9 is incompatible with the programme that the Government have set out. At the time that clause 9 was inserted, I think that the Government had not yet fully worked out the implications of how withdrawal had to take place.
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
In a moment. I do not wish to take up too much of the Committee's time. My point brings me to the specifics of clause 9, which is an extraordinary and wide power to remove us from the EU by statutory instrument, and moreover-this is the most telling point-to ask the House to give the Government effectively a blank cheque to draft statutory instruments to achieve something when at the moment we do not know what that is.
I am listening very carefully, but clause 9 is not about implementing our leaving the European Union; it is about implementing a withdrawal agreement. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) did not vote for article 50, but my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) did. That is when he voted to leave the European Union and that is decided, so he is incorrect to say that clause 9 is deciding when or how we leave the European Union.
If I may say so, I think my hon. Friend has misunderstood what I said. The fact is that clause 9 provides a power, exercisable once this Bill comes into force before exit day, to implement something when we do not at present know what that is. Therefore, it is a very strange thing to ask Parliament to sign off.
Is not the supreme irony the fact that clause 9 is actually the child of article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which the Government are now supporting? This provision is the Lisbon treaty timetable. It is not in any way trying to give power or control back to this House to amend that in any way or to ensure that the UK leaves the European Union at the time that is fortuitous. The UK is just accepting what is in the Lisbon treaty and the Government have welded themselves to that very idea.
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Ultimately, the centre of this point is that we are being asked to give the Government a power that can be exercised on something, but we do not know what that something is. Logically, the moment to make the statutory instruments to enact our withdrawal would come when we have this further statute-whatever it happens to be called-and have debated it in this House. We will then have structured the powers conferred by statutory instrument to achieve what Parliament wants and thinks is necessary to carry out withdrawal. That is the point, and pre-empting matters in this fashion is odd. Indeed, it is so odd that I heard one Minister-I will not reveal who-informally saying that they questioned whether the clause 9 power was in fact still needed, in view of how the Government were progressing this matter.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
If my right hon. and learned Friend's version of what our vote would be were to prevail, rather than the Government's version, what would happen if, close to our leaving date, Parliament voted against any agreement there might have been and against no deal?
Ultimately, as my right hon. Friend knows, this Parliament is sovereign, although its sovereignty does not extend to concluding agreements with other parties in international relations that the Government do not wish to adhere to or sign up to. I have no idea what the circumstances are going to be in 12 months' time. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich: we are dealing with a whole series of hypothetical questions. I get a bit fed up when I keep on being asked, “What is it? Surely, it is a choice between the deal on offer and no deal.â€ I do not know. There is no way that any of us can know, and that is why the process matters so much. If we get the process right, we will answer correctly each question as and when it arises. Far from that hurting or damaging the Government, it will enhance their power. To come back to the point I made in an intervention, it will convey an impression of purpose and method to our EU partners in negotiation, whereas, at the moment, the major thing that has been undermining our negotiations is the impression of chaos in our procedure and our aims.
I am extremely intrigued by the line that my right hon. and learned Friend has taken, with which I largely agree in relation not to the substance, but to the deficiencies he now seems to have accepted could, in some shape or other, be tidied up, as he put it, on Report if we were to get to that unfortunate situation. I simply ask him: is he able to elucidate how his amendment would actually work in practice?
I have been pleading with the Government throughout the past four weeks, pointing out to them that this is a really important amendment, and asking them please to respond to it. I have asked them what alternative they might have that could persuade me that they had a working proposal that should command the approval of the House and my own approval. I have been doing that repeatedly, and I was striving to achieve those things last week, but the blunt reality is-I am sorry to have to say this to the Committee-that I have been left in the lurch as a Back Bencher trying to improve this legislation, because silence has fallen. There has simply not been a credible explanation. The last explanation was, “Here is your written ministerial statement. That ought to be enough for you. In loyalty, you should now support the Government.â€ However, that does not answer the question.
Has my right hon. and learned Friend also looked at this issue: does he think that, should the Government decide that the best deal is the European Free Trade Association-we would effectively be Norway-some right hon. and hon. Government Members have worked out that, without his amendment or the new clause moved by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), this country would become like Norway and go straight into EFTA, without this Parliament having a say on whether that is what leave meant?
It would indeed be a remarkable outcome. Certainly, I think that Parliament ought to have a say. Those reasons highlight the difficulty of clause 9. There are other difficulties with the Bill, but clause 9 really has it. I want to bring my remarks to an end, and I simply say that I do want the Government to listen. The opportunity is here for them to accept the amendment and then to come back on Report and explain themselves further or to tidy the amendment up, and I will listen and try constructively to help them if, indeed, any of this power is needed, but I am not prepared to sign off clause 9 in its present form. The one merit of amendment 7-I tailored it very carefully and I tried quite deliberately to avoid the no-deal scenario, which is a very legitimate issue, but it is not what I went for-is that I wanted to make sure that these powers could not be used to pre-empt a statute that we should probably be considering this time next year. It is plainly wrong, and if it is to be departed from, the Government have to provide a credible reason for it.
May I ask my right hon. and learned Friend about a point I am struggling with and that others may be struggling with, too? On the one hand, given that the Government have conceded that there will need to be a statute to implement any agreement, it is difficult, for me at any rate, to see what the point is of clause 9, and Parliament should not legislate in vain. That is point one. On the other hand is the key point not that we will get a vote on that statute, so does this really matter? That is the part I am struggling with, and I would very much welcome my right hon. and learned Friend's views.
The right hon. Gentleman is getting to the nub of the issue. If a meaningful vote, by his definition, means that Parliament should be able to say to the Government, “We don't like the deal that you have got, and we're not accepting no deal, so go back to the EU and negotiate another deal,â€ what chance does he think there is that those who do not want us to leave in the first place will ever offer a deal that this House could buy into?
The hon. Gentleman anticipates precisely the point that I was going to make- I was. As we have already heard, all the Ministers and Prime Ministers who negotiate in this process will say at some point, either in the main forum or in other discussions, “I'll never get this through my Parliament.â€ That is the accountability we are talking about. It is called democracy, and it is really important that Ministers, Prime Ministers and negotiators have that thought in their minds when they are negotiating on behalf of the country and the House. In such circumstances, I think the House would first want to ask why we were facing no deal, and it might well wish to give the Government fresh negotiating instructions. The House might want to tell the Government to go back in and say, “On reflection, we would like to suggest that we do the following.â€ There must be sufficient time for that to take place if we are going to get a reasonable deal. Another point I want to make-I am conscious, Sir David, of what you said about the time-is that Ministers need to understand why they are having such difficulty with this fundamental debate on the Bill. It has to do with the history of the Government's handling of the whole process. At every single stage, this House has had to demand our role and our voice. I remember the answer when people first asked what the Government's negotiating objectives were: “Brexit means Brexit.â€ When a follow-up question was asked, we were told-
A red, white and blue Brexit.
I am still wrestling with the concept of a red, white and blue Brexit, and I did not find it very enlightening. The second answer was, “No running commentary,â€ but that eventually had to give way to the Lancaster House speech and a White Paper. Then we asked, “Will Parliament get a vote?â€ Almost exactly a year ago, when the Prime Minister last appeared before the Liaison Committee, I asked her that question. She was unwilling to give me a commitment on that occasion, but we all pressed, and in the end the Government conceded that there would be a vote. We argued that there would need to be separate primary legislation to implement the withdrawal agreement, but what did the Government do? They produced this Bill, which says, “No, no. We'll just do it all by statutory instrument.â€ That was until amendment 7 appeared on the horizon, at which point the Government changed their mind. If the Committee insists, as I hope it will, on amendment 7 later today, that will be because of our experience of the Government's handling of the Bill so far. They have not acted in the spirit of seeking consensus, even though the Prime Minister said earlier that that was what she wanted to achieve. The final point I want to make is simply this. Parliament has no intention of being a bystander in this process. We intend to be a participant, as I have said on a number of occasions, because this decision affects every part of the country, every business and every family. Today's debate and vote are all about control, which must ultimately rest not in Ministers' hands but in our hands. It is up to us to make sure that that happens.
Until now, with the exception of some interventions, I believe that all contributions have been, in one way or another, in support of amendment 7 and its correlative amendments. I hope, Sir David, that you will allow me a little leeway with timing to address my points, because I do believe that the debate has so far been one-sided. I want to start by talking about the speech made by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who was characteristically good-humoured and articulate, and the fine speech from the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook). I will then turn to amendment 7 and the speech made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). They all brought the cat out of the bag very well. As I will explain in a moment, I distinguish between what the Opposition are after and what my right hon. and learned Friend is after. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central and the Opposition spokesman in effect said this. The House of Commons voted by a vast majority for a referendum, the people by a narrow majority voted to leave and the House of Commons voted by a vast majority to trigger article 50, which says:“The Treaties shall cease to apply...from the date of...the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notificationâ€. That has been accurately described by some on the EU side of the negotiations as an inevitable process to leaving, but the Opposition say that the House should be capable of telling the Government that they must seek to reverse the process by seeking-not necessarily by obtaining, because we cannot guarantee that they would obtain-
That was not what I said.
Yes, that is what the right hon. Gentleman said. The logic of what he was saying carries us remorselessly there, and I will come on to explain why.
indicated dissent.
The right hon. Gentleman cannot continue to shake his head with conviction. His logic carries him there because he defines a meaningful vote as one that gives the House the capacity to reject either a deal it does not like, or the possibility of exiting with no deal. This is not a matter of opinion or value; it is a matter of logical fact. The only alternative to accepting a deal that we do not like or refusing to accept no deal is to leave the whole matter aside and not exit the Union. We either exit without a deal or we exit with a deal. If the deal is rejected but the Government are told that we cannot leave without a deal, we cannot leave.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I will, of course, give way to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment. I just wanted to expose the logic very clearly, because there are no other logical possibilities. I challenge him to explain what the other possibility is.
I set out-very clearly I thought-in my speech what the other possibility is. For the avoidance of any doubt on the right hon. Gentleman's part, I have said repeatedly in this House that we are leaving the European Union at the end of March 2019-and, indeed, I voted for the article 50 legislation. I was discussing today the terms on which we will leave. It is perfectly possible for Parliament to look at the terms and say, “We do not like them; we would like different ones,â€ and to give the Government different instructions, provided that there is time. That was my point.
Of course it is possible for the House of Commons to tell the Government that it does not like the terms, and of course it is possible for the Government to go back and ask for the terms to be changed, but it is also possible-
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Please, allow me to continue. It is also perfectly possible, as the right hon. Member for Leeds Central knows, because he is a fine logician, for the other side in the EU negotiations to reject such alternative terms. We therefore hit the question that he cannot evade: under those circumstances, is he or is he not hoping-the Opposition spokesman made what he was hoping for perfectly clear-that Parliament will have the right to tell the Government that they cannot leave on terms that Parliament does not accept? I really think that that is important, if we are to be honest about this, because that is what the right hon. Gentleman and the Opposition spokesman are suggesting.
I have no doubt that it is also what the right hon. Lady who is now seeking to catch my eye wishes to suggest. I will let her do so, and then I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford).
The logic of the right hon. Gentleman's position is that he wants to rule out any possibility for Parliament even to ask the Government to go back to the negotiating table. Of course he is right that, in the end, this is about a negotiation, and the 27 other European countries will have a view and such a negotiation will take place. The logic of his position, however, is that he wants to rule out any say for Parliament at all, or any attempt by Parliament to ask the Government to try to get a different or better deal, or to change the terms, and that makes absolutely no sense at all for anybody who believes in the role of Parliament.
First, the right hon. Lady has said nothing to contradict my point about what she and other Labour Members are arguing, and secondly, as a matter of fact, that is not a correct characterisation of my position. I am perfectly happy that Parliament should ask the Government, if there is time, to go back and reconsider the terms they are negotiating. I have no problem with that at all. The question is what happens if they cannot succeed in negotiating those terms and, in the end, we reach that crunch point.
I am not going to give way to anyone except my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford.
May I take my right hon. Friend back to what he said about article 50? It is true that that says:“The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unlessâ€-I repeat, unless-“the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.â€That is exactly the point. If we are close to a deal but, for example, struggling to get the last vote through the European Parliament, the 28 countries may wish to take a little more time.
My hon. Friend makes my point for me. The very point I am making is that no UK Government and no UK Parliament can guarantee that the other side would agree to any such thing.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I will not give way.
I will give way to the Opposition spokesman in a moment. There therefore can arise circumstances in which the choice, in the end, is between accepting leaving with no deal and not accepting leaving. I continue to believe-it is important that there is honesty on this point-that Opposition Members are essentially arguing that this House should have the ability to derail the process.
I do not think that that is a fair characterisation of my argument. The right hon. Gentleman has said that there is a possibility, in certain circumstances, of sending the Government back to ask for the deal to be changed. It is possible that that might be turned down, so it is not certain, but it is possible. Does he think that that should be an option, and if so, if he votes against amendment 7, what other mechanism might we use to send the Government back to at least try to improve a deal that this House felt was sub-optimal?
I am very happy to answer that question, and it will bring me neatly on to the point I want to make about the amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield. The answer, of course, lies in the combination of the proceedings on the resolution that will have to be agreed by this House, during which it will be perfectly possible for this House, both in debate and in the way it votes, to tell the Government, if there is time, to go back and try again; and of the proceedings on the withdrawal and implementation Bill, during which again, if there is time, the House could reject the proposition and ask the Government to go back. We then come to the nub of what happens if there is no time anymore because the Government cannot get a renegotiation and cannot get an agreement-a further prolongation-of the kind that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford describes. The question arises of whether Opposition Front Benchers are recommending, in those circumstances, that leaving without a deal is the possibility it needs to be for article 50 and the referendum to be respected. That is a crunch question that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich cannot avoid.
I will be brief, and then leave it there, but I want to pick up on two of the right hon. Gentleman's points. First, I think there will be time. Last week's joint agreement makes it clear that there must be time, in accordance with our own procedures, to look at the withdrawal agreement and then ratify it. The right hon. Gentleman said that there is a possibility, on the basis of the Government's commitment to a motion, to send them back to renegotiate, but that is not what his Secretary of State says. The Secretary of State says of the motion it is an up/down deal, and that a no vote would be the end of it-leaving without an agreement; not going back to the negotiating table.
There is no possibility of precluding Parliament from making such a resolution one way or the other. That is up to Parliament, and it is up to the Government of the day at that point to respond as they choose. No Government would sensibly respond in the way the hon. Gentleman describes, so I do not think that that is a realistic possibility.
I will give way to each of my hon. Friends, but let me say that I will not then give way again before I turn to the main part of my speech, which is about amendment 7.
My right hon. Friend will be aware that all parties are aiming for next October for the negotiation of the final deal, but the Secretary of State has said that he will keep negotiating until March 2019 and that, if necessary, he will go on after that into the implementation period, so there should be time one way or another.
I agree with my hon. Friend. There may well be time; I am not in any way denying that. The point I was trying to make is that Labour Members have alleged that it is proper for Parliament to be able to have what they have described as a meaningful vote. They have made it perfectly clear that what they mean by a meaningful vote includes the ability to tell the Government that they cannot continue to leave the European Union if the terms on which they wish to leave are not acceptable to Parliament. That is a logical fact, and people can agree with it or disagree with it. I do not in any way impugn the motives of Labour Members; it is a perfectly reasonable thing for them to think. It is just that we ought to be honest about the fact that that is the proposition they are putting forward, which is in marked contrast to the point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield in his amendment 7.
May I suggest that amendment 7, as presently drafted-this is central to my right hon. Friend's point-has a major deficiency, because it could leave things in a permanent state of limbo? There is no incentive on the EU's side to help to negotiate a good deal that is acceptable to this Parliament, which means that we could be left in deadlock for a period of years. I raised that point with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), but he did not cover it in his speech.
My right hon. Friend perfectly clearly sets out that a serious constitutional impasse is possible if this House does not pass an agreement, because article 50, even if it is delayed a bit, will eventually lead to our leaving. That assumes-he does not do so, but some of the more hard-line Eurosceptics do-that there are people in the EU who want no deal. I have never met any such person, because actually they would suffer from having no agreements on flights, security, policing and all the rest of it. As has been said, we are inevitably dealing with hypotheses and nobody, whatever their views, really has the first idea where we will be in 18 months' time, but his suggestion is a most unlikely consequence. If this House rejected a deal, the British Government would go back and say, “We've got to have a better one.â€ I personally would guess that the other 27 nation states would reconsider and see whether they did not have to give a better one in order to the get the deal that they had already tried to sign up to.
I think that is a very possible eventuality, which takes us back to our earlier discussion. I certainly agree that if, upon a resolution, the House refused to accept the withdrawal agreement suggested by the Government and agreed by the EU, it is very likely that the Government would go back and try to renegotiate it, and it is very possible that they would succeed in doing so. I do not deny any of that. My point is that amendment 7 would not force that result, because all it would do is, under certain circumstances, stop certain kinds of orders being issued under this Bill.
I picked this amendment with some care, precisely because I wanted to avoid the suggestion that by tabling it I was trying to sabotage Brexit. I was trying to prevent the potentially abusive use of a power in clause 9 when the Government were saying that they were going to do something different. That was the purpose behind the amendment. It was also, if I might say so, to prod the Government into responding, which I very much regret they have failed to do.
I am delighted by my right hon. and learned Friend's intervention, because I agree that he has succeeded in doing that. He has not created the so-called meaningful vote that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central and the Opposition want. He has instead pointed out an issue with the use of the order-making power in this Bill. The question is: is it a good amendment in those terms? We have accepted that it is not a question of creating or not creating a meaningful vote, to use the term used by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central, but just a question of trying to get the Bill into good order-a pursuit in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield and I have joined on many occasions during Committee proceedings. However, I think that on this particular occasion, this particular amendment is not a particularly good way of doing that. I will explain why I think that is the case, and I hope that the Government will instead come forward with another way of achieving the same effect. It is a very odd situation indeed to have an amendment to what will become a section of an Act that refers to another piece of primary legislation as the basis for an order-making power in the first piece of legislation. In fact I think it is virtually unprecedented.
The Bill is unprecedented, because it is asking us, in the light of what the Government themselves say they are going to do, to sanction a power that undermines a further statute that the Government intend to pass, which should be the source of power for removing us from the EU.
Now I am beginning rather to agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. Therefore, my suggestion is that if that is the purpose of his amendment, it would be far better that it come back as a Government amendment on Report that achieves that effect in a different way and directly, without the gross inelegance of referring to another piece of legislation. It should mainly limit the power in clause 9 to things that are urgent and immediate, and perhaps even specify what sorts of things they might be. As a matter of fact, I rather share my right hon. and learned Friend's inclination to believe that clause 9 in its present form came forward before the Government were clear about the need for the implementation and withdrawal Bill, and that Ministers and officials have so far been quite hard pressed to identify exactly which powers are required in clause 9 under the new dispensation of that forthcoming Bill. The Government therefore have a good opportunity to promise from the Dispatch Box today that they will come back on Report with an amendment that is correctly phrased in such a way as to limit the order-making power in clause 9. That would avoid the possibility-this is the point that I want to make to my right hon. and learned Friend and other hon. Friends-of suggesting that we are in any way creating a launch pad for the efforts of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central and Opposition Front Benchers to create what they call a meaningful vote, which is in fact an ability to trigger us not leaving.
There will undoubtedly be an opportunity at the end of this process, if this House were so minded, to reject a deal. I have to say-my right hon. Friend may agree with me-that ultimately the House could bring this Government down, if it had to or wanted to do so. That is our constitutional ability. My right hon. Friend's main point does not find favour with me, because the only way we will get something sensible on Report is by getting amendment 7 on the statute book and on the face of the Bill. I asked repeatedly for an engagement along precisely the lines that my right hon. Friend has identified, and it was consistently rejected. That is why I will vote for amendment 7, and if I may say so, I would encourage him to do likewise.
I am surprised by that, because my right hon. and learned Friend has a long and distinguished record of voting for good law. I do not think that this is good law, for the reasons I have identified. I think it really would be better if we had a correct amendment at a later stage of proceedings.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the current plans create the risk of parallel legislation, with an Act of Parliament dealing with our withdrawal agreement going through at the same time as all sorts of orders, because there is no trigger mechanism for, or constraint on, the order-making power? Therefore, is not my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), the former Attorney General, doing the House a service by seeking to avoid the risk of parallel proceedings, which is something that this House never does?
I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that we ought to avoid the possibility of parallel proceedings, but my suggestion would certainly achieve that. If the Government were to come forward at a later stage with an amendment that made it clear that clause 9 could be used only for urgent things of a specified kind, that would prevent the possibility of parallel proceedings.
May I suggest another way forward, which is that we agree to the amendment and then, given that this is Committee stage, the Government can go away and fine-tune it, which is what they thought it needed? They had the opportunity to the table their own amendment, but they did not see that commitment through and table one by 3 o'clock on Friday. There is another way. Let us vote on and accept the amendment today and put a meaningful vote in the Bill; and if it needs a twiddle and a tweak, we can come back on Report and I am sure we will all agree to that.
But if my right hon. Friend agrees with me that our purpose in this case is not to create a so-called meaningful vote but simply to ensure that clause 9 is not used to create parallel proceedings or to give carte blanche, it would clearly make sense for the Government to make that undertaking rather than to accept an amendment that has an unnecessary effect.
Looking at this matter independently, as one does these days, it strikes me that my right hon. Friend's argument raises a serious question about why clause 9 needs to be in the Bill at all. We are going to have a withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill, and if the Government cannot say what it is that might be urgent, why should we have this clause at all?
Now that there is to be an implementation and withdrawal agreement Bill I do not personally yet understand the need for clause 9. However, the right way to deal with that is for the Government either to say that they will consider getting rid of clause 9 or to make the kind of restricted amendments on Report that I was describing. In any of those ways, the problem would be resolved without the need for this kind of tension, and that would surely be desirable.
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way again. In a sense, he unmasks my strategy. I have spent the whole time trying to be sotto voce about this, trying to get some common sense into the Government, which I have been unable to do. It is for that reason that, I very much regret, there really is no alternative to amendment 7. It may be inelegant-although I do not think it is-but it does the business. It would stop the Government doing something that they should not be doing. I could not agree with him more that clause 9 could be removed entirely. It would very sensible if the Government were to do that, but if I had suggested that they would have been upset with me, and it would have made the relationship and the negotiation even harder. In the spirit of conciliation I avoided that brutality and came up with something different.
Speaking personally, I do not think there would be anything very brutal about the Government deciding on Report that it would be sensible to not have clause 9 in the Bill, given that there will now be a separate piece of legislation to achieve the same effect.
I hope that means the right hon. Gentleman is now calling on the Government not to move that clause 9 stand part of the Bill, and that, if they do not do that and instead insist that clause 9 does stand part of the Bill, he will vote against it. That is the obvious logic of what he is saying.
It was with some regret that I gave way to the hon. Gentleman. I have never known him to take a position that was not partisan and slightly ludicrous, and that was a classic example. Here am I irenically trying to achieve a result that would be in the interests of the nation-good legislation that has the effect my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield agrees he is trying to achieve, but which would not have the disadvantage of enabling the Opposition Front Benchers, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central and others, including the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), to achieve the meaningful vote they want to achieve. But what does he want to do? He wants to create some trouble. Well, that is fine-that is what happens in Parliament. My suggestion, however, is not that the Government should be defeated tonight or engage in some huge reversal, but that they should make the sort of change they often make in Committee and on Report-there is, after all, much time to consider the issue on Report if necessary. I want them either to make an adjustment to clause 9 or remove it. That would overcome the difficulty without creating a platform for ending our withdrawal, which is I think the subterranean motive of many on the Opposition Benches-although not, I stress, of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield.
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I will give way two last times and then I really must sit down, because I have said everything I wanted to say and I am now just responding.
I am afraid I am little overwhelmed by the legal expertise all around me-I will just speak very plainly. Does my right hon. Friend not understand the difficulty and the trust issue when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield has been trying for weeks and weeks, with all good intentions, to engage the Government in this process and has failed? There comes a point when enough is enough and the voice of Parliament has a role in saying, “Put this in the Bill.â€
I understand what my hon. Friend is saying, but I do not agree with her. There is a well established process for Bills in this House that includes a Report stage. If one wishes to table an amendment in the House of Commons that the Government will not accept, it is perfectly possible to do so on Report. There is no reason to force the issue in Committee. As a matter of fact, the Bill will proceed through the other place, where there will be many, many proceedings. I do not have the slightest doubt-I am sure all my hon. Friends would agree-that it will send messages back to this place, so that will give us another opportunity. I do not stress that, though; it is enough that we have the Report stage. I quite agree that there is a mischief here, but I think it is a restricted mischief and I do not think the amendment is needed to deal with it. There are other means of dealing with it. It could be done on Report, and I therefore do not think that “enough is enoughâ€ applies now.
The right hon. Gentleman has been digging a hole for himself on clause 9 quite successfully. The way he has been speaking, he seems not to understand that the amendment would only giving the House the possibility of a vote. Given the way the Brexiteers have been winning every vote, if a vote was held on a deal the only reason it would be lost is if it was a terrible deal for the UK. His argument is the equivalent of somebody setting sail on the Titanic and refusing to take any lifeboats.
It is very odd-it is as if the hon. Gentleman has not been here, but I have seen his body here all the time. The fact of the matter is that the House has had a series of votes, it is going to have a further series of votes, and then it is going to have a whole pile of votes on, inter alia, the new implementation and withdrawal Bill. In fact, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield is totally in agreement with that. There is no question of whether we give the House a vote. It is going to have a vote. The question is: what is the articulation of that with clause 9? That is what those of us who are being serious about this have been trying to discuss. I really feel that I have come to the end of my remarks. I apologise, Sir David, that I am long past time. I hope you will accept that it is because I was answering points from other Members.
We have been discussing new clause 3 and amendment 7, which is about process in this place and, as has been said, whether there is any point in clause 9 if there is going to be a withdrawal agreement Bill. The problem is that, if clause 9 remains in the Bill, the Government will still have powers in the interim to make changes, including to the Bill itself. That means that, when the Bill completes, the Executive could simply change it in any way they wanted. On the issue of having a vote that is meaningful, if the only option we have is the deal that comes back or no deal, frankly, that is Hobson's choice. What should have been happening is what the Prime Minister categorically refused: a running commentary. Other Governments in Europe have sent people back to the negotiating table to try to make changes when legislation has been enacted. It is important that we remember the paucity of the debate running up to June 2016. We did not explore all the impacts. There was one debate in this Chamber on the EU and the economy. There was no debate in this Chamber on the health or social impacts, or on the loss of rights and opportunities. We did not have that. We did not air these issues-it is like having the Brexit debate now. I want to speak to amendment 143, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), which looks for a signed agreement to protect EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU.
On a point of order, Sir David. I am not able to hear what the hon. Lady is saying because behind me there seems to be an inordinate racket being made by one of my colleagues. I wonder whether it would be in order for you, Sir David, to make the point clear that this is an incredibly important debate and Members of Parliament should be able to hear what is being said.
Thank you, Sir David. I hope, as my party's Front-Bench representative, and perhaps as the only SNP Member who will get to speak, that that timing does not apply to me. I also wish to speak to amendment 241, which stands in my name and those of my colleagues, and which would preserve reciprocal healthcare and social security rights under the social security co-ordination regulations 883/2004 and 987/200, and to amendments 270 and 271, which stand in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) and which would prevent the Executive from using clauses 8 and 9 to reduce the rights of EU citizens in this country. There was supposedly a breakthrough last week. The phase 1 agreement having been achieved, some level of agreement was meant to be fixed, but unfortunately it was then unpicked on “The Andrew Marr Showâ€. Moreover, we are still hearing the phrase, “No deal is better than a bad dealâ€, which completely undermines the agreement made last week. I make this plea: having reached a phase 1 agreement on citizens' rights, this issue should now be taken out of the negotiations and a deal to give them security should be brought forward in the upcoming immigration Bill, and not left another year for the withdrawal agreement Bill. It has been a year and a half already. Many Members know that my husband is German. There are many people here with EU spouses. We have friends who have been in extreme anxiety and uncertainty for a year and a half. This is not happening in March 2019; it is happening now. Ten thousand EU nationals have left the four NHSs because their children are being bullied and they feel insecure. They are going home “to be safeâ€. That is an appalling indictment of the current situation.
The hon. Lady is making an incredibly strong point, and one that gets lost in all this debate about article this and article that: these are real people's lives. Does she share my anger at the way the Brexit Secretary has played fast and loose with people's lives? He went on “The Andrew Marr Showâ€ and completely ripped up an agreement that people thought on Friday was done and which would have a big impact on their lives.
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Among other things, we are talking about preparing for a future deal, but the suffering and anxiety of EU nationals and EU national families in this country is already happening. They should have been given surety the morning after the vote, but instead we heard phrases such as “bargaining chipsâ€ and “playing cardsâ€ and were told they were key in the negotiations.
Does my hon. Friend agree that young early-career researchers in the academic sector, for example, are highly mobile and can easily move elsewhere? We should be rolling out the red carpet for them to make sure they stay, but instead we are treating them worse than dirt on our shoes.
I absolutely agree. As I said, we have lost 10,000 EU nationals from our health services. We have seen a greater than 90% drop in the number of EU national nurses registering to come here. It is not just about protecting the people already here. For the four NHSs across the UK, the workforce is one of their biggest issues, yet we are sending out such an unwelcoming signal that we will struggle to attract anyone else.
I agree with many of the hon. Lady's points, but is it not vital that we send out the clear reassurance, which the Prime Minister gave at the Dispatch Box to all our NHS and care staff, that they and their families are welcome to stay, that we want them to stay and that their rights are now guaranteed?
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady, but unfortunately it is not enough to come to the Dispatch Box every couple of months with warm words of welcome to EU staff, when in between women who are raising families here, with British partners or partners of EU origin, are being turned down for permanent residency because they have not taken out private comprehensive health insurance. We have had 100 EU nationals sent “prepare to leaveâ€ letters. Friends of ours tried to get citizenship for their three children, who were born and grew up in Scotland: the eldest and youngest were given passports; the middle child was refused. I am sorry but the experience of EU nationals on the ground over the past year and a half has been horrendous. If the phase 1 agreement last week is to mean anything, we must incorporate it into the immigration Bill to give them certainty now, instead of telling them they might have to wait another year before they find out what their future will be. To exercise the right to live anywhere, access to healthcare and social security is crucial. It has made such a difference, not just to EU nationals here, but to our pensioners who have settled in the sunny uplands of the northern Mediterranean. What position will they be in if they cannot access healthcare? We must recognise that freedom of movement was not a one-way street; our young people and professionals have been able to take advantage of it for the past 40 years. We are taking that away from the next generation, which is something that I find terrible. The Government say, and it is in the phase 1 agreement, that they accept keeping regulations 883 and 987, so let us bring that in. Let us get that down on paper and get it passed, because saying to EU nationals, “You're welcome to stay, but there might be no deal, which means you'll have no legal standing and you won't be able to use the NHS,â€ is no use to anyone.
In relation to the points and the amendments from the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), does my hon. Friend agree that, without the transparency of knowing what we are progressing to, many of the items that she is talking about cannot be agreed in the House? We leave ourselves open to the accusation made by Kathy Sheridan in The Irish Times this morning that the Government are“failing to establish in advance what questions should be asked. Of utterly disdaining an alternative, unifying vision while obsessing about trade, blue passports and colonial nostalgia.â€-
Okay, I am just going to move swiftly on. It was a speech, so my hon. Friend has had his chance to get that in. There are multiple agencies that are important for the nations across the UK, but my particular interest is of course health. We know that the European Medicines Agency is moving to Amsterdam, but the much bigger issue is the UK coming out of the European Medicines Agency. This is a body that has massively reduced bureaucracy, streamlined the launch of new drugs and meant that the pharmaceutical industry has to go through only one registration process for 500 million people. That is why drugs are launched in Europe at much the same time as America and about a year before Canada and Australia. Given some of what is going on in NHS England-including the budget impact assessment, which can allow expensive drugs to be delayed for three years-what I am hearing from those in the pharmaceutical industry is that they see the UK as a hostile market and that they may not come six months later or a year later. It may take longer than that because they only see the point in paying the extra cost to register when they have a chance of their drug being used in the NHS.
The hon. Lady is making an important point. Is she also mindful of the fact that, at a critical time for the future of the pharmaceuticals industry, there is currently no certainty even on cross-border production, which many of our companies are involved in, including Glaxo Smith Kline in my constituency?
I agree. Processes such as quality control, batch certification and lot release must take place in the EU. Several centres in Scotland and, indeed, throughout the United Kingdom will have to move.
I am very grateful, Mr Amess- I am so sorry. I should remember that nearly everyone who is speaking in this debate has a knighthood. I am very grateful, Sir David, for the chance to speak in this important debate. It has been extraordinarily interesting and, actually, enjoyable. I want to make a brief detour on amendment 7, because the dialogue between my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) was absolutely terrific. Listening to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset took me back-to a certain extent-to meetings that I had with him when I was a Minister. You could not go in and order a cup of coffee without engaging in a two-hour debate about exactly what was meant. In the end, however, the answer emerged, and it emerged in this exchange. Notwithstanding all the technical debate, it is extremely simple. Clause 9 was written before the Government realised that they would have to put the withdrawal agreement into a statute, and now that they have to put it into a statute, both clause 9 and, potentially, amendment 7 have reached their sell-by date. The offer from my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset is serious and real: to come back, effectively, with a rewritten clause 9 which tells Parliament exactly what the Government need to do as we implement the withdrawal agreement in legislation. Do they need some powers-I could understand that-to do some things that are essential preparatory work? I thought my point was good enough to stimulate-
Yes, it has stimulated my hon. Friend.
What my right hon. Friend is saying is spot-on: clause 9 gives some powers that trouble even Eurosceptics. I have never felt comfortable with the self-amending part of the Bill, and the solution advocated by my right hon. Friend, and proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), is very attractive.
I can barely stand up again, because I am slightly overwhelmed by the outbreak of consensus. I shall end this section of the speech with some unashamed flattery, as I look at the triumvirate of titans on the Treasury Front Bench: three Ministers for whom I have the utmost admiration, including my constituency neighbour, the Solicitor General, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland). They have heard this debate, and they are thoughtful and effective Ministers and I am sure they will have taken the mood at least from a certain part of this House about the brilliant opportunity for a solution to this Gordian knot.
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
My cup runneth over.
Before my right hon. Friend tries to urge us all into withdrawing these amendments and waiting for the Government to bring forward their own amendments on Report, let me say that we have been trying to do that through 70 hours of Committee stage. It is no good regarding the Committee stage of this House as an interesting opportunity for Members of Parliament to talk to each other and for Ministers to get up and say they will think about it; we have two days for Report and Third Reading, and the plain aim of the Government is to just enjoy going through this slightly tumultuous and interesting debate and sail on to the House of Lords with the Bill largely intact as it stands. That has been their obvious tactic from a very early stage.
I bow to my right hon. and learned Friend's wisdom and experience on that point. I am a consensus merchant and simply thought there might be a way forward, but I totally understand that votes might have to be exercised tonight in order to stiffen the Government's backbone to provide a solution. But nevertheless it has always been the case proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield that the Government will have an opportunity on Report potentially to alter his amendment.
If they can justify it.
I am entirely supportive of the intention behind this amendment, but being too much of a lawyer, I probably did not sign it because I realised the potential implications-
indicated assent.
I see the Solicitor General nodding. However, the fact that it might have legal implications does not mean that it is not a very desirable objective.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for tabling this amendment. As he knows, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee published a report today on our future relationship with Euratom. The cross-party Committee agreed that we needed as close a relationship as possible with Euratom, in part because of the safeguarding issue. Dr Golshan of the Office for Nuclear Regulation said in evidence to the Committee that our safeguarding would not be at Euratom standards by March 2019, notwithstanding the Nuclear Safeguards Bill that is going through Parliament. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that until we have reached Euratom standards, we need either a transition period or a close association with Euratom to ensure that there is no deterioration in standards in our civil nuclear sector?
The hon. Lady and her Committee have published an excellent 45-page report this morning, and I read it when it was hot off the press. It makes all the points that I want to make about the need to have as close an association as possible with Euratom, particularly in regard to safeguarding. What worries me about the Office for Nuclear Regulation is that, while the will and desire are there, this is another job that cannot be done overnight. It will need to triple the number of inspectors over the next four years, for example. Training a qualified inspector takes between 12 and 18 months; it takes five years to train an unqualified one. The ONR already needs another £10 million just for recruitment and IT, not even for specialist equipment. Some people argue-in fact, I think it is in the BEIS Committee report-that the specialist equipment at Sellafield, which is currently owned by Euratom, would have to be replaced, at a cost of £150 million. We need clarity on the nuclear co-operation agreements, clarity on the safeguarding regime and who will conduct it, and clarity on whether we will reach International Atomic Energy Agency standards, which the ONR is currently aiming for as a realistic target-Euratom's standards are higher. We also need free movement of nuclear workers in the broadest sense, and I am not talking about nuclear scientists; I mean the people who actually build nuclear power stations. For example, I think the UK has 2,700 registered steel fixers, half of which will be needed to build Hinkley Point C. That kind of specialist construction worker will come under the category of nuclear workers. As for the future of our continued international co-operation, a particularly live issue at the moment is the extension of funding for the Joint European Torus, which is currently going through the Council for the fiscal years 2019-20, and the European Union is keen to get clarity from the Government on our intentions.
The key point about that work programme is that Austria will be taking over the presidency of the Council of the European Union next year. That is incredibly worrying and means that the timeframe to which we are working is July 2018, not later, which is one of the reasons why we need parliamentary scrutiny of what is happening.
The hon. Lady is entirely correct because Austria is an anti-nuclear state, and there is some suspicion that some difficulties may emerge if the matter is not wrapped up before the Austrian presidency. The amendment's purpose is to provide parliamentary scrutiny of the important process of replicating the effect of a treaty that nobody wanted to leave. My challenge to Ministers is to engage with the amendment, and I look forward to hearing from the Dispatch Box whether the amendment is acceptable or whether they have an alternative way of providing the House with a strategy. On that note, after 14 minutes, I will sit down.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I will give way to the 16th century, but I cannot imagine for an instant how the hon. Gentleman could support such a change.
As I have said, I have my doubts about parts of clause 9, but it says that a Minister of the Crown may, “by regulations,â€ do things“for the purposes of implementing the withdrawal agreementâ€. It is hard to see how that could change the Representation of the People Acts. The hon. Gentleman slightly overstates his case.
Does the hon. Gentleman not concede that there was a meaningful vote on 23 June 2016, when people voted to leave the European Union? The problem with the amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) is that it could be, and no doubt is designed to be, used to try to overturn and frustrate that meaningful vote. My right hon. and learned Friend laughs, but it is a shame he does not have the courage of his convictions to admit that that is what his game is. If people in this House use that amendment for those purposes, the backlash from the British public will be like none seen before, and he should beware of that consequence.
Plenty of Members have plenty of courage about their convictions and have demonstrated it effectively in recent weeks. I do not think the hon. Gentleman should be deriding others because they have chosen to take a different direction. I am not sure whether he has been here for the whole debate-he might have missed a few minutes or indeed most of the hours. He is right that I am a remainer and I would prefer the country to remain in the EU-I admit that openly-but my constituents voted to leave and the country voted to leave, and we are going to leave. But we have to make sure we take the whole country with us, and we will not do that by a parliamentary process that gives far too much power to the Government and does not allow for proper scrutiny in this House.
Will the hon. Gentleman join me in my call to the Secretary of State, which I have made in this House, to set out a timetable whereby we understand what the process is and how he conceives the process of decision making being? That would give us all some certainty about when we would have that meaningful vote and whether we could amend things.
I would love to, but the truth is that the Government do not have the foggiest idea when anything is going to happen. They have suggested that something might be available in October 2018-perhaps it will, but perhaps it will not. This reminds me of the hymn we used to sing:“God is working his purpose out, as year succeeds to yearâ€The Government are trying to work out what their purpose is, day by day, hour by hour. They have no idea at the moment, which is why we have to make sure we get the process right before we engage in it; otherwise there is a danger that we will be railroaded without making proper, good decisions.
The hon. Gentleman said earlier that he was focused on getting the best possible process. Should we not be focused on getting the best possible deal in our negotiations? We know the EU does not want us to leave, so if he puts a process in place where the EU can simply knock a deal back to this Parliament, does that not give the EU the incentive to give us the worst possible deal, on the basis that we are more likely to reject it? We will simply have endless negotiations.
That is where we disagree. I believe that we will get the best possible deal only if we have the best possible process; the two go hand in hand. Indeed, if the Government introduced a Bill to implement an agreement and they started to lose votes on individual elements, they would probably then go back to Brussels and say, “You know what? I cannot get this through Parliament, so you're going to have to give me a better deal.â€ At that point, I think that our colleagues and friends in other countries in Europe would improve the deal. I believe we would end up with a better deal.
Oh yeah right!
I am glad that the right hon. aristocrat agrees with me.
I am listening to the hon. Gentleman's argument with great interest, because I was waiting for the “orâ€. He has just asserted what would happen if we did not have a good deal, Parliament rejected it and the negotiators were sent back, but then what? If it is felt that the best deal has been offered, what is his fall-back procedure? We would leave with no deal whatsoever.
Obviously, if the Government cannot get their deal through Parliament, they may be in trouble. That is a certain truth. However, if the Government get nearly all their deal but key amendments are carried by the House-for instance, on immigration, the financial deal or the rights of EU citizens in this country or elsewhere-we could help to strengthen the Government's arm, not weaken it at all. When I was Europe Minister, my experience was that when something was on the table in Brussels that I disagreed with and did not want to see implemented, the strongest argument I had with Brussels was, “I won't be able to get that through the British Parliament.â€ If we have a system in which a deal does not have to go through the British Parliament in line-by-line detail, the Government will be weakened in the negotiating process.
Is not that the whole point about what happened last week? After what happened on the Monday, when things all fell apart and were ghastly, we saw an absolute desire and it was clear that everybody, including the EU, came together to make sure that our Prime Minister got a deal. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when we talk to people, we hear that it is now absolutely clear that the leaders and all the various other people from the other EU countries accept that we are leaving? They have heavy hearts about it, but they know that we are leaving and it is now simply a question of sorting out the deal. Of course, it is not as simple as all that, but they have accepted that we are leaving. People really have to stop the conspiracy stories and the myths.
I agree. As I have said before, I also believe that there is a significant degree of agreement among all parties in this House, and probably in the House of Lords as well, about what the final agreement should look like. If the Government abandoned the strategy that they have so far adopted and decided to search for that consensus-“We're going to try to get 650 MPs through the Division Lobby in favour of the final dealâ€-they would stand a better chance of getting the best deal for Parliament.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am sorry, but I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman.
No. The hon. Gentleman can point and hail as many cabs as he wants, but I am not going to give way to him again because others wish to speak. All too often, the Government have urged us to accept clause 9 and the related measures on the basis of trust alone. As has already been said, it is just too difficult to see how we can put that trust in their hands. For a start, they have systematically ignored resolutions of the House over the past seven years; they have regularly refused to allow annulment debates on statutory instruments so that they could be meaningful-they have refused to do that even when they have guaranteed at the Dispatch Box that they were going to do so; and they have insisted on having majorities on all Committees. I fear that if we allow the Government to have excessive powers, they will tend to use every single one of those powers. The truth is that they seem to want a carte blanche. I wish the Government welcomed the role of Parliament in this process, but I just do not detect that. The devil will be in the detail. The Government cannot just bamboozle the people with verbiage that has absolutely no meaning whatsoever: “Brexit means Brexitâ€, “a red, white and blue Brexitâ€, “nothing is agreed until everything is agreedâ€, and all the rest of it. It is a denigration of the English language, let alone anything else. What we actually need is a Bill, with words in it that have legal effect, because, in the end, this is an existential matter for Parliament. Are we really a sovereign Parliament if we surrender our power to the Government? Not really. Are we really a representative democracy if MPs are denied a truly meaningful role in the process? Not really. Are we really a United Kingdom Parliament if we carry only 52% of the country with us? Not really.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
May I just make a little progress? I am not sure whether every hon. Member has had a chance to read the written ministerial statement that was published today-it is entitled “Procedures for the Approval and Implementation of EU Exit Agreementsâ€-but it is worth taking a look at it with regard to some of the concerns that have been expressed. We intend to introduce the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill after there has been a successful vote on the final deal in Parliament. Notwithstanding that, it remains essential that clause 9 stands part of this Bill. We do not yet know the precise shape or outcome of future negotiations, and it is important that the necessary legislative mechanisms are available to us so that we fully implement the withdrawal agreement in time for the exit date.
I will make a small amount of progress but then, of course, I will take the right hon. Gentleman's intervention. There will be a wide range of more technical separation issues that will need to be legislated for in time for our exit on 29 March 2019. Some will be better suited to secondary legislation, and it would not be practical to account for the sheer volume of all these issues in primary legislation. It is of course not uncommon for the principles of an international agreement to be implemented, at least to some degree, through secondary legislation. To give just one example, the Nuclear Installations (Liability for Damage) Order 2016 implements the 2004 protocol to the convention on third party liability in the field of nuclear energy. As for how we implement such secondary legislation, clause 9-this is the crux-offers a material benefit in terms of timing. We would be able to start-not complete-laying some of the statutory instruments soon after reaching agreement with our EU friends alongside the passage of new primary legislation. It is impossible to say with 100% precision at this point all the technical regulations that will be required to implement the withdrawal agreement before the full terms have been negotiated. That is obvious, and is accepted by Members on both sides of the House. However, some regulations might be required, and some will require a lead time of several months, so we need to reserve the ability to use clause 9 as soon as practically possible after a deal has been concluded. If we waited for further primary legislation to receive Royal Assent, that might be too late and we could be too squeezed for time, even in the scenario in which we reach an agreement in October, as is our current aim.
Does the Minister recognise my point about the situation that EU nationals are in now? Will the Government consider moving their issue into the immigration Bill, which should be coming imminently, rather than leaving them in limbo for another year?
All hon. Members should heartily welcome the agreement we have reached on the principles that will protect the 3 million EU nationals in this country-we want them to stay and to know they are valued-and the 1 million British expats abroad. Of course, there is still a significant amount of detail in the withdrawal agreement that will need to be worked up, so the hon. Lady may be putting the legislative cart before the diplomatic horse. Can we at least recognise that we have made substantial progress-and substantial progress from the EU's point of view-which is why we are proceeding to trade talks?
Will the Minister give way?
I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman shortly. He has been very patient and I did say that would take his amendment. Sorry, I meant that I would take his intervention, not his amendment-just teasing. Clause 9 is not intended to be used to implement major elements of the withdrawal agreement. Its role will be to assist with making regulations to deal with the more technical separation issues that are better suited to secondary legislation. There will be a large number of such regulations and they will need to be in place in time for exit day.
The Minister said that the House would vote on a resolution. This morning's written ministerial statement also refers to the House voting on a resolution on the final agreement. What would the Government's response be if the House were to vote against that resolution? What would it mean for Parliament and for the country?
I will come to that. It is very clear that we would not be able to proceed with the withdrawal agreement, but that does not mean that we would stop Brexit from happening. That is set out very clearly in the written statement, which also repeats points that have been made before in statements at the Dispatch Box.
Will the Minister give way?
I am just going to make a bit more progress. I will address the point raised by the Labour spokesperson, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, because I think he was on to something regarding the need to spell out and illustrate, albeit not necessarily exhaustively, the kinds of scenarios in which clause 9 remains relevant in the light of the proposed primary legislation. Let me offer a few illustrative examples. Clause 9 may be required to legislate for the position of ongoing administrative proceedings when we leave the EU. This is a broad basket of technical issues, including the technical aspects of ongoing proceedings on competition and anti-trust issues under regulation 1/2003, for example, which sets out the co-ordination between the Commission and national competition authorities. Another example is the ongoing procedures on concentrations between undertakings in mergers under regulation 139/2004, and the allocation of jurisdiction between the EU and national authorities. These detailed and technical issues do not need to be put on the face of a Bill, but they must be legislated for in time for exit. Another area for which clause 9 could be used relates to the privileges and immunities afforded by the UK to the EU-its institutions, bodies and staff-post exit. Privileges and immunities are a standard feature of international law, and are generally considered necessary for the proper functioning of international organisations. Privileges and immunities for the EU are currently implemented under protocol 7 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union. After exit, the EU will continue to require privileges and immunities to cover any functions it has, although the precise contours may differ according to the deal that we strike. Our agreement on privileges and immunities will need to be implemented in domestic legislation.
The point is that clause 9 is so widely drafted that it could apply to absolutely anything that could be linked with EU withdrawal. I am sure that the Department for Exiting the European Union has done a great deal of analysis-indeed, the Minister is showing that in his speech-of the areas that may be affected at the point of withdrawal. Surely that is the point at which the Government need to come to the House and, rather than speculating about what might be affected, actually identify that to us so that the powers can be limited precisely to those areas for which the Government need them.
I thank my hon. Friend for the constructive way she makes her point. Of course, until we have the withdrawal agreement, we will not know precisely the nature of the technical-
May I at least give the answer before my right hon. and learned Friend jumps in? That is why the agility that clause 9 gives us is important. I do not mean to correct my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) in a lawyerly way, but it is not quite right to say that clause 9 can legislate for anything in the context of departing the EU. It relates only to the withdrawal agreement, and I think she said it related to withdrawing from the EU. Another illustration of what clause 9 could be used for is the spelling out of the technical detail of how ongoing UK cases at the European Court of Justice should be handled, and how the UK courts should treat resulting judgments. Some of that might be done under this Bill, and some under the withdrawal agreement, but we will need to clarify things such as the types of cases that would be in scope and the precise procedural points in terms of whether a case could be considered to be pending, among others. Without that clarification, how such cases should be treated might not be clear. We would run the risk of legal uncertainty, as well as uncertainty for the individuals involved in those cases. I do not want to make too much of that before my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield jumps in. He is quite right-he has made this point before, and he may want to hear me out before I take his intervention-that, in 2016, there were 23 preliminary references from UK courts and just one infraction case against the UK. So we do not expect this issue to affect large numbers. None the less, for those affected, it is still important to get this right.
I want to understand this, because it is rather important. We are going to enact a withdrawal agreement Bill-I think that is what it is called. I would expect that to have statutory instrument powers-the very statutory instrument powers we can consider in relation to the scope of the withdrawal agreement when deciding what we then enact by secondary legislation to take us out. I begin to wonder whether, in fact, it is the Government's intention not to have any statutory instruments made under that agreement at all, but to seek to make them entirely through the mechanism of clause 9 before we have had the opportunity of considering what we actually want. That is why clause 9 is, I have to say to my hon. Friend, so mischievous. While I would be prepared to listen to some great exception, abandoning the normal legislative process in this way seems to be utterly undesirable, so I would press my hon. Friend on what is going to happen with this withdrawal agreement Bill. Are we going to have secondary legislation under it?
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend. I should just say to my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury that I will come on to talk about the restraints on the exercise of clause 9 later. However, in relation to my right hon. and learned Friend's point, if we waited for the withdrawal agreement Bill not just to be introduced after the withdrawal agreement has been signed but to be fully enacted-if we waited for it to complete its full passage-we would not have time to deal with the volume of technical secondary legislation that we need to put through.
Six months.
No, that is not right. We would be required to wait for the withdrawal agreement Bill to be enacted, so that is not right.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
No, I am going to make some progress. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield is engaging with this very seriously and constructively and that he is frustrated, but there is no getting around the timing issue that we have.
Will the Minister give way?
No, I am going to make some progress. Nor is there any getting around the long tail of technical, regulatory secondary legislation that we will need to get through if we want to provide the legal certainty that will make for a smooth Brexit.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I am going to make a little progress.
Will the Minister give way? I did give way to him.
I will give way to the right hon. Lady later, and I am coming on to talk about her amendment. I just want to address the point made by the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich about illustrations of what this power will be used for, because I hope that that will serve to assuage some of the concerns. The power could also be used to legislate, for example, for the status of goods that have been placed on the UK market at the time of our withdrawal, subject, of course, to what we agree with the EU on that. That could include a whole range of very technical, detailed measures to ensure that EU products continue to be made available in the UK, with no additional requirements on relabelling; to define what is meant by “placed on the marketâ€ for those products that benefit from the measures agreed; or to establish measures to facilitate continued oversight of those products. Again, these examples are illustrative, not exhaustive. However, I hope that I have at least addressed the kinds of cases that we are talking about, and also given an idea of the scale and volume of the technical separation issues that will need to be legislated for in time for exit day. Clause 9 will make an important contribution to a smooth Brexit in precisely those areas.
Timing is the crucial issue. Given that there are many examples of an accelerated process being used to get primary legislation through this place on many different matters, including in a single day when that has been necessary, why would it not be possible, if time was starting to run out, to have a very simple one or two-clause Bill that would do the bits of things on which the Minister needs to get agreement and to put the secondary powers in place, and therefore at least have a vote on primary legislation? Why is it not possible to do that very quickly to deal with the concerns that have been expressed?
It is just not practicable. I will come on to address the timeframe for how we are going to approach the agreement, the meaningful vote on a resolution, and then the withdrawal agreement Bill.
Does not my hon. Friend think that there should be a trigger within clause 9 to require the consent of the House to the overall withdrawal agreement that is reached before the powers are exercised? Otherwise those powers are unrestrained, and that seems wrong. Does he have a view on that?
My right hon. and learned Friend touches on a very important principle. I hope that I will be able to give him satisfaction on that precise point later. Having dealt with the technical scope of the power and some illustrations of the scale of what it is going to be used for, and before I address the timing issues, I want to touch on the limitations and parameters-
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will give way to my right hon. Friend later. If she will just be patient, I want to make a bit of progress, given the time available. It is worth looking very carefully at the limitations and parameters constraining the exercise of clause 9. It can only be used to implement the withdrawal agreement, and even then subsection (3) makes it clear that it cannot be used to levy taxation, to make retrospective provision, to create relevant criminal offences, or to repeal or amend the Human Rights Act 1998. Paragraph 6 of schedule 7 further requires the affirmative procedure in a whole range of scenarios, from the establishment of new public authority functions to the imposition of any fee exercised by any such authority. Critically-I am not sure that all hon. Members have picked this up-the power endures only until exit day. Its operation is shorter than that under clause 7. On the Government's current expected timetable, it would, in practice, be used for only about six months, so it is not the open-ended power that some have suggested. In addition, the Government have accepted the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) to establish a sifting committee to advise on the scrutiny procedures used for secondary legislation under the Bill. That will apply to this clause. That is on top of the Government amendment tabled last week that mandates Ministers to provide explanatory material for all the statutory instruments made under the principal powers of the Bill. We are listening. We are committed to making sure that Parliament plays a crucial role-a fully transparent scrutiny role-in the exercise of clause 9. In sum, the power under clause 9 is required to legislate domestically for the large number of more technical separation issues that must be settled in time for exit day if we are to have the smooth Brexit that, whether we voted leave or remain, we all agree is crucial from here on in. The regulations-
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will just finish this point before I finally give way to my right hon. Friend, who has been very patient. The regulations will be subject to the established methods of parliamentary scrutiny, with additional scrutiny provided by the new sifting committee. This is a time-limited and constrained power, but it is also an important power to help us to prepare for a smooth Brexit.
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Bill was drafted before the general election on 8 June? If I am wrong about that, could he please tell us when the Bill was drafted?
As someone who was brought into government reasonably recently and on to the Committee even more recently, I would have to check. I am happy to provide that clarity by the end of proceedings. I suspect that the process has been an iterative one, but let me see whether I can come back to my right hon. Friend on that. Clause 9 is not just an important part of the procedural toolkit; it serves a much bigger function that we must not overlook. It sends a message of clarity and confidence to our EU partners that we are ready, willing and able to conclude and implement a deal. By the same virtue, it sends an equally important message to our citizens and businesses that we are equipped to secure a smooth legal transition. I understand the concerns raised through the various amendments, and we should debate them. I will come on to them, and I hope that I will be able to give hon. Members some further reassurance.
May I ask the Minister two questions? First, in respect of the statement made by the Brexit Secretary this morning, can the Minister confirm that the withdrawal agreement Bill is not guaranteed to come before the House for a vote before exit day? All the statement says is that the Bill will be introduced before exit day. Secondly, why do the Government find so objectionable the idea of activating, if necessary, the third part of article 50, which allows for the Government to ask for an extension if we run out of time as a result of the many unforeseen practical problems? Ministers are talking from the Dispatch Box as though that third part of article 50 did not exist. Why was it included, if not to allow for an extension if the time expires and we have not achieved what we want?
I have enjoyed having proper debates with the hon. Gentleman both during the referendum and since. I point out that, as the written ministerial statement makes clear,“the substantive provisions will only take effect from the moment of exit.â€I know that he wants to drag me down into the territory of the no deal scenario and Parliament's ability to send the Government back to renegotiate. As a former Foreign Office lawyer who spent six years in that Department and worked on EU matters, in practice I think it unlikely that that would be meaningful in any way, shape or form. The point has been made in the debate that if that looked likely, we would be positively incentivising the EU to give us, and we would end up with, worse terms. It is not pure speculation; it is grounded on six years of working as a lawyer in the Foreign Office and conducting negotiations.
Thank you, Mrs Laing. Many of the amendments that have been tabled have focused on the exact nature of the regulations that will be made under the power in clause 9. The exact use of the power will, of course, depend on the content of the withdrawal agreement that we reach with the EU. That agreement will be debated and voted on by this Parliament. The Government have made a clear commitment on that, and it should not be prejudiced or pre-empted now. There has been a lot of talk about a meaningful vote in this House, and the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) has raised the matter again. I will come on to that, and to the key issue of timing. May I say to hon. Members gently, and with the greatest respect, that such a vote would be pretty meaningless in any event if we were not ready to implement on time the deal that we want to do with the EU?
I thought a moment ago that the Minister was rejecting the idea of a meaningful vote, but I am delighted to hear that he is getting on to it. Does he accept that it is perfectly likely that as the negotiations come to an end, the Government will want to enter into a deal, but they will have given in to pressure from the right wing of the Cabinet and Back-Bench Members of the party and rejected various things on offer from other EU members? That is a far more likely scenario than no deal being the other EU members' preferred option. In such a case, it would be absolutely essential that the first thing we had was a parliamentary decision on a meaningful vote. We could then legislate, once that particular British issue had been resolved where it should be resolved-in Parliament.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
If I may, I will finish my comments on this amendment, and I will then let my right hon. and learned Friend critique them in the round. I suspect such a critique is coming. In rare and exceptional cases, we may need to exercise the powers in clause 9 to pass statutory instruments before the final enactment of the primary legislation, which will be on the date of exit. Let me give an illustration of why it may be necessary for operational changes to be in put in place before that point. An example is where specific statutory authority is needed for a monitoring body to supervise the implementation of the terms of the agreement on citizens' rights, if that cannot be done in advance under other primary legislation. Such a body would need to be set up beforehand so that it was ready to operate on day one, but we may not know its precise content and contours until relatively late on in the negotiations. Yes, the potential scope for reliance on clause 9 has been reduced by the Government's commitment to primary legislation to implement the withdrawal agreement and the implementation period, but it is still important to retain it. The fetter imposed by amendment 7 would risk materially damaging responsible preparations for exit, including in sensitive areas such as citizens' rights. I know that that is not the intention of my right hon. and learned Friend, to whom I am very happy to give way.
I am again most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He will know-I touched on this in my comments-that when this issue was first raised, I suggested that one possibility might be to allow statutory instruments to be laid and voted on by this House prior to the enactment of the further statute, but not allow them to be brought into force until that further statute had been enacted. That would allow the House to stop the statutory process if it was not happy with it. As I understand it, the further statute has to be enacted before the date we leave, because without it we do not have the powers to pull out. In those circumstances, I find it impossible to understand why my suggestion might not solve his problem. I think he will agree that that is where our dialogue stopped. If he actually wants to do something even before that, I have to say to him that, as a matter of principle, I object.
I am sure that a lot of people are looking at this debate and seeing it as being conducted very much in legal terms, with lawyers versus lawyers. Will the Minister outline in very simple terms why there is no necessity for amendment 7 to be voted on tonight?
The hon. Lady, as ever, sums up the situation very neatly. Clause 9 is absolutely necessary to make sure that we can fully implement the withdrawal agreement and provide legal certainty. The problem with amendment 7 is that it emasculates that ability because of the time pressure it places on us. That is why, with the greatest respect to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, it is not an effective amendment and we cannot accept it.
We have only two hours left, and I want to make some progress, but I give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset.
I think that my hon. Friend is suggesting a route to solving the problem raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). Could not the requirement that the resolution be sanctioned by the House before the implementation of those orders be put into a revised version of clause 9 on Report?
I would hope that the assurances we have made, along with the written ministerial statement, are adequate, but there is nothing stopping any hon. Member coming back and having another go. We have- The hon. Member for Rhondda is sitting there tapping knowingly. He has been talking about the separation of powers between the legislature and the Executive, and now I am being asked to correct homework for hon. Members. That is not necessarily the course on which to proceed. What I will do, as we have done all along and as I think as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield knows, is to continue to discuss all these matters with my right hon. and hon. Friends as we progress. The important point to understand-we have not had a huge amount of time to go into the details of what the compromise assurances might be-is that at the moment amendment 7 is defective and would have very real consequences for our ability to deliver on the deal we do with our European partners.
Does that mean, therefore, that the Government would accept an amendment on Report that put on the face of the Bill that there would be a vote, as is stated in the written statement, on a resolution in both Houses of Parliament that would cover the withdrawal agreement and the terms of our future relationship? Is that what the Minister is saying?
What I am saying is that my hon. Friend has had an assurance, given by me at the Dispatch Box, that I hope addresses his concern. If hon. Members want to come back on Report with further amendments, I will continue to give them proper consideration. I think all hon. Members who have dealt with me directly have found that I have been true to that commitment.
Will the Minister give way?
No, I am not going to give way again. Amendment 47, tabled by the Chair of the Exiting the European Union Committee, is slightly different in that it would make the use of clause 9 dependent on approval of the withdrawal agreement by both Houses without specifying statute. Similar timing concerns apply. We would need to retain the option to ready statutory instruments before such approval, but I have made clear, and I make clear again, that they would not enter into force until Parliament had held its meaningful vote. New clause 68 replicates the provisions of amendment 47, with the addition that the Government must seek the approval of Parliament no later than three months before the date of exit. We cannot bind ourselves to such strict sequencing constraints when the latter stages of the negotiations remain unknown. To do so, in fact, would be irresponsible. It is also a vague and arguably defective new clause, I say with the greatest respect, because it is not clear whether by the “conclusionâ€ of the agreement the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) means finalisation of the text, signature, ratification or entry into force. For those reasons, I hope hon. Members will not press their new clauses and amendments.
Will the Minister give way?
I am grateful for that. It was intended as a probing amendment, particularly to ensure that these issues were ventilated. Given the assurances in previous days of the debate, I obviously will not push it. While I am on my feet, however, may I ask the Minister to reflect again on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy)? I really think that the Government would find a means of resolving these matters if they were to bring forward their own amendment in the form suggested.
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I hope he understands how, in good faith, I am seeking to engage with hon. Members on all sides of the House. It was my suggestion that the assurance would be made to him. We will reflect further as we lead into Report-
May I correct an error of mine?
I give way.
I mentioned the wrong constituency name. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford would not at all want to be involved in that matter. The Minister knew who I meant. It was my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) who made the point, and I hope that the Minister will consider it.
My hon. Friend's point is well made. I turn now to equalities legislation. Last week, the Government tabled amendment 391 to schedule 7. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said that the Government had not come back with any amendments in response to requests. This is a clear example of where we have listened and returned. The amendment will require Ministers to state in writing, when using the powers in clauses 7 to 9, whether they amend equalities legislation and that they have“so far as required to do so by equalities legislation, had due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under the Equality Act 2010.â€
The right hon. Gentleman is quick off the mark. I am about to address his point. When the Bill was introduced, the Government published an equalities analysis of the Bill, and I can reassure the Committee and him-I know that he raised this on a previous day-that, as promised, we will make a similar statement in relation to all other Brexit primary legislation that has been or will be introduced to this House. I pay tribute-if she is here-to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), the Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, for raising this important issue and for her advice in helping us to address it in a sensible and practical way.
The Minister has now clarified what the Government intend to do in relation to primary legislation. Will he indicate to the Committee when he expects to make a statement?
The amendment has been tabled, and I am giving the right hon. Gentleman the assurance now that the same formula will be applied to all Brexit-related primary legislation, so he can take that one to the bank. I turn now to amendment 19, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda. I understand his position and what he is trying to establish, but if the regulations made under clause 9 were to lapse two years after exit day, it would set a very rigid legislative timeframe for the Government and risk unnecessary disruption. If the two-year deadline expired unmet, it would create holes or risk creating holes in the statute book. I sympathise with the intentions behind the amendment, and I just wonder whether it was intended to tempt Eurosceptics on the Government Benches, but it is too rigid a fetter on Parliament's ability to manage its legislative priorities between now and 2021, and it would risk exacerbating the very uncertainty that the Bill is designed to reduce. Amendments 74 and 75 attempt to tie the use of clause 9 to our continued membership of the single market and the customs union. The Government have been clear that we are leaving the EU, and that necessarily means we are leaving the single market and the customs union. The amendments rehash old ground. The Government are clear that we are seeking a deep and special partnership with the EU, including as frictionless free trade as possible, and that will inevitably be linked to the withdrawal agreement. It is good news that we are moving to the negotiations on that area, following the success of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and the Prime Minister. The amendments, with the greatest respect to their SNP authors, would be counterproductive on their own terms, because they would undermine our ability to secure and implement the withdrawal agreement, which itself will be necessary for agreeing the future partnership agreement and maintaining barrier-free trade.
I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend's argument on clause 9. It seems to me that the initial intention was to do the withdrawal agreement by regulation, since when the principle of a withdrawal agreement implementation Bill has been conceded. Under the circumstances, is not the proper thing to withdraw clause 9, to prevent Opposition Members, particularly from the SNP, from using it as a Christmas tree to put Brexit-stopping measures in place?
I am very grateful indeed to the Minister for allowing me to intervene. I just want him to clarify a very important issue. We are talking about clause 9 and amendments to it. The Minister and his colleagues will know that any regulations that could be made under clause 7 are restricted, in that they cannot create new criminal offences, cannot have retrospective effect and cannot affect the Human Rights Act. Those exemptions are mirrored in clause 9, apart from the reference to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and the protections given to the Good Friday agreement. In the light of the Prime Minister's statement to the House on Monday about the commitments to the Northern Ireland Act and the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, why is there such a glaring omission in clause 9, in terms of the protections offered to the Northern Ireland Act?
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. There is absolutely no intention to use clause 9 in any way that would disrupt the Belfast agreement. The short answer to her is that these are just different technical devices, dealing with different technical aspects of withdrawal.
Forgive me for correcting the Minister. I do not mean to be rude, but clauses 7 to 9 extend to Northern Ireland, so these powers will also be extended to Northern Ireland-schedule 2 extends them to Northern Ireland-so if we had an Executive up and running again, Ministers in a devolved Assembly could make regulations that affected the Good Friday agreement. The protection to the Good Friday agreement-the Belfast agreement-has to be written into clause 9, so I suggest that the Government take it away tonight, redraft it and come back on Report with something that satisfies everyone in this House, including the Minister.
It is important that any changes that may need to be made to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to ensure that the UK can honour its international commitments can be made. Any such changes could be made only to ensure ongoing compliance with our international obligations, and could not substantively change the agreed devolution settlement or deviate from the terms of the Belfast agreement. I should be happy to write to the hon. Lady and spell that out in more detail.
As a new Member, I have listened intently as many Members on both sides of the Committee-some who voted to remain and others who voted to leave-have talked about the fundamental flaws in clause 9. The rest of the world is watching how we regulate at the moment. Will the Minister give an undertaking that the Government will come up with amendments to clause 9 on Report?
As I said earlier, clause 9 retains the residual necessity to provide us with agility in these negotiations. I think that I have given the assurances on substance that Conservative Members and, I believe, some Opposition Members wished to hear. If other Members want to table amendments on Report, I will of course continue the dialogue in which I have engaged all along.
Will the Minister give way?
I am going to make some progress, because I have been on my feet for some time.
I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, because I have given way to him already. I am going to make some progress.
A number of Members have tabled amendments seeking to maintain the UK's membership of EU agencies, institutions and international agreements, as well as our participation in EU programmes and access to EU systems and databases. They also seek to ensure that measures are put in place so that we are ready domestically to thrive when we leave the EU. Those amendments include amendments 196 to 199, 241 to 261, 276, 224 and 225, and a number of others. The Government recognise that a large number of the UK's relationships with non-EU partners and international organisations are linked to our membership of the EU, and specifically to the Euratom treaty, which deals with nuclear co-operation. Maintaining close links after we leave is important, and in many cases will be in the interests of both the UK and the EU.
I know that my hon. Friend has been on his feet for 50 minutes. We should be happy to have another 50 minutes, because he is doing brilliantly. He has just mentioned Euratom. As he knows, amendment 300 was signed by more Members than any of the other amendments. I hate to keep asking him to come back with proposals on Report, but will he give a commitment that the Government will at least publish a strategy for their future relationship with Euratom by then, and that the strategy will be updated quarterly so that we can maintain progress? As I said in my speech earlier, Ministers have been brilliant on this issue, but we do need to partner with them.
The Government intend to present a written ministerial statement to Parliament before Report which will set out our vision, or strategy, for a close association with Euratom. I hope that the commitment to that statement will reassure my right hon. Friend, and that he will not feel the need to press his amendment to a vote.
Will the Minister give way?
I want to make some progress, but I will give way once to the hon. Lady.
On the subject of amendment 300, will the Minister confirm that the Government intend any implementation period for leaving the EU to apply to leaving Euratom as well?
That will be addressed in the written ministerial statement and the strategy that will be forthcoming very shortly, and the hon. Lady will have an opportunity for scrutiny then. We will work with the Commission on addressing those international agreements when the parties have a shared stake, and a shared interest, in continuity. Similarly, the Government recognise the need to maintain a strong relationship with the EU in the future. We are seeking to forge a deep and special partnership with our EU friends, and our relationship with the EU's agencies and bodies on exit will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. No final decisions have yet been made on our future relationship with the EU's agencies and bodies after leaving the EU, and we are carefully considering a range of options. Where there is a demonstrable national interest in pursuing a continued relationship with an agency or other EU body, the Government will look very carefully at whether and how we can pursue that, and of course it is a matter for negotiations. That brings me to why these amendments are, while well-intentioned, unhelpful. The first reason is because negotiations are ongoing and we cannot allow our negotiating position to be prejudiced or pre-empted. The Government are working to achieve the best possible deal with the EU. We welcome the constructive and thoughtful amendments from hon. Members, but we cannot accept any that might undermine the Government's negotiating position or restrict our room for manoeuvre, not least in terms of striking the kind of arrangements that hon. Members in tabling these amendments want to see.
This debate started with an extremely eloquent and passionate contribution by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) on the meaningful vote that this House has been promised, on the timing of that vote, and on how we can ensure that the Government do not proceed with the detail of the withdrawal agreement, and probably the ultimate trade agreement, without the consent of this House. My hon. Friend the Minister has spent an extremely valuable hour taking us through the foothills of the drafting of the Bill and the administrative procedures that might be necessary before we leave. I asked him for a political argument if he wants to resist the idea, put forward by many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, that this House demands a meaningful vote before the Government actually start enacting the outcome of any agreement they have made, so does he have a little time to address that? Is there anything left in his notes that covers that?
I welcome the chance to reiterate what has already been said and what is already set out in the written ministerial statement: we will guarantee that there will be a meaningful vote in this House, and that none of statutory instruments introduced under clause 9 will enter into force until we have had that meaningful vote. That squarely addresses the substantive issue that my right hon. and learned Friend is getting at. He criticises me for dealing with all the other amendments, but it is only fair in the proper course of parliamentary proceedings to ensure that all amendments from all hon. Members are fairly addressed.
Will the Minister give way?
I have listened to this entire debate with close interest. I think that we are all agreed that we want an orderly process for leaving the EU, which means a sensible withdrawal agreement along with a clear and detailed commitment to an EU-UK trade agreement and a period of implementation, but I also think we all agree that if no satisfactory agreement arrives, we still all voted to leave the EU. Well, we nearly all voted to leave the EU: I respect my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), but he voted against the triggering of article 50, as did some others. Those of us who voted to trigger article 50 voted to leave on 29 March 2019.
Article 50 clearly states that an extension can be requested, so when we voted to trigger it, we voted to trigger a clause that included the possibility of requesting an extension.
I thought for a moment that my hon. Friend meant all that stuff about my challenging the result of the referendum.
No, no, no.
I am sorry; I misheard my hon. Friend. I do not think for one moment that we will have completed any of these negotiations by March 2019, but I will wait to see. There are perfectly clear arrangements in article 50 for the time to be extended. I have met several other European politicians, including some of those involved in the negotiations, who rather expect that to happen.
As I say, it is not something that we can bank on. May I just deal with this question of what is a meaningful vote? I cannot find anything clearer than the ministerial statement that was issued this morning. It says that“the Government has committed to hold a vote on the final deal in Parliament as soon as possible after the negotiations have concluded.â€It continues:“This vote will take the form of a resolution in both Houses of Parliament and will cover both the withdrawal agreement and the terms for our future relationship. The Government will not implement any parts of the withdrawal agreement-for example by using clause 9 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill-until after this vote has taken place.â€That seems to provide the assurances that my right hon. and learned Friend is looking for and that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice has repeated already from the Dispatch Box.
Does my hon. Friend agree that, to be meaningful, there has to be some time between that vote and such time as we leave the European Union? That is the whole point. A meaningful vote comes before something that is basically to be rubber-stamped. That is the whole point of “meaningfulâ€. When does he anticipate that we will have that vote?
The right hon. Lady knows as well as I do that the intention is to try to conclude an agreement by October 2018, but, again, there is no guarantee of that fact, in which case the resolution will be tabled soon after 2018. May I just point out that amendment 7, proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, is trying to create a meaningful vote by turning this resolution of both Houses into a statute?
Well, we have been promised a statute.
Yes, a statute has been promised, but not as a means of second-guessing the negotiations. At what stage in the passage of the statute does my right hon. and learned Friend expect the Government to use that moment and say, “Oh, well, they haven't agreed with this bit of the agreement; we'll have to go back.â€ Is it during the passage of the statute that the negotiations would have to continue? Making this decision a statute does not alter the discussion about a meaningful vote.
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I think that he may misunderstand the position. The House will have an opportunity, at the time that it is asked to move a motion approving the deal, to express its view, but it will also have an opportunity to express its view during the passage of the statute. Both those are necessary pre-conditions constitutionally for our leaving the European Union. I cannot help that; that is just how it is. Let me reiterate: the purpose of my amendment is to prevent the powers in clause 9 being used until this key statute has been enacted. That is the purpose.
Actually, that option is not available, because article 50 has a deadline, and when that deadline runs out, we leave. There is no requirement for a withdrawal agreement or a statute for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.
Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a process completely driven by Parliament? We have an Act of Parliament to send the letter, an Act of Parliament proposed now to withdraw and then another Act of Parliament to implement any agreement. The whole thing is completely under parliamentary sovereignty. Will he also confirm that we must have the date in the Bill to ensure legal continuity, as, under international law, we are leaving at the end of March because of the treaty?
It is wishful thinking that the deadline will be extended. Where I disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield is over the fact that, somehow, he thinks that the withdrawal agreement is necessary for us to leave the European Union and that the statute for the agreement is therefore necessary. Unfortunately, it is not. He voted for article 50, which triggered the process of leaving. Everything else is for our domestic legislation. Let us hope that there is a withdrawal agreement, but, actually, this Bill is what is necessary to provide legal continuity. Unfortunately, requiring another Act of Parliament before provisions of this Bill come into effect is just muddying the waters. As the Minister has already demonstrated very forcefully, this is not an effective amendment. If my right hon. and learned Friend wants to table a different amendment, as colleagues almost seem to be suggesting, that might be a way to resolve this. I beg my right hon. and hon. Friends on this point. There is a summit tomorrow. This is not the moment to try to defeat the Government-
This is not the moment to try to defeat the Government, when there is another opportunity to amend the Bill at a later date.
On a point of order, Mrs Laing. Are summits now to be sovereign over Parliament?
This is not the moment to try to defeat the Government, when there is another opportunity to amend the Bill at a later date, if a satisfactory discussion cannot be held. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield has been very conciliatory.
We have been speaking for months.
Well, continue the discussions.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
No, I will not give way. I keep hearing my right hon. Friend saying, “It's too late.â€
I did not say that; I have never said that.
I have heard my right hon. Friend saying that.
On a point of order, Mrs Laing. I will put up with all sorts of things, but I will not have an hon. Member saying that I have said things that I have not said. Will my hon. Friend retract what he said, because I have not said, “It's too lateâ€? What I have said is that we have been speaking to the Government for months. This matter was first raised in this place in February and we are still waiting for a resolution.
I will give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey).
My hon. Friend's remarks fill me with hope. He seems to accept that this debate is about a point of principle, rather than-as some might think-delaying Brexit, which is absolutely not what it is about. Does he agree?
I think that some people in this House might be trying to delay Brexit, some of whom may be supporting the amendment of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, but I perfectly accept his bona fides and those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage. I simply conclude that there is an opportunity for the discussions to continue. It is not necessary to bring this matter to a vote this evening.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is deeply insulting for those who have time and again voted against their Prime Minister and their Government to suggest in this crucial Bill, which will help to set the future course of this country, that it would be wrong for us to do the proper scrutiny and to apply for votes in this House?
I rise to address amendment 7, in particular, which I hope the Committee will reject if it is put to a vote. However, may I first quickly put on record an exchange I had with the Father of the House-I am sorry he is not in the Chamber. In his usual courteous manner, he suggested that I had misquoted him when I said he had once said:“I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a council chamber in Europe.â€He suggested I had got the quote from social media, but, in reality, it is given in volume 23 of the International Currency Review from 1996. I thought it wise to put that right, if only for the record. I note the amendment in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), and I see that he is also not in the Chamber. He once suggested that, having been the only Conservative to vote against going into Libya, I was leading the charmed life of a rebel. I think he now knows that when we vote against our Government, we are not leading a charmed life-it is a pretty awkward situation sometimes, and I think he is now finding that out for himself. Amendment 7 has several flaws. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) set out a number of them. He also spoke about the importance of having clarity of intention when addressing this issue, but I want to raise an additional point that has not been covered. Amendment 7 is fundamentally flawed because it leaves open at least the possibility-given that the EU does not, in reality, want any member to leave-that as there would be no incentive for the EU to negotiate a good deal that this Parliament could accept, we could find ourselves in a permanent state of limbo, deadlocked in unproductive negotiations for months and months with no incentive for the other side to pursue a constructive deal. Members should reflect hard on that practical flaw as they go through the Lobby, assuming that the amendment is put to the vote.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the incentive would be to make sure that the deal was as bad as possible so that we would be left in a limbo whereby we cannot leave, yet cannot move on?
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are trying to negotiate a good deal, but it takes two to tango. The amendment leaves open the door for the other side not to try to negotiate a good deal, knowing that it could drag out the negotiations and therefore prevent, at least until this Parliament were to accept the deal, our leaving the EU. If that was the case-
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will in a second if I can just finish my point. If that was the case, it would be an outrage with regard to the result of the EU referendum, in which over 17 million people voted to leave with the best possible deal. Those 17 million people had no third option on the ballot paper. There was not an option of staying in a semi-permanent state of negotiating limbo while talks progressed over a period of months and maybe years; it was a very clear yes or no. In addition, such a limbo-
Will my hon. Friend give way?
In a second; I will tell my hon. Friend when I am ready. Such a limbo would not be business-friendly as it would continue to create uncertainty when business wants certainty on a deal for making investment decisions. I now give way to my hon. Friend.
I am slightly confused by the point that my hon. Friend is making. I thought that taking back control meant taking back control to this Parliament, but that is clearly not his argument. In fact, he almost seems to distrust parliamentarians, despite the fact that we voted for the referendum and to trigger article 50.
I will not be voting for article 7, because I think it is a mistake- I am extremely grateful; I mean amendment 7. The amendment calls for legislation to be put in afterwards, which is a very unusual thing for a Bill to do-I believe it is unprecedented. If people do not like clause 9, they should vote against it, rather than voting for this unusual amendment. I want to make it clear, however, that I very much accept the good faith of those who argue for amendment 7. Those of us who opposed the Government when they were very pro-European should not criticise Members such as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve)-Disraeli pronounced the constituency name slightly differently-when they decide to take the reverse position of the one we took in previous years. What they are doing is completely reasonable.
Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a quite natural solution, which is to put the assurance given at the Dispatch Box into the clause when the Bill comes back on Report?
My hon. Friend is probably right, but my understanding is that the definition of withdrawal agreement clearly says “whether ratified or notâ€, so we do not have to follow the European Parliament. However, unless we get a meaningful vote, it may well end up being able to vote on something that, frankly, we will not be able to vote on.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, but the Government have already said that we will have a chance to vote on the withdrawal agreement before the European Parliament.
A meaningful vote.
Well, that vote must by its nature be meaningful. As we know, it is very easy to have a meaningful vote: we just table an Humble Address, and then it is binding on Her Majesty's Government, as is quite clear from all previous parliamentary and constitutional procedure. We can engineer a meaningful vote even if the Government are trying to be a bit slippery, which I happen to doubt very much, because I think Her Majesty's Government would never dream of being slippery-they would not know how to be slippery. It is hard to think of a Government in the whole of history being slippery. In the whole schedule leading to the ratification and approval of the withdrawal agreement, there is a requirement for a vote in this House. There is also a requirement, now agreed with the European Union, that there will be a withdrawal and implementation Bill- I am sorry that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan Mac Neil) is getting impatient, but this is a very important matter. The rights of Parliament will absolutely and clearly be preserved, and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will listen to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset, because his is a solution with which I think everybody can be happy.
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Let me say to him that-reflecting the mood of the Committee, having taken advice, and, in particular, having listened very carefully to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin)-the Government are willing to return on Report with an amendment on the face of the Bill clarifying the undertaking and assurance that I gave in my speech that statutory instruments under clause 9 will not come into force until we have had a meaningful vote in Parliament.
I hope that the Minister's intervention will satisfy some of my colleagues. Let me end by saying that I will be supporting the Government this evening. In my view, it is time for us to grit our teeth and simply get on with it.
I rise to speak about my amendments 293, 294 and 295, which deal with the issue of who decides exit day, but rather than making the speech that I originally prepared, I will keep my remarks brief and broad. The Prime Minister's decision to set the exit date and to write it into law is another panic move, and it puts her into a self-tying straitjacket. It is a sop to the hard Brexiteers, and it creates a rod for the negotiators' backs. It weakens, rather than strengthens, the UK's position in the crucial nine months that are left for us to negotiate a good deal. Eighteen months after the referendum, we have seen the bluff and bluster on the withdrawal agreement. The Foreign Secretary has gone from telling our European partners to go whistle to being little Tommy Tucker singing for his supper to the tune of £40 billion. We have seen a tug of war take place on EU citizens' rights, and a deal on no hard border with Ireland taking place in frantic late-night phone calls-a deal that the Brexit Secretary later undermined by calling it a mere “statement of intentâ€, which has caused all sorts of problems.
I rise to support the-
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Yes, of course.
While I was briefly out of the Chamber, an announcement was made of a Government concession, but I have to say, it is too late. I am sorry, but you cannot treat the House in this fashion. My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) may agree with me that the best way of getting progress in this area is by moving amendment 7 and thereafter we can co-operate with the Government in trying to achieve its aim.
I rise to support amendment 7, tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). I have listened with great interest to all the excellent speeches and interventions by right hon. and hon. Members this afternoon and, for me, three key themes have emerged. First, there is real disagreement about the meaning of “meaningfulâ€. Secondly, there is confusion about the terms of article 50. Thirdly, there is an issue of trust. On the first point, it is crystal clear that this vote cannot be meaningful if it is binary. It has to be taken on the basis of us having an opportunity to instruct the Government to extend article 50 if necessary. On the second point, article 50 clearly gives the Government the opportunity to seek an extension of the period, and there is no reason whatever why the EU27 would reject that request. It is enshrined in the treaties, and for that to have meaning, they would clearly have to listen to our request. Why on earth would they not accept that request if it was in our mutual interest to do so?
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a moment comes in one's life when, on the most important issue that this nation has faced in decades, we have to set aside party differences and even party loyalty and be true to our principles and to what we believe in? It could be that that moment is now.
I agree absolutely with the right hon. Lady. I pay tribute to her and to a range of other right hon. and hon. Members across the House. This is not an easy choice to make. It is always difficult in these circumstances when there is a huge amount of interest and focus on what we are about to do in this House. It is essential that hon. Members stick with their principles, and sometimes that means putting country before party. I pay tribute to every right hon. and hon. Member who will do that this evening. This is indeed a matter of trust. The challenge that we face is that if this provision is not put on the face of the Bill, we will not have the confidence and the assurance that we in this place can indeed take back control and reassert the sovereignty of this place, which is what 17 million people voted for on 23 June 2016.
I am afraid I must push on, because we are moving towards the deadline. Having paid tribute to those right hon. and hon. Members for what they are doing this evening, I commend the terms of amendment 7 to the Committee. I will be honoured to go through the Division Lobby with those right hon. and hon. Members this evening.
The Committee will know that, from my point of view, we cannot get out of the European Union fast enough. Time and again, I have said that we need to be ready on day one and be prepared for every eventuality, deal or no deal-or, should I say, regional deal or global deal-but we must remember why we are taking back control. It is because of the vision we have for our country and because of our values. Those values include the rule of law, natural justice and the sovereignty of Parliament. The rule of law exists to ensure that executive power is not abused, and that is why I object to clause 9. It is not right that a measure of this sort should be put through by any form of statutory instrument. I welcome the fact that the Government are going to bring forward a withdrawal agreement and an implementation Bill, and nothing I have heard today has indicated to me any sense of urgency or any reason why a statutory instrument will need to be put through in a hurry. As far as I am concerned, I am prepared to stay up all night long to pass legislation to get us out of the European Union as soon as possible. For that reason, I urge the Government to withdraw clause 9, and I have to say that I will not be able to support it on stand part.
I am coming up to my 18th year in the House. During that time, we have had serious votes on going to war in Iraq and in Syria, and on different occasions, parliamentary sovereignty has asserted itself. On the war in Iraq, we thought we had the information, but it turned out that we did not, and we went to war. On Syria, despite some strong arguments to intervene, we chose not to. I also remember sitting through the night for the 90-day detention legislation under Tony Blair, and this House resisted the move to a 90-day detention period for those arrested for terrorism offences. Tonight, we are again being asked to make a very important decision that will affect the future of this country. I might say that the sovereignty of this Parliament is why we are here in the first place, so I applaud the Government Members who are standing by their principles and remembering the importance of coming back to debate in this House. This is about timing. We may have had a discussion about what is meaningful, but I think we all know what is meaningless. It is meaningless to have a debate and a vote in this House after the decision is made. For all those reasons, I hope that we will return after the vote on amendment 7 and find that we really have given back sovereignty to the UK Parliament.
The Government have now made it clear that the House will have a final meaningful vote on the EU withdrawal agreement before the UK leaves, which is extraordinarily important because the last point in the process of withdrawal is actually the vote in the European Parliament. My former colleagues-the ones who are trying to help us get an amicable agreement in that Parliament-have told me that unless there is a full democratic process here, there will be people who try to scupper the deal in that last vote in the European Parliament. The rest of the world is watching how we legislate, and transparency is important. I am new to British legislation, but I have heard it time and again from Members as diverse as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) that the powers in clause 9 are inappropriate, too strong and could mean that the Government are able to make material changes to legislation without a scrutiny process before we leave. I am therefore extremely pleased that the Minister made his announcement at the last minute. If he would like to, I would love him to intervene once more to ensure that everybody has heard exactly what he said.
I am delighted to intervene again and, reflecting the mood of the House, I can tell my hon. Friend that we are willing to return on Report to put an amendment on the face of the Bill making it crystal clear that statutory instruments under clause 9 will not enter into force until we have had a meaningful vote in Parliament.
I thank the Minister. I am going to take a moment to reflect.
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.
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?
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.
It is wonderful to see so many former Ministers on the Conservative Benches discovering their love of parliamentary sovereignty when they are no longer on the ministerial merry-go-round. I have far greater respect in this place for those parliamentarians who have never held ministerial office and actually respect this place, even when things are not going their way.
Is the hon. Gentleman wondering-he might be about to come to this-whether the Government have carried out an assessment of the impact of the UK's falling out of all these treaties?
Just as the hon. Gentleman wonders whether the Government have produced impact assessments for those treaties, he might also be wondering whether they have produced contingency plans for if they are unable to rewrite them to reflect the UK's new position.
Because the hon. Gentleman has, notwithstanding his personal views, accepted the will of the electorate, no doubt the logic of where he is leading us is to put off leaving the European Union for some indeterminate period of time until all these issues are sorted out.
On that basis, is it therefore the hon. Gentleman's intention to reopen the question so that the public can revisit their decision?
Does my hon. Friend agree that the other parties to these treaties may not quite have the incentive to be as quick as we might need them to be?
As always, my hon. Friend makes a compelling case for changing the Bill. Given that the Government are battered and bruised this evening after their outstanding defeat, if the Minister comes to the Dispatch Box and says that they do have assessments of the impact of our leaving these international treaties, should we believe them?
My hon. Friend is making an important point. Of course, I support his new clause. I have long been in favour of the arms trade treaty, parts of which fall within EU competence. The EU as a whole was involved in the negotiations on the treaty, and we are a party to it as an individual country. We also have the consolidated EU and national arms export licensing criteria as well as domestic legislation. The arms trade is one of the issues that cut across many different areas of competence, and we are party to a number of treaties relating to it. Is that not exactly the sort of issue that should be examined?
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should carry out an impact assessment to establish whether they have the capacity to negotiate the treaties, given, for example, the Secretary of State for International Trade's recent admission that they do not have the capacity to negotiate trade deals?
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I just wanted to help the hon. Gentleman. Given his position in the Chamber, he might not have been able to see that both Ministers were frantically texting earlier. I suspect that they did not have the list of treaties to which he is referring. He might need to supply it at the end of the debate so that they can start doing some work on this.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
The hon. Gentleman obviously thinks very little of this country if he feels that other countries around the world do not want to do trade deals with the United Kingdom. Why does he think that?
The hon. Gentleman needs to answer the question that I asked him first, with all due respect. He said there would be concern among many of these other countries-he did not say which-about what kind of trade agreement there would be, and about access to markets and so forth. Of course they will have concerns; we will also have concerns-that is part of any bilateral trade negotiation. Why does he think, despite these concerns, that they will not wish to do deals with us?
My hon. Friend rightly raises the issue of these countries objecting to any changes to quota, because they will first and foremost seek to protect their own economies, not our economy. In the event that we get a percentage of the EU quota but for whatever reason-customs barriers; non-tariff barriers; the withdrawal of purchasing power-that quota of goods cannot be sold into the UK, those countries' flexibility to then sell those goods to the EU is lost. That is why they are digging their heels in so early on this issue.
There is another complication. If we are saying that we are going to have regulatory alignment on cross-border issues with regard to Northern Ireland, specifically on agriculture, given that we are in the EU orbit in that sense, how on earth can we then have WTO trade arrangements elsewhere unless we give the same conditions that apply to the Irish Republic to every other country in the world, which the EU cannot accept?
This is a filibuster.
The hon. Gentleman is going into great detail about the amount of time and effort that is going to be spent, and the number of treaties and trade deals that will need to be done. Does he agree with me on the broader point that we are treading water here? A huge amount of money and parliamentary time is going to be spent, and nothing else will be able to be done.
The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned chlorinated chicken, and he should be worried not only that the Americans may seek to impose it on us, but that our International Trade Secretary has said:“There are no health reasons why you could not eat chicken that had been washed in chlorinated water.â€Our own International Trade Secretary therefore seems to be advocating the consumption of chlorinated chicken.
It is an interesting idea that foxes have been eating chlorinated chicken. As the right hon. Gentleman says, the concern is that the International Trade Secretary, even at this early stage, will look to undermine consumer standards, health standards and other standards in order to fix a deal and have something on the table to avoid the humiliation we see coming. As has been pointed out, it is in the interest of other countries to hold back from striking an early deal and to let the UK sweat. We will be in a difficult place if we do not have agreement on tariffs with the EU and elsewhere.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, as well as chlorinated chicken and other items, infant formula is regulated differently in the US from in the EU? There are higher levels of aflatoxins in US infant formula than in EU infant formula, which could prove detrimental to infant health.
People will know that the EU has enormous capacity for negotiating trade deals, and we have been relying on it for the past 40 years. Over the past few years the EU has had an intricate dialogue with the United States on TTIP and with the Canadians on CETA to try to bring about some sort of harmonisation and agreement. TTIP has hit the buffers and is not going forward, but my point is that we simply do not have that negotiating capacity. If the EU's huge capacity cannot achieve agreement in a short amount of time-it takes a long time to get these things right-what hope do we have? Very little.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the EU was able to extract additional protections on the environment and workers' rights from the Canada deal because the EU worked together as a big bloc? At one moment it looked like the EU would be unable to extract those protections, and it happened only because Belgium and other countries insisted. On our own, we must not be able to be picked off by Canada, the US or any other country-they have already tried to pick off the EU.
I have a great deal of affection and respect for the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), and he has drawn attention to a perfectly proper area of concern, to which, strangely, his remedy is merely a report-but then the mask slipped. We have heard all this sanctimonious guff this afternoon about the need for this House to take back control and about proper scrutiny-everything we heard in the earlier debates -but now we see the real motive. Of course he was assisted by others, whom comrade Lenin would have properly referred to as “useful idiotsâ€, but now the mask has slipped. The real motive-the hon. Gentleman made it absolutely explicit-is to reopen a question that he does not believe was given sufficient attention at the referendum. That has just been confirmed by the hon. Member for Swansea East-
West.
Swansea West. The hon. Member for Nottingham East said that he did not believe that people should not have an opportunity to revisit their decision, and that they have a perfect right to change their mind-I accept that. I am not in favour of some sort of African democracy of one man, one vote, once. People perfectly rightly have an opportunity to do that, but if there was one thing on which both sides in the referendum campaign were agreed it was on the importance of the vote that took place on 23 June 2016. He has every right to campaign for a second referendum, and I am glad that he has made it explicit this evening in advocating for his amendment that that is the real agenda. The purpose is to delay for long enough for something to turn up. An essential ingredient of giving time for something to turn up so that people will change their minds is delay, and that is what the process of all today's amendments has, in essence, been about.
One key thing that future students will read about and find incredibly difficult to understand is how the same people who for 40 years argued that the EU had taken sovereignty away from this Chamber were prepared to give that sovereignty so quickly to the United Kingdom Government Executive. That is what all these clauses, including clause 8, will end up doing.
Not surprisingly, I could not agree more with my hon. Friend.
Does the hon. Lady agree that there will probably be a chapter in the history books called “Impact Assessmentsâ€, and students will study the reasons why a Government took the most catastrophic economic decision for the country without having conducted any impact assessments of its effect on the economy?
I absolutely do agree. It will probably say “Impact Assessmentsâ€ and there will just be a blank page, because that is the reality of the situation. It will probably serve as an abject example of how not to do democracy, and sadly we will all be judged under that banner. I do hope, though, that the history books will include those of us who opposed how this process is being carried out. It is important to reflect on the fact that, whatever people thought of the Scottish referendum, it was held up as a gold standard and that, when the Electoral Commission reflected on the referendum on Brexit, its view was that it happened in too short a timescale and that there was not proper opportunity for debate and discussion. That is important. It is sad that we set a gold standard on one referendum and then seemed to go backwards. The other day, sitting on the Tube, reading the Evening Standard, I was quite aghast to read an article celebrating its new appointment of a journalist to Brussels. Is it not ironic that news agencies and the press are suddenly appointing journalists to Brussels? Not that long ago, I read a report that said that, out of all the countries in the EU, the nations of the UK had the worst representation in terms of journalistic reportage. So it is no surprise that, after 10 years and longer of blaming the EU for all our ills and of not properly reporting on it, people were ill-informed and we did not have a proper period for debate. I come back to my point about children. The House of Commons Library briefing paper on Brexit stretches to almost 200 pages, yet children are mentioned only three times. The Brexit White Paper mentions children only once. It urges us all to work towards a stronger, fairer and more global Britain. Well, is that not ironic because we are going to be weaker, less equal and less outward-looking? We are going to be the exact opposite of what those right-wing Brexiteers seemed to want for us across the UK.
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that there has been no proper commitment yet to continuing with Erasmus+, which gives so many children in my constituency opportunities to go and make friends, to travel out into the world and to broaden their horizons?
It has been a pleasure to listen to this wide-ranging debate and to hear some of the speeches, not all of which seemed to be specifically about clause 8. I compliment my opposite number, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), who very accurately described the clause.
I do have a speech on clause 8 and I would like to raise some specific points, but I am slightly concerned that the Minister might now be about to speak for 15 minutes, in the tradition that he started yesterday, and I am worried that he will not be able to respond to my specific points.
I am very happy to do my best endeavours to ensure that the hon. Lady does get five minutes to make her speech; she often has interesting points to bring to these debates. Let me discuss briefly, therefore, what clause 8 is for. As we leave the EU, it is essential that the Government can ensure that we do not breach any of the UK's international obligations. These international obligations stretch from our promises to other nations, some of which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), to those we have undertaken as a sovereign and responsible participant in international organisations such as the Council of Europe and global ones such as the WTO. This need to prevent breaches of our international obligations is the reasoning behind the clause.
I appreciate the Minister's explanation of the scope of clause 8. Does he agree that, just like clause 7, clause 8 is limited in that it relates only to withdrawal issues and is a sunset clause?
My hon. Friend make a good point on the exact matter that I was going to come to in a moment; she pre-empts me brilliantly. Clause 8 is needed-I think that this answers the point made by the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich-because not all the UK's international obligations that might be affected by withdrawing from the EU are implemented domestically in what will be retained EU law. Those which are implemented elsewhere are therefore out of scope of the correcting power in clause 7. In addition, there are restrictions on the use of clause 7 relating to, for example, taxation that might, in some circumstances, prevent important changes to comply with international arrangements from being made. We need this power because we need to be prepared for all eventualities. I would like to clarify that any SIs made under clause 8 that transfer a legislative function, or create or amend any power to legislate, will be subject to the affirmative procedure, as provided for in clause 7. Therefore, Parliament will be able to debate any transfer of powers, and consider the proposed scope of such powers and the scrutiny proposed for their future exercise. Clause 8 gives Ministers a temporary and limited power, as my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) said, to make regulations to prevent or remedy breaches of international obligations. The provision contained in the secondary legislation must be an appropriate way of doing so and will have to pass before this House under the parliamentary procedures that we have been discussing over the past couple of days. In addition to its limited goals, the power is subject to a number of further limitations. It expires two years after exit day and, as listed in subsection (3), it cannot “make retrospective provisionâ€, create certain types of criminal offence,“implement the withdrawal agreement, or...amend...the Human Rights Actâ€.
Perhaps I can respond to the hon. Lady's intervention before she even makes it. It is important that we have the power to maintain all our international obligations. As we have discussed in a previous debate, one of those international obligations is to the international element of the Belfast agreement. We will absolutely maintain our commitment to that.
I am grateful to the Minister for pre-empting the intervention, but he is referring to my earlier intervention regarding clause 9. Will he use this opportunity to confirm at the Dispatch Box that neither clause 8 nor clause 9, which we have just passed as amended, will be used in any circumstances to amend the Good Friday agreement by regulation?
I am happy to give that confirmation. As I said to the House of Lords Constitution Committee earlier today, no one has any intention to amend the Good Friday agreement.
By regulation.
At all-by regulation or in any other way. I will turn briefly to the amendments and respond to new clause 20 in the name of the hon. Member for Nottingham East. My Department is leading cross-Government work to assess and act on the international agreements for which, as a result of the UK's withdrawal from the EU, arrangements will need to be made to ensure continuity for businesses and individuals. Any that require implementing legislation or parliamentary scrutiny before ratification will go through the appropriate, well-established procedures. We are working with our international partners to identify the full range of our agreements that might be impacted by our exit from the EU, and we will be taking their views into account. It would not be appropriate at this stage to publish the type of assessment proposed in new clause 20. Doing so would prejudice the outcome of these discussions and how any action would be put into practice.
I will give way once more, but that is it, because I want to give the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) a chance to make her speech.
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Before I give way, I have to confess that I am a serial offender when it comes to not necessarily speaking in plain and clear terms, so I am not pretending in any way to be the world's greatest simple communicator on such things. I am sure I will transgress this afternoon.
Another advantage of new clause 21 is that it would enable the Government to give us a clear explanation and perhaps say that “regulatory alignmentâ€ and “regulatory convergenceâ€ mean the same thing.
My hon. Friend takes the words out of my mouth. He has spotted that the famous paragraph 49 of the phase 1 agreement between the negotiators on the EU side and the negotiators on the UK side talks about maintaining regulatory alignment, which is a phrase that manages to span all sorts of different interpretations. The EU and Republic of Ireland side believes “full alignmentâ€ to mean full alignment and that we will essentially have the same arrangements as we have now. But when the Prime Minister returned to the House of Commons, she sort of said, “Oh, no, it is a very narrow meaning in the terms set out in particular paragraphs of the Belfast agreement.â€ It is amazing how words can mean one thing to one listener and another thing to an entirely different listener.
I agree that clarity is usually an admirable virtue, but if the thing the Government are trying to describe is not very clear in itself-perhaps because it is very complicated and impossible to make clear, or perhaps because it is deliberately obfuscating-what happens then? We cannot have a dishonest account of what a complex clause is doing.
We should not assume that those watching our proceedings, or reading them in Hansard, entirely trust the Government or Members of Parliament simply to know and understand what is happening. People outside have a right to know, and of course we expect businesses and members of the public to interpret the legislation we pass. This is a signal moment, and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) rightly pointed out on, I think, day 2 in Committee that we are about to copy and paste a phenomenal body of legislation, which has accrued over decades, from the EU corpus of law into the British legal context. That requires us to pause for a moment to think about whether we are properly articulating to our constituents and others what exactly is happening in this process.
The hon. Gentleman refers to trust in the Government. Does he think our constituents will be reassured by the Prime Minister's confirmation on Monday that the Cabinet's discussions on our future trade deals do not involve the Cabinet having any assessment of the impact of different potential models?
Governments would normally be expected to have information and facts, with evidence being collected and presented and with an assessment made based on information that has been analysed and digested in a professional way, but it appears that, although we were told they exist, the impact assessments do not actually exist but are sectoral analyses. What is the difference between an impact assessment and a sectoral analysis? Well, we have been discussing that for quite some time. Returning to EU retained legislation, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield rightly pointed out that we have lived with important legal understandings, such as on equalities law and environmental law, for a number of decades. Those understandings have been tenets of our expectations of the civilised society in which we live. Of course, they will now be transferred from European law into UK law. If they had originated in this House, they would have been enacted in primary legislation and any changes would have had to be made through primary legislation. But the Government's proposal is to take this new category of EU retained law and bring it into UK law, and it will not have the same status as primary legislation. In many ways, it will be repealable or amendable, often by secondary legislation-by statutory instrument. This is not a point about Brexit; it is about the process of transposition. It is important that the public know what is going on when we are doing this. If a transfer is taking place, information should be set out in the explanatory notes, not just about the technical details, but about the weight that those legal rights will have once they come back into UK law. There are a number of other aspects to this-
The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting and relevant point, although it is of course true that all this legislation came in via secondary legislation in the first place and Parliament will have considerably more control over the secondary legislation that amends it than we currently have over the method that created it. I would imagine, as I am sure he does and the Government do, that Acts of Parliament will become more important, particularly if we want to make sure that this is not challengeable in the courts, as secondary legislation is much more vulnerable to challenge through the courts than primary legislation.
Yes. Although we disagree on many things, I think we can agree that if we are going to do this exercise, it needs to be done thoroughly and robustly, making sure that the intent of Parliament and the laws we are transposing are robust enough to withstand the test of time. Having explanatory statements to accompany those is an important development that has helped us in our legislative process recently. If we are going to have a sifting committee-it is not really a sifting committee; the procedures committee will be doing this-looking through all these statutory instruments and picking out which ones it thinks should not be passed through the negative procedure, this explanatory process ought to be in place to help hon. Members figure out which of these hundreds or even thousands of aspects of legislation are important enough to flag up to hon. Members more widely. That is a small point but it needs making. Other issues arise relating to “tertiaryâ€ legislation and the powers the Bill is giving to agencies and regulators to make, or to amend or remedy, laws. Again, I would like these things to be flagged up in plain English, wherever possible, so that parliamentarians can know about them. In essence, new clause 21 is about transparency, clarity and shining a light on this complicated bandwidth of activity that is about to hit all hon. Members, and that is important. The only other point I wanted to make on this group-
The hon. Gentleman has been a Member of this place for far longer than I have. We have lived through 40-odd years of what he is now describing as “dense and complexâ€ legislation which applies to the UK, but only at this stage does he seem to be concerned about what that legislation really means. Why has he not been so similarly vexed and exercised these past 40 years?
I have been vexed and exercised for quite a long part of the past 40 years, but that is my problem. The hon. Gentleman should know that as we go forward we are creating a new type of legislation. It is true that many of the European directives and regulations have been adopted over the years in different ways, but we are now importing this great body of EU retained law. It is going to affect him and his constituents, as well as my constituents. The first point to make is: can we understand what it is? That provides a useful opportunity in this exercise-
The hon. Gentleman may agree with me that if there are deficiencies in the way EU law has been imported into our law, the last thing we want to do is to perpetuate them by keeping the uncertainties after we have gone. Yet schedule 5 raises a number of uncertainties, which this House would do well to address.
We are doing our duty by at least trying to comb over these issues now. I wish to commend the Labour Front-Bench team on their amendment 348, which seeks to ensure that impact assessments are made properly and thoroughly before we take many of the decisions in this whole Brexit process. We already know enough about what has happened with the Brexit Secretary promising impact assessments and their turning out to be sectoral analyses. Many of us will have gone to the reading room and looked at the hastily written 50-odd documents, which would be good if someone was writing a master's degree dissertation on the aviation sector-they are full of facts and information-but do not really provide much more analysis than people can already get off Google. Where we did get an insight, although it may have been a slip of the tongue, was when the Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared before the Treasury Committee on 6 December and said that he has“modelled and analysed a wide range of potential alternative structures between the European Union and the United Kingdomâ€and that“it informs...our negotiating positionâ€. So obviously there does exist within government some level of impact assessment and analysis that has not yet been placed in the public domain. It might be that the Brexit Committee wishes to explore that further or that the Treasury Committee wishes to do so, but it is important that we know whether this is simply a reference to the pre-referendum work that was done under the former Chancellor George Osborne or whether further assessments have taken place, independently undertaken by the Treasury. We need to know what analysis the different Departments have undertaken and what sort of modelling on the different sectors of our economy has been done.
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that the Government produce assessments, whether or not they are “sectoral assessmentsâ€, on issues that are a lot more trivial than such an important thing befalling our country as Brexit? It is therefore imperative that we have detailed assessments on how this will affect our country.
Yes. That again gets to this question: are we accidentally bumbling our way through, where nobody has thought about doing an assessment, or, worse, is this work being done but then hidden, covered up and held back from Members of Parliament and from the public at large? I suspect that any serious analysis worth its salt will show that there are some damning consequences of exiting the single market and customs union, and I think that needs to be shared with the wider public.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Brexit Secretary was rather lucky when he appeared before the Select Committee, because having agreed to produce papers, he got out of it by sticking to a narrow definition of “impact assessmentâ€? It was semantics that enabled him to get away with just producing the new documents, which he had hastily produced in the past few weeks, containing bland descriptions of where we are. As the originals are important documents, as these questions have been looked at and as we were told a summary had been sent to the Prime Minister, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the House's motion meant that whatever documents the Government had that bore on the subject, they should have been produced? The Brexit Secretary should not have been allowed to get away with saying, “Strictly speaking, they're not impact assessments.â€
I do agree with that. We should not just skim over this question. These are some of the most profound decisions that Parliament will make for a generation and, if we are going to do our jobs correctly as Members of Parliament, having the right facts, getting the evidence, assembling the analysis, making sure we can weigh up the pros and cons of all these matters, and getting readily understandable, plain English explanatory statements of what is actually being proposed are prerequisites. They should be there to make us do our jobs properly.
I will give way one last time, and then I will conclude.
How does the hon. Gentleman imagine that the assessments are going to be any less divisive than the issue that we are seeking to assess? The assessments are based on assumptions, and we profoundly disagree about the assumptions.
That is getting us into this question about experts again and whether there is such a thing as a fact or whether everything in this world is an opinion. It is important to make sure that if there are facts and if we can prove cause and effect-for example, if we know that the introduction of inspections or a hard border is going to slow down lorries going through a particular port-we can, QED, prove that there is going to be a particular consequence for the economy. That sort of analysis ought to be shared with the wider world.
I did say I was trying to finish, but my hon. Friend tempts me.
I wanted to give my hon. Friend an example before he concludes. Last week, the Prime Minister claimed that the UK would make “significant savingsâ€ as a result of our leaving the EU, but I have asked questions and Treasury Ministers have not been able to explain what those savings will be or to put a figure on them. Yet Financial Times analysis suggests that we will lose £350 million per week, which contrasts with what was on the side of that red bus.
That is right. That Financial Times analysis was worth sharing and should be shared, but we should not rely on journalism alone to do the job. We have a professional civil service; let us not gag it or try to lock it under the stairs somewhere. We should let that expertise come out so that we can all see and hear it.
Members are enjoying new clause 21 so much! I thought it was a simple one.
I only want to help the hon. Gentleman. Does he think it would have been a lot easier had the Exiting the European Union Committee asked the Secretary of State for the impact opinions that he may well have had?
Again, when is an assessment an opinion? In some ways, it diminishes and slightly denigrates the professionalism of our civil service to suggest that its output is merely conjecture or opinion. There are some things in this world that are facts, from which we can draw conclusions and which any rational observer would not really question.
I give way for the final time.
May I read my hon. Friend the steel sector view? It says that“it will be a lengthy and potentially very costly process for UK manufacturers to break into new markets...Returns on sales to new markets will frequently be poorer than from existing contracts with customers in neighbouring countries.â€Is not that something that the British people need to know?
That is the level of analysis and assessment that deserves to be shared and that was not available to the public prior to the referendum. It should not be dismissed but made more widely available. Members, and beyond them voters, can weigh up the different opinions. Some Members might rubbish representatives of the steel sector and say, “What do they know? I know better,â€ but we can weigh these things up and bring them into balance. We have the opportunity to debate transparency. Let us allow sunlight to flood over this issue and make sure that we are better informed going forward than we were before the referendum.
During last Wednesday's debate, I specifically asked whether the Bill was first drafted before the June general election. My view-I do not know whether my right hon. and learned Friend shares it-is that this Bill was all about delivering a quick and hard Brexit, and the reason for these extraordinary powers is that they were needed by Ministers to execute that process in quite a short period of time. Does he think that there is any merit in that?
I think I might be a little kinder to my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench, because it seems to me that at the time the Bill came into being, the Government still thought that it was all that was required to take us out of the EU. I think that that is where its genesis and origin lie. In actual fact, one of the supreme ironies is that for all the heat that has been generated-we have carried out some proper scrutiny as well, but certainly, last Wednesday, there was a lot of heat-much of what we are doing here might well turn out in practice to be completely academic. In fairness to the Government, once they were landed with this immense problem, I am not sure that they were wrong to proceed in this way, but it just so happens that that is where we are going to end up. However, that is not a reason why we should not pay attention to the powers that the Government are seeking to take-we do have to pay attention to them.
I will give way to my right hon. Friend in just a second, because I do not wish to speak for very much longer. For that reason, I do hope that a bit of focus can placed on schedule 5. I do not have any amendments tabled. I am not about to create difficulties for the Government or to divide the House on schedule 5, but I will, if I may, just ask a question as we approach Report, because I cannot believe that this will not be looked at in the House of Lords. It would be quite nice for the Christmas period to be used for quiet reflection on just how wide these powers are and whether, yet again, the Government might, on reflection, be able to circumscribe them a little bit, so that they appear to be slightly less stark in terms of the power grab that they imply. That is quite apart from the fact, to come back to my first point, that the exception in paragraph 2 giving Ministers the power not to print strikes me as very, very odd.
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the Henry VIII powers, as he calls them, in the Bill are much more modest than the Henry VIII powers in the European Communities Act 1972 that it replaces? This is about only transferring existing law into UK law. Where and when we wish to amend, improve or repeal, that will require a full parliamentary process, which it did not need when it came from Europe.
Clause 13 is confined to the publication and rules of evidence. The schedule itself is about publishing what is retained direct EU legislation. Can my right hon. and learned Friend describe to me what latitude the Government would have that could do so much damage, or be so capricious, within the powers of the Bill, and can he give an example of what would be so damaging and outrageous?
As I have explained, this is a Henry VIII power, so within the period in which this power is operational-this is on my reading, but perhaps my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench will correct me-a Minister of the Crown may, by regulation, essentially change the way in which retained EU law is handled by requiring“judicial notice to be taken of a relevant matter, or...provide for the admissibility in any legal proceedings of specified evidence of...a relevant matterâ€. That is a very extensive power. Effectively, it gives a power to rewrite how legislation should be interpreted.
Give us an example.
The examples could be endless- Well, if there is an established rule by which, for example, EU law is currently being applied, a Minister could say that, in future, that should be disapplied because notice should not be taken of its previous application.
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that it is not correct to compare the direct application of EU law with Henry VIII powers? When EU law is made, we all sit around the table. EU law is not other people's law but our law. We sit at the table when EU law is being made, so it is an incorrect comparison.
I do actually agree with the hon. Lady and, I am afraid, disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). Of course, membership of the EU implies a pooling of sovereignty, but the decision-making process by which law has been created in the EU is one that is done not by faceless bureaucrats, but by the Council of Ministers. There is absolutely no doubt about that at all-
In secret.
I do not wish to be dragged off into some new polemical argument. My hon. Friend says in secret, but, if I may say, we are signed up to hundreds of treaties other than that with the EU in which we pool our sovereignty to come to common positions with our fellow treaty makers.
I think that I am about to take up much more time than I wanted to. I give way to the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon).
I am extremely grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. I agree entirely with his eloquent points about the power that schedule 5 transfers to Ministers of the Crown. Will he spend a moment reflecting on the definition of a Minister of the Crown that is set out in clause 14? The definition comprises not just Ministers, but“also includes the Commissioners for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customsâ€. The power in schedule 5 is being given to a very broad range of individuals.
The hon. Lady is right. Next to me, from a sedentary position, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex is saying, “It'll only be used for technical matters.â€ Indeed-let us be clear about this-I strongly suspect that that is the intention, but this is a very extensive power and, as it is worded, it goes way beyond technical amendments. As we are in Committee, it seems perfectly proper for me, as a Back-Bench Member of Parliament-it does not matter which side of the Chamber I am sitting on-to ask my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench to explain to the Committee how the power will be used. I gently say to my hon. Friends that the problem with this debate is that the heat that starts to come off very quickly goes into issues of principle about what has been going on over the past 50 years. Could we just gently come back to focus on the issue at hand?
As much as I would like to give way to my right hon. Friend, I am actually now going to sit down.
Just for a second.
All right, I will give way.
I want to take up my right hon. and learned Friend on one small point. After agreeing with the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and justifying the past 40 years by saying that decisions were agreed by Ministers sitting together to make law, he knocked down his own argument as to why he cannot support what Ministers are doing because, of course, they would use this power as Ministers who have been elected to implement change and make law. My right hon. and learned Friend cannot have it both ways. Either he thinks that the last 40 years were wrong, which is why one defends the idea of change, as he did originally; or he thinks that the last 40 years were fine, in which case there is no attack on this particular aspect of the Bill.
I am afraid that I disagree totally with my right hon. Friend. In the last 40 years, we decided to pool sovereignty as a matter of national interest and necessity. This is a totally different issue; it is about our domestic law. When it comes to matters of domestic law, this House does not have the necessary constraint, which is the very reason why I have asked these questions. I am quite confident that my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench will be able to provide some cogent answers to the points I have raised.
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
All right, but this is the last one.
Is there not also another difference, which is that decisions within the European Union are not just taken by meetings of the Council of Ministers, as there is a co-decision process that involves elected Members of the European Parliament representing all 28 member states?
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I do not want to get dragged into revisiting the way in which the European Union works. The European Union has many flaws, and there are many issues on which I have seen fit to criticise it during my years in the House-including, sometimes, the way it goes about its business. Having said that, this constant conflation of the two issues when we are carrying out scrutiny of what will be domestic legislation is, in my view, not helpful. We need to focus on what we are doing. If we do, we will come up with the right answers.
It is a real pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who made a characteristically thoughtful and reasonable contribution. It is always remarkable to see how such thoughtfulness and reasonableness can be so provocative to some Government Members. I wish to speak to amendments 348 and 349 in my name and the names of my hon. and right hon. Friends. I hope, in doing so, to build on the agreement across the Committee that was evident last Wednesday, when we made the decision that Parliament should have a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal.
Thank you for that clarification, Dame Rosie, although I think that the points that I am making stand regardless. Following on from the decision last Wednesday, let us be clear that an overwhelming majority of Members respect the result of the referendum, as was reflected in the vote on article 50, but there is also a clear majority who reject the deep rupture with our friends and partners in the EU 27 that is advocated by some of the more extreme Brexiteers. In the months ahead, that clear majority needs to find its voice. Most Members-many more than reflected in last Wednesday's vote-recognise that our future lies in a close and collaborative relationship with the EU. I am sorry if that was provocative to some Government Members. The Prime Minister describes that relationship as a “deep and special partnershipâ€. It is a relationship based on maintaining common EU standards and regulations necessary for our future trading relationship, and it is vital in protecting jobs and the economy. It is also a majority of the House who recognise that the referendum was a close vote-not the unprecedented mandate that some have suggested. Yes, 17.5 million people voted to leave the EU in 2016. That is roughly the same number as voted to remain in 1975, although that represented 67% of voters in 1975. It was a clear decision, but a close vote, and one that we should be implementing in a way that unites the country, not in a way that drives a further wedge between the 52% and the 48%.
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should be trying to bring people together, rather than separating them. In that context, will he explain his definition of Brexiteer? He used the word earlier in the phrase “more extreme Brexiteersâ€. In his definition, is every Member who voted for article 50-I think that five sixths of the House did so-characterised as a Brexiteer?
Clearly not. Like hon. Members across the House, including the overwhelming majority of the Opposition, I campaigned to remain in the European Union because I thought it was right thing to do economically and politically for our country and our continent. But I voted for article 50. That clearly does not characterise me as an extreme Brexiteer. Since I was elected in 2010, it has startled me that a small number of Members seem to define their politics by their ambition to leave the European Union at any cost and at any price; that is what I would describe as extreme.
Again, just for clarification, Members who voted for article 50 are not Brexiteers, but presumably those who did not vote for article 50 are also not Brexiteers. Therefore, none of us is a Brexiteer; or are we actually all Brexiteers and just trying to resolve the issue?
I am not really sure where the hon. Gentleman is trying to go with that argument. My point is that an overwhelming majority in the House wish to see us implement the decision of 2016 sensibly, and in a close and collaborative relationship with the EU 27. There are others-a small number, whose voices I expect to hear shortly-who would see us leave at any cost, and I regret that.
My hon. Friend says a number of extreme Brexiteers in this House want to leave at any cost. Does he accept that a small number of Members will do anything-anything-to stop the United Kingdom carrying out the wishes of the British people to leave the European Union?
No, I do not, and it is unfortunate that some people have been characterised in that way, as the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and others were by some of their colleagues last week. If I can now make some progress-
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Well, while we are talking about extreme voices, I am happy to give way.
There are right hon. and hon. Members who say they want to honour the result of the referendum, but who actually want the European Union to carry on controlling our laws. I call them Brexinos-people who want Brexit in name only. There may well be a majority of them in this House, but that would not be respecting the result of the referendum, would it?
The hon. Gentleman is a good example of those who see conspiracy in any corner. I note the article he wrote in The Guardian on 8 October under the title “It's a sad truth: on Brexit we just can't trust the Treasuryâ€. He went on to say:“There is no intrinsic reason why Brexit should be difficult or damaging, but the EU itself has so far demonstrated it wants to make it so...it has co-opted the CBI...the City and...the Treasury to assist.â€Well, I think that the majority of Members take a more rational view. The decision taken in 2016 was not a mandate for driving over a cliff edge with no deal or for having no transitional arrangement in place. It was not a vote for leaving all the agencies and partnerships from which we have benefited over the years and could continue to benefit or for turning our back on the single market, walking away from the customs union or-I say this with an eye on the contribution made in the last debate by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who is paying more attention to his phone than to the debate-turning our back on the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Would the hon. Gentleman let me intervene?
I was hoping the right hon. Gentleman would.
Is the hon. Gentleman not guilty himself, however, of attempting to interpret what the vote was for? On the ballot paper was the issue of whether to leave; the rest is down to negotiation. So, surely, his position is as absurd as that of anyone who says they know these things. He does not know. He knows only one thing: that the British people voted to leave. The rest is for negotiation.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The rest is indeed down to negotiation, and it is down to this Parliament to make the final decisions. In the right hon. Gentleman's contribution to, I think, the debate on day one, he sought to interpret the mandate by saying that the primary reason, from the research he had done, for leave voters voting as they did was their antipathy to the Court of Justice of the European Union. I was quite surprised by that, because I talked to hundreds of people on the doorstep who told me they were voting to leave, and the jurisdiction of the CJEU was not one of the regular issues raised. Therefore, after day one, I took the time to look at the right hon. Gentleman's research, which was carried out in partnership with the Foreign Secretary's and the Environment Secretary's favourite think-tank, the Legatum Institute. I located the report, and I read it with interest. Unusually, it did not include data on the full results, only the final weighted results, but the interesting thing was the question itself. Whereas the other choices were value-neutral-the economy, immigration, national security or the NHS- one option was“The ability for Britain to make its own lawsâ€-a leading question if ever I heard one. If the question had been “Jurisdiction of the Court of Justiceâ€, the right hon. Gentleman may well have found a different answer. Other research, with larger samples-
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can skip that and go to the point that was in that pamphlet, which made it clear that when people were asked what their primary reason was for voting to leave, it was “Take back controlâ€-control of our laws, our borders and our money. He can debate that as much as he likes, but the public knew about that when they voted.
Are we not in a discussion about who interprets what? Is it not therefore time that we asked the people: what did they mean?
On a point of order, Dame Rosie. My understanding of the advice you gave earlier is that amendment 348, which is about impact assessments, is not being discussed at this moment. I think that you told us that this debate is supposed to be about new clause 21, which is about clear English. That is why I asked the question about the shadow Minister's definition of the word “Brexiteerâ€. However, I have not heard anything about new clause 21, and I think that you said we are going to take amendment 348 later.
Thank you, Dame Rosie. The point I was making was that when Mr Speaker confirmed that our motion was binding and, indeed, that the Government should comply urgently, they clearly found themselves in a bit of a fix. Three weeks later, they finally produced something, although it was not what we voted for. I was really keen to read the papers that had been described by the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union as offering “excruciating detailâ€ on the impact of the various options we faced as a country when leaving. So I, like a number of other Members, booked my slot for the DExEU reading room at the earliest opportunity. On 5 December, I turned up at 100 Parliament Street and reported to reception. I was accompanied, closely, to the room. When I arrived, I was required to hand over my mobile phone. Having been sat at the table, two lever-arch files were brought to me from a locked cabinet, and as I read them I was supervised by two civil servants. So what did I find? Nothing that could not have been found in a reasonable internet search-which is presumably what the civil servants had been doing over the preceding three weeks in order to prepare them.
I went through the exact same experience. I visited the Cabinet Office and gave in my mobile phone, and made my written notes on the various tables in the section I was interested in. Afterwards, I found that I was given the identical information by submitting written parliamentary questions -so why all the secrecy?
My hon. Friend makes the point very well. Why all the secrecy for what was available in that room, because there was certainly no assessment-or analysis, if we are playing with words-of the impact of the policy choices facing the Government and the country?
The education section starts by saying, “We will not touch on the effects on Horizon 2020 or Erasmus.â€ It does not touch at all on non-higher education. There is no impact assessment on summer schools or language teaching in this country. Clearly, the work was not really done even with an internet search.
We are probably straying on to dangerous territory if we start talking about the content, such are the rules surrounding the documents until such time as they are made public, but those of us who have been there know that they provide no analysis and no impact assessment. So it was no surprise when the Secretary of State told the Brexit Committee last Wednesday that the Government had undertaken “no quantitative assessmentâ€ of the impact of leaving the customs union-just one of the policy choices we face. Yet just a few hours later, in a room just a few yards away, the Chancellor told the Treasury Committee that the Government had“modelled and analysed a wide range of potential alternative structures between the EU and the UK, potential alternative arrangements and agreements that might be made.â€The Chancellor's answer was developed in oral questions last Thursday by the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who is in his place. He said:“Our sectoral analysis is made up of a wide mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses examining activity across sectors, regulatory and trade frameworks and the views of stakeholders.â€- Let us bear in mind that the Secretary of State had said that no quantitative assessment has been undertaken on the impact of leaving the customs union. So in this“qualitative and quantitative analysis of regulatory and trade frameworksâ€have the Government for some reason exempted the customs union?
Is the hon. Gentleman confused, as I am, about the reasons why the Government seem to have this problem-I do not know whether it is an ideological objection-with conducting impact assessments? We heard from the Prime Minister on Monday that Ministers are sitting down to discuss our future trading relationship with the European Union without having in front of them any impact assessments on what the different economic impacts of these models might be. How irresponsible is that?
The worry is that either they are not conducting them or they are conducting them and not sharing them in the way that was required.
Could not there be another, far more simple, explanation-that the Secretary of State is heading a Department that should be renamed “the Department for Winging Itâ€?
That is probably the sort of phrase that the Secretary of State might use on some occasions. On 2 February 2017, the Secretary of State told the House:“We continue to analyse the impact of our exit across the breadth of the UK economy, covering more than 50 sectors-I think it was 58 at the last count-to shape our negotiating position.â€- Was he right? Or was the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) right when he said recently that the Secretary of State“has never actually referred to impact assessments... These were a fiction of the media and the Labour partyâ€? If the Government are playing with semantics, claiming that assessments of impact and impact assessments are not the same thing, they should be aware that they are at serious risk of misleading the House. Even more worryingly, have they, as we have heard suggested, actually not undertaken this work at all? Are they hiding these assessments in semantics-hiding them from the House and from the Select Committee-or do they not even have any work to hide?
I want to speak briefly on new clause 21 and amendment 348. I also want to make some points in response to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), because I agree with him on half of what he says and not on the other half. I will keep that stored up for the end to try to persuade him to stay; otherwise, I am sure that cups of tea may beckon for many. I think that new clause 21, tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), is the great confession that we have been waiting for from the pro-Europeans in this House. The new clause has been given the support of some of the most luminous pro-Europeans known to the nation: the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), and that great panjandrum of pro-Europeanism, the distinguished gentleman the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable). All have signed this new clause. It says what we Eurosceptics have been saying all along: that the European Union produces its law in a form of gobbledegook-stentorian, sesquipedalian sentences that nobody can ever understand-and that when it is brought into British law, it should therefore be brought in in a plain English translation. The title of the new clause is “Plain English summaryâ€.
I agree with my hon. Friend's description, actually. Does he agree that a lot of these things are almost as bad as the drafting of the Finance Bills that the Government bring before the House of Commons year after year?
I am extremely grateful for the humility being shown by my distinguished right hon. and learned Friend, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who admits that some of the Bills brought forward by his own former Department are incomprehensible to the lay reader. It is a broader problem of legislation, but it has been a particular problem of European legislation. That is why I have some sympathy for the new clause. As EU law is brought into UK law, which is widely accepted as the right starting point for when we leave the European Union, the Government ought to seek to do it in a form that is intelligible and easy to understand. This is one of the areas where I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, who said that that is one of the principles of the rule of law. As we do this, we should of course be sticking to principles of basic constitutional fairness. It is glorious that the second argument of the Eurosceptics has been accepted in this new clause. The first argument is the basic one of taking back control, but the second is that the fundamental nature of the way in which the EU created law, and the whole body of the acquis communautaire, was not comprehensible to most people, was not subject to satisfactory democratic control, and was a bureaucratic monster that rolled on and on regardless.
Of course I give way to the hon. Lady, whose constituency I encircle.
I thank the hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, for giving way. Has he ever tried to put any legislation in front of an ordinary person and ask him or her whether it is comprehensible? Our discussion demonstrates our difficulty, as parliamentarians, in making comprehensible to the people who elect us what we are actually about.
In North East Somerset, we do not have ordinary people. We have only exceptional, brilliant and talented individuals of the highest and finest calibre. I have a serious point to make in that: we, as politicians, should never use the term “ordinary peopleâ€, implying that we are some priestly caste who understand the mysteries of legislation, whereas ordinary people do not.
I apologise for the use of the term “ordinary peopleâ€. I accept that it is possibly not a very good way of describing the people who elect us.
Expensive help.
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has been in to read the documents, but by no stretch of the imagination are they an analysis or an assessment. They are purely descriptive. Either they have come from Wikipedia or-I think this is more likely-they are a bad piece of GCSE coursework, which would get a fail if it was supposed to contain analysis.
I did go to see the documents, as a member of the Exiting the European Union Committee. I was lucky; I was not told that I had to hand over my mobile telephone, my secret spyglasses or whatever other kit I might have borrowed from James Bond and brought with me so that I could try to take these secret bits of information out to the wider world. I did not have to suffer the great indignity that some other hon. Gentlemen have suffered. I was allowed to sit down and plough through the documents. I must confess that on that afternoon, I would have been happier reading a P. G. Wodehouse or a similarly entertaining document. I also confess that there was not a great deal in the bit that I read that could not have been found out by somebody with an able researcher or competence in the use of Google. None the less, the information had all been brought together in a usable fashion in one place, and it was an analysis of the sectors covered. It may not have been exciting, it may not have been the read of the century and it may not have won the Booker prize. None the less, it was a detailed sectoral analysis and it more than met the requirements laid down by the Humble Address, which asked for something that did not exist.
The hon. Gentleman is extremely generous to give way again to me. I asked the Secretary of State in the Select Committee where and when he thought the misunderstanding had arisen, but I do not think I got a very satisfactory answer. He had plenty of opportunities in the House to correct us and say, “These are not impact assessments; they are sectoral analyses.â€ He never chose to do that, and I am still waiting for the answer. Why does the hon. Gentleman think that the Secretary of State did not have the opportunity to clear up that misunderstanding?
I do not agree with the hon. Lady. I think the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), made the situation clear from the Dispatch Box. He said in no uncertain terms that there were not impact assessments, but there were sectoral analyses. Dare I say that there are none so deaf as those who will not hear? I think the House did not particularly hear that those impact assessments did not exist, and therefore rode over the information that was given from the Dispatch Box.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being so generous. I brought up the issue with the Secretary of State in October 2016, when he told me:“We currently have in place an assessment of 51 sectors of the economy.â€- The hon. Gentleman knows as well I do that there are only 39, and they do not look like assessments of sectors of the economy. Will he join me in asking Front Benchers whether they will clarify their position on that issue?
The hon. Gentleman is moving away from the Humble Address, which asked for impact assessments, not assessments of the economy by sector. He is asking about another piece of information, which he is quite entitled to do. It is perfectly legitimate to ask for that information, but it in no sense represents a breach of the Humble Address; nor is it covered by amendment 348. Does the hon. Gentleman wish to intervene again? No?
Let me be bipartisan and take our friend from Scotland first.
In fairness to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) on the SNP Front Bench, he was referring to his own question, not the Humble Address, so will the hon. Gentleman address his point?
Yes, but I was saying that the terms of the question asked by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) and the Humble Address were different. The Humble Address is a binding motion, but although the hon. Gentleman's questions are very important and deserve to be taken seriously-and treated, as all questions should be, properly and diligently-they are not binding in themselves. It might be a great thing if the hon. Gentleman's questions were to become binding and have the force and weight of the whole House of Commons behind them, but that is not yet the situation. I will now happily give way to my right hon. Friend.
We are rehearsing matters that I thought had been thoroughly covered, but the reality is that had the Secretary of State not addressed the requirements of the Humble Address, he would have been guilty of a contempt, and Mr Speaker has made it absolutely clear that that was not the case.
My right hon. Friend has put the matter so well that I can move on to my final point. I wish to make a point about the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield and Henry VIII powers, where we have come from and where we are going to in relation to new laws being implemented in the United Kingdom. The part on which I agree with him is that we in this House should always treat Henry VIII powers with the deepest suspicion. The job of the House of Commons is to protect the powers of the House of Commons against an over-mighty Executive. Dare I say to those on the Government Front Bench that all Executives seek to be over-mighty? It is in their very nature, whether our side or Labour is in power. Those of us on the Government Back Benches should always remember that we will not be in government forever. I am sorry to say that, but I take a very long view of history, and I can see that at some point in the next millennium we may, heaven help us, have an SNP Government-
We have already got one.
But not for the United Kingdom as a whole-no, not yet. I will wait for the SNP to put up a candidate in North East Somerset, and we will see how well that goes down.
Would my hon. Friend concede that some of us are always in opposition whichever party is in government?
My hon. Friend puts the point beautifully. That is actually the historical and traditional job of Back-Bench Members of Parliament. We should be here to protect the interests of our constituents and the interests of the constitution, and to hold the Government-of whichever party-to account. That is why I am in such agreement with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield about the undesirability of Henry VIII powers. However, I said I would diverge from him at some point. The point on which I diverge from him is the perhaps slightly academic one about where we have started from. I think it is inconsistent to say that Henry VIII powers exercised by the British Government, subject to the normal parliamentary procedures of this House and another place, are worrying, but that the Henry VIII powers used under the European Communities Act 1972 were not.
My hon. Friend makes a perfectly reasonable point, and there is an argument that this House should not concede Henry VIII powers without very good reason indeed. I suggest that the difference is that the 1972 Act carried the clear implication that this was a necessity in order to meet our international obligations. The question I have asked this afternoon is whether these powers are required to meet some domestic necessity. My hon. Friends on the Front Bench may be able to reassure me that they are, but as the powers are so extensive, it is right that we should question them.
It is always right that we should question such powers. That issue was about meeting our international obligations, but we volunteered to take on those international obligations by treaty without allowing the House to have the final say on the regulations that would come in. A political decision was made for the convenience of the then Government to do this in such a way to get that treaty agreed, but that was just as much a power grab from this House as what is currently proposed. Indeed, to my mind, it was a very much greater power grab because of the way in which laws in the European Union are introduced. The key is not co-decision making, which we have heard about-that is marginal, and came in at a later stage-but the fact that the right to present a new law rests with the Commission, which is the least democratic part of the European Union. One of the glories of this House is that any right hon. or hon. Member may at any point, after the first few weeks of a new Session, go up to the Public Bill Office and seek to bring in a new Bill. The right of initiation of legislation lies with all of us, not just people who win the lottery or have ten-minute rule Bills. It lies not just with the Government; any right hon. or hon. Member has that right. It is such an important part of our ability to represent our constituents and to seek redress of grievance. The highest form of redress of grievance is an Act of Parliament; interestingly, Acts of Parliament emerged at the beginning of the 14th century from the presentation of petitions to this House that Members then turned into Acts. This is at the heart of our democratic system, but it was immediately denied by the basis on which laws are introduced within the European Commission.
The hon. Gentleman is of course right about the ability of Members to introduce a Bill, but glorious though the right is, is he not slightly exaggerating its force? Given the Executive's control of the timetable, the likelihood of any Bill introduced in such a way being able to make it into law is pretty minimal.
The likelihood is minimal because it would be fairly chaotic if we had 650 Bills coming through each day-understandably, there has to be a means of making this House work; none the less, we have such a right. When Members bring forward really important Bills that are of fundamental significance and have support across the nation, they do eventually get through, despite the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), as well as of me and one or two others, to talk out rotten Bills. When Bills are of high quality and have support, they do get through, and that is very important.
Will the hon. Gentleman name one that has got through via that procedure during the last Session?
In the last Parliament, we got through a major reduction in prejudice against people suffering from mental health disorders-for example, allowing them to become Members of this House. That very important Act of Parliament was carried by pressure from individual Members. Nobody sought to talk it out-it had very widespread support-and it was taken through by a Back Bencher.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Autism Act 2009 was such an example, as was the legislation creating marine protection zones that was brought in by our former hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. Such Bills do come through- The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) is saying that they were not presentation Bills. It is fair to say that a presentation Bill very rarely gets through in the first instance, but it can often go on to become a ballot Bill or to receive Government support, so it is the beginning of the process. I certainly would not advocate that each of us should have the right to get a Bill made into law, but we have the right to initiate the process. That is at the heart of the democratic process, but the EU lacks such a system, which is why the 1972 Act created a worse set of Henry VIII powers than the set now being created. Overall, however, as it is nearly Christmas, I am in happy agreement with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield.
My hon. and learned Friend makes a powerful point. Will she put it to the Minister that the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union told me in October 2016 not only that there were 51 sectors rather than 39-there was some confusion, and I thank the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) for giving way to me on that-but that there was also an assessment that was promised to the Scottish Government back in 2016?
The hon. and learned Lady is making a very interesting speech. Retained rights for EU citizens perhaps go that little bit further, because they are specific to EU citizens in this country-hence the reference, perhaps with a little more certainty, to the European Court of Justice-but she is seeking to imply that same strict standard for all retained EU law.
indicated dissent.
The Solicitor General is raising his eyebrows at me, but if he looks carefully at schedule 5, as I am sure he has, he will see that it talks about the procedure for interpreting retained EU law. That is why I am revisiting these issues. I am also revisiting them because former Supreme Court judges Lord Neuberger and Lord Hope gave this evidence to the House of Lords after our discussions on clause 6(2) in this House. It is new evidence that the Government really should take away and look at before Report.
In a former career, I would take cases and seek direction from the courts on what they believed the law, or previous cases, were intending. Courts and judges are used to exercising discretion. Clause 6(2) makes it quite clear that they may do so if they consider it appropriate, in the same way they can refer to Commonwealth judgments if they believe that to be appropriate. I do not recognise the picture of the judiciary that the hon. and learned Lady is painting.
I recognise it, because in my former career I appeared regularly in the Supreme Court of the UK and the supreme courts of Scotland. The hon. Gentleman may not recognise my concerns, but if he shares my professional background, he should recognise the concerns of senior members of the serving judiciary and the retired judiciary. These are very real concerns. They are telling us that clause 6(2), as currently drafted, on how they will be directed to interpret retained EU law after exit day, does not give them the clarity they desire and would leave in their provenance issues that are political and economic, and factors that, to use Lord Neuberger's words, are rather unusual for a judge to have to take into account. This is complicated.
indicated assent.
I am very grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield for agreeing with me on this point. I would expect him to do so, because he, like me, will be paying very careful regard to what current senior judges and retired judges are saying. I would like to conclude by quoting what Lord Thomas said to the House of Lords Committee after Lord Neuberger and Lord Hope had given their evidence. He said that he entirely agreed:“It will be a very real problem for future judicial independence and the rule of law if thisâ€-the guidance-“is not clarified.â€Put briefly, the problem is that leaving domestic courts free to make independent judgments on such crucial constitutional issues raises the prospect of politicising the judiciary's institutional role in the Brexit process, resulting, potentially, in further regrettable attacks on the integrity of UK judges like those we saw earlier this year and last week. I therefore ask the Minister to address this problem before Report. I have no doubt that it will be addressed in the House of Lords, but I think it should be addressed in the elected House. The elected House should sort this out and not leave it to their lordships.
Given the spirit in which the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) moved new clause 21, I was anticipating some form of Christmas truce, and that we would perhaps emerge from our trench lines and play football. As the debate went on, however-this is inevitable on such issues-divisions soon emerged. We have had quite a fierce debate on aspects of the policy surrounding our exit from the EU. First, there was the question of when an impact assessment is not an impact assessment. We then-I am not criticising the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry)-started down the road of, in effect, reopening the debate on clause 6(2). I did raise my eyebrows at her. I take the point that there is a link with schedule 5, but she will immediately recognise that the schedule tries to answer the old question of whether the recognition or understanding of EU law for the purposes of judicial interpretation is a question of fact or a question of law. It is a mechanism to an end, rather than the means of interpretation itself, which is of course within clause 6.
My point is that, having rightly conceded that it is a question of law, the Government need to address how that law is interpreted by the judiciary.
I rather assumed that, given the other extensive powers the Government are taking, we would have that deleted before it became retained EU law in the first place.
As I have said, this is a power of publication. It is important not only that we formally delete it, as my right hon. and learned Friend says, but that we provide that it does not end up in the wrong place and thereby mislead the reader or those who want to find an authoritative source for retained EU law. Another example would be EU regulations that have entered into force but are only partially applicable here immediately before exit day. One example is regulation 2016/2031 on protective measures against pests of plants, which has entered into force. One provision applies now, but the rest will apply in the EU only after exit day. To answer him directly, that is why the power exists. I shall move on to paragraphs 3 and 4. Paragraph 3, as the keenest Members will have observed, is based on section 3(1) of the 1972 Act, which provides that“any question as to the meaning or effect of any of the Treaties, or as to the validity, meaning or effect of any EU instrument, shall be treated as a question of lawâ€, and, of course, when something is a question of law, a court can determine the meaning of that law for its own purposes. Foreign law is normally a question of fact to be pleaded and then proved, often by recourse to expert evidence. Quite rightly, however, we want to allow a question of EU law to continue to be treated as a question of law after exit day, for certain purposes, such as when it is necessary to decide the question of EU law for the purposes of interpreting retained EU law in legal proceedings here.
Will the Solicitor General take a moment to explain the status of the long preambles to EU regulations and directives? We are taking all this back, so what is their status to be? How will the courts interpret the preambles to regulations and directives that become part of retained EU law?
Like any other part of a document, it will, of course, have effect. A preamble is an important statement. It is different from, say, an explanatory note or accompanying document-it is part of the measure and therefore will have force. We are seeking to download that documentation and make it part of our domestic law so that when we read it across, people will know that it is part of our domestic law, albeit in that category of retained EU law.
The hon. and learned Gentleman, like everyone in the House, will be well aware that our legislation does not have long preambles. I think that the judges need further guidance. He has indicated from the Dispatch Box that the preambles will have force. What weight should the judiciary across the UK give to those preambles, as they are not accustomed to them in British legislation? What does “forceâ€ actually mean?
To be fair to our judges, they already have the task of interpreting and applying EU regulations and all EU legislation that has direct effect. With respect to the hon. Lady, it will not be a new task for them, and I trust Her Majesty's judges to get it right. As I said in response to the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West, it is tempting for the House to try to set out a list of judicial dos and don'ts, but I do not think that that is an appropriate approach. I trust and respect the judiciary to get this right, as they almost invariably do. They answer the question that is put to them, and deal with it in a robust and independent way. As one of the Law Officers responsible for upholding the rule of law, I am happy to reiterate on the Floor of the House that I have the utmost confidence in our domestic judiciary to get it right. Paragraph 4 is based on subsections (2) to (5) of section 3 of the 1972 Act. Those subsections distinguish between EU-related matters which are to be judicially noticed-such as EU treaties, judgments of the Court and the Official Journal of the European Union-and other matters which, in theory, fall to be proved to the Court, such as EU instruments. For the latter category, rules are provided about how such matters are to be admissible to our courts. It is worth noting that the power in paragraph 4 to make evidential rules is again subject to the affirmative procedure, as it will be used to replace rules commonly found in primary legislation. I think it is important for all Members to note the context in which these powers are to be used.
My hon. and learned Friend is giving a very helpful explanation of the powers in paragraph 4. He may agree that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) should listen to it with care. There he was, expressing his great concern about the way in which legislation and EU law was handled in this country-and is still being handled before we leave the EU-but here the Government are replicating the process for when we have left. I am not allowed to speak in French in the Chamber, but plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
My right hon. and learned Friend is not just a lawyer but an historian. He will know that a previous Solicitor General, the late Lord Howe, steered the Bill that became the 1972 Act through the House of Commons. I nod to his memory. He knew what he was about, and he helped to produce an extremely important and effective piece of legislation. I make no apology for replicating aspects of it in this Bill. Let me reassure the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West that the fact that the provision is in a schedule is not significant. It is on the face of the Bill-in primary legislation-and it receives the same high level of scrutiny that it would if it were one of the clauses. I think it only right that clause 13 is drafted in a general way and there is particularity in the schedule. That is good, modern drafting practice, as I am sure the hon. and learned Lady will acknowledge, given her extensive study of other Bills on which we have worked together.
That was not just my concern. It was a concern expressed by the Law Society of Scotland which, as I have said, informed the SNP amendments. May I take up a point made by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve)? These are extremely sweeping powers, but they are tucked away in a schedule.
I take the hon. and learned Lady's point with the utmost seriousness, as I hope I always do, but, with respect to her, I think there is no real significance to be attached to the fact that the provision is in a schedule. This is hardly the longest piece of legislation that the House will have seen, but it will certainly be one of the most pored over-and rightly so. The hon. and learned Lady is doing justice to that through her interventions. Let me now deal directly with new clause 21. Of course I recognise the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham East, but I do not consider it feasible to impose a statutory duty requiring summaries of all retained direct EU legislation. The scale of that task would be hard to overstate. I have used the word Sisyphean before, and I think that it applies in this case. According to EUR-Lex, the EU's legal database, there are currently more than 12,000 EU regulations in force. To impose a statutory duty of requiring plain English summaries of them would, I think, be disproportionate, given that many explanatory materials have already been issued by the EU about EU law-and, indeed, by UK bodies, including the Health and Safety Executive. One example is documentation on the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals regulations published by the European Chemicals Agency. That measure has been mentioned many times in the Committee. I believe that, at present, the law is accessible.
I am grateful to the Solicitor General for addressing new clause 21 in that way, which will be useful to the poor members of the committee that has been given the task of sifting what should and should not be negative statutory instruments. The commitment to provide explanatory memorandums that are readily understandable is very helpful. Dealing with perhaps 12,000 regulations is, of course, a massive task, but does the Solicitor General not agree that that might be one of the unforeseen consequences of Brexit?
I think that there are many consequences on which the hon. Gentleman and I could dwell on another occasion. The fact is, however, that it is my task to try to ensure, as one of the Law Officers, that the principles of the rule of law to which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield referred in his speech-accessibility, clarity and certainty-are adhered to. We will deal with the issues so that we uphold those important principles, which were set out by the late Lord Bingham.
I am grateful to the Solicitor General for his generosity in giving way again. As he knows, we do not currently have a functioning Assembly in Northern Ireland, so we do not have Ministers who can abide by his direction about explanatory memorandums that will be issued when EU regulations and directives are brought back, in this context to Northern Ireland. Will he confirm that the Departments in Northern Ireland will have an obligation-a duty-to provide explanatory memorandums in that connection?
Anyone could have written it.
I agree with my hon. Friend. The sector has said that World Trade Organisation rules and current EU third country tariff schedules will bring a 4.5% tariff on components and a 10% tariff on cars; I think we already knew that. We were also informed that Japanese and Ford motor manufacturing make the UK their base because of access to the EU market. There is a major statement and recommendation there: it will be devastating for motor manufacturing in the UK if we do not continue to have access to the EU markets. We were also told that automotive is a high-volume, low-margin industry operating a just-in-time process. It was said that customs checks would add to administrative costs, delay production and shipments and create the need for increased working capital and that they would increase the cost of production in the UK. Concern was expressed about access to key engineering staff if higher immigration controls were in place, exacerbating skills shortages where a significant skills shortage already exists, with 5,000 job vacancies, especially in engineering design and production engineering.
Will the hon. Lady give way?
No, I am going to carry on, because others need to get in. Turning to the steel sector, I found what I already knew: Wales employs 5,000 people in the steel industry, and the knock-on effect on the steel industry in Port Talbot, Neath, Swansea, Ogmore and Bridgend will be devastating if those jobs are affected in the slightest. I did not waste my time going through all the Government nonsense again; I went straight to the sectoral views. The view of the steel sector was very blunt, just like the people who work in it, and I like that. It stated that policies and practices should remain as closely aligned to the EU as possible. Have I heard the Government promise that at any time during these debates? No. The sectoral view asked that we retain the UK's existing trade relationship through the EU's free trade agreement and similar preferential trading agreements. I have seen no promise of that either. It said that this should be a priority over the negotiating of a new free trade agreement. It also said that if we are to minimise the disruption that Brexit will entail, it will be vital that UK trade policies and practices remain as closely aligned to the EU as possible. The sector would not be happy to learn about the bonfire of the vanities proposed under the Henry VIII clauses in the Bill. My local employers and workforce need to know in advance of our exit that the Government have taken into account the economic and financial impact on their lives, their jobs and the future of their children before modifying or abolishing anything.
The Government say that they have carried out significant impact assessments covering the Welsh economy, but they have not been shared with the Welsh Government. What are they, and do they actually exist?
I took that intervention from my hon. Friend because she is a Welsh colleague, and she and her constituents will also be affected by these job losses in automotive and steel. This was nothing to do with rejecting an intervention from the Conservative Benches; it was about giving the Welsh voice prominence in this place, just for a change. Welsh workers are deeply affected by these industries, and it is appalling that the Welsh Government have not been given the information that they need to do what they can. It is equally appalling that we as elected Members are not being given the information that we need to work to protect the people we were elected to protect. The typically patriarchal attitude towards the workforce revealed by the impact assessments that have been done so far is deeply worrying. I do not think that any in-depth analysis of the financial impact has been done. Interestingly, I was in the USA last week at a defence conference, during which the question of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and a potential free trade agreement with the UK came up. A very senior member of the Trump Administration told us that the US had an ambition for access to all services in each other's markets and that it was particularly keen to have access to the UK's financial services. We were told, however, that it would not be as keen if the US was subject to the European Court of Justice, because it would not want its companies to have such judicial oversight. I think that tells us everything we need to know about the importance of our remaining in the customs union and the single market and being subject to the European Court of Justice. That is how we will protect not only our workforce but the consumers who buy the products that they produce.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who has spoken so well today, and indeed throughout these debates. This is the first time that I have risen to speak on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, and I do so because I wish to add a little to what has already been said about amendment 348. I do not intend to revisit the arguments put forward in the previous Humble Address, or the decisions taken by our Select Committee. That issue has been dealt with, but since the shadow Minister hinted that the Opposition would come back to it, I want to focus on the substance of the amendment and on why I disagree with it so strongly. It is my belief that what amendment 348 seeks to achieve is without precedent in the history of negotiations by our country. It would require the Government to publish their economic impact assessments of the policy options for withdrawal from the EU. However, the missing words at the end are “during our negotiations on withdrawal from the EUâ€. Those missing words matter, because this is a particularly important negotiation for our nation-nobody is any doubt about that-and because this is a particularly delicate time. The Government start negotiations on the implementation period and on our future relationship with the EU soon after the new year. On the other side of the negotiating table, the EU has made it absolutely clear that it will not be publishing all its research. We will therefore certainly not see any published analysis, let alone any impact assessments relating to, for example, what no deal would mean for specific ports in northern Europe, or to any potential drop in GDP for the town of Calais.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He seems to be arguing not for or against the publication of information, but against the whole idea of any kind of economic impact assessment at all, which makes me wonder what the Chancellor's last Budget statement was about. If he is being consistent, does he also think that none of the 16 economic impact analyses published by the Government in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum were worth the paper they were written on? They were also based on surmise and speculation.
I am following my hon. Friend carefully. Does he agree that my constituents' relatives from the Caribbean should have the same opportunity to come to this country as those from the European Union, who can come here by right? That is part of the reason why many people from ethnic minorities voted leave: they saw that there would be a fair immigration system, not one that was biased towards 27 other countries.
I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the National Audit Office report, published yesterday, on the Brexit work of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is already clear that the Department is under pressure, and it is making significant use of external consultants. With no promise of finances, much of the work programmed for Brexit is at risk. Does he agree that could be a significant problem?
My hon. Friend corroborates what I have been trying to outline. Rather than taking back control of public services, Brexit is likely to result in more public services being run at arm's length from directly elected representatives, who will seek to avoid being held responsible for poor performance. It is also vital that our trade agreement with the EU does not prevent economic growth and the growth in jobs and prosperity that comes with exporting our goods. New clause 21 is all about information, but where is the information for businesses and workers in my Slough constituency? Large businesses in my constituency such as Mars, the confectionary producer, have interconnected sites and factories across Europe, making up an integrated network in which raw materials are moved across borders. Finished products made in one country are packaged, distributed and sold in others. Representatives of Mars are concerned about the return of barriers to the supply chain and about the possible impact on jobs. During visits to their factory in my constituency, I was told:“It is a fact that Europe after Brexit will remain a critical market for UK exports and likewise the UK will remain an important market for goods produced and manufactured in other European states. There can be no economic advantage from either side restricting trade with a large market situated on its doorstep. In simple terms, if the UK and the EU fail to agree on a new preferential deal, it will be to the detriment of all.â€
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that a large company such as Mars is able to import cocoa, chocolate and nuts from African and Latin American states and get over all the trade complexities in that import business, so it is very easy for it to get over some minor issues that he is concerned about with regard to the EU trade?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that, but I would point out to him that we already have trade agreements, which is why in a previous exchange in Parliament I pointed out that we need to ensure that we have increased access arrangements and that we continue with the existing access agreements for developing countries.
Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that Mars is clearly able to make an assessment of the impact of the different types of economic arrangements we might have with the EU after we leave, whereas the Government are not? We heard this in an intervention from the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who is no longer in his place; he completely disregards any value in impact assessments whatsoever. Why can Mars do it but the Government cannot?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that intervention, because if Mars can do it, I am sure we can do it within Parliament. The Government's approach is, in essence, keeping business in the dark. In conclusion, a cliff edge scenario, with us sleepwalking into no deal, which is where this Government seem to be heading, would be severely damaging to us and our economy. We need to change course and avoid this fate of no deal. A starting point on that would be clear and detailed impact assessments.
I thank the House for going into much more detail than we perhaps initially expected on these clauses and amendments. It is has been a worthwhile investigation of schedule 5. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), in particular, raised pertinent points about rules of evidence, and we have heard good speeches from many of my hon. Friends, too. The Minister says that schedule 5 allows those explanatory memorandums to be produced by Government to help the House to sift through these potentially 12,000-plus statutory instruments that are going to come, so I will take his word on that and we will hold him to account on it. In those circumstances, and as we have many other issues to discuss, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
We find ourselves in the last part of day eight of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill Committee. Frankly, it has come around far too soon. Members might want another day before Christmas-I do not know whether that can be arranged at the last minute by the Leader of the House. This group of new clauses and amendments relates to a set of incredibly important issues. I am particularly keen to speak to new clause 13, which relates to the customs union, but there are many other new clauses and amendments in the group that are worth dwelling on. Before I come to new clause 13, I shall point out a few of them.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when he and I tabled new clause 54, we did so consciously trying to replicate Government policy as stated in the Florence speech? If the Minister would fairly promptly acknowledge and accept that, we should be able to save some time for the other important matters to be discussed in relation to this group.
That is an excellent suggestion. We could almost add new clause 54 to the copy-and-paste process, given that it is based on the Prime Minister's own words. Obviously, I personally would like to go further, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I tabled the new clause in the spirit of compromise. New clause 48 serves to highlight the important but often overlooked question of mutual recognition agreements. MRAs are another series of international obligations between countries. The UK has obtained rights for notified bodies to undertake conformity assessments to make sure that standards across the EU are complied with and that UK firms can certify assessments of conformity across that market of 500 million people by virtue of the process that they undertake in the UK. If we lose that MRA process, it could cause immense disruption to many businesses and sectors in the UK.
I know that Ministers are already aware of REACH-the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals-but the regulatory compliance of companies such as BASF in my constituency is essential to the continuation of effective trading across borders. I really do not want to see companies moving elsewhere, perhaps where regulations are easier to follow, because we will lose good jobs in research, development and manufacturing, and all in the incredibly important science, technology, engineering and maths sector. Does my hon. Friend agree that our leaving REACH will put that at risk?
I entirely agree and my hon. Friend is completely correct to stand up for her constituents and local businesses and to make that point, which is too often overlooked. We need mutual recognition arrangements like the REACH regulations. It is often said that big corporations want to get out of such regulations, but in this case they want to stay part of that framework because it allows them to access markets. If we sacrifice that access, they will lose out and jobs will go as a result. On a related issue, new clause 59 concerns the recognition of professional qualifications throughout the EU. I have been talking to the Royal Institute of British Architects, which is very worried about British graduates in architecture and those already in practice who often have services to sell across that wide range of 28 countries-as it is currently-and it is deeply concerned about whether its professional qualifications will continue to be recognised for the purposes of its ongoing business in that wider market. This is really serious stuff, and I hope that the Minister will address the matter when he has time to respond to these amendments. New clause 11 is about how Parliament should be able to keep track, even after exit day, of regulations that are being made in the European Union. When we leave, we will obviously have our own jurisdiction and the EU will have its own jurisdiction, but if the EU continues to evolve its regulatory practices and to make new changes to rules and laws, we need some device to keep us informed in the UK Parliament so that we have the choice over whether to contract with those rules and stay in alignment or to ensure that we have regulatory equivalence. This is really more of a procedural new clause, but it is just asking the question of how we will keep in touch given that these are our near neighbours and the markets with which we have to remain aligned.
My hon. Friend is proposing a whole series of amendments that would certainly improve the current dire situation of this Bill, but is not a simple solution to all these amendments to stay in the single market and the customs union?
It is indeed. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has visited Dover port. If he has, he will know that the site has no room available for customs checks. If he has visited the channel tunnel, he will also know that there is no capacity whatever to do any customs checks there.
Yes, and we all presumed that some of the £3.7 billion of preparations money would be spent on tarmacking fields around those areas in preparation for lorry parks and the overflow from the possible queues on the motorways.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are failing to understand the deep complexity of supply chains in the EU? He is talking about the finished product of a car, but there are also many automotive components that go backwards and forwards between the UK and mainland Europe. Sometimes within a single company, one part is made on mainland Europe, fixed into a car in this country and then exported back out to Europe. I also believe that the planning application for the lorry park was rejected because the council failed to carry out an environmental impact assessment.
We will have to see what happens there. I think that about 2.5 million lorries a year go through the port of Dover; just think about the volume of traffic we are talking about.
The Brexit Select Committee actually visited Dover and we then met a representative of the port of Calais. Although this country is prepared to build a lorry park, the French side will not build a lorry park because it has a migrant crisis. The port of Calais will just close under these circumstances, so where will we export to and import from?
I know that the Minister will answer all these questions as soon as he sums up this debate. He has the answers in his pack and he is not one to shilly-shally; he will give us specific and detailed responses to these questions.
May I turn my hon. Friend's attention to Ireland? Freight traffic to Dublin has enjoyed a growth rate of 700% since the establishment of the single market, but the control zone of the terminal is no bigger than it was in the 1980s, thanks to the fact that it has enjoyed the dismantling of customs control and port health control. Is he aware of any preparations or investment to deal with this potential problem if we do abolish the customs union?
No, and preparations would be needed for all sorts of other checks, including sanitary and phytosanitary checks. This would be for every port around this country, and I think that more than 1 million containers come in through the port of Southampton alone.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree with my view that most people in this country do not understand the huge benefits of the customs union? Of course, a huge swathe of people have never had any experience of stuff being stopped in customs. I certainly remember those days because of my age. Has it been his experience that British businesses are in many ways even more concerned about the movement of goods and tariffs and not being in the customs union than the actual imposition of the tariffs themselves? Companies such as Rolls-Royce in neighbouring Derby hugely benefit from these large supply chains and they are really worried about our leaving the customs union.
The right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) are right to focus on supply chains. The tariff could be a problem. Who knows what that would be-3%, 4% or 5%-if we fell back on the World Trade Organisation? Think of the disruption to business planning. A lot of firms would almost need to have an insurance policy at their disposal for the warehousing just to cope with the flows. We could be on the brink of many manufacturers fundamentally having to move away from the just-in-time business models that they have developed; it is almost like “RIP JITâ€ in this circumstance. We could almost see a whole new business model-we could be stepping back into the 20th century and earlier-if we get this wrong.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and indeed to the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), for drawing attention to this wider point, which greatly troubles manufacturers in my constituency, in particular. As things stand, they manufacture and ship immediately to customers in other parts of the European Union. We have a huge shortage of available space for new warehousing facilities in Greater Manchester, and it is really important that the Government understand that wider context-it is not just a question of problems at the ports.
We must not take these arrangements for granted. Many of our constituents have taken them for granted for decades now and thought, “Oh, well, this is all seamless,â€ so they would not understand, as the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said. It is worth just walking through what happens when we do not have this sort of seamless arrangement. If a country is outside the customs union, this is what happens to goods that are destined for elsewhere. Before departure, people have to complete an export declaration, which is often lodged with a freight forwarding company. At the port of exit, the goods need to be cleared by the authorities, who decide whether inspection is needed. If so, the goods are possibly placed into storage and checked. Then, once they have left and travelled to the port of entry in the destination country, they are presented to the authorities via another declaration process, and potentially placed in storage again. Then there are country-of-entry checks and risk assessments; there is revenue collection; there could be checks for smuggled, unlicensed goods; and there are things such as hygiene, health and safety measures, labelling, consumer protection checks, the administration of quota restrictions, agricultural refunds, and trade defence checks to ensure that things are not being dumped unfairly in the country. All these administrative processes will absolutely add to the export process for goods.
Great Grimsby is well known for its fish and fish processing. We have discussed extensively some of the issues around delays to things such as automotive sector products, but we also have fresh products, such as fish. Fish is caught in Norway and imported to Grimsby, and it is an essential part of the fish processing industry. Any additional delays to that product will mean that supermarkets will not buy it-they will not want it-and the quality will reduce. That will have a really serious impact. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the issues around the delays and to make sure that the Government understand that reducing those delays in any way possible has to be at the forefront of their considerations.
The delays will probably be of great concern to the companies involved in those shipments, because those goods have to be fresh and delivered on time. However, if we fall back on to WTO arrangements, there is also the potential 8% tariff for fish and crustaceans.
I wonder why the hon. Gentleman is concerned for companies on that particular point, when Norway is not in the European Union or the customs union-it is in the single market. Therefore, the customs union aspect simply does not apply to Norway.
The hon. Gentleman will know that there are concerns. He said Norway was a “vassal stateâ€-I think that was his phrase. I do not think the Norwegians would see it that way, but they have had to simply take instructions, in many ways, in terms of the European Union arrangements on a lot of these questions. With many of our products, particularly in the manufacturing sector, the customs union has given us great opportunity to thrive, and we have done particularly well in recent years on the back of that.
On that point, the Norwegian border is very interesting. Norway is in Schengen, so it does border checks on goods, but it does not need to do border checks on people. The main problem, of course, is that we are not in either. We need, at some point, to address the issue of how we check that lorries are not bringing into this country people we do not want to be here. I know that taking back control of our borders is a very important point, but there will be important discussions to be had about how we make that possible. Container ports will be okay, because we can seal the loads, but it will be a lot more difficult with lorries, because they take separate loads from separate consignments, and they need to be opened several times. So the issue of people smuggling is becoming quite potent.
The hon. Lady deals with the point incredibly well. If we end frictionless trade or introduce barriers, with potentially the return of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, very significant problems will arise. The Government are either deluding themselves by saying, “There's some miraculous blue-skies technological solution to all these thingsâ€, or deluding others because of the fudging and obfuscation that is going on, when, in moving from the phase 1 to the phase 2 process, they put in a form of words that seems to be interpreted in almost as many different ways as there are people reading them. They have kicked the issue into the long grass for now, but we are not going to be able to get to a decent deal without this unravelling.
The long list of checks that the hon. Gentleman read out that would be applicable are, as he knows, currently applied. That is done in a very mechanical way, often by computer through a trusted trader-type scheme. A lot of the mechanisms, procedures and protocols that he read out, especially for food and medical products, are already applied. What would lead to new and additional checks is a change in tariffs between our exports and imported goods. Therefore, surely the imperative for everyone in this House is to urgently get on to the part of the negotiations where we can get a tariff-free deal with the EU. Otherwise some of the issues that he highlighted will need to be covered.
I agree that we want to have a tariff-free relationship with our European neighbours-that much we can all agree on. However, the hon. Gentleman should look at the circumstances where we export to third countries outside the European Union that are not part of the free trade agreements that we have accrued over the 40 years of our membership of the European Union. Those free trade agreements are there for a reason. As we heard earlier, the reason people want out of the pure WTO arrangement and into an FTA is precisely that they want to minimise many of the transactional barriers and the inertia that can be there. Let us take the car industry as an example. The chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the car industry's own representative, is now voicing concerns about investment in the sector gradually beginning to ebb away, partly because of the uncertainty of this whole situation. The level of investment in the industry in the UK was £2.5 billion in 2015, then £1.6 billion in 2016, and it is heading to less than £1 billion this year. Car companies are “sitting on their handsâ€, according to the chief executive of the SMMT.
I want to take my hon. Friend back to what he was saying about the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We had evidence this morning at the Brexit Committee on this. As he knows, in their recent agreement with Brussels, the Government committed to having no infrastructure at the border, and, if necessary, to our providing full regulatory alignment with the internal market and the customs union in order to achieve that. Is he encouraged by that commitment, even though the Government's current policy is not to stay in the customs union, because if it stands, it looks very likely that we will have to, in effect, stay in the customs union?
Absolutely. If we can maintain full alignment, which was the phrase used in that agreement, that is essentially the same thing as a customs union arrangement. However, there was a caveat in that Ministers said that it would apply unless specific solutions can be found for divergence that they might want to see. That is a bit like the European negotiator's way of saying, “Come on then, do your best-let's have a look at what you can dream up.â€ The worry that I had when the Prime Minister returned was that her interpretation of full alignment was to reference the old list within the Good Friday agreement that merely talked about areas such as agriculture, energy and tourism but excluded trade in goods, which is a pretty big part of the issue at the border. I do not think the European Union signed up to this thinking that there was an exclusion for trade in goods. It is a question of “watch and waitâ€ until the situation unravels.
May I bring the hon. Gentleman back to another border that he referred to, namely that between Norway and Sweden? Our Secretary of State for Transport is on record as saying that that is a completely frictionless border, across which things move with ease. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that that is not the case? I think it was the Swedish trade body that said Norway is the hardest country to trade with.
I have not seen that information, but there are all sorts of bits of infrastructure involved. There are separate roads and lanes for the processing of different things. As I have said, I am sure that the Minister will have solutions for all those problems.
Before the hon. Gentleman whips himself up into too much of a state of pessimism, may I gently remind him that inward investment is at a record high? If anything, it has picked up recently. In addition, because the EU has no free trade deals with big trading partners such as the US, China, Australia and New Zealand, and neither do we. That has not prevented trade from being conducted handsomely; if anything, our surpluses are with those countries rather than with the EU.
I will come to the US situation in a moment. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that the inward investment figures are massively inflated because of mergers and acquisitions data. When we consider the buy-outs of some of the large technology companies- Well, I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman should necessarily interpret the stripping out of British ownership of such companies as a great British success. If he digs beneath the statistics, he might see a slightly different picture. Our mythology about the UK's potential to strike a great and bountiful set of trade deals if we could only rid ourselves of the shackles of the customs union is becoming a bit of a joke across the British economy.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will give way in a moment. Our justification for leaving the customs union has to be more than simply to keep the Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade in a job. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who is keen to intervene, took evidence on some of these questions this morning. I think that the potential United States deal that the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) referred to is being kiboshed as we speak. The US would want an agricultural basis for any trade deal with the UK, but there is a reason why the Americans dip their chicken in chlorine: they have entirely different and lower animal welfare standards than do the UK and the EU. If we were to do an agricultural deal with the US on the basis of those lower standards, it would undercut our farmers, abattoirs and food producers, who would have to chase each other down to the level of the lowest common denominator. It is contradictory to hear the Environment Secretary saying that he does not wish in any way to reduce safety standards or animal welfare standards, and he may well be killing off the idea of a US trade deal with his pronouncements.
My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way again. This morning, the Secretary of State further entrenched his position, which will make it very difficult to complete a US trade deal involving food and food products. The other evidence that we have received in the Select Committee has indicated, week after week, that many parts of the agricultural sector believe that the UK Government over many generations-not just this Government, but previous ones-have never done the political or diplomatic brokering work necessary to build our export trading position with third countries outside the European Union. What on earth makes us think that we can now pull off this magic trick of building trade around the world to replace that which we have had with the European Union?
It is possible that our civil service will eventually gear up to do these things, and I would be the first person to say that we of course want to do new trade deals to repair some of the damage caused by this whole process, but it is not going to happen overnight. In fact, as you will remember, Sir David, Vote Leave promised during the campaign ahead of the referendum that we would be negotiating trade deals the day after the referendum and that they would all get going straightaway, but we are yet to see any of that actually kick off.
The hon. Gentleman has highlighted this contradiction, so will he explain why the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has not signed new clause 13-after all, he is on the record as saying that staying in the customs union would be a “disasterâ€-and why, given that Labour Members were whipped to vote against staying in the customs union, they have now made a volte-face and decided that staying in it is a possibility? What actually is the decided and determined policy of the Labour party on this issue?
I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) can speak for himself; he has done in the past and will do so again. I take the view that we should not shilly-shally on this issue, but stand up and say that there are risks to business and to our borders from our ports and airports being clogged up. We should also say that there is an economic cost-revenue costs for the Treasury-that could mean years of Brexit austerity ahead. All hon. Members, whichever side of the House we are on, need to recognise that some of the responsibility for these things will fall on our shoulders if we do not stand up now and say that staying in the customs union is the right way to proceed.
I may give way, because we have been talking about the USA, and some people have speculated about a trade deal with India.
Yes, on that point.
I give way to the right hon. Lady.
Given the hon. Gentleman's experience, has he, like me, talked to people about the detail of the EU-Canada comprehensive economic and trade agreement, as well as about what the Australians and the Indians-and many other countries that are apparently queuing up to do these great trade deals with us-want? At the core of any free trade agreement with such countries will be an absolute requirement for their people to be able to come to our country quite freely, as they can with the accelerated migration policy under CETA. Under that free trade deal, the Canadian people have the ability to come into parts of the European Union. It is a myth to think that this is about trade, because a huge part of it is about immigration.
Absolutely. The right hon. Lady has taken the words out of my mouth. I would love to see the Government's draft free trade agreement with India. I hope that there are fantastic manufactured goods or widgets that the British want to sell and could sell to India, but I suspect that the Indian economy is quite adept at producing widgets of its own and probably at quite a low cost. If the Indians are going to buy anything from us, they will buy services-services are about people; they are people-to-people businesses-and the Indians will naturally say, “Well, we'll do you a deal, but it has to involve the movement of people.â€ All hon. Members will need to think about the downstream consequences of that and about how our constituents might respond. Such an agreement would be perfectly reasonable, but this is a much bigger question.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work in drafting and moving all these new clauses. Does he remember that when the Prime Minister visited India, the No. 1 topic on the Indians' agenda was relaxing our immigration rules? How does that square with the Prime Minister's immigration targets and her ambitions on Brexit?
We are due imminently to see the immigration Bill-the Minister will tell us exactly when it will be introduced to Parliament-and the draft agreement that the Secretary of State for International Trade has drawn up with the Indian Government, and we will be able to make a judgment on that at that point.
Before my hon. Friend moves away from India, may I draw his attention to the Scotch whisky industry? I am sure we will all partake of some of that industry's goods during the next few weeks of the festive period. The Scotch whisky industry has flourished on the basis of free trade deals done through the EU, such as the one with Korea, but this Government are planning to walk away from those 57 EU bilateral trade agreements and try to reach free trade agreements with countries such as India, which will want to maintain its 150% tariff on Scotch whisky.
Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes his point well. The idea is that we should turn a blind eye to the trading arrangements we have with our nearest neighbours-50% of our markets-in pursuit, as an alternative or substitute, of some deal with far-flung countries a lot further away, but Australia accounts for 2% or 3% of our current trade and a deal with Australia will not offset many of these problems. It is not just the 50% that we have directly with our nearest neighbours. All those free trade agreements that the European Union has worked up and signed, to which we have been a party, over the past 40 years add up to a further 14% of our trade. So going on for two thirds of our trade is tied into the customs union process-36 bilateral free trade agreements with 63 different countries. How shall we ensure that they continue the day after we exit?
I will not give way; other Members want to speak. The Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade has said, “These can be grandfathered; they can be cut and pasted and we will just sort all those out,â€ and junior Ministers at the Department for International Trade have said in the past, “Those countries have all agreed to roll them over.â€ That is not the case. Maybe a bit of dialogue has begun, but those other countries might want to take the opportunity to reopen some of those long-standing agreements-who knows? The Minister will give us the answers when he winds up the debate.
I want to conclude my remarks because others want to speak. I simply want to make a final point about why the customs union is such a crucial issue, and why I urge my hon. Friends on the Front Bench and hon. Members across the House to think about the consequences of not staying in the customs union. If this country ends up with hard borders again, there will be big consequences. Our ports could grind to a halt. Lorries will clog up our motorways, with, potentially, vast lorry parks near the ports. The expensive, wasteful spending on bureaucratic checks will hurt our industries, and we ought to be evaluating the economic impact of industries, potentially, gradually relocating elsewhere because it is easier to do business in a different jurisdiction. Think of the jobs lost, particularly in the manufacturing sector, if we get this wrong. Bear in mind that we will not have any say on what happens on the EU side of the border after this whole process. There is no guarantee about what happens at the other end of the channel tunnel or in Calais. The reason I have pushed new clause 13 as I have, is to do with the austerity that we risk in this country for the next decade-a decade of Brexit austerity that will potentially befall many of our constituents because of the lost revenues. Unless we stay in the single market and the customs union, we will have that austerity on our conscience, and I urge hon. Members, especially all my hon. Friends, to think very seriously. We have to make sure we stay in the customs union.
It was a pleasure to listen to the speech of the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie). It is like a vintage wine-it improves with age as one hears it on repeated occasions, with mild variations.
A bit like yours.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way and for the very careful way in which he is setting this out. I hope he would agree that this is a much more commodious and confluent way than was previously the case. It will mean that article 50 and our domestic law are in better synchronisation. If I may, I pay tribute to him and to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) for working on this amendment and for coming up with a very happy solution to a thorny problem.
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, to the many right hon. and hon. Friends who signed up to the amendment and, above all, to the Government for turning it into a Government amendment.
If the European Communities Act 1972 is abolished on 29 March 2019 and that is the legal basis for following the European Union's rules at the moment, what does the right hon. Gentleman think will be the legal basis for following the European Union's rules during the transition period?
That is a very interesting question, to which we will know the answer when we have seen the text of the agreements that lead to the withdrawal and implementation Bill and when Parliament accepts it. I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman, but I maintain steadfastly the effort to use the Committee stage of this Bill to speak about this Bill, this clause and this amendment, and not some extraneous consideration.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I will, but it will be for the last time, because I want to bring my remarks to a close. I do not want to detain the Committee for long.
We have heard many times from Conservative Members that the date of 29 March 2019 cannot be moved because we have triggered article 50 and the process has a two-year limit. Will the right hon. Gentleman set out for the Committee what he thinks would happen in practice if the powers under amendment 400 were used by the Government?
I am surprised by the hon. Lady. I have known her a very long time and I know she is extremely assiduous and very intelligent, so she will have read article 50 and observed that it contains an express provision for agreement between the EU and in this case the UK to delay the date which would otherwise pertain. In fact, there are also rules for what is required on the EU side by way of unanimity to permit that to occur. There is no question, therefore, of the Government ever having asserted that they could not change the article 50 date; they have always said and known that it is possible to change it. The question, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) said a moment ago, is how we make sure that UK law marches in step with whatever happens under the article 50 process.
May I trouble my right hon. Friend?
My hon. Friend is so important in these proceedings that I will give way to him, but then I really am going to stop taking interventions and finish.
I do apologise. I did not want to trouble my right hon. Friend, but the two-year timeframe under the article 50 process is a deadline, not the point at which we necessarily leave; it is the point at which we leave in the event that no deal is reached beforehand. It is perfectly possible, should the negotiations go well, for an earlier date to be agreed.
Oh, my hon. Friend is absolutely right-that is of course the way that article 50 works. My point was merely that it also provides in the event that the opposite occurs-the negotiations take even longer than anticipated, or the negotiations come to an end but ratification takes a bit longer than anticipated, which could well happen-for an agreement to be reached to extend the date, which is what would then cause the incommensurability with UK law, unless we have adequate provision on the UK side. That is what amendment 400, to which, I am pleased to say, he is a signatory, provides for. I want to say one more thing before I sit down. I am glad-I hope that the Minister will confirm this from the Dispatch Box-that the Government have said throughout this discussion that they will bring forward an amendment to make sure that the statutory instrument that might be triggered under amendment 400 would be under the affirmative procedure, although I think that the amendment will have to be tabled on Report because of how Bill proceedings work.
I am happy to tell the Committee that that is the case, as I shall confirm later.
I am delighted by that. It is important to people on both sides of the arguments that it be something that Parliament can do, not that Ministers may simply do on their own. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), my south-western neighbour at the end of the Bench, very much agrees with that proposition, as does my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield in the middle.
I just want to thank my right hon. Friend for having intervened in this matter and found a way to resolve the issue. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) just pointed out, the oddity of the original amendment 381 was that it would have imposed a rather serious obstacle if, for any reason, there had been an agreement for the article 50 period to end earlier.
That is right. My right hon. and learned Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset have always actually maintained the same point, which is that we need to keep the two sets of law in sync with one another. That is the overriding purpose of the whole Bill: to ensure that UK law matches what is happening in the international law arena and that we then import the whole of EU law into UK law for the starting point of our future.
I am terribly sorry, but I am not going to take any further interventions. I am going to sit down in a second. I only want to say that I am profoundly grateful, not only to my right hon. and hon. Friends who have joined us in this amendment, but to the Government. This is exactly the way to deal with these things: find a sensible compromise that brings everyone on the Government Benches together and makes the Opposition entirely irrelevant to the discussion.
Does my hon. Friend agree that services are so important to our economy that if we want to negotiate something that has not been negotiated before, it is likely to take far longer than two years?
It is a pleasure to participate in this debate, and it was also a pleasure to listen to the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) opening it. He will not be surprised to hear that I entirely share many of his views about the merits of staying in the customs union, and the lack of advantage of leaving it. However, there is a time and place for everything. The customs union and the merits or otherwise of the single market are all matters that the House will have to debate in due course. In the meantime, we will have to see what the Government come up with in the negotiations, and what they return to the House with at the end of them, but I do not intend to get bogged down in that this afternoon.
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
I will give way in a moment. I made it quite clear on Second Reading that the purpose of the Bill relates to process, not outcome, and I have tried really rigorously to confine my remarks to the process issue, although the extent to which people have kept interpreting my concerns about process as an intention to sabotage our leaving the EU altogether, which I have never at any stage sought to do, is remarkable. I will now give way to the right hon. Gentleman, but I must tell him that I want to get on to the meat of this subject, rather than talking about those other matters.
I understand the right hon. and learned Gentleman's point about focusing on process rather than outcome, but does he agree that given that Cabinet Ministers are now sitting down to discuss the outcome, it would be helpful for Parliament also to use the opportunities available to us to express our views about what the outcome should be?
Parliament should certainly be debating these matters. Individual Members will decide whether they want to use the opportunity of this Committee stage for that purpose, but I want to confine myself strictly to the issues in front of us.
My right hon. and learned Friend has been consistent all the way through our consideration of this Bill in agreeing with me on only the subjects of process, rather than substance, but I quite respect his view and always have the highest respect for his legal and political skills. Does he agree that if amendments actually went beyond the Bill, they would have been ruled to be beyond the scope of the Bill? It is entirely a voluntary decision on his part that he refuses to be drawn into the substance of Government policy, or the stance that the Government are taking on the eve of their starting the first serious negotiations on our future after we withdraw. It is a pity that he has made this self-sacrificing concession.
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for making so eloquently the point about the importance of process as the best defence of our liberties. Will he join me in welcoming the work that assiduous junior Ministers have done for their Secretary of State with my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) in agreeing a package of amendments that I am happy to put my name to and vote for tonight, along with amendment 381? As he mentioned tidings of comfort, it seems at this Christmas moment that not since the soldiers met on no man's land to sing “Silent Nightâ€ has peace broken out at such an opportune moment.
I would like to speak to new clauses 44 and 56, in my colleagues' names. New clause 56 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) is on an issue raised with the Prime Minister today. Gibraltar voted by 96% to remain in the European Union-an even higher figure than for those who voted remain in Scotland and Northern Ireland. That vote clearly reflected the people of Gibraltar's concern to protect the rights that they have acquired since joining the EU with the UK in 1973. Gibraltarians need their border to be kept fluid, so that commerce can thrive and so that residents, workers and tourists can continue to pass through a border that should have only proportionate controls and reasonable checks. It is fair to say that they are not asking for anything from the UK that they have not had to date, and it is right that they should be given a firm, formally enshrined legal guarantee to add confidence for industries and commerce. The right of a person from or established in Gibraltar to provide services into the UK, where that right existed immediately before exit day as a result of the UK and Gibraltar's common membership of the EU, should continue. There is strong cross-party support and, building on the Prime Minister's comments earlier, I hope the Minister will touch on it in his summing up.
I had a similar experience to my hon. Friend. I delved into these documents with great excitement only to find it was clear from them all-I do not think we are allowed to quote directly, lest we be struck down by lightning-that they do not contain anything that is either commercially sensitive or sensitive to the negotiations, so why do not the Government just put them all in the public domain?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I agree. Having had a look at these assessments, I am not entirely sure what the fuss is about. As we undergo the biggest economic and constitutional upheaval since the end of the war, we have a flimsy report covering 39 industries, not 51, as I was told more than a year ago. The information I have seen would be pretty accessible to the public, and it strikes me that the only reason we have not seen the assessments is that this is a Government who do not know what they are doing, who have not done their homework and who are prepared to drag us and the industries into the abyss. It strikes me that this is more to do with internal Conservative party feuding and less to do with our economy.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps another explanation for all the rigmarole surrounding access to these reports is that the Government want to give the impression that they have actually done a huge amount of work? That is a Trumpian way to describe the amount of effort that has gone into producing these assessments, but, in fact, when we turned up to look at the assessments, they were nothing more than a damp squib and nothing more than could be found by googling for five minutes.
Of course this is not going to be a second referendum. I want to clarify once and for all that it is the language of the other side to say that we want a second referendum; we want a referendum on the deal-on what is going to be negotiated. It will be a confirmation-an update-of what the people have said, because only the people can end what they have started. That can be dealt with only through a referendum.
I have enormous sympathy for the hon. Lady's position and what she says, but the people of Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the EU and we are concerned that there would be no recognition of Scotland's place in any subsequent deal, and we want to leave open, even at this late stage, the possibility of seeking a compromise. We all have a responsibility in this House to do that.
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that this would not be a second referendum? People are saying, “This isn't what I voted for.â€ They voted to go out in principle. They were told they would get more money, but they are getting less money. They may get restricted market access. They have a right to vote on the terms of the deal. This is quite separate from whether they in principle wanted to go out. Surely, he should think again about this, and rather than just banking his previous result for Scotland, he should think of the UK.
I rise on this eighth day of eight to propose that clauses 14 and 15, 18 and 19 and schedules 6, 8 and 9 stand part of the Bill. Over the course of the eight days of debate, we have had almost 500 amendments tabled and more than 30 separate Divisions. I am very happy that, in this section of the debate today, the amendments under consideration run to just 39 pages.
Will the Minister give way?
I did want to make a serious point.
This is a serious point.
May I make my serious point first, and then give way? It is sometimes said of this House that it does not scrutinise legislation well and that we send Bills to the other place in a mess. On this occasion, on this historic Bill, I think that the House of Commons has shown itself equal to the task of scrutinising important constitutional legislation. With that, I will very gladly give way.
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. What I wanted to say was that, at the start, there was some disquiet over the timetable motion, and, actually, the Government responded positively on that. The evidence suggests to me that, in fact, the timetable has matched the scope of the amendments that we have had to consider, and that is greatly to the credit of the Government that that has happened, and I am very grateful to him for it.
I am very grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. For all the fire and smoke that we have had over the course of this debate, there has been quite a lot of consensus.
Will the Minister give way?
No, I wish to move on to my next point. On this point about consensus, the Government have listened and responded to constructive challenge from all parts of the House. Earlier in the process, the Government tabled amendments to set a single exit day in the Bill, to which I will return. We tabled an amendment to provide extra information about equalities impacts and the changes being made to retained EU law under the powers in the Bill. We have announced the intention to bring forward separate primary legislation to implement the withdrawal agreement and the implementation period in due course. We published a right-by-right analysis of the charter of fundamental rights, and we have made it clear that we are willing to look again at some of the technical detail of how the Bill deals with general principles to ensure that we are taking an approach that can command the support of Parliament. Finally on this point, the Government have listened to representations set out during debate on day six, and indeed on Second Reading, and have accepted the Procedure Committee's amendments to establish a sifting committee. We fully recognise the role of Parliament in scrutinising the Bill and have been clear throughout that we are taking a pragmatic approach to this vital piece of legislation. Where MPs and peers can improve the Bill, we will work with them.
Before I move on to the specific clauses and schedules, I will give way just very briefly.
The Minister is being very generous. It would be very useful to Members on the SNP Benches if, during his speech, he set out even in principle some of the amendments that were promised by the Secretary of State for Scotland.
As the hon. Gentleman should know, my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General promised a Report stage, and we will indeed have that Report stage and we look forward to it.
I will give way to the hon. Lady; she has been so patient.
I thank the Minister for giving way. He is generous. As a new MP, I must say that I am very surprised about how little constructive dialogue there has been. In fact, the comment that those on the Government Benches could deal with all of this without having to deal with the Opposition was alarming. We are all here to make constructive comments, to improve the Bill and to make compromises. The comments that they could deal with it all without having to listen to the Opposition or to have constructive dialogue were both alarming and disappointing.
The hon. Lady reminds me of how much I miss the days of coalition on some occasions. The clauses and schedules that we are debating in this final group contain a number of detailed, necessary and technical provisions. In many cases, they are standard provisions that one would expect to see in any Bill. Clause 14 is a technical and standard provision that sets out important definitions of many key terms that appear throughout the Bill, such as “EU tertiary legislationâ€ and “EU entityâ€, and clarifies how other references in the Bill are to be read. Clause 15 complements clause 14, setting out in one place where the key terms used throughout the Bill are defined and noting where amendments to the Interpretation Act 1978 are made under schedule 8. Together, clauses 14 and 15 will aid comprehension of the Bill. Clause 18 provides that the Bill will apply to the whole UK. In addition, because the European Communities Act 1972 currently extends to the Crown dependencies and Gibraltar in a limited way, the repeal of that Act must similarly extend to those jurisdictions to the extent that it applies to them. The Bill also repeals three Acts that extend to Gibraltar, all of which relate to European parliamentary elections. The powers in clauses 7 and 17 can be used to make provision for Gibraltar as a consequence of these repeals. The approach in clause 18 has been agreed with the Governments of Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar in line with usual practice.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Well, I am going return to the subject of Gibraltar at considerable length later. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to continue. As is typical with all Bills, clause 19 sets out which parts of the Act will commence immediately at Royal Assent, and provides a power for Ministers to commence other provisions at different times by regulations. Schedule 6 is linked to clause 3, which we debated on day two in Committee. That clause converts into domestic law direct EU legislation as it operates at the moment immediately before we leave the EU. There are, however, some EU instruments that have never applied in the UK-for example, instruments in respect of the euro and measures in the area of freedom, security and justice in which the UK chose not to participate. It would obviously be nonsense to convert these measures into domestic law after we leave, so these exempt EU instruments, to which clause 3 will not apply, are described in schedule 6. Hon. Members will know that consequential provisions are a standard part of many Acts in order to deal with the effects of the Act across the statute book. Equally, transitional provisions are a standard way in which to smooth the application of a change in the UK statute book. Schedule 8 makes detailed and technical provisions of this nature, all of which are necessary and support the smooth operation of other crucial provisions set out elsewhere in the Bill. It clarifies what will happen to ambulatory references-I will return to this topic-to EU instruments after exit day, makes consequential and necessary amendments to other Acts, and makes transitional provision in relation to the establishment of retained EU law and the exceptions to it. Finally, schedule 9 sets out additional and necessary repeals as a consequence of our exit from the EU.
During the Minister's course through the amendments, has he perhaps noticed new clause 54, which was tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) following the Prime Minister's Florence speech? If he has noticed it, what does he think of it?
Could the Minister set out for the whole Committee-not just the Conservative Members sitting behind him-what will happen if the legislation provided for in amendment 7, which we passed last week, is not passed? The Minister, using amendment 381-whether or not it is itself amended by amendment 400-will still have the power to set the exit date and withdraw, irrespective of what has gone on. Is that not right?
The hon. Lady is trying to pre-empt some of my remarks. If she will bear with me, I will come to that. A crucial point is that the Bill does not determine whether the UK leaves the EU; that is a matter of international law under the article 50 process. However, it is important that we have the same position in UK law that is reflected in European Union treaty law. That is why the Government have signed these amendments, and I was glad to do so. I can assure the Committee we would use this power only in exceptional circumstances to extend the deadline for the shortest period possible, and that we cannot envisage the date being brought forward. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said many times, we and the EU are planning on the UK leaving the European Union at 11 pm on 29 March 2019.
I apologise to the Committee for having had to be in the Liaison Committee for the last couple of hours and for missing much of the debate. I thank my hon. Friend for accepting these compromise amendments. The Government are, in fact, accepting a very significant limitation on the powers they had in the original draft of the Bill. If we are interested in the sovereignty of Parliament, we are interested in limiting the room for Government to set arbitrary dates without any controls over them whatever. That is what existed in the Bill before. There is now proper control by Parliament of the date in the Bill.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I would also like to say thank you to him for the role he has played in bridging the spectrum of opinion on this issue.
How can it be right to tell the House that the exit date is being set by the House, when the amendments give the power to the Executive to set the exit date?
It is an interesting question that the hon. Lady asks, but how does she think that exit day would be set by the House? If it is not set on the face of the Bill and immovable other than by primary legislation, it must be set in secondary legislation. I would have thought that that was plain to the hon. Lady. We have done the right and pragmatic thing, which is to align UK law with the international treaty position. That enjoys wide support across a spectrum of opinion, and I am glad to support these amendments in the way I have set out. Let me turn to the issue of the customs union, and I particularly noted what my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset said about it. The issue has been widely aired, and I do not intend to be tempted into a broader debate on trade policy. We are confident that we will negotiate a deep and special partnership with the EU, spanning a new economic relationship and a new relationship on security. Businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU, so we are seeking a time-limited implementation period during which access to one another's markets should continue on current terms. During this implementation period, EU nationals will continue to be able to come and live and work in the UK, but there will be a registration system. The details of the implementation period are of course a matter for negotiations, and we have been clear that we will bring forward the necessary implementing legislation in due course. However, it would not be right to sign up now to membership of the customs union and the single market pending the outcome of negotiations, as new clause 52 would have us do.
The Minister, and the Prime Minister for that matter, repeatedly say that businesses will only have to plan for one set of changes. Given that businesses currently benefit from being part of the single market and the customs union, how can it possibly be the case, as the Prime Minister has also said, that we are coming out of the customs union and the single market during the so-called implementation period?
The hon. Lady tempts me to dilate on the details of the implementation period, which are to be negotiated, but that is not my purpose today, because it is not the purpose of this Bill. The purpose of this Bill is to deliver a functioning statute book as we leave the European Union. With that in mind, I turn to new clauses 10 and 54 on the transitional or implementation period. Both new clauses seek to impose conditions on what form the implementation period the Government are seeking will take. I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe for his new clause, which attempts to write the Prime Minister's vision for an implementation period into statute. That would be a novel constitutional change. Nevertheless, I welcome it in the sense that it is a ringing endorsement of Government policy. New clause 10, however, differs in some key regards from our vision. The Government cannot accept these new clauses. The Prime Minister has set out a proposal that is now subject to negotiation. We are confident of reaching that agreement, but it would not be sensible for the Government to constrain themselves domestically in any way while those negotiations continue. We are making good progress, and it is in our mutual interests to conclude a good agreement that works for everyone. We do not want to put the legislative cart before the diplomatic horse.
In referring to the transitional or the implementation period, my hon. Friend has at various times used phrases straight out of the Florence speech, and he has accepted that the new clause in my name is identical to stated Government policy on the subject. In what way does it restrain the Government's position to put their own policy in the Bill and ask the Prime Minister, as the new clause does, to seek to attain that which she has declared to be her objective? That is not a genuine reason for rejecting it. He is rejecting it because agreeing with the Florence speech still upsets some of our more hard-line Eurosceptics both inside and outside the Government.
I pick up my right hon. and learned Friend on a couple of things. First, he has used the word “identicalâ€-I did not use it because I have not taken the time to go through his new clause absolutely word for word to check his work.
You haven't read it!
Of course I have read it-it is here in my hand. I have read it but I have not gone back and done his homework for him to check and mark his work. I make two points to my right hon. and learned Friend. First, as I said, it would be a constitutional innovation to begin putting statements of policy for negotiations in legislation. That is a good reason not to accept the new clause. The second point- He says that it is not a good reason. He is the Father of the House and he has occupied many of the great offices of state. I would be interested to know when, in his long and distinguished career, he accepted that principle in legislation.
I have never previously seen members of the Government debate a clear exposition of Government policy from the moment it is first announced. That gives rise to serious doubts about exactly what the Government are going to pursue in the transition deal, and these exceptional and unprecedented circumstances are doing harm to Britain's position. I cannot see what harm would be done by giving the approval of the whole House to the Government's stated objectives in the Bill. The fact that it has not been done before is not an argument against it; it answers a situation that has not happened before, either.
My right hon. and learned Friend has caught himself in a contradiction. In this exchange, he has rested his argument on knowing exactly what the Government's policy is, but in his last intervention he said that he did not know what it was. My second point concerns subsection (2) of my right hon. and learned Friend's new clause- I would just like to make this point. The subsection states:“No Minister of the Crown shall appoint exit day if the implementation and transition period set out in subsection (1) does not feature in the withdrawal arrangements between the UK and the European Union.â€That would cause a problem if the new clause were accepted and we reached the point at which the treaties no longer applied to the United Kingdom. We would have legal chaos-my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) talked about this earlier-if we had not commenced this Bill when the treaties ceased to apply. For both those reasons, we simply could not accept the new clause.
There is a sudden flurry of interest in this point. I will take an intervention from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), and then I will move on.
Ah! They are like spoiled children, aren't they? Is not another objection, if not the real objection, to the point made by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) that it is the sort of point that should have been made in a Second Reading debate? We have two days for Report and Third Reading. That may be a stage at which the Government wish to look at these things, and it might be a time for huge innovation. Now is not the time to take Second Reading points, which could be dealt with later in the whole proceedings.
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, to whom I gave way because he has tabled relevant amendments about exit day. I hope that today he will feel able to support the Government's set of related amendments.
Will the Minister give way?
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I want to complete my argument, for the benefit of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, who tabled this new clause. We are seeking an economic partnership that will be both comprehensive and ambitious. It should be of greater scope and ambition than any previous agreement so that it covers sectors crucial to our linked economies, such as financial and professional services. We are confident that the UK and the EU can reach a positive deal on our future partnership as this will to be to the mutual benefit of both the UK and the EU. We will approach the negotiations in this constructive spirit. I want to provide reassurance to my hon. Friend on his new clause 72, which seeks to ensure that any ministerial power to charge fees in respect of inspections of imported food and animal feed is exercised in a way that ensures full cost recovery for public authorities.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Before I give way to my right hon. Friend, I want to respond on the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. I would like to persuade my hon. Friend that his new clause 72 is not necessary. First, there is already sufficient statutory provision to ensure that the cost of mandatory veterinary checks on food and animal feed, on their importation, are fully recoverable. The arrangements for setting inspection fees for imported food and animal feed vary according to the type of inspection. All imports of products of animal origin must be inspected by a port health authority at a border inspection post. For high-risk products not of animal origin, these checks are carried out by a port health authority at a designated point of entry. Broadly speaking, these checks must be satisfactorily completed before a consignment is released for free circulation. EC regulation No. 882/2004 on official controls, together with supporting domestic legislation-for England, it takes the form of the Official Feed and Food Controls (England) Regulations 2009-provides the legal basis for charges in respect of these inspections. The Bill will convert that EC regulation into UK legislation. The nature of the charges that the port health authority can make depends on a number of factors, including the nature of the food or animal feed being imported and its point of origin.
I am grateful to the Minister for going into such detail on the basis for charging. May I mention that the other purpose behind new clause 72, which is a probing amendment, is to remind the Government of the importance of seeking in our negotiating objectives-no more and no less than that-a continued form of mutual recognition, if at all possible, for checks on food and feed?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification. He will know that, under the WTO foundations of the world trading system, there are arrangements for the mutual recognition of sanitary and phytosanitary checks and other matters. The second point I should make about my hon. Friend's new clause 72 is that, in relation to any new inspections that may be required after the UK leaves the EU, the Government are considering what controls or surveillance will be required on imported food once we have left the EU. Where Ministers decide to introduce statutory inspection fees, Parliament should have the opportunity to consider the approach to be taken on a case-by-case basis. Where port authorities undertake additional checks on food, on its importation into the UK, for which there is not a statutory charge, decisions will continue to be taken on the basis of the need to balance costs between general and local taxation. We consider that the Government must remain free to set fees and charges in a manner that reflects these considerations. I hope that this provides my hon. Friend with sufficient reassurance. Finally, on a separate issue, my hon. Friend asked earlier in our debates whether courts would be able to consider all material in relation to retained EU law when deciding such legislation's meaning and effect. I am happy to confirm that this is the position under the Bill. The Government will place a letter in the Library of the House setting this out in more detail, and I am putting that on the record now to enable us to do so.
I am grateful for that assurance. There is just one other matter on which I hope my hon. Friend will be able to give me a like reassurance, on private contract matters.
I will. I am about halfway through my remarks. I will come to that.
I wonder whether the Minister could be quite clear at the Dispatch Box and give an undertaking on behalf of the Government that now we have voted-as we did last week-for amendment 7, the Government will not at any stage now bring forward any measure that in any way undermines the vote of this House on amendment 7, and that Parliament will have a meaningful vote, as we voted for last Wednesday.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I admit, I thought she was going to ask me about the matters before me. That is a matter to be considered on Report, were we to return to it. Opposition Members were shouting me down there for a moment. Were we to return to it, it would be a matter for Report, not for today. The Government's policy is as we set out in the written ministerial statement, and of course we are a Government- No, certainly not. We are a Government who of course obey the law. Parliament has voted and the law would currently be set out as on the face of the Bill.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am really not going to take more interventions on this matter, because as I-
No, I really am not giving way to the hon. Gentleman; I insist. I turn now to amendment 102, which removes provisions that enable existing powers to amend retained direct EU legislation, and amendment 103, removing provisions that enable future powers by default to amend retained EU legislation. These amendments are linked to amendments that we have already debated on day 2 of the Committee, and I do not plan to repeat all those arguments.
I will make the argument on this point. We maintain that it is absolutely right and necessary for existing domestic powers granted by Parliament in other Acts to be able to operate on retained direct EU legislation, which will become domestic law. Fettering these powers would prevent important and necessary updates being made to our law, where that is within the scope and limitations of the powers and Parliament's will. Similarly, it is important that future delegated powers created after exit day should be able to modify retained direct EU legislation, so far as applicable. This provides important clarity on the status of retained EU law and how it will interact with these powers. Further, where it is appropriate to do so, future powers can of course still be prohibited from amending retained direct EU legislation.
Will the Minister give way?
I will, if it is on that set of amendments.
It is very relevant to the amendments that the Minister is currently running through, because the Prime Minister, at the Liaison Committee, has refused to fully commit to abiding by amendment 7, agreed to by this House last week. I wonder whether the Minister would like to comment on that, because if he is rowing back on that commitment he is essentially undermining many of the amendments he is running through at the moment-the one from the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) in particular.
What I would say to the hon. Gentleman, and I try to say this as gently as possible and in the spirit of Christmas, is that when I listened to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield talking about certain colleagues of a Eurosceptic persuasion, I hope he will not mind me reminding the House that he gave an articulation of-I think he used the word neurosis.
indicated assent.
He says that he did. I think we need to recognise that as a Government we are trying to make this Bill work, and we have throughout the Bill's passage worked closely with the House, listened closely to the concerns-
No you haven't.
It is a matter of fact that we have stood at this Dispatch Box, we have accepted amendments and we have moved forward with the House on this Bill, accepting amendments and shaping the Bill to comply with the will of the House. I very much regret-
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No. I very much regret that on the occasion that is being referred to, we were not able to reach an accommodation, but the Bill is as it currently stands.
I will not take any more interventions on this point, which is not pertaining to the clauses before us.
We all know what's happening
I do take objection- I do take objection, because what we are going to do is move forward with the Bill as it stands, with the set of concessions that we have included within it, and I would ask my right hon. Friend to accept the good faith of the Government.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Of the three points the Minister has made, the latter is without doubt the one that has the greatest force. It is worth bearing in mind that it highlights the fact of the supremacy of EU law, which is being preserved for the purposes of retained EU law. That, if I may say so, is a good reason why he should listen carefully to what I said about people being able to invoke general principles of EU law in order to challenge its operation. All these matters are interconnected.
I am most grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. I know he is going to take this matter up further with my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General. I did actually just make two points, but perhaps I structured them ambiguously. The third point is that in the event of a strike-down there would be no existing power under which fresh regulations could be brought forward, so it would be necessary to bring forward a fresh Act of Parliament or to rely on the remedial order-making power within the HRA itself. I should say that the remedial order-making power within the HRA was not designed to be the default means by which incompatible legislation is remedied or to deal with the policy changes that could be required. The remedial order-making power may only be used if there are compelling reasons for doing so and it is targeted at removing the identified incompatibility. If wider policy change were needed following a finding of incompatibility, a fresh Act of Parliament would be the only means of doing that and we could be left with damaging holes in the statute book unless and until such an Act was passed. That is why the Government concluded that converted EU law should have the status of primary legislation in relation to the HRA, and that is why the Government will not be able to accept the two amendments.
I wish to pick up on the important point raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). For the avoidance of doubt, will the Minister clarify that it is not the Government's intention to set up retained EU law in UK statute in a manner that would encourage a UK court to strike down another primary statute? If that is the intention, may I suggest it might be something the Government will have to look at?
My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General has just confirmed to me that we do not want that to happen. I am sure that that will be given further consideration, along with the issue of general principles that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield has raised.
I will give way to the hon. Lady, and then I really will move on.
I apologise for interrupting the Minister's stream of thought and taking him back to his response to the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), but can he rule out, from the Dispatch Box today, returning to amendment 7 on Report?
I refer to the answer I gave earlier. At this point, I can tell the hon. Lady that I am not expecting to return to it, but we are reflecting on the implications of the amendment. We made a strong case for the powers at the Dispatch Box and are reflecting on it. I say to her, however, and to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield that we are not expecting at this point to return to it. She asks what that means. We have been in close conversation with my right hon. and learned Friend, and I feel sure that those conversations will continue, but I say to the rest of the Committee that I am going to focus on the amendments before me.
If it is on this point, I will not answer the hon. Gentleman.
It is indeed on this point. Some of the Minister's right hon. and hon.-and courageous-Friends from last week have, in good faith, signed amendment 400 this evening. Given that he is refusing to guarantee that the Government will stick to the letter and the spirit of amendment 7, they might feel that they are being led up the garden path.
I did say that I would not answer the hon. Gentleman, but I cannot help saying that I do not remember him complimenting me when I have-occasionally-found myself in the other Lobby.
Will the Minister confirm that Parliament is going to have its way? We will have a vote on any agreement, and it will then need primary legislation-the most intense scrutiny of all-to put it through. That, surely, is a major win for those who wanted that approach. I am quite happy with that. That is what amendment 7 leaves us with. Will he confirm that there will be full parliamentary scrutiny, debate and legislation on an agreement?
Yes, I will confirm that of course there will be full parliamentary scrutiny. One of the things that is bringing me great joy, particularly at Christmas, is the extent of parliamentary unity on this point of parliamentary sovereignty. One reason so many of us campaigned to leave the EU is that we wanted our voters to have a choice over who governed the UK in as many matters as conceivable. I do not wish to revisit the arguments around amendment 7. I wish rather to conclude my consideration of the issue before us.
I am not going to let the hon. Gentleman come in on this point, which we have dealt with. I emphasise again that our approach does not immunise converted law from HRA challenges. If an incompatibility were to be found, it places the matter in the hands of Parliament to resolve, without creating a legal vacuum in the interim. This approach strikes the right balance and recognises that supremacy of Parliament. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend has wider concerns regarding the rights of challenge after exit, including, in particular, where these are based on the general principles of EU law. I am happy to repeat the commitment made by my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General earlier that we are willing to look again at the technical detail of how certain legal challenges based on the general principles of EU law might work after exit. We will bring forward amendments on Report to address this, and we are happy to continue to discuss these concerns with him.
That is a very sensible approach on these matters, and I am very grateful to the Minister and my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for taking it forward. As for the other matter that has floated into our discussion, and which I have studiously avoided getting drawn into, I would simply recommend that, on the whole, kicking hornets' nests is not a very good idea.
It is ironic that my right hon. and learned Friend and I should be constituency neighbours, and, if I may say so-and as we put on the record on a previous day-friends. It is also ironic that our other Buckinghamshire neighbours have swapped one rebel commander for another. But I think I should move on: I have kicked enough hornets' nests myself for one day.
I am grateful to the Minister for that assurance, particularly in the light of recent press reports of attempts by the Spanish Government to exclude Gibraltar from the transition and end-state process. It is important for the Government to make that clear commitment, subject, of course, to the existence of the proper regulatory equivalents and standards. If the Minister will give me an undertaking that that will happen with the full involvement of Gibraltar's Government, I think that those of us who supported the amendment will be satisfied.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his positive reaction to our amendment. The situation is as I have described it: our unshakeable objective is to secure the seamless continuation of existing market access to the UK, and to enhance it where possible.
This is the one amendment that would probably have attracted support from the Democratic Unionists, but, because of the assurances the Minister has given-and, importantly, the assurances the Prime Minister gave even today at the Dispatch Box-we feel relieved for Gibraltar's sake. Is the Minister essentially saying that the protections he is now affording to Gibraltar effectively mean it will not be treated in any way differently from any other part of the United Kingdom?
The position is as I have set out, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if, in all the circumstances, I stick to that position. I hope that he will understand the strength of our commitment from that. We will deliver on our assurances that Gibraltar businesses will enjoy continued access to the UK market, based on the Gibraltar authorities having already agreed to maintain full regulatory alignment with the UK.
I have no doubt that the people and Government of Gibraltar will be grateful for the Minister's assurances, but the wording of this amendment intends to make sure with 100% certainty that, even inadvertently, nothing in the Bill can damage the interests of the people of Gibraltar. Can the Minister tell us with absolute certainty that if this amendment is not added to the Bill, there is nothing in the Bill that will cause that damage? Assurances, objectives and promises are good, but can he say with absolute certainty that nothing in the Bill will ever damage or prejudice the interests of the people of Gibraltar?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for their frank and helpful response in this matter. This issue was raised by the City of London Corporation and the International Regulatory Strategy Group. I thank the Minister for his assurance that he will continue to work with them, and look forward to that. I am satisfied, for these purposes, that the issue is being addressed.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General and I look forward to working with him on this issue. In conclusion, Sir David-
Will the Minister give way?
I will give way one last time.
May I briefly take the Minister back to amendments 381 and 400? I thank him for his kind words about amendment 400, and for his work on the Bill. He will know that I did not put my name to amendment 381, but I will support amendment 400 so long as that power will be used only in extremis and for the shortest possible time. We have had an assurance on that from the Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box today, and I know that those on the Government Front Bench have taken that on board, but if there is any dissension on this, it would be nice to know about it now.
Perhaps my hon. Friend was not in the Chamber when I gave my assurance on this earlier. I am happy to repeat it. I can assure the House that we would use this power only in exceptional circumstances to extend the deadline for the shortest period possible, and that we cannot envisage the date being brought forward. I think that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister explained that earlier.
Will the Minister give way?
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir David, and it is also a pleasure to follow the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker). I pay tribute to his calmness and tolerance in taking a very difficult Bill through to this stage. I was around when the Maastricht Bill was going through Parliament, and the way in which he has handled this one is a real tribute to him. I do not always agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), but I agreed with him when he said that the Bill was about process. I am afraid that, perhaps because we have had eight days in Committee, we have widened our debate into areas that should not necessarily have been discussed today. We have rehashed quite a lot of the debate on the referendum. For me, this is a simple Bill about repealing the European Communities Act 1972. I welcome the fact that there is now general agreement across the House about the date. I am pleased that it will be set out in the Bill because unlike a lot of Members here, but like my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell), I do not really trust the EU. I therefore always worry that if we are not absolutely clear about what we are doing, the EU will manage to move things, because it would like to delay the process and punish us as much as possible for taking the brave decision to leave. When we look at what we are discussing, we are simply asking to leave the EU. The British people originally voted for a formal economic agreement, but for 40 years we have seen entanglement and legal procedures getting into our country, and we are now having to go through all this to leave.
Does my hon. Friend agree that if Parliament appeared to be dragging its feet on leaving the EU when a majority of the people decided that we should leave, the people would get frustrated with Parliament? We have to remember their wishes.
I agree. One of the good things about the Minister is that he is not a lawyer, which is perhaps why he has been able to treat this matter with quite a lot of common sense. The debate has been rather taken over by lawyers and lawyer speak, and it is pretty clear that they love things being so technical.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will give way once to my hon. Friend, who is not a lawyer.
I am certainly not a lawyer. Would my hon. Friend care to explain to the House why she felt unable to support amendment 7 last week? Was it perhaps because, as well as not trusting the EU, she does not trust this House?
I certainly trust this House but, to be honest, many of the people who were pushing that amendment saw it as a way of delaying things before we got into the detail of getting an agreement. I did not get called to speak during the debate on amendment 7, but I will not go back over that amendment.
Is it not- Yes, I am sorry, but I have got in again. One of the truths that we have to bear in mind-people on the outside will remember this even if people on the inside wish to deny it-is that from very word go, according to the great Guardian record of the European experiment, the great fear was that we the British people could not be told where this journey was taking us. Those of us who wanted a date and a time-even a British time-were concerned that large numbers of people throughout our whole history of being in the European Union have never been straight with the British people about where the journey was ending.
I have been clear since the day that I came into this House that I wanted us to get out of the European Union, and I am just delighted that I have lived long enough to see it happen.
The hon. Lady has been totally consistent year after year in opposing EU encroachment on British laws. However, there has been not a chirp recently from some of the Members who supported amendment 7. They oppose European encroachment on our sovereignty, but they were very happy to raise some feigned hope about parliamentary sovereignty.
There is a lot in that.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
No, I will not give way at the moment. Look at all the different EU regulations and the ways in which the EU has encroached on our country's rules over the years. Majority voting has meant that we have occasionally been outvoted, and we have therefore been unable to do things that we wanted to do. When we decided that we wanted to leave, it was clear that the EU felt that we had no right to make that decision, which is why it wants to delay and delay.
Will the hon. Lady give way?
No, not at the moment. My worry about amendment 7 is what the EU has done before with countries that have voted against something that they did not want. As we get nearer the end, if we do not have an agreement, it will of course be in the EU's interests to delay if it knows that this Parliament is just waiting to allow more time, and we will therefore just be paying in more and more money. I have a problem even-
This is absolute nonsense.
My hon. Friend may think that I am talking absolute nonsense, but 17.5 million people out there do not. Let me get back to my reason for speaking today: I oppose new clause 13, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), and I want to explain why we must leave the customs union. I am very pleased that our Front Benchers have made no remarks about us supporting the new clause, and I certainly will vote against it tonight.
People voted to leave for all sorts of reasons, but-
Take the intervention!
I can see. I do not need to be told what to do by my hon. Friend; I have been here quite a long time. It is very clear that if we stay in the customs union, we cannot cut the kind of free trade deals that we want with the over 80% of the world's economy that will be outside the EU once we have left. That is not what the British people voted for. They voted to leave for different reasons, but underlying everything for all of them was our getting back the ability to make decisions about what we want to do and who we want to trade with.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
As my hon. Friend is very kind and nice, I give way.
Does my hon. Friend not understand the significance of the June election? The Prime Minister called the election to improve her majority, but it was reduced. That was a game changer in many ways. Many Labour Members increased their majority, including, I think, my hon. Friend.
Members who read this year's Labour manifesto-it was very readable-will know that it was very clear that we had accepted the result, that the British people wanted to leave, and that we were going to leave the customs union and the single market. For once in my life, I am not the rebel on the Labour Benches; the rebels are sitting on my right. I genuinely cannot understand how progressive people who believe in equality, fairness and justice can support-
Will the hon. Lady give way?
No, I am not giving way any more, because a lot of people want to speak. The reality is that a customs union actually penalises countless people in some of the world's poorest countries. It prevents them from selling their goods in Europe, but doing so would help them to develop and mechanise. After this change, we can make our own decisions about how we treat countries, particularly in the Commonwealth, where there are millions of people who have shown huge loyalty and dedication to this country over the years. We betrayed them when we joined the Common Market. Many people in this Chamber did not have a say in that, but we now have the opportunity to pay back. I think that some 80% of the tariffs paid by UK consumers on imports from outside the EU are sent to Brussels, although British shoppers are having to pay more on a range of imports. There is so much more that we could do, because the UK is the only large country in the European Union that does more trade beyond the EU than within it.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I recall the Minister asking the right hon. and learned Gentleman to list, after all his 47 years' experience in this House, one occasion when he, a former Minister, would have put into the Bill what he is suggesting the Government should have put into the Bill. He could not claw anything back from his memory banks to that effect. Surely, what this Minister has said in the arguments he has put to the right hon. and learned Gentleman has completely dismantled new clause 54.
For the most part, this is a fairly benign new clause, but I am not certain, even from listening to him now, what my right hon. and learned Friend's concern is in subsection (2) of his new clause where it refers to subsection (1). It seems he is concerned that somehow there will not be an implementation period. Alternatively, is it just that that implementation period has never been discussed by Parliament? Is there a fear the Government will try to do the dirty on us? I do not understand why he feels he has to have this provision.
It is an attempt to rule out both. Before anybody starts resorting to talking about drafting points, which is what has happened on every point of principle we have had in the past seven days of debate, they can all be sorted out on Report. If something in the wording of the new clause raises some serious technical difficulty, the Government should table an amendment on Report to sort it out. I am sure that would face no resistance at all.
I have been trawling back through my more recent memory banks. If I am not mistaken, before the Minister was taken to task and dismissed the new clause as a constitutional novelty, which is no argument, he was rather sympathetic to its content, so I was assuming that he might agree with it because it is, after all, in agreement with what the Prime Minister said.
I shall not go back to waxing too much about the nature of the debates we have been having. We can be clear that it is the fault not of the Ministers but of the brief they have been given to keep things going until the timetable motion comes in, at which point if all is intact, they have made it-that is their job done. Those of us who have been Ministers have probably been in that situation ourselves on various occasions. Just as in the debate about the meaningful vote when the Minister at no stage engaged in the question what sort of meaningful vote the House of Commons should have, on this occasion the Minister has not engaged in any feature of the Florence speech with which he had any reservations. The substance was not challenged by a word that he said, hence my speculating why we might see the extraordinary spectacle of the Government instructing all their Ministers to vote against a prime ministerial declaration of Government policy from which, as far as I can see, the Prime Minister has at no stage personally withdrawn.
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is no coincidence, given the reluctance to put the Florence speech into statute, that the Prime Minister appears today to be rowing back on amendment 7 and that we have heard the Minister do the same from the Dispatch Box?
indicated dissent.
If that is not the case for financial services-I can see the Minister shaking his head to indicate that it might not be-perhaps I can turn the Minister's attention to the Scotch whisky industry. Is that a sector that the Government are determined to throw under the bus? What about our wonderful Aberdeen Angus beef sector? Will the country be flooded with antibiotic beef to allow us to get a deal with the US, which may be contradictory to our deal with the EU? If the Minister is saying no to all those sectors, which sectors will he throw under the bus? The Government and the Department have drawn red lines that the chief negotiator for the European Union has described as contradictory to the aspiration of keeping financial services in the passporting arrangements with the European Union.
The only red lines from the Labour party that I have read about recently are these. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has said that we must leave the single market to respect the referendum result. The shadow spokesman on Brexit, the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), has said that we must leave the customs union because it would be “a disasterâ€ to stay in it. That is the only controversy I can see here.
Nobody voted to leave the single market and customs union. As the Chancellor has said, nobody voted in the European Union referendum to make themselves poorer. If the shadow Chancellor wants to walk through the Lobby with the Conservatives to take us out of the customs union and the single market, I certainly do not agree with him on that. I have been elected to represent a constituency that voted 78% remain and that is dependent on financial services, small businesses and the very healthy Scotch whisky industry. It is incumbent on me to defend my constituents' interests from a Government who would be quite happy to throw sectors under the bus to get a trade deal from any country anywhere in the world, even though we already have 57 free trade deals that benefit all the sectors that I represent.
I do not know whether my hon. Friend meant to say that his constituents are dependent on Scotch whisky, but I take his point. At the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee this morning, I asked the Environment Secretary about the Canada-plus-plus-plus model. He said that he wanted agri-food to be part of the plus deal, and he referred to the trade agreement with Japan as something that covered agri-food. Is it not the case that, as Michel Barnier says, we will simply not be allowed to cherry-pick and insist on having a Canada-style deal that includes agri-food?
That is exactly what Michel Barnier said. The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union wants a Canada-plus-plus-plus deal with a special arrangement for banks, and the chief negotiator has said that that is impossible for two reasons. It is against the red lines that the Government have already drawn for themselves, so they are arguing against their own policy. Indeed, we already have special arrangements in place for free and unfettered access for all our sectors; they are called the single market and the customs union. When we have debated the matter in this Chamber on other days, I have made the point that the question of whether or not we agree with the single market and customs union is essentially irrelevant to the Bill. The Government's negotiating position should, at the very least, keep those options on the table so that the Government can look at them and ask whether they are the way forward. Why might we remain members of the customs union and the single market for the transition period? We would do that to allow businesses the certainty, security and stability that they require to make the changes that they need to make. When we come out of that transition period-it will not be in two years, according to Michel Barnier; it may be much sooner-we will have to have a system that is, no doubt, worse than that which we had during the transition period. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for raising Canada-plus-plus-plus, because that is impossible to achieve with the red lines that have been drawn. Perhaps the Minister will come to the Dispatch Box-he can intervene on me, if he likes, or on any other hon. Member-and tell us which red lines the Government are willing to drop to achieve the Government's aspiration of Canada-plus-plus-plus with a special deal for financial services.
Just as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) took evidence this morning from the Environment Secretary, the Health Committee took evidence yesterday from representatives of the pharmaceutical industry. They were completely realistic about the fact that the Government are not going to get any special sectoral deals, and that there will not be any cherry-picking. They unanimously made it clear to us that the only solution for us is to stay in the customs union and the single market, certainly for the transition and possibly-hopefully-beyond that.
That is the key. We will have had 64 hours of debate in this Committee by the time we vote at 10 minutes past nine this evening. If we distil all our debates over those 64 hours, we get to the conclusion that we should stay in the single market and the customs union. I cannot understand why the Government have decided to throw that entire strategy out the window, probably for ideological reasons.
Is not the reality that all this talk of Canada or Canada-plus-plus-plus is an illusion, and that it would be far better to go for the far better deal that is Norway-plus? We should actually stay in the single market because that will be best for our economy and for our political influence in Europe.
This of course brings us to the crux of the Government's ideology, and no Government Members can ever stand up again and confidently pronounce that the Conservative party is pro-business. The Government's strategy and the red lines they have drawn in relation to the Bill are destroying business and are anti-business. Every sector that gives evidence to the Health Committee, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee or the International Trade Committee-and on and on-tells us that the only way to resolve these problems is by staying in the single market and the customs union. If such sectors-the people who create the jobs, employ the people and create the wealth in this country-are telling us that, we should listen to them, rather than to those on the extreme right wing of the Conservative party. They claim to be free traders, but they want to throw out 57 trade deals for some aspirational trade deals-no one can yet tell us whether anyone is even in the queue or wanting to speak to us about them-which is surely anti-trade and anti-business, and is destroying the fabric of the economy of this country.
Is there not a deep misunderstanding among those who say they want free trade agreements but to be outside the customs union? Creating a customs border is independent of how much we actually raise tariffs, because there will still be a border and there will still be checks. However freely or not freely we trade, creating a customs border will lead to delays, checks, regulations and so on and so forth. People say that we will have a great free trade deal, but we will still have a border, and that is what will be damaging.
That intervention-I will finish on this point-gets to the crux of new clause 13, because we will have to have a border. I will keep making in this House the same argument that the Minister and his colleagues in this House made when they stood on the same platform as me during the Scottish independence referendum. They consistently said that if the UK was split up and Scotland came out of the UK single market, there would have to be a border at Berwick. Why? Because there would be different arrangements for customs, regulatory matters, the free movement of people and goods. How can Ministers now stand at the Dispatch Box with a straight face and say that none of this now applies either to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland or indeed to Gibraltar? There is no answer to that question because, again, the Government's red lines and their narrative do not fit with where they want to go on the final negotiations. We cannot have frictionless free trade while having differential arrangements on customs or regulatory alignment: it just does not work. If the Minister wants to intervene on me to tell me how it will work, rather than just using narrative and rhetoric-and anybody can understand how it will actually work-I would be happy to agree with him.
Is it not interesting that when the public were consulted in a people's assembly, with a representative sample of leavers and remainers, the conclusion they came to was that they wanted to remain in the single market, but to extend all the freedoms we already have to limit freedom of movement? Does my hon. Friend not agree that we need to listen more to the public and involve them more?
I absolutely agree. The 34 million people who voted in the EU referendum probably voted one way or the other for 34 million different reasons, but it is incumbent on politicians to start taking a lead and to be brave about making the arguments. We should say to the country, “The EU referendum delivered a result and, yes, we will be leaving the European Union, but let's just pause, look at the arguments being put to the country and see whether this is what people actually want.â€If we distil down all the arguments about the customs union and the single market, the only solution we can come to that does not damage this country in any way-in relation to jobs, the cost to business, or the future aspirations of students or of our children-is to stay in the best possible platform for free trade and regulatory alignment, which is the single market and the customs union. No one will forgive this Government, or anyone else who argues against that, when the first person leaves a financial services company in my constituency with their P45 in their hand. I will take no pleasure in saying “I told you so,â€ but the Government can pull back now, can sort out the Bill, can agree to some of these amendments in principle and come back on Report and put on the table, at the very least, a negotiation about keeping the UK in the single market and the customs union. To do anything less, with the red lines that they have drawn and the aspirations that they have, is pulling the wool over the eyes of the public, and they should be brave enough to admit it.
We have no concerns at all here.
Is my hon. Friend asking me to give way?
No, no.
Excellent. It is always good to take a sedentary intervention from my hon. Friend. I said I would be brief, so I will bring my remarks to a conclusion. I support the amendments and I congratulate those who drafted them. I want the Government to get through this as best they can. They should listen carefully where there are changes to be made but, if we have to return to this matter on Report, they will certainly have my support in making whatever changes are necessary to accommodate concerns so that we get a Bill that is reasonable, feasible and puts the power back into the House. I would make one small point, however, to those who opened up this massive debate about what happened during the referendum and the idea that we can guess what was in people's minds. It was said again and again, as I recall, by the then Prime Minister, by the then Chancellor, by Lord Mandelson and also by many in the vote leave campaign, that voting to leave meant leaving the customs union and the single market. Now, I understand and accept that people might not want to do that-they advance all sorts of reasons for not doing it-but it was said again and again. On the idea that the British people were too stupid to understand what they were voting for, I say that they were right in their decision and made a decision that was a lot more intelligent than people give them credit for.
When that was said-it probably was said by one or two campaigners on the remain side during the referendum campaign-it was used as an argument against voting to leave. The reaction of leave campaigners was to dismiss it, saying it was the politics of fear, that people were being alarmist in talking about leaving the single market and that in fact our trading arrangements would remain absolutely unchanged, because the Germans had to sell us their Mercedes. That was the role it played in the referendum campaign.
I always like to take an intervention from my right hon. and learned Friend. We agree on many things, but not on this, it has to be said. He will remember that, when he was Lord Chancellor, I supported him in getting through his very good and far-reaching reforms-I wish they had all been put through, but they were not, as he knows. To that extent, I have long supported him, but on this I do not fully agree with him. I think it was clear. It is no good saying that “someâ€ people on the remain side said it. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor were the leaders of the remain campaign, certainly on the Government Benches, but also from the stand point of the country, and they were very clear on this. I do not recall anyone-I certainly did not-saying, “No, no, we'll stay in the single market and customs union.â€ I have always made the point that leaving means leaving the Court of Justice, the customs union and the single market. Voters were, I believe, clear about that, but we can all debate and rerun the arguments.
I will undertake to send to my right hon. Friend a list of the various quotes from leading members of the leave campaign who told the British people, “There will be no change in our trading arrangementsâ€, “We'll do deals in a day and a halfâ€, “We can be like Norwayâ€, “We might want to be like Switzerlandâ€, and so on and so forth. It was made very clear to the British people that the trading arrangements and economic benefits of the EU would remain the same. Does he honestly think that in his constituency of an evening in the Dog and Duck people sat there and said, “I tell you what, you know this single market, well I'm all for out of thatâ€? Does he honestly think they really understood the issue, when there are obviously right hon. and hon. Members in this House who still do not understand what the single market and the customs union are?
That may be. I do not know of the Dog and Duck, unless they have moved a new building into my constituency, but I say to my right hon. Friend that people made a decision to leave, and that argument was debated extensively: it was on television, the Prime Minister was questioned endlessly and others such as Lord Mandelson said categorically that if people voted to leave, we would be leaving these institutions.
We are debating what was said to the electorate during that period, but none of us are talking about what the electorate are thinking now. That is the most important thing. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, as we enter the most crucial part of this stage of the negotiations, the Government should put far more energy into understanding what the public actually think and aspire to for our future relationship with the single market, the customs union and the EU in general and take that into account?
I am all for consulting the British people. That is what we are here for as MPs, right? It is what we do when we go back to our constituencies and talk to people. The honest truth, however, is that we can consult them as much as we like, and we will get different opinions all the time, depending on the question. The biggest consultation I have ever seen took place in 2016: it was called a referendum. The difference between my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and the rest of the House is that he has been opposed to referendums throughout his political life and has never voted for them, whereas most other Members did vote for a referendum. When Members vote for a referendum, they are bound by the decisions that the British people make, and in this instance the British people asked us to leave the European Union. Much of the debate has been about rerunning the referendum. I fully understand that some people will never be reconciled to the idea of departure or of leaving the customs union and the single market, but what we are talking about today is getting out of the European Union. It is not a question of the date, but a question of the process. We are leaving anyway. I support the Government because I believe that leaving the customs union and the single market and taking back control of our laws is exactly the right thing to do, and I do not think they should listen to the siren voices that tell them otherwise.
Thank you, Sir David. Your timing is perfect. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). It enables me to remind him of the promises that were made during the referendum about the £350 million a week that would be available to the NHS post-Brexit. I am as imbued with the good spirit of Christmas as others, Sir David, and I will therefore seek to limit my comments to the five minutes that you have specified. A number of Members referred to what the Prime Minister said to the Liaison Committee in connection with amendment 7. I understand that she was asked no fewer than five times to confirm that she would provide a meaningful vote, by which I mean a vote that would take place on a Bill that will be amendable and would allow the debate to take place at a time when the Government could be instructed to go back and negotiate some more. Let me briefly comment on new clauses 13 and 54. New clause 13 would ensure that we stayed in the customs union. That, I think, remains the only solution to the Ireland-Northern Ireland border issue apart from a border in the Irish Sea, which I do not think the Democratic Unionist party would support.
Never.
I rise to support new clauses 54 and 13, both of which, if put to the vote, I shall vote for. I made it clear to the people of Broxtowe when I stood back in June that I would continue to make the case and vote for the single market, the customs union and, indeed, the positive benefits of immigration. We are on day eight of our Committee proceedings, and, goodness me, if only we had had all this quality debate-this exposition of all the arguments-before the referendum, we perhaps would have had a different result. My constituents might not have changed their minds, but they overwhelmingly say to me now, “I didn't know it was going to be so complicated; I didn't know what it would be like.â€ I have to say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) that customers in the Nelson and Railway pub in Kimberley- a fine pub, and I will take him there one day-did not sit there talking about the customs union.
Of course they didn't.
I am happy to give my right hon. Friend an early Christmas present. I can give her the following assurance on behalf of the Government. The Government have accepted amendment 7. Our written ministerial statement on procedures for the approval and implementation of the EU exit agreement stands. There will be the following meaningful votes in accordance with that statement: on the withdrawal treaty, and on the terms of the future agreement. There will also be a withdrawal and implementation Bill, which the House will consider in detail, and of course all legislation is amendable.
It is important to note the difference between EFTA and the customs union, which is mainly that EFTA countries are able to strike trade deals with third countries. For example, Iceland has a bilateral trade deal with China.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. That is the sort of detail we need. We have to understand all the different arrangements that are there that will work and suit our country, and I beg right hon. and hon. Members to look at them. The solutions are there. We are not going to get a bespoke deal, but arrangements are there on the shelf. We can grasp them, sort out Brexit, move on and do the right thing by our country and our constituents.
It is a great pleasure to follow my good friend the Chair of the Justice Committee. I had the honour of serving on that Committee when we prepared our report on Brexit's impact on the justice system, to which the Government provided their response earlier this week. May I say to Ministers that new clause 31, which is about the best interests of children and safeguarding those interests, has a particular relevance to some of the issues that the Committee uncovered? Those relate to family law, which has not been the subject of much debate in Committee but is, none the less, an extremely complicated and important issue for the wellbeing of children. Our EU membership gives us access to institutions that protect and safeguard children as potential victims of crime.
Last again.
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East said that Ireland raised the point about the customs union and the hard border. That is why it is relevant to this clause. It is about trade between those two countries-the UK and the Republic. The point is that it is also about avoiding the hard border in relation to our other, very important, relationships with Ireland. I ask every Member of this House to bear in mind the emotional and powerful speech made last week by our hon. Friend the Member for North Down (Lady Hermon). It is really important that we remember those days when the hard border between the two countries, and the troubles, delivered so much devastation, hatred and agony to the people of Northern Ireland. On those grounds alone, I ask people to support new clause 13 tonight, and I ask Members on the Opposition Benches, including Members of my own party, to support the new clause, because to do so is in the interests of the country and in the interests particularly of our friends in Northern Ireland.
I raise to support amendment 43. Hon. Members will know that this year marks the 150th anniversary of Walter Bagehot's “The English Constitutionâ€. At the heart of Bagehot's masterpiece is the definition of the expressive function of this place, meaning that it is our duty as parliamentarians to express the mind of the people on all matters that come before it. Amendments 381 and 400 are a betrayal of the expressive function of this House. They are a silent coup d'état masquerading as a technical necessity, so before we go through the Division Lobby this evening, let us reflect on what Bagehot would think of them, and of the Government's behaviour throughout this process. The fact is that he would be appalled. He would be appalled at the attempt to sideline Parliament on the most important issue that has faced our country since the second world war, and he would be appalled by the direct assault on the expressive function of this place. There is, however, a broader point that goes to the heart of our political culture. Bagehot always believed, and I have always agreed with him, that Britain is a land of common sense, compromise and realism, but the Brexit referendum has replaced moderation with division and realism with dogma. I say that the wild men of Brexit have been allowed to drive this debate for too long. I say that amendment 43 represents an opportunity for us in this House this evening to take back control and to return moderation, compromise, realism and pragmatism to their rightful place at the heart of our political system and culture.
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is the position of the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union now untenable? He said that he would resign if the former Deputy Prime Minister was forced out. Have you received any indication, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the former Deputy Prime Minister will come to the House and correct the misleading statement that he made to us?
I beg to move amendment 57,Â pageÂ 2,Â lineÂ 42, leave out clause 4. This amendment is linked to NC19, which would aim to preserve, more comprehensively than the existing Clause 4, rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies and procedures derived from EU law and incorporated into domestic law via the European Communities Act 1972.
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the best guarantee of the fundamental rights of the British people is the will of the British people as expressed through the Parliaments they elect? That is the system I thought we all believed in. I know of no threats to these important rights coming from this Parliament. There are not people proposing that they are watered down, and there would be no majority to do so. The guarantee to the British people is that their Parliament will look after their rights.
May I gently say to my right hon. Friend that if his analysis were accurate, no statute would ever have been enacted by Parliament, at any stage in its history, providing additional protections to people's rights over and above the common law? That must be the end point, because the whole point about the Human Rights Act was that it added to protections enjoyed under the common law and did so in a way that was compatible with this House's sovereignty. All I am saying to Ministers is that given that, for 40 years-plus, we have been involved in an international organisation that in practice has entrenched certain rights, it must now be for Ministers to come forward with a sensible proposal as to how those rights, in so far as the Government consider that they are in fact rights, will be protected in the future. I am afraid that I disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). Nice as it is to rely upon the Executive's good will, 21 years in this House-heaven knows, my right hon. Friend has been here far longer-persuades me that that good will is not something that we should always rely on. I am afraid that I have seen a number of instances-particularly when I was in opposition, I might add-where it did not seem very wise to do so.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) that in the end, because we are a sovereign Parliament, we are the only guarantor of our people's rights. However, I am interested in what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) is saying about this matter, because the other danger that is lurking here is the fact that our courts may well decide that they have an obligation to maintain EU law even in the face of an Act of Parliament, and might strike down an Act of Parliament because, from reading the Bill, they see it as their obligation to retain certain principles of EU law. I like the declaration of incompatibility that my right hon. and learned Friend is suggesting as a very suitable compromise that enshrines what we have.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is making a point that gets to the heart of the purpose of the Bill, as stated by the Government: this is a technical transfer exercise-it is technically transferring the acquis communautaire into British law to facilitate Brexit. Does not the decision not to transpose the charter of fundamental rights make a mockery of that claim? Although the right hon. and learned Gentleman is making very valid points about some of the technical alternatives, do we not need to keep returning the Government to their stated fundamental purpose in the Bill?
The hon. Gentleman makes a totally legitimate point, especially as the Government themselves have emphasised how important these issues are to them. We are not turning the clock back to the 1950s-at least, I do not think we are-since when this country has moved on in respect of rights. The challenge to Ministers is that they have to come up with some solution to the problem. As I said, I do not want to put spanners in the works of how they do it. Another factor influenced my decision not to table another amendment and divide the House on this matter. Realistically, although I realise that some may not like this, in leaving the European Union, we are about to embark on a lengthy period of transitional arrangements during which, in my view-I might be wrong-every jot and tittle of EU law will continue to apply to this country in every conceivable respect, except that we will no longer share in its making in the institutions of the European Union. I am afraid that I think that is where we are going; the alternative, of course, is that we are jumping off the cliff. If that is where we are going, I accept that there is a little more time for the Government to start to reflect on how they will deal with issues of entrenched law before anybody's remedy disappears. That is something else that influences me in not wishing to divide my own party or the House. I am always aware that quiet persuasion may be better than speeches from the Back Benches, and for those reasons, a bit more quiet persuasion might get us to where we need to be on this issue, but it will not go away.
My right hon. and learned Friend says that he does not wish to divide the House. However, if he had tabled an amendment and divided the House, and then that vote had been lost, it would have sent a powerful message to their lordships not to mess with the Bill and that the will of the House had been firmly expressed. There would have been an advantage in his position, if he had maintained it.
There might have been, but as a loyal member of the Conservative party over many years, I have always been of the opinion that the best way to try to influence one's party's policy is in the quietest way possible. As this issue has the merit of being able to succeed in that way, I shall stick to my strategy. Of course, if and when I think it necessary for me to do something else, I could, very reluctantly, be forced to do so. On this matter, however, I prefer to leave it. I turn to a related matter about which I did table an amendment, which I do not wish to press to a vote. It goes to the other issues about the certainty of retained EU law. There is an inevitable internal incoherence about how retained EU law is being handled in the Bill. In reality, retained EU law has a primary quality, because in all likelihood most of it is supreme over our own laws. Oddly enough, that situation is going, at least in part, to be retained, but the Government have dealt with that by allowing it all to be altered through statutory instruments. In Committee, we tried to find a way out-I tried quite hard. That is why I have tabled new clause 13, which provides a way of identifying what EU legislation is in reality primary and what is secondary. I thought that the House might be interested-if it is not, the other place might be-in how one might go about making that separation, which would then provide a sensible measure of greater certainty. At the moment, the Government's proposal, as I understand it, is that each measure will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. That seems a rather extraordinary way in which to proceed.
As ever, it is a genuine privilege to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), whose integrity and honesty have shone through every day we have been debating this Bill.
indicated assent.
I see the Solicitor General nodding. On this crucial issue, however, the Government's cover has been blown. For this, I would like to thank the new Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) -I am sorry she is not in her place today-because in an article in The Daily Telegraph on 18 November last year she made our case clearly. She expressed her concern about the charter precisely because it provided new rights. She wrote that it went beyond the European convention on human rights by creating “extra layers of rightsâ€, and she went on to bemoan the fact that these extra rights covered“everything from biomedicine and eugenics to personal data and collective bargainingâ€. I appreciate that her thinking on this will probably be in line with that of her new boss, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, because he relied of course on the extra rights provided by the charter when he brought his own court case against the now Prime Minister asserting his right to personal data.
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. In addition to the points he has just made, the Exiting the European Union Committee heard evidence from witnesses who said that something would be lost if the charter was not transferred. Given that the whole purpose of the Bill is to take the law as it is now and make sure it is still there the day after, does he agree that the Government have thus far failed to persuade the House that the one thing that should be left out is the charter of fundamental rights?
I agree absolutely with my right hon. Friend, and I hope even at this stage that Members across the House might join us in supporting amendment 4. I do not often agree with the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Fareham, but I am delighted to say that in this case I do. She is right that the charter does indeed go beyond the European convention on human rights and that EU retained law will be incoherent without it. Our amendment is necessary, therefore, if we are to achieve the Government's own stated objective of protecting the rights of UK citizens. This is a crucial issue. The chair of the Government's own Equality and Human Rights Commission, David Isaac, has said:“The government has promised there will be no rowing back on people's rights after Brexit. If we lose the charter protections, that promise will be broken. It will cause legal confusion and there will be gaps in the law.â€These are serious concerns. Human rights should not be a dividing line across the House but should be seen as a British value, and I urge all Members who do not want Brexit hijacked and the rights of UK citizens diluted and reduced to support the amendment.
I want to speak briefly to several of the amendments in this group. In particular, I want to encourage the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) to elaborate on his rather carefully crafted new clause 13, which sets out quite a clever solution to the vexed question of EU retained law. He slightly rushed through his explanation of the new clause towards the end of his speech, but as I understand it, he is suggesting that, rather than treating as a new category of law the whole corpus of 40 years of accrued EU legislation, rights and duties that we all enjoy-or not, depending on how they apply-for the purposes of future amendment or reform of those rights and retained law, certain aspects should be treated as primary legislation and others as secondary legislation. I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman was saying that issues that fell under article 289 should be treated as primary legislation because they were of greater import, and that if we wanted to amend them again in the future we should do so by Act of Parliament, whereas aspects of retained EU law that related to delegated instruments under article 290 should be treated as secondary legislation, and if there were future reforms of those aspects, Parliament could use the secondary procedure. It would be most helpful if the right hon. and learned Gentleman could give us a little more detail about why he felt that those were the right categories to pursue.
I am certainly not going to make a mini-speech; I said what I felt was sufficient. I offer the new clause not as a perfect solution, but as an alternative to what I consider to be the rather incoherent approach that the Government have adopted. The new clause seemed to me to have some merit, especially because it includes a provision allowing the status of retained EU law to be altered by statutory instrument, so the House could be done with the process quite quickly. I thought that it was a way of trying to resolve what I saw as a practical problem. Let me emphasise that it was not intended to be a weapon with which to beat Ministers on the head. I saw it merely as a sensible way of trying to take things forward, and I present it to the Committee in that spirit. It is not perfect, but represents another way in which we might approach the issue.
This may seem a dry and technical question, but from time to time Parliament does reflect on the nature of legislation that has been passed. We all assume that it has been accrued through Acts of Parliament or through secondary legislation, but we are now importing a third category, that of retained EU law, into our legal context, and we need to know how to treat it in the future. I do not think that the Government have addressed that question adequately, which is why I think that new clause 13 is of particular interest.
One of the perplexing aspects of Brexit is the lack of certainty. Many external advisers have come to see us, both in our capacity as constituency MPs and as people who are concerned about the economy and the legal picture and who are asking for certainty. The new clause would assist that process.
These issues are very much to do with legal clarity. They are to do with ensuring that the body of our law can operate smoothly and with stability, and that the courts can properly interpret the way in which various rights will apply in the circumstances that our individual constituents may encounter. You were not in the Chair during the Committee stage, Mr Speaker, but you may recall that we had some discussion about aspects of the charter of fundamental rights. Amendment 4, and amendment 7 tabled by members of the Scottish National party, makes the important point that, as we heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), this is not a simple “copy and pasteâ€ piece of legislation. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn): it seems very peculiar that the charter has been explicitly excluded from the carrying forward of rights. Ministers say, “Do not worry: all those matters are already coveredâ€, or “Common law can deal with them adequatelyâ€, but I do not think that such verbal assurances are good enough, and evidence given to the Exiting the European Union Committee bears that out.
I read what the report said about the issue of the charter of fundamental rights, and I must say that I thought it very inconclusive. I do not think that the Committee took a strong position on either side of the debate.
The catalogue of rights that the hon. Gentleman has just read out is impressive, without a shadow of a doubt. Will he concede, however, that throughout the glorious history of this place, Governments of all political persuasions have enshrined, in primary legislation and elsewhere, rights that include almost all of those? Indeed, in continental Europe, when many of those rights were being stripped down and attacked, this place had a fantastic track record of defending them both in the UK and in other parts of the world, spilling the blood of our young people in order to do so. How on earth can the hon. Gentleman think that we would strip them away?
No one is more proud of being a member of this fine body than I am. Parliament is a great institution: I would say that it is one of the greatest democratic institutions in the world. We are perfectly capable of dealing with many of these issues, but the hon. Gentleman unwittingly went against his own argument when he said “almostâ€ all the rights in the charter were covered or duplicated in primary legislation. Not all of them are covered, as was made clear in some of the evidence that the Select Committee heard.
Is there not a fundamental inconsistency here? The Government's reason for not including the charter is that those rights are covered in domestic law, so it would not add anything, but they propose to include thousands of other directives and rules, many of which we would also be unlikely to change in domestic law. The very same argument could be applied to those thousands of other rules that the Bill goes out of its way to incorporate. The Government say, “We do not want to change the labour laws; we do not want to change the environmental rules; we do not want to change the consumer rights.â€ However, they apply a different logic to the charter. Why does my hon. Friend think that is?
The logic of the Government is a mystery sometimes, and I wonder whether the Solicitor General actually secretly agrees that these are important rights that need to be defended and that the Government have got themselves into a bit of a pickle, possibly because they drafted this Bill before the general election and therefore before they saw some of the consequences of these things.
Those of us who are gay, who went to school in the 1980s and who remember very well the impact of section 28 might baulk at the idea that every Government have given rights and not taken them away. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a fundamental reason why we need to share and stay within the European Union and the fundamental rights system it provides?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That right of protection for freedoms and liberties on the grounds of sexual orientation is enshrined in the charter of fundamental rights. One of the examples given was civil partnerships where in the future pension rights might be divided but at the time when the partnerships took place certain UK laws were not in place; the charter provides protections against discrimination in a way that existing UK law does not.
My hon. Friend is making a strong point and I strongly support what he is saying and Labour Front-Bench amendment 4. I accept that many Conservative Members would strongly defend the rights in the charter and other provisions we have agreed to, but does my hon. Friend agree that the public have reason to be deeply suspicious, because they hear many Conservative Members talk about a race to the bottom in regulation, particularly in employment rights, and about wanting to scrap the Human Rights Act and pull us out of the European convention on human rights? That is why keeping such rights is so crucial.
That is right, and my hon. Friend will also remember that, before becoming Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) cited many of the rights in the charter in his own legal case against the then Home Secretary, who is now the Prime Minister. The right hon. Gentleman took a case against her and cited many of the provisions in the charter; how strange it is that he now introduces a Bill that does not necessarily carry forward those provisions.
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that the issue at hand is not whether those of us in this Chamber now might want to change the rights and protections we currently have, but the process by which those laws and rights could be changed and the ease and lack of accountability and transparency that could put them at risk in future?
I can certainly imagine cases where our constituents, feeling the need to assert some of those rights in the charter in future, find themselves falling foul of the provision in clause 5 that says, all of a sudden, that the charter of fundamental rights is not part of domestic law on or after exit day. They enjoyed those rights hitherto; where would that situation leave them? The Government, when being sued by the tobacco companies which did not like plain packaging and thought it was against their rights of expression, cited the right to public health in the charter of fundamental rights and managed to defeat those tobacco companies. The charter of fundamental rights proved important not just for our constituents, but for the Government themselves in upholding what was a good piece of public policy at the time.
I think I played a small part in that, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Does he agree that all political parties are very keen to appeal to younger voters and that things such as rights really matter to young people, so it could be seen as somewhat ironic that a party that wants to get more young people to vote for it seems to be turning its back on provision for these very important rights?
I am sure that advice will have been heard in senior quarters. Indeed a vice-chair of the Conservative party, the hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), is sitting on the row in front of the right hon. Lady. He is a very senior and eminent individual now, who has great responsibility for digging the Conservative party out of quite a deep hole.
If the hon. Gentleman wants to show us his spade, I will give way to him.
I am not trying to scrape over the point I made earlier, but I am very proud of the history of this place in enacting and protecting rights whether they are in primary legislation or not. The implication of what the hon. Gentleman is saying is that, upon our departure from the EU, unless we bind the hands of Governments of the future in some way, we can no longer trust this place to enhance and protect human rights. Can he reassure me that in no way is he implying that this place will in any way in the foreseeable future row back from its commitment to extending human rights?
Who knows what will happen in terms of future majorities in this place. The hon. Gentleman is still not explaining to me why this issue of all the issues should not be carried forward into legislation. He says he is in favour of almost all or all, of the rights in the charter, but we know there are examples where problems arise.
The Government boast about their protection of human rights, and of course they sign up to UN conventions on the protection of rights of women and children, but they do not then incorporate those rights into our domestic legislation, and because we have a dualist system in terms of international law the rights in UN conventions are not directly applicable in the UK. That is why it is so important that we retain the charter of fundamental rights, and that the Government give a commitment today that they will do so.
The hon. Lady's legal experience speaks volumes about the issue. Simply explaining that one is in favour of these rights, having Members on the Conservative Benches say “They are all really importantâ€, saying that in leaflets and posting them through letterboxes at elections, and having Ministers at the Dispatch Box saying, “Trust us, it's all fineâ€ cannot provide the solid protections that our constituents need in a court of law, whereas the charter of fundamental rights can currently do that.
They have never been in any of my leaflets. I may be in danger of repeating myself now, but when did that ever stop anyone? The reality is that I remember sitting where the hon. Gentleman is sitting now and being told from the Dispatch Box on this side of the Chamber by his party colleague the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) that the charter would never apply in the United Kingdom and indeed that it would have no more force than a copy of The Beano.
As it happens, since that time we have learned that the charter provides extremely important protections for many citizens. I do not think the Government would have cited it in legal actions against the tobacco companies if it were such an unimportant protection.
Does not the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) make our point for us? So many on the Tory Benches disregard the importance of the charter.
I am worried. The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) was saying to her hon. Friends, “Be careful because our constituents do care about rights.â€ She said in particular that younger people care about rights. They really do matter. They may not matter to them in their daily lives today, but they may matter to them or their family or relatives or the environment tomorrow. Those are all things our constituents care about.
The hon. Gentleman has been incredibly generous in taking interventions throughout his speech. When this matter was debated at the previous stage, we had a long discussion on the charter of fundamental rights and it was clear that it divides into three sections. One section is already covered by the Human Rights Act, another section will be meaningless when we leave Europe-it includes rights such as the right to petition the European Parliament-and there is a middle section where there are rights that we should look at carefully. The right way to deal with that is through a constitutional Bill in due course to reset our own rights settlement in this country for all citizens, not just for European law.
If that were the right way, the Government would have introduced a Bill to provide such certainty, instead of saying, “Mañana. Maybe at some point in the future we will try to close this loophole.â€ We have the Trade Bill now, as well as the Nuclear Safeguards Bill and a customs Bill. We are supposed to have an immigration Bill at some point, although I suspect that the Government are having a few difficulties figuring out how to bring it forward. These Bills are supposed to be the fundamental underpinnings of the copy-and-paste process that the Government are pursuing. They are supposed to be taking aspects of European Union rules and regulations and ensuring that they will still be here after March 2019, but no Bill relating to the charter of fundamental rights has been brought forward.
The hon. Gentleman is right about the importance of some of these rights, but may I suggest that incorporating the charter would create complete legal confusion? Under the convention, there is purely a power to make a declaration of incompatibility. Under the charter, however, UK law can actually be trumped. The extraordinary situation could arise in which, if a prohibition against slavery were breached, the courts could merely say that it was incompatible, but if there were a breach relating to data protection, UK law could be trumped. That would create confusion and chaos, which is not what we need in this country.
In Dover and Ramsgate in east Kent, we have to put up with the evil and wicked trade of live animal exports, and we have to do that because of European law. We now see an opportunity to stop that evil trade, for the sake of our communities and for animal welfare, by leaving the European Union and taking back control. Does the hon. Gentleman not welcome that?
There are ways of mending, improving and reforming animal safety standards within the European Union. We should be making the case to do that. We do not want to throw away the benefits that the hon. Gentleman's constituents enjoy, such as being free from traffic jams-not all the time but on many occasions. If Dover has to institute all the necessary sanitary and phytosanitary checking and inspections, with all the warehousing arrangements and other obstacles and regulations that will be needed at the border because we have left the European Union, his constituents will be mightily annoyed by the bureaucracy that they will encounter.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if the Government had had the political will to do this, they could have ended live animal exports by now? There are already references in the EU treaties to public morals, so they could have done it if they had had the political will to do so. Also, if the Government really want to persuade us that they care as much about animal welfare as they claim to do, why on earth would they oppose the new clause? It will simply ensure that we do not have a gap when we leave the EU and before the new Bill, if it happens, comes in?
The hon. Lady makes a very good point. In relation to specific issues relating to Brexit, the Government are finding, when the rubber hits the road, not only that there are potential problems such as the one relating to an American trade deal but that an awful lot of their constituents are saying, “Hang on a minute, what exactly are you doing about animal rights issues? Where will we be when we exit from these particular provisions?â€
My hon. Friend knows that we do not agree on many issues relating to the EU, but we were both elected on the same glorious day in May 1997, and he will remember that our postbags then were full of campaigns to stop the export of live animals to Europe. The reason that that did not happen was not a lack of political will. The reason that the Labour Government, the coalition Government and the Conservative Government did not change the law is that it is a fundamental part of the treaty of Rome. That gives the lie to the argument that the EU can be reformed from inside. The treaty of Rome is not going to be reformed.
Treaties are reformed every time there are adaptations to them, whether it is Maastricht, Nice or Lisbon. The body of European rules and regulations is adapted and reformed all the time. It is all part of working together in co-operation. Sometimes we get our way on particular issues; sometimes we have to continue to argue our case. That is the nature of pooling some of our rules and sharing sovereignty in some respects with our wider neighbours. That is the nature of agriculture and of the environment in which we live.
It is an absolute fallacy to suggest that this Government have been dying to ban live animal exports and that it is only the EU that has held them back. I think it was Germany and the Netherlands that tried in the past few years to put a limit of eight hours, transit time on live exports. The UK went along to those negotiations and argued against those proposals. This is definitely a question of political will.
My hon. Friend absolutely nails the point and brings it home. She knows a great deal more about such issues than I do. The Government of the day do have a say on the rules and can sometimes effect reforms or block them.
I do have to conclude my speech, but I will give way to the hon. Lady first.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but this country is a leader in animal welfare legislation, having introduced the concept of unnecessary suffering in 1915 and, in effect, the first protections for animal welfare, and we have continued that process. Indeed, this Government have reformed animal welfare and this country has high animal welfare protection standards.
We do have high animal welfare standards. I do not deny that there could always be improvements, but I want to retain what our constituents want, which is high standards. By leaving the European Union in this particular way, I worry that we will be forcing ourselves to chase after trade deals with other jurisdictions that have a totally different approach to regulation. The world effectively has three regulatory philosophies: the Chinese have a particular view of regulation; the European Union has a precautionary principle; and the Americans have a different cost-benefit analysis view of the world. If we depart from the precautionary principle ambit, that will affect agriculture, animal rights and many other issues. It would lead to wholly different and lower regulatory standards, which in some ways is the backdrop to this whole question.
I will take one last intervention, but then I must conclude.
No, I have to conclude.
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; he is being very generous. Does he recognise that people are suspicious given that, for example, the new Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), who has just joined us in the Chamber, said that the Government were right not to copy the charter of fundamental rights into UK law because lawyers will love the extra rights that it gives? That shows the real intention behind what some Ministers want, which is to bring down the rights that have protected so many people and workers, the environment, and safety.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) on her appointment, but I am very much looking forward to her speech, which will perhaps wind up one of the sections of this debate, because Parliament will want to scrutinise her views, past and present. I will conclude with that because I have taken up more than half an hour and other Members will want to contribute.
That was a long time ago.
It was not that long ago. Some of us were at school or were students at the time and fought very hard against it. Some of us still find it rather irksome to see the modern Conservative party presented as a great defender of gay rights, because we remember the years when it was not. It has seen the light since then and that is a good thing, but the contravention of human rights is something that Governments do from time to time, which is why it is necessary to have protections that go over and above the whims of the party in power.
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, because I think it needs to be put on the record that, as a Conservative, I could not be prouder of what we achieved between 2010 and 2015, when we introduced equal marriage. I also pay tribute to the fact that the leader of the Scottish Conservatives happens to be gay. We just need to move on from all this. We should not talk about the past, but look to the future. We are very proud of our history as it now is in the Conservative party.
If the Scottish referendum had gone the other way, would not the hon. and learned Lady have regarded the result as completely binding on the whole United Kingdom, even though large parts of England might have voted against her view?
I will not be drawn into a discussion about that today. I can see why the right hon. Gentleman might want to take attention away from the matter at hand, but we are not here today to debate Scottish independence. That will come later, and I very much look forward to it. We are here today to consider the Bill. Rather than shuffling off our responsibilities to another place, we should be looking at the provisions here. The “assuranceâ€ published by the Government is not worth the paper it is written on. One of their Ministers will tell us otherwise, but, perhaps more importantly, the independent legal opinion of a senior English silk commissioned by the EHRC tells us so, and his view is widely held. I do not intend to press amendments 42 and 43 to a vote today, as I see them as probing amendments. Amendment 43 arises from matters raised in Committee, and amendment 42 arises from the terms of the agreement reached between EU and UK negotiators in December 2017. Amendment 42 would ensure that UK courts and tribunals can refer matters to the Court of Justice of the European Union, as was agreed between negotiators in December 2017 in relation to citizens' rights.
I agree entirely with what the hon. and learned Lady is saying, but it is my understanding, and I hope the Minister will say it again-he said it in Committee-that this will be dealt with in the other place. I am sorry that it could not be dealt with here, because that would have been rather better, but if the Government need more time, I expect them to address this issue.
That is what I have heard, too. What I would like to hear from the Government today-this is why I tabled this probing amendment-is some indication that they recognise the gravity of the issue. This is not a political football, and it is not about stopping Brexit; it is about addressing issues of legal certainty. As a courtesy to this House, I would like to hear some indication of how the Government propose to address the issues of legal certainty, particularly so that Members of my party, which is not represented in the other place, can have some input and give our view. Of course Scotland has a separate legal system. Clause 6(2) will apply to the High Court of Justiciary, and we need to be reassured not just on behalf of judges in the UK Supreme Court but on behalf of judges in the Supreme Courts of Scotland. I very much hope amendments 42 and 43 will draw from the Solicitor General some colourable reassurance that the Government are taking these concerns seriously and that they have them in hand, as well as some indication of the route the Government intend to go down in the other place to address these concerns. Finally, on the charter of fundamental rights, I will wait to see what the official Opposition do, as we each have an amendment down. Given the spirit in which we have worked together on other aspects of this Bill, I am sure we can come to an agreement on that. The Scottish National party will be happy to support new clause 7, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). Many of our constituents feel strongly about the issue it raises, as do those of other MPs, and we are grateful to her for persevering with it.
I will give way in a second; before I finish, I will give way if people insist. Secondly, what on earth is the advantage we gain by putting in a three-month limit? The Government have taken weeks to come back with their alleged response to the points raised on the Floor of the House on acquired legal rights, and it seems we can have a concession for three months. That is utterly ludicrous. Thirdly, what is wrong here? My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) is much more of a gentleman than I, and he is much more likely to adhere to party political loyalties. There is no more stout mainstream Conservative than me, and I would say that I am sticking to the Conservative principles that I have followed throughout my life until 18 months ago, but I do think some of these things, certainly on questions of rights, are not party issues. They usually do not have a whip applied. They are matters of conscience and cut across both sides. Going back to the future powers of this Parliament, which it must have of course, to amend retained EU law as and when the political will of the House wishes to do so, what is wrong with new clause 13 and its specification of what is primary legislation and what is secondary legislation? What alternative are the Government going to come up with, other than just saying, “The Government of the day will decide as each issues arisesâ€? They must have a better alternative than that.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that this is the sort of amendment that the other place might just take to heart and bounce back, so it might be more sensible to have that difficult pain now and get it out of the way, and the other House will not have to return it?
I hope and believe that the other place will make an enormous number of changes to this Bill. The idea that a Bill with all these Henry VIII clauses is going to have an untroubled passage through the House of Lords is an illusion. This House just lets every extension of the Henry VIII clause principle through. The Opposition of the day object like mad but then that party takes office, cites the precedents of its predecessor and defends them as the way of proceeding, and the previous Government then start denouncing them. I hope the House of Lords will throw back some of the bizarre extension of the Henry VIII principle in this Bill and some of the European things.
You could go by road.
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could walk on water. Anguilla is economically dependent on Saint Martin. The relationship is essential for Anguilla. The northern part of the island of Saint Martin, which has been since 2007 a French overseas collectivity, has a population of 38,286. The southern part of the island is one of the four kingdoms that make up the Netherlands, the others being Aruba, Curaçao and the Netherlands proper. France and the Netherlands have a different relationship with their overseas territories than the UK has with ours, and that has changed the dynamics. For example, in September the massive, terrible Hurricane Irma hit the Caribbean and wiped out whole communities and destroyed whole towns. President Macron flew very quickly to visit this integral part of France, where there is a tight, close relationship with the Netherlands. This afternoon, the Foreign Affairs Committee, on which I serve, is discussing the overseas territories and the response to hurricanes. I hope to get to the Committee in time to hear a representative of the Government of Anguilla's London office give evidence, but I cannot be in two places at the same time. I hope I will be able to speak in advance and ask questions later. The population of Sint Maarten, the Netherlands part, is around 33,000, so the total population of the island to the south of Anguilla is around 75,000. It is much larger and much more important, so there are fundamental economic questions to be answered about what will happen when-if-the UK leaves the EU.
The hon. Gentleman will know that my colleagues in the Department for Exiting the European Union have been engaging with Britain's overseas territories, including Anguilla, through the Joint Ministerial Council and other mechanisms. Does he agree that that is a perfectly adequate mechanism that should continue, and that that means his new clause is not necessary?
No, I do not agree that it is a perfectly adequate mechanism. The report published by the Government of Anguilla's London office last summer, “Anguilla and Brexit: Britain's Forgotten EU Borderâ€, points out how we do not give sufficient attention to the needs and requirements of our overseas territories. Let me quote just one example: the position with regard to overseas development assistance. Since 2014, we have virtually stopped giving Anguilla any overseas development assistance through the Department for International Development budget, in contrast to some other overseas territories such as Montserrat and elsewhere, and yet it is receiving assistance from the European Union. There is a big concern, which I will come to later, about what will happen to the continued assistance that goes to Anguilla once we leave the EU. That assistance accounts for about 36% of the capital expenditure of the Anguillan Government. That huge amount comes as a result of assistance from the European Union, and it goes to Anguilla by virtue of UK membership of the EU, but once we stop paying into EU development assistance, does anybody think that the EU will continue to finance a British overseas territory when there is no longer any relationship between the UK and the European Union? These are very complicated questions.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for treating us to the shorter version of his speech. Does he welcome the communiqué signed by the Government and the territories, which said that the UK acknowledged“the importance of EU funding for sustainable economic development in some Overseas Territories and committed to ensuring that these interests were fully reflected in the UK's negotiating positionâ€? Does he not think that that will be of great assistance to Anguilla and other overseas territories?
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I do not want to interrupt his most eloquent speech, but does he not agree that the irony is that Anguilla reflects the position that we will find ourselves in at the edge of Europe should we leave? Indeed, it is a concern that the Government have not given any sensible or sufficient answers to his queries, and it bodes ill.
Does my hon. Friend agree that this is one of a number of examples? A place such as Anguilla or an industry such as farming has no sense of certainty about how or whether the Government will replace funding that will be lost after-or if-we leave the European Union. Does he think that the Government are not being clear about the future because they have not yet worked it out, or because they fear that if people see what the situation will be after we leave the European Union, they may begin to wake up to the fact that what is on offer is very much inferior to what we have now?
I strongly agree with the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) that the United Kingdom could strengthen her links and ties with Anguilla and could be very supportive as we go through Brexit. I trust that those on the Government Front Bench have listened carefully to what he has been saying. As far as I know, they have good will towards Anguilla. He mentioned some positive ideas about how the UK can help more and develop that relationship, which I welcome and which I suspect the Government may welcome. I will respond briefly to the remarks of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). In her remarks-we have heard this in the many SNP speeches during the debates on the Bill-she referred again to the way in which Scottish voters had a different view from UK voters as a whole on the referendum and she implied that that had great constitutional significance. I urge her to think again. I pointed out to her that, had Scotland voted to be independent in its referendum, I do not think it would have mattered at all if, in a subsequent election-I think that there would probably have been one quite quickly-a lot of people in England had voted the other way and said, “No, we'd like Scotland to stay in.â€
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
If the hon. and learned Lady lets me finish my point, I will let her intervene. I would have thought that the result of the Scottish referendum was binding and, although I deeply want to keep the Union together, I would have felt that it was my duty to see the wishes of the Scottish people fully implemented because those were the terms of the referendum. She seems to be implying that it should have been otherwise.
The right hon. Gentleman has unfortunately forgotten that the Scottish referendum was preceded by the Edinburgh agreement between the British and Scottish Governments, which said that the outcome of the referendum would be respected by both sides. I think that he is rather trying to deflect attention from the issue at hand today by harking back to this.
I fear that it is very relevant, and probably even more relevant to what we are going on to debate in the next group of amendments-and the hon. and learned Lady did raise it as an important part of her case on how we handle EU law. I feel that SNP Members want to recreate the European Union in every way they can by amending this Bill, which is actually about us developing a new relationship-a very positive relationship-with the EU from outside the EU. That means changing some of the legal ties that currently bind us to the EU, while the many that we do not want to change come under our control so that future votes of the British people, and Parliaments, could make a difference if they so wished. That is the very important thing that we are debating. She has to accept that just as, had the Scottish people voted to leave, we would all have accepted the verdict and got on with it, against our wishes, now that the United Kingdom's people have voted to leave the European Union, the whole Union has to accept that democratic judgment.
Is the right hon. Gentleman really suggesting that the outcome of the 2014 referendum means that henceforth in this Union the views of the Scottish people can be blithely ignored on all occasions? Is that his view? I am sure that Scottish voters watching the television would love to know that that is what he saying.
Absolutely not. Scottish voters' views matter very much. They have a privileged constitutional position, which we are all happy with, such that in many areas Scotland makes her own decisions through her own Parliament. However, when it comes to a Union matter, I thought we all agreed that where we had a Union-wide referendum, the Union made the decision and the Union's Parliament needs to implement the wishes expressed in the referendum. That is why Members from every party in the House of Commons, apart from her party and a few Liberal Democrats, decided, against their own judgments in many cases, that we needed to get on with it, send the article 50 letter and give this Bill a good passage. We are bound by the wishes of the British people as expressed in the referendum.
Does my right hon. Friend detect, as I do, a tendency in SNP Members, which reaches its pinnacle in the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), not to accept the results of any referendum held in this country? They reject the alternative vote referendum result, they will not accept and respect the Scottish referendum result, and now they are trying to countermand the European referendum result. I really think it is high time that they accepted the decisions made in referendums in this country.
Of course, the charter is an excellent example of these rights. It incorporates rights on data protection and other issues, as has been described in the debate. Would it not make sense to incorporate it into UK law and allow it to be changed at a later date through the kind of evolution that my right hon. Friend is describing?
I am interested in the issue my right hon. Friend raises about our not being able to scrutinise European law in this Chamber before it was approved over there. In other Parliaments, such as the Dutch Parliament, specialist committees scrutinised proposals before they reached the European Parliament; for example, the telecoms committee in the Dutch Parliament would scrutinise telecoms law before it got to the European Parliament. As we take our own law, would it not be helpful to use the specialist committees more on the detail?
We had 45 years to get that right, and I think my hon. Friend would probably agree with me that it did not happen in the way she now says she wished it had. When I was the single market Minister, I tried to do this. I brought draft proposals to the House to try to get comment before I went off to negotiate. I felt that that was the only time it was worth hearing Parliament's view because there was still the chance of trying to change things. If Parliament agreed with me that the draft was very unsatisfactory, it was marginally helpful to be able to say to the EU, “By the way, the United Kingdom Parliament does not like this proposalâ€, although the EU did not take that as seriously as I would have liked it to. The truth was that we could then be outvoted, under a qualified majority voting system, and we often were if we pushed our disagreement, so the views of Parliament mattered not a jot, even if we did the decent thing and invited Parliament to comment before the draft was agreed. As my hon. Friend must know, once a draft was agreed, if it was a regulation, that was immediately a directly acting law in the United Kingdom and this Parliament had no role whatsoever. If it was a directive-directives can be very substantial pieces of legislation-we could not practically change anything in that law. Whatever Parliament thought, it had gone through.
I sit on the European Scrutiny Committee and have done so for some time. I can confirm that, although we briefly look at all the laws coming into this country, we certainly do not have the time to scrutinise them. I can assure the House that the House does not have the time to do so either.
There is also the point that, if we are scrutinising that after it has happened, that is not a lot of use. That can alert Parliament and the public to problems that the new law might create, but if it has been agreed under the rules, it is law and we have to do the best we can and live with it. Having sat through quite a few debates on the Floor of the House-in Committee, and on Second and Third Readings of Bills-while being a Member of Parliament, I do not think I have ever seen a Bill that has been so extensively debated, dissected, discussed, analysed and opposed. A huge amount of work has gone in to proposing a very large number of detailed and rather general amendments, discussing the philosophy, principles and technical matters in considerable detail.
Before he moves on to another point, does my right hon. Friend agree that the narrowness of the Henry VIII clauses has actually been very considerably intensified by the amendments tabled on Report to clause 7(1) and 7(2)?
Yes, I agree. I think the Report stage may even produce some agreement between my right hon. Friend, me and our right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield that improvements have been made in that respect, with some powers for Ministers being narrowed and the House having an even bigger role. I am perfectly happy that that has happened. The wider point I want to make is that this very extensive, forensic and thorough discussion could be a model for other legislation. It is interesting that MPs on the whole do not get as interested in other legislation as they have done in this Bill. The Lords should take into account the fact that, on this occasion, the Commons has done its work very extensively and thoroughly, and has considered a very wide range of issues in amendments. I am sure that the Lords will take that into account when it comes to have its important deliberations on this legislation.
I rise to speak to new clause 7, which is in my name and is supported by Opposition Members. I hope to push it to a vote. The new clause would transfer article 13 of the Lisbon treaty into UK law, so that the obligation on the Government and devolved Administrations to pay due regard to the welfare requirements of animals as sentient beings when formulating law and policy is not lost when the UK leaves the EU. You will be glad to hear that I can be brief, Mr Speaker, because there is no need to set out again the case for transferring this obligation under EU law into domestic law. In Committee, the then Justice Minister, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), rejected my similar new clause and, I would suggest, inadvertently misspoke in the House in the process by stating that the sentience obligation“is already recognised as a matter of domestic law, primarily in the Animal Welfare Act 2006.â€- That was simply incorrect, and there can be no disagreement about that because the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has since published a new draft Bill providing for the transfer into UK law of the obligation on animal sentience set out in article 13. The Government therefore accept that they need to do what my new clause provides for, and the simplest thing would be for the Minister to accept it or, if the specific wording is considered deficient in some way, for him to bring forward a revised version as a Government amendment. As this has not yet happened-I will gladly give way to the Minister if he wants to say that the Government will accept the new clause-I can only assume he will say that the Bill is not the right legislative vehicle for the new clause: in other words, that a Bill to transfer the body of EU law into UK law is not the right legislative vehicle to transfer an important piece of EU law into UK law. To me, at least, that does not make sense.
I am very pleased to speak in support of the new clause brought forward, once again, by the hon. Lady. I am particularly pleased to see that it extends not just to Ministers in this Parliament, but to those in the devolved institutions. My one concern is that the wording could have been stronger by creating an obligation to uphold respect for animal sentience, rather than just having due regard to it.
Yes, in theory, I agree with the hon. Lady that the wording could be stronger. I was trying to be careful to avoid an accusation of gold-plating EU legislation, so I simply looked at the wording of article 13 and tried to bring that over from EU law into UK law. If we were starting again, I certainly agree that we could make the wording stronger.
Does the hon. Lady not agree that we can do better on animal welfare than the EU currently allows us to do? For example, making foie gras is prohibited in this country, but we cannot stop its being imported from countries in the EU that make it, such as Belgium and France, because that would be against the free movement of goods. Does she not agree that the Conservatives are now putting in place tougher sentencing for animal welfare breaches, and we should focus on that, rather than looking at the past?
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the new laws on sentencing are certainly to be welcomed, but I do not see why we need to see this as an either/or. I am trying to make sure that there is no legislative gap, because I do not have confidence-perhaps Conservative Members do-that the new Bill is likely to be on the statute books by the time that we leave the EU, if that is what happens. I want to make sure we have legislative certainty-belt and braces-by putting my new clause in the Bill. We can have a big debate about the extent to which the EU has promoted animal welfare. I would argue that usually the reason that animal welfare has not been promoted while we have been a member of the EU is the lack of political will here, rather than that the EU itself has prevented it. I take the point about the rules of the single market, but cases can always be made for exceptions-for example, on seal fur. If enough political energy is expended in the EU, such derogations can be achieved. We could have done the same on issues such as live animals, but we chose not to. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said, the Government have a record of not supporting tighter legislation on the live animal transport trade. So I will not stand here and listen to Conservative Members pretending that their new-found detoxification strategy for the Tory party is a reflection of a long-held belief in animal welfare.
Does the hon. Lady agree that a bird in the hand-her proposal -is much better than two in the bush? It would be cruel of me to remind the House that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs made a solemn pledge to support the Foreign Secretary in his bid to be leader, but then ended up stabbing him repeatedly in the front.
I will be supporting amendment 57 and other provisions. I rise to speak to new clause 16, which is in my name. I will not be pushing it to a vote, because it is a probing provision. The new clause seeks to ensure that there is no regression in our equality protection as we leave the EU and following the repeal of the charter of fundamental rights. That principle has already been agreed by the Government, so there should be little controversy about supporting new clause 16. Hon. Members were promised that the Government would introduce an amendment that required Ministers, on the presentation of any Brexit-related primary or secondary legislation, to make a statement before the House on whether and how it was consistent with the Equality Act 2010. While the Government may try to make out that amendment 391 covers that point, I do not believe that it properly addresses the issue of primary legislation-a point eloquently made by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). For that reason, I have tabled new clause 16. We cannot allow any regression in, or diminishing of, our equality protections and rights when we leave the EU. I totally disagree with hon. Members who have suggested that we should just trust the Government to get this right. The equality protections and human rights referred to in new clause 16 have been hard fought for, and we cannot allow them to be put at risk. I commend new clause 16 to the House.
I rise to support the speeches made by my right hon. and learned Friends the Members for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). The idea that three months is sufficient protection in terms of somebody launching a legal action, while a welcome concession from the Government, does not go far enough. I urge the Government to listen to the proposal to retain the Francovich right throughout the transition period or implementation period-however it is described. I also support the points made on the charter of fundamental rights. When the charter was brought into effect, it said that it codified existing rights-rights that UK citizens already had. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), takes a different view. I do not really care which view is right; the fact is that we have moved on as a society, and these protections have now become important in UK law. I would very much urge the Government to consider that when approaching this matter in the Lords. Finally, it is eminently sensible that the Government look at new clause 13, which will not be moved to a vote today. It provides a very good mechanism for distinguishing between primary and secondary legislation in terms of the appropriate protections that will apply to UK citizens. I do not want my constituents to be in a worse position in a few years' time than they are in now when it comes to their rights, so I urge the Government to listen to the debate today-I know they have their listening ear on.
I wish to speak in support of amendments 37 and 38 in the name of my colleagues in Government. I will try and answer the question that was put to me by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who has been getting frustrated in these debates about the somewhat technical nature of ministerial responses. Well, this is a very technical Bill. Like its illustrious predecessor, the European Communities Act 1972, it is a Bill of constitutional importance; it is a framework Bill. It is not-I stress this, because it is most important-it is not a Bill that seeks to convey a policy or a particular aspect of policy that we have discussed today. It is a framework that is designed to ensure that the law that is applied up to exit is downloaded in as clear and proper a way as possible because, to be consistent with the rule of law, the law needs to be accessible, it needs to be clear and it needs to be well understood. That is the fundamental basis of my concern about today's amendments-that in seeking to retain the charter of fundamental rights in domestic law after exit, not only do we sow potential confusion but we fundamentally misunderstand what that charter means in the first place.
The Government have introduced welcome amendments to clause 7. While my hon. and learned Friend is talking about clarity, I just want to ask him to confirm, at this early stage in his remarks, that the Government will bring forward the amendments that we were hoping for, and that I think my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and I were, if not promised, at least led to expect, when clause 6 is discussed in the other place.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. If he had sufficient time at his disposal, he might have seen the evidence that I gave to the Constitution Committee in the other place, in which the issues in clause 6 were discussed-the interpretive provisions that he and I and others debated in Committee. May I come back to the fundamental point about the charter? It was never intended to create new rights. It was a document that reaffirmed rights that already existed in EU law.
Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?
I will not; I am developing my argument. It was a point that was made clear, not only in the charter itself but in protocol 30, which was signed by Poland and the UK at the time of the Lisbon treaty. In addition-this is important, and this, it seems to me, having listened carefully to the debate, is not understood-the charter does not apply to member states in everything they do. Although it applies to the EU and its institutions in all areas, it binds member states only in so far as they are acting within the scope of EU law. Therefore talking about the charter in a domestic context misunderstands its purpose and point: it was not drafted in that context. I am afraid that there has, I think, been a regrettable misunderstanding about that in this debate.
I do not think I have been under any misunderstanding at all. That is why I have kept pressing the Government to leave the charter to one side but look at the general principles of EU law necessary to bring challenges to retained EU law, brought into our own domestic law, that was not enacted by this Parliament-and without which, frankly, the coherence of EU law starts to disintegrate. That is the issue. Linked to that, of course, is the other issue of protecting some of those fundamental rights, perhaps in a different way, that matter to so many on both sides of the House.
My right hon. and learned Friend and I agree about general principles, which is why the general principles that underpin the recently drafted charter remain and, of course, do apply in respect of retained EU law. His second point about the means by which individuals challenge that is, of course, a matter of ongoing debate. I shall come back to the points raised in not only his amendment, but mine as well.
My hon. and learned Friend kindly said that he would try to answer my question. The question was: what harm has the charter of fundamental rights done and what evil is he trying to avert? It is true that, unexpectedly, new rights have been created under the charter and he is right that those rights have relevance to EU law. But the whole point of the Bill is to retain large amounts of EU law and its principles. What is the point of the change? This is policy in this Bill-it is a policy change. I fear that it is a signal to some sections of my party: the only part of the acquis communautaire that will be abolished mentions the wicked words “fundamental rightsâ€, and that is why it is being removed.
The position that my right hon. and learned Friend took on the charter back in 2007 is the right one. As I was saying, it is in the interests of maintaining the rule of law that we maintain clarity, consistency and a clear authoritative source for those rights. My genuine concern about the importation of this particular charter into our domestic law is that we will sow confusion. That is not good for the maintenance of the rule of law, for the citizens of our country, for the future development of the law or for the position of this place vis-Ã -vis that development.
I entirely endorse what my hon. and learned Friend is saying, not least because of the acquis itself. Secondly, there are the adjudications under the European Court itself. Thirdly, the charter is like a legal ectoplasm: it seeps into everything. There is no way in which we would ever be able to extract ourselves from the entirety of the provisions in perpetuity.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who raises a genuine concern about the impact of protocol 30. Many Opposition Members were here 10 years ago; they were anxious then to make sure that the protocol was included in the Lisbon treaty. They are now happy to resile from that position and take an entirely different view. I take great issue with that: the legal principles were the same then as now. Nothing has really changed about the potential force of the charter, so I am rather bemused to hear about that volte-face on the part of many Opposition Members.
I am grateful to the Solicitor General for giving way, particularly given that from a sedentary position earlier he described an intervention of mine as rubbish-but let us slide away from that. As he will know very well, human rights were an essential component of the Belfast agreement, and the protection of human rights was at the core of the Patten reforms of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. For the people of Northern Ireland, therefore, the protection of human rights is essential. By repealing the charter of fundamental rights-not the convention, the charter-we are sending out an extremely negative message to the people of Northern Ireland. Can he offer reassurances on that point?
I certainly can. First, we are not repealing anything. Secondly, the dog that has not barked in this debate is the European convention on human rights, which is much supported by both sides of the House, very much part of our law and a fundamental part of the underpinning of many of the human rights-
I know that the hon. and learned Lady treasures and rightly places great value on those human rights. I give way to her.
Can the Solicitor General confirm once and for all that reports that the Prime Minister wants to run the next Tory party general election campaign on a pledge to repeal the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the convention are incorrect? Conservative Members roll their eyes and make a noise. I am giving him the opportunity to confirm that that is incorrect.
May I just calm the hon. and learned Lady? Well, she is making a point that is frankly not the case. We have committed to supporting our membership of the European convention throughout this Parliament, and that is a position I entirely support.
What about the next Parliament?
My hon. and learned Friend's argument would make more sense if the Government had not decided to retain the principle of the supremacy of EU law in the Bill. Once they have done that, removing the mechanism of a challenge on the basis of general principles creates something that I think is rather odd. I would not have pressed the issue if the Government had adopted an alternative approach, but that was their own decision. This has, I think, highlighted some of the oddities of the way in which the matter has been approached. It may well be that they can be sorted out in the other place, but I think my hon. and learned Friend must acknowledge that they are odd.
I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend is allowing me to intervene on his intervention. Let us not forget that we are dealing with the pre-exit situation. The EU acquis is being frozen, in the sense that its full effect in a pre-exit sense must be maintained so that we can maintain certainty. I agree that it is a strange and rather unusual concept, but I think it preserves that all-important certainty. Time is short, and I want to ensure that I deal with further amendments.
Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?
I would be interested to know what policy area the Solicitor General thinks the EU provision does not cover: what does he want to cover that the EU does not? Secondly, would it not be safer just to have this amendment in the Bill to make sure we have legal certainty, because he cannot guarantee that the Government Bill will get on to the statute book before we leave the EU?
I thank the Minister for praising me as a shining example on animal welfare, but that does not quite make up for my disappointment that he has failed to address the issues in my amendments. I therefore seek to press amendment 57 to a vote.
I beg to move amendment 49, page 17, line 13, leave out “appropriateâ€ and insert “necessaryâ€. This amendment would ensure that Ministers can only bring forward regulations when it is necessary to do so.
The amendments I have tabled go to the heart of concerns that many Members have about the wide powers afforded to the Executive by clause 9, schedule 2 and other parts of the Bill in relation to secondary legislation. The purpose of my amendments is to ensure that Ministers can only bring forward regulations under clause 7 and the like when it is “necessaryâ€ to do so, rather than when it is “appropriateâ€. The word “appropriateâ€ is too wide. These issues were discussed in Committee, but-surprise, surprise-it was very difficult to get a straight answer from Ministers about why they were so wedded to the word “appropriateâ€ and were not interested in changing it to the word “necessaryâ€, as supported by many organisations including Justice and the Law Society of Scotland. The change would also reflect judicial concerns about the breadth of discretion that the judiciary would be given if they had to determine whether something was “appropriateâ€ rather than “necessaryâ€. This will be subject to judicial review because we are talking about secondary legislation. I tried in vain in Committee to get the Minister to say what was meant by “appropriateâ€. He referred me to the dictionary definition, but that is simply not good enough.
It seems to me, and I am sure the hon. and learned Lady will agree, that as far as the Government are concerned, “appropriateâ€ means, “We'll tell you what we're going to bring in front of you.â€
I can see the hon. and learned Lady's point that, in the light of the changes that the Government have made to clause 7, it may be appropriate to change “appropriateâ€ to “necessaryâ€ in the schedule. However, will she confirm that her amendment 49 does that for devolved authorities' Ministers, not for the Crown, and that that comes later in the sequence of amendments?
Yes. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. It would not be very consistent if I thought that the British Executive should not get sweeping powers but the Scottish Executive should. All these arguments about curtailing Executive power apply to all Governments in these islands, not just to this Government. At the moment-my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) will address these matters later-the Scottish Government are getting precious few powers in relation to these matters, and that is a grave concern. However, others will address that later. The Solicitor General said he had listened with care to what was said about this issue in Committee, so what will Ministers do about it? Have they spoken to the judiciary about this? Have they taken on board the judiciary's concerns about the scope of discretion granted to them and their fear of that, given recent politically motivated attacks on the judiciary? Have Ministers taken on board the concern expressed on both sides of this House and by many organisations outwith it about the broad scope of the powers currently afforded? As I said, I have no doubt that these concerns will be raised in the Lords, but now is the time for the Government to tell this democratically elected and accountable House what they are going to do to circumscribe the exercise of Executive power in this Bill.
I will speak only briefly to somewhat lament the fact that we have not made more progress on this clause 11 issue. Let me explain the background. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has taken an interest in this matter. We have taken an extensive interest in the inter-institutional relations between the different Parliaments of the United Kingdom and the different Administrations of the United Kingdom, which is a very undeveloped part of our constitution. We have the legal framework, but we do not have the practices, the culture or the institutional underpinning. The debate about the legislative consent motions in relation to this legislation has shown that up to a degree. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), recently departed from the Government, who played a crucial role in making considerable advances on the question of how the legislative consent motions in support of this proposed Act of Parliament should be supported by the devolved Parliaments. It seems to me that the process has stalled somewhat, and it is unfortunate that we do not have the Government or others tabling amendments at this stage of the scrutiny of the Bill, when some of us had hoped that that would be the case. I am bound to say that it may reflect the fact that there is not yet a consensus, and it would be more important to reach a consensus on this matter than to table some amendments that do not reflect a consensus.
I totally understand the wish, perhaps, to have had more discussion or debate before bringing amendments, but is that not an argument for putting back this debate, rather than that these amendments should come up in the Lords, where not just Scotland's governing party but all Scottish MPs cannot take part in the debate?
I do wish that the Scottish National party would take up its option of positions in the other place, so that it could-
MPs.
No-so that the SNP could be represented in the other place, because I have no doubt that this matter will be addressed there. But I agree; I think that is unfortunate and that it would have been preferable for it to have been developed here.
Even if the SNP were in the Lords, it is the representatives here who are elected, and representatives from all Scottish parties are disfranchised by the amendment's not being moved today.
I accept that. Whatever compromise or proposals emerge in the other place, we can either debate them, vote on them and accept them, or we can debate them, vote on them, reject them and send back our own proposals to the other place at that point, so this House will have an opportunity to debate this very fully-just as fully as on Report. This is, ultimately, a question of trust. We need to build up trust. Whatever the future holds for our United-or disunited-Kingdom, there need to be relationships of trust between the four Parliaments of these islands, the four Administrations of these islands, to enable us to make our way in the world as effectively as possible after we have left the European Union. That trust is still somewhat lacking in those relationships, and there may be one or two who want to foment distrust for their own political reasons. That makes getting this sorted out in an amicable way more challenging, but all the more necessary.
Is not trust based on experience, and is not the experience that we have witnessed over the past few weeks disappointing in that building of trust?
We have come a long way since the Government first published the Bill in draft last summer, when there were very peremptory conversations with the devolved Administrations and they felt very unconsulted about the Bill that had been published. There has been quite a lot of trust building and discussion, and the meetings of the Joint Ministerial Committee, which has discussed these matters and produced joint memorandums, shows that the trust is capable of building. I do think we have gone backwards a little bit in recent weeks, but I hope that the work that my Committee is doing will help. My Committee is going to Cardiff at the beginning of February and then we will be making an official visit, following an unofficial visit late last year, to Edinburgh, to build up these relationships and these understandings between the different Parliaments and the different Administrations. I do hope that in the end we can arrive at the right destination.
I welcome the Committee Chair's taking his Committee formally and informally to Edinburgh and I agree with what he says about trust, but I hope that he agrees with me and my party that trust would be ably demonstrated if the Government had tabled an amendment, committing to deliver all the 111 powers to the devolved Administrations.
Trust is about what is offered to the other party. In this case, the Government have been consistently misconstrued. Given the drafting, clause 11 can be read as though the Government intended to hold on to the 111 powers for all time, withholding them from the Scottish Government, but the Government have repeatedly said that that is not the case. My Committee has also consistently said that the Government's intention is that the devolved Administrations and Parliaments should finish with substantially more powers as a result of leaving the EU than they had before.
We have not had a functioning Assembly in Northern Ireland for a year-since January 2017. How exactly does the hon. Gentleman and his Committee expect to build up trust with the Northern Ireland Assembly? How is that going?
The biggest scandal about clause 11 is that the UK Government know that it is completely unacceptable; they are just not brave enough to admit it. Ministers, Tory MPs and civil servants have privately-and publicly, sometimes-acknowledged how extremely ill-advised it is to remove the power of the devolved Governments over devolved areas. This UK Government committed to introducing amendments on Report to address this, but where are they? Where is the Government's acknowledgement that they have got this wrong?
No doubt the hon. Lady will develop her argument, but will she just clarify something? It is not the case, is it, that anything is being removed from the devolved authorities? It is a question of whether things that currently reside in Brussels should be devolved rather than returned to Westminster.
There are things that are devolved and on which we work with the EU, and we do not want those devolved areas returned centrally to the UK Government, as part of a power grab, rather than to our devolved Administrations. The Welsh Government are clearly arguing that case, and so are the Scottish Government.
Is the issue not the basic principle that when the Scottish Parliament was set up, certain powers were reserved, and if they were not specifically reserved, they were devolved? That was not originally the case in Wales, but it was later changed. This process reverses that.
That is absolutely the case. It is the case in Scotland and is now the case in Wales. The Welsh and Scottish Governments are clearly arguing this case, and we are now on the brink of a constitutional crisis. This is an issue of trust-trust to exercise devolved powers responsibly, trust to carry out measures that represent the people of Wales and trust to provide meaningful scrutiny of legislation. Why should we in Wales trust a UK Government who are leading us, at any cost, towards such a shambolic, hard Brexit? As it stands, after Brexit, the devolved Governments will be at the mercy of Whitehall, which will have complete control over the time, place, method and future of the powers being repatriated from Brussels. Whitehall may even decide that passing them on is too much trouble, and since the devolved Administrations are given no bargaining powers under the Bill, there will be no opportunities for either Wales or Scotland to demand their return. This is called rolling back the powers of devolution, and we in Wales will not stand for it.
Is the hon. Lady not aware that there are ongoing discussions between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations about this very subject, that there are positive signs that an agreement will be reached-if it has not already been reached-and that therefore she is scaremongering in respect of these powers?
I am aware that discussions are taking place, but I am also aware that the UK Government promised to bring forward an amendment at this stage but have not done so. So where is that trust?
Will the hon. Lady agree that a symbol of how seriously this is being taken by the Welsh Government and Welsh parties and in Scotland is the fact that consideration is now being given to continuity Bills to ensure that those powers are retained? In fact, my colleague Steff Lewis in the Assembly will be presenting just such a Bill tomorrow morning.
Yes, that is exactly right, and something I am coming on to. Just today, the Welsh First Minister has said he will take steps to protect Welsh powers after Brexit if UK Ministers do not change the Bill, stating that the Prime Minister's plan to accumulate all the powers from Brussels in London is a “fundamental assault on devolutionâ€.
Members from all sides have mentioned the issue of trust. Does my hon. Friend think that the Government's attitude to the cancellation of the electrification of the line to Swansea and their promises on EU grants to Wales have helped trust between Cardiff and London?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. How can we trust a UK Government who cannot make a decision on the tidal lagoon, who cancel electrification, who do not give us fair funding, and who do not give Wales an equal say? The Bill says just that. The First Minister of Wales has explicitly refused consent to the Bill, and if nothing has changed by the end of January, the Welsh Government will introduce a continuity Bill to protect Welsh interests. The invitation from the Welsh Government to co-operate with the UK Government to make the Bill fit for purpose has been ignored. If the UK Government understood why devolution is one of the strengths of the UK rather than-as they seem to think-one of its weaknesses, they could have included a strategy providing for meaningful, positive scrutiny of legislation by the devolved Governments, and a smooth transition of powers from Brussels to the local, devolved Administrations who are best placed to know what is best for their own countries. Some EU frameworks will need to be replaced by common frameworks in certain devolved areas, such as agriculture, environment and fisheries, but it is unacceptable to sideline the devolved Governments in that process. The Welsh Government have always been involved in EU negotiations, and are involved in them at the moment. I know that because, in a previous role, I have been part of those EU negotiations alongside Welsh Ministers. I know at first hand what an easy process this is, and I know that it is a process that has always worked. For example, Wales leads the way on recycling and climate change. If environmental policy is reserved to Whitehall, what is to stop the deregulation and the rolling back of our progress to abide by the messy agreements that the Government are planning with the likes of Donald Trump?
I share the hon. Lady's frustration that the Government have not tabled an amendment, which I think will be well documented in the debate. Does she agree, however, that there is an opportunity for us to have a stronger United Kingdom through UK frameworks? The environmental point is very clear: pollution does not respect national or regional boundaries. We need strong nations, but we need a strong United Kingdom as well.
We did table amendments, but the Government voted against them. I cannot possibly accept that the UK Government will decide all new policies for all the nations of the UK on issues that are devolved, when they are also acting as the English Government. English interests are not always the same as Welsh or Scottish interests. We know all too well that English interests come first. Wales voted for a devolved Government 20 years ago. I was part of the campaign, and I was proud to see the then UK Labour Government bring that about.
Surely the point is that we are a United Kingdom, and as we move across the United Kingdom we see a great diversity in our country. Walsall North is very different from some of the sunny areas in the south-east. I think that we need to operate collectively as a nation in these discussions.
If the UK Government were going to work together in that way, surely they would have tabled an amendment at this stage enabling them to do just that. We now see a more successful and more confident Wales than we saw two decades ago, but I fear that we are about to go backwards. The Tories have made it clear that when it comes to devolution, they just do not get it. Anyone who understands the basics of devolution could tell them that the Bill, in its current form, is taking us backwards. We need a Bill setting up a procedure that devolved Governments could use in order to have a say on the common UK frameworks so that they would not have to depend on Whitehall's good will or trust, and that must be on the face of the Bill. We need a Bill that does not propose regressive restrictions on the ability of devolved Parliaments to legislate on devolved areas; this Bill is not it, and I am disappointed that this UK Government could not get their act together between Committee and Report stage and offer better amendments to salvage it.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin). I want to raise two points, and the first of them goes to the issue around devolution and clause 11 and the lack of Government amendments. I do not share the hon. Lady's somewhat apocalyptic view on this issue, but I certainly acknowledge that it is not desirable, because it is clearly not the Government's intention for the process of Brexit to result in a diminution of devolved authority either in Scotland or Wales, or for that matter, in so far as Northern Ireland is going to get a viable Administration, in Northern Ireland. My view has always been, on looking at and reading the way the Bill was drafted, that we can do better than what appears in it at present. My understanding is that that is also acknowledged by the Government, although I do slightly regret that the Bill was introduced in its current form, because it seems to me that it was, to an extent, unnecessarily provocative. However, it is worth bearing it in mind that ultimately the devolution system-I participated in the debates that set it up-had behind it the implication that the adjustments were not just a one-way ratchet, and I want to emphasise that point: the implication was that devolution might at times require adjustments that gave powers back to Westminster, just as they conferred more powers over time to both Cardiff and Edinburgh. That was clear in the course of those debates when Parliament set the original system up, and it has been repeated on a number of occasions since.
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree with his colleague in the Scottish Conservative party Adam Tomkins MSP, the constitution spokesman, who said:“Brexit must be delivered in a way that respects devolution...Looking at the substance of the 111 powers, many can safely be devolved without further ado; why aviation noise, for example, would need to come under a UK-wide framework I do not knowâ€?
I should like to speak to amendment 5, a cross-party amendment tabled in my name and those of other hon. Members. I should also like to indicate my strong support for the Opposition Front-Bench amendment 3. In principle, I also support many of the other amendments in this group, although not, I am sorry to say, the Government amendments, which do not go far enough towards addressing the concerns that have legitimately been raised by the devolved Administrations in particular. It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who has made some excellent points, as has my colleague and friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), who shares many of my deep concerns about this part of the legislation, which have not been addressed. I hesitate to raise this point, but it is odd that we are discussing devolution and Brexit in this, the most important piece of legislation to face the United Kingdom and the devolved nations since the second world war, without the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland being present in the Chamber with us. I cannot see any of their junior Ministers here either. Perhaps they all have other important business to undertake. That seems rather remiss of them, given that we are considering such serious matters. I raised a point of order with you about this the other day, Mr Speaker, as did other Members. Much of the concern about this part of the Bill relates to promises and assurances that were given by the Secretary of State for Scotland, yet he is not here to account for himself. I have a great deal of respect for him, but these are serious issues that have been raised in good faith, and Ministers should be here to hear our concerns, and those of the devolved Administrations, if we are truly supposed to be bringing the United Kingdom closer together-as the Prime Minister claims to want to do-rather than pushing it apart.
I count 10 Ministers on the Treasury Bench, so it is a little churlish to say that the Government are somehow under-represented when I can see only four members of the Opposition Front-Bench team. I think that says it all. This Government are listening hard to what the hon. Gentleman is saying even though he is being rather tedious.
The Secretary of State for Scotland said that these things would come back on Report. That has not happened, and now the Government are saying that it will go to the Lords. Of course, technically, the Government cannot guarantee any votes in the Lords because they do not have a majority, so this is another area where there is an element of failed trust; they simply do not have the numbers, even if they stack the Lords with a pile of the Prime Minister's friends.
Indeed, and it is a great concern that we have not had a proper chance to discuss the issue in this place. Given some of the constraining efforts by Government Whips and others at previous stages of this Bill, we will no doubt have constraints at ping-pong, when we consider the amendments made by the Lords. I want these issues to be substantially addressed.
Would it not be an act of good faith for the Government to accept amendment 3 today, and then to amend that amendment in the Lords?
Amendment 3 is sensible, well meant and well thought through, and it enjoys substantial support. If the Government just accepted the amendment and moved forward, it would show good faith and we could try to resolve these issues. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North said, this Bill will not proceed with the consent of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Government or the Welsh Assembly without substantial and urgent changes over the next few weeks, or indeed today before the Bill reaches the other place. That is well understood by people across the EU who are watching this process-indeed, I raised it on the visit to Brussels yesterday.
The hon. Gentleman is making a good point about the legislative consent motion and the requirements that need to be in place for it to happen. The Labour amendment would not bring that about. There needs to be an agreement between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations. Without that agreement, it is impossible to replace clause 11 satisfactorily to secure that LCM.
The bottom line is that these concerns have been raised for months. They were raised by the Welsh and Scottish Governments right at the start, when the Bill was published. The UK Government have had plenty of time to resolve things, which is why there is such deep distrust and suspicion about their intent. Until they come up with something that actually addresses the concerns, we will continue to raise the issue.
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that negotiations are two-sided? He talks about the agreement of the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, so can he guarantee that if this House were to adopt the Labour amendment, the LCM would be passed in both of those?
I think the Government should accept the series of amendments we have tabled. I am communicating the concerns of the Welsh Government and the Welsh people-indeed, of many who want to respect and maintain the devolution settlement as it is. The hon. Gentleman is asking this question now, but these amendments were put down months ago and these issues have been raised.
This is exclusively the responsibility of the UK Government. They introduced the repeal Bill, designed clause 11 and acknowledged that there are issues for both the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, so it is up to them to fix it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this attempt to share blame with Scotland and Wales, as if somehow we are semi-responsible for this impasse, is totally disingenuous?
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point.
Does my hon. Friend agree that this Front-Bench amendment was written alongside and in co-operation with the Welsh Government, which means they will accept what this amendment says? Yes.
Thank you for allowing me to say a few words in this setting, Mr Speaker. I wish to make it clear that, despite whatever else I may say in this speech, I support this Bill wholeheartedly and I wish it to be a success. Uppermost in my mind when considering the Bill are the ramifications of there not being a Bill. I think about the choice the British people made to leave the EU and I respect it. We made a commitment to act on that instruction and act on it we shall-we will honour that vote. Those who choose to disregard the vote of the British people must answer to the British people. My constituency voted to remain in the EU, but I know that my constituents are democrats who expect me, as their elected Member of Parliament, to ensure that their best interests are served in the light of the outcome and that the result is upheld. Many businesses and individuals in my Stirling constituency are ready to make the best of Brexit.
The hon. Gentleman is running through the start of the speech he made in Committee, during which I asked him four times to outline how he feels clause 11 is deficient and how he would like that sorted out. Would he like to take this opportunity to tell us?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for remembering my speeches, which makes him very favourable in my sight. I shall come to clause 11, but first I wish to make it clear that the people and businesses of Stirling-the individuals who live in my constituency-want us to make the best of Brexit. All we hear from other parties, as we heard from the First Minister of Scotland yesterday, is an unmitigated diet of doom and gloom. The fact is that, as was disclosed in an esteemed social attitudes survey that was released last week, there are really no differences between the electorates in Scotland and England when it comes to what they want the Government to get on with doing. They want the best possible Brexit, and a smooth Brexit that will work for all the people of this country. The Bill is a necessary enabling measure. No one in this House wants to put our country and British businesses through a cliff-edge Brexit. The idea that there are Members who do is often repeated, but it is just not true. We want a smooth Brexit and a working statute book at the end of it. I repeat that, and I do not apologise for repeating it.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the electorate do not want a deficient Bill to lead them into Brexit?
Let me come to that-I promise that almost my next sentence will be on that. I want to make sure that the Bill and Parliament deliver what my constituents expect. I now turn to clause 11 and the amendments to it, particularly amendment 3. Let me be absolutely clear about the clause: we must have an agreement between the UK and Scottish Governments to allow for the passage of a legislative consent motion. I am not convinced that that is a legal necessity, but it is a convention that the Government are honouring and they should be commended for that. I am therefore intensely disappointed, dissatisfied and frustrated that a deal has not been struck between Scotland's two Governments. In the past few days, there has been a lot of talk in the media about the claim that there is an agreement in principle between the UK and Scottish Governments. The Scottish Government's Brexit Minister, Mike Russell, claimed on television on Sunday that such an agreement existed. Will the Minister tell us the status of the negotiations between Scotland's two Governments? Is there an agreement in principle? Is there an agreement on the frameworks that we all agree are essential for the operation of the UK marketplace, to allow the UK to honour its international obligations and to strike trade deals?
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the need to make amendments to improve clause 11, which is almost universally accepted as deficient, is not predicated on there first being an agreement on a legislative consent motion, or the agreement with the Scottish Government to which he refers? Amendments should be taken on their merits alone.
That is brave talk, but the facts of the matter are that Conservative Members are seeking to co-operate with the devolved Administrations so that there can be a unanimous approach to the legislative consent motion.
Does the hon. Gentleman not see that the way to achieve UK frameworks and to respect devolution would be to have all four Governments around the table as equals? We should not have this place handing things down from on high.
I do not recognise that description of what has been going on. In fact, as lately as October, the UK Government and the devolved Administrations set out the principles by which such an agreement as I am describing would be achieved. I do believe that an agreement is necessary for us to be able to see that clause 11 is fit for purpose. It is a very important part of the passage of this Bill. We have to respect the devolved settlement, and an appropriately amended clause 11, which is subject to the negotiation and agreement of the devolved Administrations, is how to proceed.
I will try for the sixth time over two debates to get the hon. Gentleman to answer this question. I ask him to please not say that he is coming on to it, when he never comes on to it. What is deficient in clause 11? What would he like to see changed in order to make it a clause that is not deficient? Does he stand by what he said in the previous debate, that he expects the Government to come forward with amendments before it goes to the other place?
I am going to disappoint the hon. Gentleman-I will come on to that last point. What I believe should exist in clause 11 is the subject matter of the agreement that is reached between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations, in terms of UK frameworks in particular. We all accept that it is necessary that there are UK frameworks.
When I was referring to having all four Governments around the table, I was talking not about negotiating clause 11, but about how to set up frameworks for fishing, food or the environment. Those things should be decided together and not just decided here.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, is not in his place now, but he dealt with that matter in his speech. I must say that I find myself in complete agreement with his sentiment and that of the Committee's recent report, which is that, since we arrived at the position we are at with devolved Government in the United Kingdom, there has been a lack of appropriate machinery for our Governments to work together. There is a lack of appropriate constitutionally agreed machinery for even Parliaments to talk to each other. That must be addressed.
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that amending clause 11 is the right thing to do, but the detail of amendment 3 would be mired in judicial review were it to be accepted. For that reason, it is the wrong route to go down.
I completely agree. Although I could not disagree fundamentally with the wording of the amendment, it is not adequate for its purpose in terms of the withdrawal Bill and the importance of achieving the legislative consent motions that this Government have rightfully determined are the way to proceed with what is-I agree-a major constitutional rearrangement of the affairs of this country because of our exit from the European Union.
We all accept that having those joint frameworks is a desirable and necessary thing, but we are talking about the sequence in which that should be carried out. It is not necessary for us to wait for that to happen before amending clause 11 and making it fit for purpose now. Why do we not crack on and do it today? What is stopping us?
What is stopping us is the fact that there is no point creating an amendment which then itself has to be amended. No one is more disappointed and frustrated than I am that we do not have these amendments. I sat and listened to the Secretary of State for Scotland make the same commitment. I will come on to that as it is a serious matter for me.
It is important that the hon. Gentleman understands the sequence and how this works. The repeal Bill is something that this Government have done to Scotland. What we have identified in that repeal Bill is a devolution threat in a clause that has to be corrected. If that is not corrected, there will be no legislative consent motion. It is incumbent on the Government who introduced this Bill to sort it and bring it forward. Then we will see whether we can give a legislative consent motion. That is how it works.
There is the soul of a nationalist. The hon. Gentleman manages to take any issue and to make it into a grotesque grievance, which does not even exist. The fact is that the Government are going to extraordinary lengths to achieve the necessary level of consensus and agreement by which clause 11 can be amended so that it is fit for purpose. I support that, but it does not take one iota away from the fact that I am intensely disappointed. I ask the Ministers again to tell us about the status of the negotiations and where we are on the agreement. If there is an agreement, no one will say any louder, “Where is the amendment that we were promised from the Government?â€ I am saying it now; I just said it. The Government gave undertakings that the Bill would be amended at the stage before it left this place to go to the House of Lords.
I am not going to ask the hon. Gentleman for the seventh time, but will he tell the House what mechanism he and his Scottish Conservative MP colleagues would have in this House if the Government do not amend the Bill in the House of Lords?
He doesn't know.
The hon. and learned Lady, with her normal reserve, says that I do not know. The fact is that there are established processes by which the amendments that will now have to be made to the Bill in the House of Lords will come back here. Those processes were addressed by the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. I do not want my next point to be lost, especially on my hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench-please do not underestimate the depth of disappointment and frustration among Scottish Conservative colleagues in the House. It does not seem appropriate for the Government to blame outside influences for the lack of an amendment. SNP Members say, “Yes.â€ But it took until October to get an agreement to the principles by which we would proceed towards the agreement that I, and many of us here, regard as essential. Why did it take so long? Well, the fact is that the nationalist Government in Edinburgh are approaching the matter, as usual, with a wrecking mentality. They want to create a constitutional crisis that precipitates their beloved second independence referendum. The First Minister was at it again this week, talking about another independence referendum. The people of Scotland have spoken on this matter, but the SNP will not listen and its Members claim to be the democrats in this House.
The hon. Gentleman talks about trust, and about building towards agreement and compromise. Will he advise us as to how he expects that trust, agreement and compromise to come about? My understanding is that the UK Government have not shared any draft amendments to clause 11 with the Scottish Government.
I respect the hon. Gentleman's point of view and question on this matter. Frankly, I believe that we will proceed on the basis of the negotiations, on which I have asked Ministers to update us. Even Ministers in the hon. Gentleman's own Government in Edinburgh talk about these matters in the most positive terms; it is not necessary to dress the issues up as a crisis and make them into some drama. We need to proceed to a point at which we can get to an agreement, which will then be the basis for an amended clause 11.
I am just looking for some clarity. The hon. Gentleman mentions how difficult it has been to get agreement with the Scottish Government. If the Government continue to fail to get that agreement, is it the case that no amendments to clause 11 will be tabled in the other place?
The hon. Gentleman talks about there not being any prospects of an agreement. There is every prospect of an agreement, and I am quoting the SNP Brexit Minister. There is every possibility and likelihood of an agreement. My view is that it should have been achieved before now, and that we should have had an amendment to the Bill.
I will give way just one more time because I am sure that Mr Speaker's patience with me is going to wear thin. In fact, I will take one intervention from the Opposition and one from my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex.
The Welsh Government and First Minister deemed it necessary to make a statement today about the lack of joined-up working with the UK Government, which is threatening a constitutional crisis; that is coming from a Labour Government in Wales. The very point is that we are on the brink of a constitutional crisis. We need an amendment. We need the Government to support Labour's amendment 3.
The hon. Lady is describing the attitude of the Welsh Government, which in many respects has been more hawk than dove on these matters. I have no doubt that that is for the Labour party's political purposes in Wales, as such things are for the SNP in Scotland.
It would be helpful if the Government gave an assurance today that in the event that there is no agreement with the Scottish or Welsh Governments, they will still amend clause 11-unilaterally, if necessary-to ensure that its effect is ameliorated as reasonably as possible. If the Scottish and Welsh Governments refuse to agree to that, it will be a problem for them and not for this Parliament.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr), and I can sense the torture he is putting himself through. The shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Lesley Laird), who is sitting on the Bench beside me, described his trying to come up with a reason for not voting with the Opposition on amendment 3 as “dancing around handbagsâ€. My only advice to him is that he can be as tortured as he likes and in as much turmoil as he clearly feels, but unless he votes accordingly, the Government will never take him seriously and his pleas will go unanswered, as they have so far. He has a good hour to reflect on that and to consider what he wants to do this evening, and I hope that he decides in the end to vote with us on amendment 3.
Does my hon. Friend not agree that the game-changing arithmetic is with the Scottish Conservative bloc of 13 MPs, and if they come together, show some gumption and stand up for the national interest, they can actually turn this around and improve clause 11 today? There is nothing stopping them: they could overturn the DUP bloc and change this if they brought forward their own amendments.
The EU referendum result was clear, and it was a decision by the House to put that question to the people. They gave their answer. Whichever way we voted in the referendum ourselves, we have been given instructions that must be carried out. In Scotland, as much as others might wish to portray the picture differently, more than 1 million Scots voted to leave the European Union, 600,000 of whom came from the SNP yes side. It is inherently the case that, as we leave the European Union, those powers that it exercises on our behalf will come back to the UK and to Scotland. That has always been the golden opportunity to exercise more powers in Scotland over areas such as fishing and agriculture. That is why Members on the other side of the House should welcome that. Rather than fighting to keep those powers in Brussels, we should be fighting to take them here. We have one opportunity to get this right. We do not get a dress rehearsal for leaving the European Union. There is one time to negotiate and get it right, and it is in nobody's interest to see a rushed process or to get anything wrong that could damage our constitution. As the House knows, Conservative Members believe inherently in the power of our single market here in the UK.
The hon. Gentleman's colleague, the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr), quoted the Scottish social attitudes survey. Some 62% of Scots in that survey think that all decisions about fishing should be taken by the Scottish Government, and 59% think that all farming decisions should be made by the Scottish Government as well. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I know that Members can be selective, but that survey also showed that the majority of Scots want immigration to stay at the UK-wide level. It is really important that we still have UK-wide frameworks and things that are kept at the UK-wide level.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No, thank you. The survey also shows that Scots want to leave the single market. The Scottish Government published a paper yesterday saying Scotland has to remain in the single market, but Scots want to leave the single market-the survey is very clear. So Members can be very selective in the things that we quote. As I said, it is important that we get this right. Even the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry)-she is not in her place at the moment-said in her introductory remarks that, although she had voted to remain, it is really important that we get the Bill right. Having the Bill is important. Conservative Members not only want but require there to be proper changes to the EU withdrawal Bill, because we want to see the Scottish Parliament grant its legislative consent, and the Lords require that as well before they make changes. It is in the interests of all Administrations, whether in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales, that we find a way to reach agreement. Therefore, I urge in the strongest of terms that the Scottish and UK Governments work and engage positively to ensure that negotiations advance well and that that important agreement can be reached. I welcome the fact that the UK Government have been absolutely clear to date that they want a constructive and consensual approach and that nothing will be imposed on any of the devolved Administrations.
The hon. Gentleman is making the same argument as the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) with regard to the negotiations being complete and the negotiations and the conclusion to them then influencing amendments in the other place. If the negotiations do not conclude by the time this Bill passes through the other place, what mechanisms do he or any of his Scottish Conservative MP colleagues have in this place to amend the Bill?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am glad that he has recognised that my colleagues and I are saying the same thing, because it is the right thing and the sensible thing, and that is why we have been consistent in our approach. I am also glad that he acknowledged the power and influence that we hold on the Conservative Benches, compared with the Labour Benches, because there are more Scottish Conservative MPs than Scottish Labour MPs. However, we recognise that reaching agreement is in the interests of both Governments; both want to see a conclusion. Even Mike Russell himself-I have sat in the Scottish Parliament Chamber listening to his diatribes and to him railing against Brexit-wants to reach agreement with the UK Government; in fact, he said that in the Scottish Affairs Committee. Agreement is in the interests of all, and I am positive that changes will be made in the Lords and that we will get agreement, because it is not in any Government's interests not to secure it.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Can I make a little more progress? I will take more interventions. Looking at the amendment before us, it is clear that there is no safeguard in terms of UK-wide frameworks, which many of us agree are important when it comes to areas such as agriculture or animal and plant welfare standards. Further, and importantly, it does not secure any Joint Ministerial Committee consent, and it does not guarantee the legislative consent that is essential in the Scottish Parliament. We may all have areas of disagreement, but it is important that we do not pre-empt things by voting for this amendment tonight and that we work constructively to ensure we can get the JMC and our national Parliaments and Assemblies on board. I do not take the characterisation made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) that we can somehow speed ahead with the process and that, fingers crossed, things will be amended and then come back. We need to be working more collaboratively and constructively with the Scottish Government.
On that point, does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the UK Government do not appear to have shared any draft amendment to clause 11 with the Scottish Government? Has he seen any draft amendment? Has he been involved in any of those discussions?
The Labour Government in Wales are not a nationalist Government, and if the UK Government were to work co-operatively with both the Welsh Government and the Scottish Government we would not be in this situation. We need that amendment, and the behaviour of this Government means that we are heading for a constitutional crisis. I do not want that constitutional crisis, and neither the First Minister for Wales nor, I think, the First Minister for Scotland wants it.
Did the hon. Gentleman watch the programme? The entire session was about Brexit. Andrew Marr asked the First Minister about independence-she was asked by someone else. You have just spent about five minutes talking about it, but suddenly it is the SNP banging on about it.
I was not talking about the questions asked but about the answer given. That is the broken record. The First Minister has always had the opportunity to accept the result of 2014. She never has and she never will. That is why independence transcends everything else for the SNP. It does not speak in the national interest, but only ever in the nationalist interest. To conclude, powers will come back from Europe and will be exercised directly in Scotland by the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government Ministers. I know that the Scottish Government do not have a great track record when it comes to managing things in Scotland, so I understand their trepidation about any other powers going to the First Minister. That is no doubt why they want to keep all those powers in Brussels. At least those of us on the Government side actually want devolution-not the kind of crazy centralisation that we have seen from the SNP. That is the hallmark of its Government and of the party here. That is why on this side we will stand up for Scotland and deliver for Scotland.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that systems are already in place under which the Welsh and UK Governments negotiate together on EU discussions? UK Ministers are Ministers of the Crown, as are Welsh Ministers. That is already in place and just needs to continue. The amendment is necessary if it is to continue.
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. It brings me to the very point I was going to make. The Joint Ministerial Committee (EU Negotiations), to which she was referring, had a very rocky start. Some hon. Members will know that it met last February and then not again until October. During that time, momentous events were taking place here. Huge changes were being made in the relationship between Wales and the EU, and in the United Kingdom's relationship with the EU. However, the JMC, the very mechanism that was supposed to elicit the views of Welsh Ministers-and Scottish and Northern Irish Ministers, for that matter-did not meet. I am glad to say that since that suspension it seems to have recovered somewhat: the October meeting was much more positive.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am going to make some progress. On 6 December, the Secretary of State for Scotland was asked by MPs across this House about the amendments to clause 11. He said:“The answer is that it will happen on Reportâ€-the stage we are at now. He added:“We have been very clear about thisâ€-terribly clear it would seem-“The Committee stage is about listening and adapting to issues...we will table amendments to clause 11.â€- They have not. Now we are at the stage where this will go to the House of Lords. It is a democratic abomination that the Scottish Parliament will have less of a say, and this House consequently will have less of a say, than the House of Lords. The Scottish Conservatives seem to be embarrassed about that. I wonder whether they are joined by anybody else who is even remotely embarrassed.
As has been said, the Government do not even have a majority in the House of Lords. What does my hon. Friend feel about the newly ennobled Bishop of Chichester, who will now have a bigger say on these amendments about critical issues to do with the devolution settlement than my hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) and me?
As usual, my hon. Friend makes a very good point. I want to make it clear that the points I make about the House of Lords have no bearing on its Members' personal characteristics. Rather, I am referring to the anti-democratic situation in which we find ourselves. I presume that we are now in a situation in which a Scotland Office Minister, appointed after losing an election, will debate these matters with Lords who are there by accident of birth or as a result of political patronage, and that this will happen after Third Reading. That is absolutely shameful. It should shame everyone involved. “Bring back democracyâ€, Vote Leave supporters cried. “Return our independenceâ€, they cried. They also cried, “Bring back our blue passportsâ€, even though they could have had those all along. After this, we can even have commemorative stamps. Does no one see the irony for democracy? I know that the Speaker wants me to make some progress on this-
I will. I know that the Minister wants to respond and pick up on some of the points that have been raised, but as I represent the governing party of Scotland, I would also like to make some points on where we are with this-
I should like to thank the Speaker for his guidance on that-
The debate has been lively and has ranged quite widely over various aspects of the impact of this country's withdrawal from the European Union on the devolution settlements. I therefore want to make it clear from the start that the Government's expectation and intention are that the return of competences from the European Union will result in a very significant addition to the powers exercised in future by the devolved Administrations on the bases set out in their respective devolution statutes. However, we have to go about this complex task in the right way for the sake of individuals, families and businesses in every part of the United Kingdom, because the devolution settlements were negotiated, debated and enacted on the basis of certain competences being known to be within the power of the European Union and, on the quite reasonable assumption at the time that the devolution statutes went through this House, that that would continue to be the situation.
I will give way briefly to the hon. Lady, who has not made a speech in this debate.
May I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his new job? I was absolutely delighted for him. He just mentioned that, in the absence of a Northern Ireland Assembly functioning as we would want it, he has had discussions with leaders of political parties in Northern Ireland-that is what I understood him to say-so will he list which leaders of which parties he has had discussions with?
Parties have all been briefed on the Government's position and therefore have had the opportunity to put forward their points of view. Obviously, in the absence of a functioning Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland, we have regular contact with the civil service authorities in Northern Ireland, which are maintaining the administration of Northern Ireland in accordance with Northern Ireland law.
I am grateful to the Minister for taking another intervention. I am very disappointed. I sit as an independent, and I take my seat in this House. Sinn Féin Members, seven of them, are absentee MPs. I would be extremely offended if I thought for one moment that the leader of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland-she is not elected to this House-had been consulted when I had not.
The hon. Lady and I have known each other for a long time, and having now had overall responsibility for intergovernmental relations and devolution in the United Kingdom for seven days, I am happy to undertake to make it a priority to have that conversation with her to ensure that her views are properly heard. Government amendments 26 and 27 will replace the current requirements for devolved Ministers to seek the consent of the United Kingdom Government when exercising the correcting power in specific ways with requirements instead to consult the United Kingdom Government. That achieves the same effect as Committee amendment 169, which was proposed by the Scottish and Welsh Governments and tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty). Having discussed the matter with those Administrations and having listened to the debate in Committee, we have agreed to accept that proposal, with the addition of extending the change to the power by conferring it on the Northern Ireland Executive. The United Kingdom Government have a vital role in considering the broader consequences for other parts of the UK where devolved Ministers legislate under these powers, and we think this change is justified. It remains important that, in using the conferred power, no action is taken that inadvertently places us in breach of EU law while we are still a member state or that would prejudice or pre-empt the outcome of negotiations; but on reflection, we consider that the devolved Administrations consulting with the UK Government before legislating in these specific circumstances relating to our negotiations will provide a sufficient safeguard and will preserve the autonomy of the devolved Administrations in correcting their laws.
Will the Minister give way?
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we have heard a lot of talk about respect between both Governments and that being why we should accept the amendment, but that in not securing Joint Ministerial Committee agreement and in not securing a legislative consent motion this actually shows no respect for that process and is simply a stunt?
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Is it not the case that workers' rights have no privileged status under the Bill? Once the Bill becomes an Act, those rights can be picked off by secondary legislation. If the Government wish to prevent workers from receiving proper holiday pay or to cap awards for discrimination, they will be easily able to do so.
Is it not important for the public to be reassured about workers' rights, given reports in the media of Cabinet discussions about scrapping the working time directive?
I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous with his time. There are many cases, such as Marshalls Clay Products Ltd v. Caulfield and Gibson v. East Riding of Yorkshire Council, in which domestic courts have reached incorrect decisions on workers' rights. If the European Court of Justice will no longer be the adjudicator after the transitional period, what will?
After the transitional period, the ECJ would not be the adjudicator. That would be dealt with as a matter of retained law. My hon. Friend has reinforced a point that I made earlier. We need a level of enhanced protection and the courts need clarity on how to interpret this new category of law, because if they do not have that clarity and certainty, they will be more vulnerable.
I hope shortly to be able to make a brief speech on that very subject, dealing with the question of whether or not there should be a power for the courts to disapply Acts of Parliament in relation to the matters to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.
I am not sure that that warranted an intervention, but I await the hon. Gentleman's contribution with bated breath.
Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), does my hon. Friend agree that either the institutions and agencies that currently enforce EU rights, privileges and protections should be maintained as EU agencies, or a transitional arrangement should involve agencies and institutions that will protect people's rights in respect of, for instance, work, the environment and consumer issues?
I certainly believe that, when it is appropriate and when the country will derive benefit, we should continue to participate in EU agencies. The important point, however, is that when the functions and powers of EU agencies are transferred to either an existing or a new body, the purpose, scope and effect of the rights and protections that flow from those agencies should continue. That is one of the issues that clause 7 fails to address. Returning to my earlier train of thought, all of this was why the Prime Minister's Florence speech of last year was so welcome. It made it clear that Government policy was to seek, semantics about implementation versus transition aside, a time-limited period in which the UK and the EU would continue to have access to one another's markets on current terms, and with Britain continuing to take part in existing security measures. Crucially, the Prime Minister made it clear that this bridging arrangement would take place on the basis of“the existing structure of EU rules and regulations.â€That quite clearly implied the acceptance of the jurisdiction of the ECJ, as confirmed by the Prime Minister in an answer to the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) in the weeks following the speech, when she stated:“that may mean that we start off with the ECJ still governing the rules we are part ofâ€. - It is also set out in black and white in the phase 1 agreement.
With regard to the issue of transition or implementation, as the Government call it, does my hon. Friend agree that while it is of course necessary in particular to give time for our businesses to prepare, transition or implementation is no safe harbour if this Government are determined to pursue the extreme break from our relationship with the EU which have set out with their red lines? That is no safe harbour to jumping off a cliff; it just delays it, in fact.
I absolutely agree; and the unpicking of, or wheeling back from, some of the progress we felt had been made in the Florence speech is one of our concerns. The Bill before us was drafted before the Florence speech, but rather than amend the Bill to reflect the evolution of Government policy outlined by the Prime Minister in that speech, the Government chose instead to fashion a legislative straitjacket for themselves in the form of enshrining “exit dayâ€ for all purposes in the Bill as 11 pm on 29 March 2019. Let us be clear: bringing forward amendments to stipulate that exit day for all purposes of the Bill had nothing to do with leaving the EU. The article 50 notification made our departure from the EU on 29 March 2019 a legal certainty, so, for the purposes of the Bill, exit day could be left in the hands of Parliament.
The hon. Gentleman just used the phrase “legal certaintyâ€ in referring to our departure from the EU on 29 March 2019. Does that mean that he has seen legal advice that article 50 cannot be revoked? Is the Labour Front-Bench position that it is impossible, as opposed to politically inexpedient, to consider revoking article 50?
The hon. Gentleman tempts me down an avenue that has nothing to do with the point I am making, which is that it remains unclear why the Government tabled three exit day amendments to their own Bill which have sown further confusion. We do not know why they did that-whether it was driven by Tory party management considerations or some other reason. The effect of those Government amendments would have been to end the jurisdiction of the ECJ on 29 March 2019, thereby preventing agreement on a transitional period on current terms. The Government clearly soon realised their mistake and to save face enlisted the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), who is not in his place, to table amendments to loosen the legislative straitjacket they themselves had created. But his amendments, which the Government have accepted, only provide a limited form of flexibility. Ministers may now amend the definition of exit day in clause 14 for the purposes of the Bill if the date when the treaties cease to apply to the UK is different from 29 March 2019. However, there is good reason to argue that that power might not be sufficient to facilitate transitional arrangements after 29 March 2019 on the same basic terms as now. If it is not-this might end up being the most bizarre aspect of the Bill's curious parliamentary process-the Government will find themselves in the ludicrous position of having to amend this Bill when they bring forward the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill later this year.
I think that is a virtual certainty in any event. On the basis of the Bill that the Government have promised the House for the end of this year, it seems to me that it will be a substitute for the arrangements under the existing European Communities Act, so I think that must be what is going to happen.
As I have mentioned the SNP, I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Clearly, any forecast or projection is going to be approximate, and I do not think that anyone is claiming that the Scottish Government's figures are precise. But would the right hon. and learned Gentleman prefer to defend a position that was backed up by approximations and forecasts that may or may not be accurate, or would he prefer to be in the Government's position of defending a position backed up by no impact analysis whatever?
I shall turn to that in a moment, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely. I was not making a criticism of the think-tank, which has done its best, but we all know from experience that all economic forecasting should be taken with a slight grain of salt. It is utterly beyond the capacity of either the Treasury or the most expert outside groups to predict with absolute confidence what the precise consequences will be.
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
I would like to move on. I was merely making a passing remark about the unwisdom of trying to put a figure on this, but I will give way.
I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I wonder, given that he is talking about the impact on the economy, whether he has heard the remarks by Christophe Bondy, the legal counsel to the Canadian Government during the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement negotiations. He has described Brexit as being like trying to“blow up a bridge without bankrupting yourselfâ€at the same time. He has also said that the Canadian deal and our coming out of the single market and customs union are very different.
I agree with that second point strongly, and I will consider the implications of the quote. The point I am trying to make is that, whatever the basis on which we come out, there are bound to be adverse effects on the British economy if we create new barriers between ourselves and the biggest free market in the world. No other Government would remotely contemplate moving out of such a completely open and free market and deliberately raising barriers by way of tariffs, customs processes or regulatory divergences between themselves and such a hugely valuable market. It is particularly valuable to us not only because it is a huge market but because it is on our doorstep. We have played a major part in creating this totally open trade. If we proceed to a deal in which we withdraw, we will inevitably find ourselves, to some degree or other, taking an economic blow and probably making future generations less prosperous than they would otherwise have been. It is important that we all realise that, which is why it is a great pity that the House is not being given the information necessary to make a really informed judgment, as the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) has just said, or being allowed any opportunity to guide the Government and hold them to account for the course on which they are set on these economic and trading implications.
In his assessment, has my right hon. and learned Friend taken into account the fact that services within the European Union have never been completed under the single market? Furthermore, our deficit in the past year with the other 27 member states has gone up by another £10 billion, while our surplus in our trading with the rest of the world has grown exponentially by another £6 billion or £7 billion, so I really rather doubt his conclusions.
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend's first point. For as long as I can remember, it has been the policy of Conservative Governments, some of which I have served in-indeed, it is a policy in which I have been involved from time to time-to press for the single market to be extended to cover all services. Until the referendum almost 18 months ago, we were still actively engaged in canvassing for that and trying to push it forward inside the EU. We are also making considerable progress towards a digital single market across Europe, which will be very important. The other member states are likely to go on and complete that quite soon.
My hon. Friend and I have been debating the subject for so long, and I think it would be unwise for the two of us to get bogged down in mercantilism. I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
I want to ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman about the assessment of impact. I think that it is important that we call it an assessment of impact rather than an impact assessment, because the Government can hide behind the formal impact assessment process. On the assessment of impact, would he like to speculate about why the Government are so adamant that Members of Parliament should not be allowed to receive this information?
The points I hoped to make in my speech are being put to me by others, which may have the welcome effect of shortening my contribution. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman.
My right hon. and learned Friend has not given us many numbers so far, and the one he has given us is wrong. We have actually had eight days in Committee and two days on Report, and we had an extensive debate on Second Reading in which many of these larger issues were strongly reviewed. We had very detailed short-term forecasts from the Treasury of what would happen in the year or so immediately after the vote if we voted to leave. We now know they were comprehensively wrong in forecasting a recession, a big rise in unemployment and a big fall in house prices. Why were they so wrong, and what has he learned from that?
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that we are less likely to catch up with the Germans on penetrating the Chinese market if we are out of the EU? We will have our back to the wall, facing tariffs, if we are not in the EU, and the Chinese will be able to bargain harder against a small player with few resources and little trade.
My right hon. and learned Friend has made a very important point. I represent a very young constituency in London. The bottom line, looking ahead, is that, if Brexit does not work for young people in our country, in the end it will not be sustainable and when they take their place here, they will seek to improve or undo what we have done and make it work for them. So we absolutely have a duty in this House to look ahead and ensure that whatever we get is sustainable and works for them.
As ever, my right hon. and learned Friend is making an exceptionally important speech and doing so eloquently. As he will know, a group from the all-party group on EU relations has just been over to Brussels, where we spoke to a number of people. Many of those conversations will remain between us, as we agreed. Does he agree that it could well be argued that the Government made a mistake in rushing into saying no to the customs union and to the single market without fully understanding the implications, not just for our economy, but in terms of how this has meant that a range of options has now been taken off the table by the UK Government, when the EU has made it very clear that all options remain on the table as far as it is concerned?
I have, and everybody still seems to be awake!
I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) on warming up the debate so well. In a way, Mr Speaker, I feel sorry for you in the Chair, because it is perfectly ridiculous that the programme order is such that we have to conclude our series of debates at 4.30 pm when so many issues have not been properly aired on Report. I said that during yesterday's debate on the programme motion, and I hope that Members in the other place will bear that in mind when they consider the Bill. I tabled amendments on six issues that I did not think had been adequately covered in Committee. Being a dutiful Member, I felt it my responsibility to table amendments to cover those issues, but I must rush through them, because otherwise I will not exactly be flavour of the month with many of my colleagues.
Hear, hear!
Don't say “Hear, hearâ€ in that way. New clause 5 addresses a massive topic. It simply says, almost in the words of the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, that after we have left the EU, we should have the exact same benefits for the service industries in our country-including financial, legal and professional services-as we have now. The service sector accounts for some 80% of the British economy. During our consideration of the Bill, we have not yet really debated the implications for the service sector. It is often easier to talk about the trade in goods, because goods are tangible-they are physical, and we can imagine them crossing borders, going through ports and so forth-but in many ways we excel in our service sector, so new clause 5 would simply put into the Bill the commitment that Ministers have previously given that they would seek the exact same benefits.
I do not have much time to go into new clause 5 and I shall try not to take too many interventions, but how can I resist my right hon. Friend?
Does my hon. Friend agree that on the question of services, never mind goods, this is probably going to be the first negotiation in human history in which a Government have gone into the process knowing that they will come out with a worse deal than the one currently enjoyed? The reason for that is the red lines that the Government have set for themselves. Does not that demonstrate what a profound error this has been, especially when we now know that the decisions on those red lines were taken without any assessment at all of their economic impact?
Absolutely; I could not have put it better myself. We currently have, in the shape of the single market, one of the finest free trade agreements available to any country anywhere in the world. It is frictionless and tariff-free and, of course, it offers great opportunities for those in the UK service sector to sell their services to 500 million customers. There was nothing about departing from the single market on the referendum ballot paper, so this is a ridiculous red line that the Government should not have put in place. I take this opportunity to gently ask my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench please not to acquiesce to the red lines. The fact that the Government have set them does not necessarily mean that they are correct. I want the Labour party to fight for permanent access to and membership of the single market, and I will not stop making that point. New clause 2 might look a bit lengthy, but it sets out what we should hope to expect to see in the withdrawal agreement that is currently being negotiated by the Prime Minister and the European Commission. I think that a lot of people expected, having passed phase 1, that this was going to be the moment to talk about trade and the sort of deal we were going to get. That is not where we are in the negotiation. We have entered a period of talks about talks-that is simply where we are in this phase 2 arrangement. The article 50 process specifies that, after we have buttoned down a transition arrangement-I shall come to that in a minute-we can perhaps hope to get a framework for our future relationship. That could easily be a single side of A4 with very warm words saying, “Let's all work together,â€ and we would then be supposed to depart on our one-way journey without knowing for sure where we were heading.
The issue of the withdrawal agreement was supposed to be resolved last December, as part of phase 1 of the negotiations. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is abundantly clear that there are massive potential pitfalls, particularly in respect of the relationship with the Irish Republic, in the translation of what appears on the face of it to have been a mutually convenient fudge into what will in fact be a binding treaty obligation?
That is absolutely right, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman neatly and helpfully moves me on to my new clause 3, which deals with the question of the Irish hard border. I think that many people read the phase 1 agreement in an optimistic light. In many ways, those words were all things to all people. The can was kicked down the road, but there will have to be a translation into some sort of legal text by the time we get to the withdrawal agreement. Heaven help us when the two sides to the negotiations have to start talking in specific terms. The Prime Minister had a slightly different view from the Republic of Ireland of what the phase 1 agreement meant. She reported back to the House that it was simply to be restricted to the issues listed in the Belfast agreement, which does not, of course, include trade in goods, to mention just one small policy area. There are massive questions about the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. People in that area share reciprocal healthcare, as well as environmental factors such as rivers, streams and lakes. They have a shared energy market and shared fisheries, food and plant arrangements. All those are shared because of the very geography of what are two distinct countries, so trying to fudge the issue just will not work, particularly if the UK is a third party.
Is not it essential that at some stage in these Brexit negotiations the Government legislate to protect the fundamental principles of the Good Friday agreement-the Belfast agreement? Those principles include freedom from discrimination, equality under the law and parity of esteem. They are fundamental principles-I could go on listing them, but I will not-so is it not essential that the Government protect them?
I believe that that is essential. I completely agree with the hon. Lady, which was why I took the exact words from the phase 1 agreement to create the text of new clause 3. If the Government really mean to commit to there being no hard border, they should enshrine that commitment in the Bill. That is the test for the Government-it is what they have to prove if they really believe that this was not just some mealy mouthed commitment to get them through a particular difficulty in the short term.
My hon. Friend has spoken about the island of Ireland on many occasions during our scrutiny of the Bill. Could not this complicated issue be easily resolved, and does not the resolution lie in the customs union and the single market?
That is indeed the case, but the Prime Minister said, “Oh no, that's a red line.â€ The difficulty is that Prime Ministers can get into stubborn positions. Are they going to have to back down? How do they deal with these things? It would be a measure of the Prime Minister's status and stature were she to say, “On reflection, I have looked at this issue and it cannot be solved.â€ I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), will be encouraging the Prime Minister to do that, because she has that way about her. The Prime Minister should change her mind and say, “Things have changed.â€
My hon. Friend is obviously making some absolutely excellent points, but the crucial thing is how all this matters practically for people and businesses. I wonder whether he saw yesterday's concerning announcement about the opening of a new ferry route between Spain and the Republic of Ireland. The port of Cork expressly said that it was doing that to avoid having to come through all the Brexit uncertainty that was being created in the United Kingdom.
I did indeed see that. Think of all the distorting arrangements that will pop up.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
On that point in particular, does my hon. Friend agree that all the new clauses and amendments are about trying to get greater openness and honesty about the pros, cons and trade-offs of the choices we face as a country? It is vital that that information is available not just to this House, but to the public. It is our job as Members of Parliament to put it before the country, because these huge decisions have big consequences, but we have had to drag the Government every step of the way towards putting such information before the country.
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It is important that our constituents know that nothing is inevitable. One parliamentary decision cannot bind a successor Parliament, because Parliament has the capability to do a number of things. Although the article 50 notice signalling the Government's intention has been sent in, it is not a binding commitment.
It might be my intention to give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I might change my mind by the time I get there. I can walk towards a Division Lobby while thinking that it is my intention to vote for a particular issue, but I might change my mind at the last minute. We are all able to change our minds. That is the nature of life, and we can all do the same in a dynamic democracy and Parliament. Article 50 says that treaties shall cease to apply from“the date of... the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notificationâ€, but we will have left only after those events. Article 50 is of course silent on what happens during the two-year interim period before the agreement. We are still full members of the European Union, prior to the withdrawal agreement or the expiry of the two-year period, so it stands to reason that we should continue to act as such. The framers of article 50, who include Lord Kerr, said that a “request readmission after negotiationâ€ clause was not necessary because that was taken as read. That is how the 1969 Vienna convention on the law of treaties operates, and it is accepted by many jurisdictions around the world. Article 68 of the Vienna convention states:“A notification or instrument... may be revoked at any time before it takes effect.â€That is the widely understood nature of such treaties.
I just thought that I would draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017. I do not think that he voted for it, but 499 other Members did, and it passed the House of Lords, so I would have thought that that would be quite a difficult problem for him to overcome.
No Parliament can bind its successor, and that Act was passed in a different Parliament. It may not be necessary for the UK to consider extending or revoking the article 50 process, but it might prove necessary. MPs and the public have a right to know that such options are available. Nothing is inevitable about this whole process. Choices and options are available to this country, and the Government should publish their legal advice and a summary of that advice. There is ample precedent for doing that. Indeed, when the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) was Attorney General, he published summaries of legal advice. The measure does not even ask for a breach of the confidentialities between client and legal adviser, but this House is entitled to a summary. We need to know and the public need to know, which I is why I want to press new clause 6 to a Division, if I get the opportunity.
There will be a change of tone, because the speeches so far have been understandably wide ranging, and mine will be much more narrow and technically focused and also much shorter. I say by way of preface that it is both strange and regrettable that the analysis of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) was not adopted by the remain campaign, because we might have been saved a great deal of trouble if it had been. Frankly, he speaks passionately and well, and I prefer the economic analysis as to risks and/or benefits of someone who was one of the most distinguished post-war Chancellors to that of those who have not had the opportunity to hold those exalted positions and whose view of the matter sometimes seems a little more based on articles of faith than on practical experience.
My hon. Friend gives us a salutary reminder that it is important that we make all the appropriate corrections before exit day, and the Government do want to make all of those corrections and to ensure that the law is accessible for all. I can confirm to him that Government Departments and the centre of Government are listening to industry, including the City, as part of our planning. We have put in place procedures and tools to ensure that we prioritise the most important corrections and so that nothing is missed out. On top of that, as the Bill provides for, we have put in place an urgent procedure in case of last-minute developments to which he refers.
I am very grateful to the Minister for that helpful intervention. I am conscious, as I said, that the Solicitor General and other Ministers have done work on this, and that will shorten what I have to say. I hope that the Minister might meet me in due course to discuss the way in which the urgent procedure will operate so that we can get more detail. That is what I was seeking to achieve-to make sure that we have a means of dealing with something when a decision needs to be made pretty much in real time under these circumstances. That reassurance that the Government will find the means of doing that enables me to confirm that I shall not be pressing the matter. It does of course apply to situations in which, for whatever reason, something has been overlooked in the transition process, or in which something has cropped up that could not reasonably have been foreseen by means of the best endeavours. Against that background, I welcome the Minister's clarification on that matter. I gather from his nod that he is happy to discuss the matter further with me, so I need not trouble the House any longer.
I have found some media chat saying that the Scottish Government's analysis of staying in the single market was alarmist, giving the figure of a 2.5% loss in growth. That is actually less than the figure put out by the UK Treasury for the loss of growth of just being in the single market, with no deal and the Canadian-style option far worse still.
Since the hon. Gentleman raises public trust and legitimacy, would he acknowledge that the extension of that argument is that, were we to say to the British people that their express will in a binary choice to leave the European Union were to be frustrated through obfuscation, prevarication, delay and confusion, the trust between this House and the people would be broken in a way that would be very hard to mend, to the cost of not only everyone here, but our whole system, for a very long time indeed?
My hon. Friend talks about the principal Opposition party-by number, that is. Is he aware that in the past year, for five months they supported the single market, for five months they were against the single market, for two months they were uncertain, and sadly there were only two months-July and August-where they had a consistent policy without alternating every other month?
As I said, I have been disappointed in the performance of the official Opposition up until now. I think we are seeing some signs of cohesion, and quite a number of speakers have been very firm in favouring the single market, as indeed we have heard across the House. I do not want to point out mistakes that have been made in the past or score political points. There is a time and a place for that. The situation that we will face within the next couple of hours is so important and could have such devastating consequences for all our constituents that how about, just for a couple of hours, we forget the mistakes that each other has made and look at the catastrophic mistake that we may be about to make if we allow the Bill to go through without amendment 59 or something similar being passed? This may be the last chance we have to keep ourselves away from the cliff edge. I say to all those in this House, regardless of their party allegiance, who know that the single market and the customs union is where we have to be, please come through the Lobby with us tonight to vote to make sure that that happens.
Lord Neuberger, who is the former President of the Supreme Court, has also expressed concern about the perceived illegitimacy of judges overturning Acts of Parliament. Is my hon. Friend concerned that the power in clause 5 to disapply Acts of Parliament might result in a worrying politicisation of the judiciary that I would have thought would be unwelcome not only to hon. Members but to the judges themselves?
I am indeed. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who also serves on the European Scrutiny Committee. The provisions I refer to would be express provisions. Therefore, the question of principle is fundamental and will also, no doubt, be taken up in the House of Lords. Furthermore, former Law Lords and members of the Supreme Court have expressed their concerns. The European Scrutiny Committee's unanimous view when we met this morning was that Parliament as a whole needs a solution that confirms the principle of parliamentary sovereignty along the lines of declarations of incompatibility under the Human Rights Act 1998, as I indicated in my correspondence with the Prime Minister, whose letter I received on 9 January. To take this forward, may I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to intervene to give me and the House an assurance that when the Bill is in the House of Lords, the Government will constructively engage with the European Scrutiny Committee, with any other Committees of both Houses and with the advice of the Attorney General and the Lord Chancellor to explore and find a proper solution to the constitutional issues I have raised in the national interest?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the case that he has made. The Government are well apprised of the issue that he has brought to the House. It is absolutely right that we respect and uphold parliamentary sovereignty-
I was completing my speech by inviting the intervention that my hon. Friend is now making.
That is why in the Bill we treat retained direct EU legislation as primary legislation for the purposes of the Human Rights Act, and why we have taken the approach we have to challenges based on the general principles. Bearing in mind what my hon. Friend has said-and, indeed, what my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) has said-and the view of the Select Committee, which he has just set out, we will of course listen carefully to him and his Committee, and the other individuals he has mentioned, as the Bill continues its passage.
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his response. May I simply say that these are issues of immense constitutional importance? My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) mentioned that yesterday and we have had debates on it in Committee, and I am most grateful for my hon. Friend's assurance.
In his discussions with Mr Barnier, did my right hon. and learned Friend gain any impression that the European Commission, and indeed Mr Barnier himself, had taken on board the fact that in relation to the legal order to which my right hon. and learned Friend refers-the European Union and its institutions-article 50 actually represented a radical change by giving people the right to withdraw if they wished? That changed the nature of the European Union from the day on which article 50 was passed as part of the Lisbon treaty.
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that this constitutional danger is heightened by the fact that Conservative Members from Scotland are not listening to growing concerns about our lack of membership of the single market and the customs union, and the implications for our economic future, but simply following the Government through the Lobby?
I am afraid that I disagree entirely-far from noticing any such thing, I have noticed the very reverse. My Scottish colleagues are very much alive to the constitutional implications of Brexit and have been working assiduously to address them, while not falling into the trap, as I am afraid the hon. Lady and some members of her party have, of constantly characterising what is a national constitutional debate-indeed, a crisis-in binary terms, with Scotland always appearing either as a victim or as having a halo over its head, neither of which, in the scheme of human existence, is justified.
I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman might have misunderstood what I meant, which is that the binary nature of what the Scottish Conservatives are doing is heightening the binary argument in Scotland, and indeed playing into the hands of those who seek nationalism.
I am afraid that I disagree. My Scottish colleagues have been behaving with extraordinary good sense, particularly their leader, Ruth Davidson, and my colleagues here at Westminster. Perhaps I have misunderstood some aspect of the hon. Lady's question. Far from seeing them as supporters of crazy ideas in the context of Brexit, I think that they have consistently shown a moderate common sense in trying to understand the wider United Kingdom position and Scotland's distinctive position, and trying to take this forward. If I may say so, they are exactly the sorts of allies I want in the course of the work that I will continue doing in this House. I have spoken quite enough and I thank the House for its indulgence.
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way in this tight debate. The negotiation before Christmas came down, in the end, to the Ireland question. Does she accept that allowing enough flexibility, as many of the amendments do, is crucial to the final, icing-on-the-cake deal?
I know my hon. Friend loves his part of our great country, but has he asked businesses throughout Cornwall, if they were given a choice of staying in the single market and the customs union or of leaving one or both, what they would choose? That would be helpful in determining the best sort of Brexit to benefit all his constituents.
I think I welcome that intervention. I hear what my right hon. Friend says, and it is true that, despite all the money and business support that Cornwall has received, it voted in favour of leaving the EU. What people in my constituency and across Cornwall want is us to get on with the job-to get the Bill through and then set out clearly how we intend to trade in the future. We are asking for a level playing field, where that is possible. I welcome the creation of the shared prosperity fund, and although I do not support new clause 2, I seek an assurance from the Government that areas such as Cornwall and Scilly will enjoy special recognition, as we do now because of the challenges we face, which include deprivation and severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I have.
It is abundantly clear that the matter has not been determined by the Supreme Court. The Government chose in the Miller case-for understandable reasons-to put forward the proposition that it could not be revoked, and both sides asked the Court to proceed on that assumption. It did not opine on the matter.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is quite right. The Brexit Minister in the House of Lords, Lord Callanan, repeated this false claim when asked by a Conservative colleague whether he could confirm that the judgement in the Miller case had in ruled in “precise termsâ€ on the revocability of article 50. He replied, “I can confirm thatâ€ and went on to say that the European Commission had said that once invoked, article 50 was irrevocable. He was forced 10 days later to return to the other place to come clean on the reality of the legal position, which was of course that the Supreme Court had said no such thing. Indeed, the European Commission is clear that article 50 can legally be revoked, and politically no member state has indicated that it would object to this. Last week, the Government received legal advice from three Queen's counsels, Jessica Simor, Marie Demetriou and Tim Ward, all of whom are on the Attorney General's A panel of counsel and represent the United Kingdom. They have provided the Government with a published legal opinion confirming that article 50 is revocable. On the political side, the President and vice-president of the European Commission and the President of the European Council have made it clear that if this country wishes to change its mind at the end of the process, it will be free to do so. The British people deserve to know that; our constituents deserve to know it. The Government should publish that legal opinion, which is why new clause 6 must be passed.
New clause 12, which stands in my name and those of a number of other Members, seeks to guarantee our management of environmental protection after exit day. The environment has been in the news quite a lot recently. The members of the Cabinet all had reusable coffee cups following their meeting yesterday, although I think we shall need a little bit more from the Environment Agency than bamboo cups if we are to protect our environment after Brexit. I was delighted to receive your letter today, Mr Speaker, saying that the House of Commons Commission and the Administration Committee will be looking into how Parliament can reduce its plastic usage. Last Thursday the Government published their 25 Year Environment Plan. They were very clear about what they wanted to achieve, but there was absolute silence on how that was to be done. A third of the acquis communautaire which applies in the UK is related to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs-it has brought us huge environmental improvements-and 80% of our environmental protections originated in the EU. A third of those protections cannot simply be cut and pasted. The aim of new clause 12 is to prevent us from ending up with “zombie legislationâ€, no longer updated or enforced, and vulnerable to being quietly dropped at the stroke of a Minister's pen. The Environmental Audit Committee, which I chair, called for a new environmental protection Act more than a year ago, and the new clause does the same today: it calls for legislation setting up a strong environmental protection agency to monitor and enforce standards, replacing the European Commission. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs told my Committee in November that such a body would be needed. We await his proposals, but this must be done quickly.
What my hon. Friend has said is important for another reason. Environmental protection means development, and, as she will know, that means development jobs in towns such as Coventry. There is, for example, the electric car.
I have been a long-standing champion of citizens juries. In fact, I wrote the first book on the citizens juries in 1992. They give people real information, choices and trade-offs, and it has been proven that people can take difficult decisions if they have that open and honest information. I warmly support my hon. Friend's new clause.
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I was not aware of her historical involvement in this matter. That is absolutely fantastic. I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and many others have been involved in this process as well. Before I conclude, I want to draw attention to a recent example. The citizens assembly on Brexit was organised recently by a number of universities and civil society organisations, including the constitution unit at University College London, the centre for the study of democracy at the University of Westminster, the University of Southampton, Involve and the Electoral Reform Society. That citizens jury came up with some very interesting results. It concluded that our priorities for trade policy should be minimising harm to the economy, protecting the NHS and public services, maintaining living standards, taking account of the impacts on all parts of the UK, protecting workers' rights and avoiding a hard border with Ireland. Those are all sensible suggestions, and that is not surprising because they come from the British people. They do not represent the one monolithic view of the way forward that the Government are presenting. The public are presenting a sensible approach to Brexit, and that is what we need more than ever at this time. We do not need to hear wild claims about what the public think. It is a shame that we sometimes do not get these debates in this House, but I am thankful that Members on both sides have been brave enough to stand up in this debate and put forward their views. We need to listen to the public on this as well.
I am. I urge people to support new clause 14.
I wish to speak to new clause 17. We have learned several things in recent weeks. First, that the red lines set by the Prime Minister will handicap us in our negotiations; secondly, that those same red lines have removed important options from the table; and, thirdly, that the Government have not felt it necessary to do comprehensive qualitative and quantitative assessments on the implications of leaving. That is extraordinary. No large business, certainly no multinational business, would leave a market and abandon its investment in that market without fully evaluating the commercial and reputational consequences, but for this Government that lack of process is somehow acceptable. What new clause 17 offers, correctly, is a framework to properly evaluate the deal and arrangements proposed by the Government, so ensuring both transparency and a full public understanding, by area, of the consequences of leaving. That is why I support new clause 17.
I hope the Government will consider workplace protections in the Bill, because many of us do not trust the Government in that regard.
After the sifting committee has received an explanatory statement and before it makes a sift, will the committee also have access to Ministers to question them if it cannot understand what the affirmative or negative instrument is about?
I very much hope that the committee will be able to understand things through our meeting the requirements for explanatory memorandums that we have set out in the Bill, but I would of course expect Ministers to be helpful to the committee. We need to get statutory instruments through smoothly, and we would want to support the committee in reaching its decisions. I will now jump ahead in my remarks to deal with new clause 3 and the Belfast agreement. New clause 3, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), is important, and I reiterate that the Government remain steadfast in their commitments to the Belfast agreement and its associated obligations under international law.
Will the Minister give way?
Will the hon. Lady allow me to make my points? I think I am going to be able to satisfy her, but I will gladly give way after I have reached the particular point in which I think she will be interested. The agreement between the UK and the EU, as set out in the joint report, must be negotiated and taken forward through the article 50 negotiations, not in this Bill. The EU set out before Christmas that negotiators now need to work on translating the commitments in the joint report into the withdrawal agreement or the framework for the future relationship. That is the task we will be engaged in over the coming months, so it would be wrong to cut across the negotiations by separately seeking to codify commitments into this Bill. We have already committed to protecting the Belfast agreement in full through the withdrawal negotiations. The joint report sets out the Government's and the EU's commitment to respect the provisions in the Belfast agreement and the principle of consent. More broadly, we have said that we will introduce the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill to implement what we agree with the EU as a whole. The joint report is also clear on the Government's commitment to protecting north-south co-operation and to our guarantee of avoiding a hard border. We have been clear that we will protect the UK internal market in all circumstances and ensure the same unfettered access for Northern Ireland's business to the entire United Kingdom internal market. The detail of the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill will and must reflect the terms of the withdrawal agreement, so I reassure the House that we will include an appropriate provision in the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill upholding the agreement we reach, including the protection of the Belfast agreement, to which we committed in the joint report.
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I am delighted that he has confirmed that there will be no hard border and no border down the Irish sea. What I am concerned about are the pledges about the Belfast agreement. My focus has always been on the incorporation of the fundamental principles of the Belfast agreement. When I spoke to my new clause on the fifth day in Committee, I withdrew it on the understanding that the principles of non-discrimination, equality and respect before the law would be incorporated by the Government in forthcoming legislation. Will the Minister confirm that commitment?
I remember our previous conversation about the general principles, which have been widely discussed during the passage of this Bill. As I said, we are fully committed to the Belfast agreement, and the appropriate commitments will be put into the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill when it comes forward, so I hope the hon. Lady will allow me to move on at this point. Occasionally, a speech is made in this House that will never be forgotten, and one such speech was hers in Committee. I well remember the need as a young Royal Air Force officer to check under my car every time before getting in. Although I did not share in the troubles as she did, the echoes were felt where I trained in the Royal Air Force, so I assure her that I want to ensure that, by the end of the process, she is satisfied that we have upheld the Belfast agreement. Did I hear a colleague ask to intervene? No.
Well, would my hon. Friend give way?
Voices of inspiration, I trust. My hon. Friend mentioned the withdrawal Bill several times. Am I right-to be absolutely clear-that the withdrawal Bill will come forward and be considered, and probably approved, by this House before any withdrawal agreement is ratified, that we will not be presented with a Bill to implement an agreement that is already binding on the United Kingdom, but that actually the Government will not ratify any agreements until the House of Commons has first given its support and approval?
May I take the Minister back to clause 7 and thank him very much for the approach that he took in the negotiations?
Will the Minister confirm that the Government intend to keep in place the equal treatment directive, which has helped women to gain equal pay claims?
And enthusiastically.
If you forgive me, Mr Speaker, I am going to do two things I have never done before: not take interventions, which I have always taken before; and I am breaking that habit of a lifetime to allow time for the Scot Nats to put their reasoned amendment. It is very much a lifetime first for me to be polite to the Scot Nats. We have also brought forward amendments to provide greater certainty on how imminent or impending legal cases will be dealt with from the day we leave the EU. We committed to bring forward separate primary legislation in due course that would implement the withdrawal agreement, including an implementation period, and we set out the provisions for a vote on the final deal and the processes for implementing whatever is agreed. Linked to this, we respect the decision of this House to limit the power in clause 9, so that it cannot be used before primary legislation approving the terms of the withdrawal agreement has been enacted. Perhaps most notably-and happily for me-we have listened to the concerns expressed about the scrutiny of secondary legislation. On Second Reading, my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) shared her concerns about the process of scrutinising the 800 to 1,000 statutory instruments required under this Bill. I made it clear then that we would happily discuss the feasibility of establishing a triage process. With this in mind, the Government welcomed amendments made to the Bill proposed by the Procedure Committee to establish such a sifting Committee. I hope that all Members agree that we have approached scrutiny of this vital piece of legislation in a pragmatic way and worked collaboratively to improve the Bill. We have also intensified our positive discussions with the devolved Administrations and legislatures to find an agreed approach to clause 11, and we intend to bring forward amendments in the other place.
Will the Secretary of State give way?
No, I will not. We are committed to achieving legislative consent for this vital piece of legislation. We are sending an improved piece of legislation onwards to the other place and I hope that that House will acknowledge the substance and spirit of the debate and scrutiny this Bill has received thus far and that debate there will unfold in the same constructive way in which it has in our House. The scrutiny of this vital legislation remains one of the most important tasks that we parliamentarians have had before us for some time. I believe that this House is risen to the occasion by ensuring that the Bill continues its journey throughout Parliament in a much improved form. I commend it to the House, and I believe that this is an historic occasion.
In brief, this Bill, with clause 1, which says that we are repealing the European Communities Act 1972, reflects the will of the people on 23 June 2016 and the will of this House, as expressed in the votes. So there are two absolutely valid reasons why this Bill must go through: it represents the will of the people outside the House; and it represents the will of the people inside the House. Therefore, I say one thing only when it goes to the House of Lords: those in the House of Lords must surely realise that they agreed to the European Union Referendum Act 2015, a sovereign Act of Parliament, which went through and enabled the question of whether we leave or remain in the European Community to be decided by the people outside. That was a transfer of power deliberately taken by this House and it must be carried through. That is all I need to say, other than that for 33 years it has been my privilege to try to fight for this proposal and I am deeply grateful to all the people in the House who have agreed to it and to those who have exercised their democratic right to oppose those views.
The shadow Secretary of State said that this Bill is not fit for purpose, and I agree with him. It is not fit for purpose for staying in the EU, but it is fit for purpose for implementing the greatest festival of democracy that this country has ever known. In June 2016, 17 million of our citizens voted to leave the EU, and all this Government are doing is implementing that decision in a positive way that will ensure that we are generous to all the EU citizens who live here, generous in terms of the EU budget and, in this Bill, generous in taking all EU laws and directives into our law. In Zurich in 1946, Winston Churchill outlined his vision for Europe, but he made it clear that we should not be part of that united Europe. In 1972, plagued with self-doubt, we joined the European Union. Tonight-this historic moment-we plough a new historic course to create a world fit for free trade. Vote for the Third Reading.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) will go down in the history books as one of the great parliamentarians, as he has shown great courage and leadership in making what he rightly described a monstrosity certainly more palatable. That is why I and no doubt many others will now vote for this Bill on Third Reading. It delivers what it sets out to do, which is this transposing of law, and that is right, but it is by no means perfect and we have yet to discuss the big issues that divide our nation.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice on how to inform the House of some breaking news coming out of the Welsh national Parliament. Assembly Members have unanimously supported the introduction of a Welsh continuity Bill to put a halt to the Westminster power grab. So great is the constitutional encroachment of the Westminster Government that this Bill to support Welsh democracy is supported by not only Plaid Cymru, but the Welsh Conservative party and the UK Independence party. This is of great constitutional significance, with implications for the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which has just received its Third Reading.
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 110.
Does the Secretary of State recall that on page 21 of the original White Paper on the great repeal Bill, the Government pledged to make changes to retained EU law by delegated legislation only “where necessaryâ€? Does he accept that if this House does not accept the Lords amendments, the Government will be breaking the pledge that they made in their original White Paper?
With great respect, the hon. and learned Lady is a lawyer, and she knows that the words in an Act of Parliament matter, and matter very precisely, rather more than an individual word- They matter very precisely. Let me explain why. As I said, “necessaryâ€ is not a synonym for sensible, logical or proper. In many cases, changes such as correcting inconsistencies, changing terminology, removing redundant provisions, or improving clarity and accessibility could be left unmade, even if the consequences were perverse. That is not the best outcome for businesses or individuals across the United Kingdom. I do not believe that their lordships intended to constrain our ability to change the names of documents such as European aviation documentation. Nor do I think that they intended to require us to use cumbersome terms such as “national regulatory authorities of member statesâ€, and then to have to designate our national regulators underneath that. That would be an inefficient way of making Ofcom the regulator for our open-access internet legislation, for example. This will be UK law, applied only in the UK. It would be confusing to businesses and individuals to keep laws that suggest otherwise, but such changes, while appropriate, might fail the “necessaryâ€ test.
I understand the point that my right hon. Friend is making, but I have to say that I am not sure that I agree with him. I think that all the examples that he has given would meet the necessity test without any difficulty at all. Where the necessity test provides a higher bar is that if it were thought that a Minister was using powers to change legislation in a way that was not necessary, he would be prevented from doing so. My right hon. Friend cites examples, but I just do not think that the test would be a problem for a Minister at all.
My right hon. and learned Friend, as I have known for a long time, is a very good lawyer, but I am afraid that other lawyers disagree quite seriously. The Lords amendments effectively increase the risk of judicial review. What that does- . This is an incredibly serious point, because that process asks judges to make a policy decision that this House should be making by saying yes or no to a statutory instrument. It really is as simple as that.
I am rather sorry that my right hon. Friend is so distrustful of judges on what are essentially procedural or constitutional matters, but could he define “appropriateâ€ to me? It is one of those vague words that I suspect means “if the Minister feels that he or she wants to, one way or the otherâ€. A decision could almost certainly not be challenged by judicial review, because the word is so wide and vague that there is no conceivable argument that could be raised to challenge the Minister's opinion. We cannot take powers in that way meaning that the Government are able to legislate on matters that will be important to some individuals entirely at a Minister's uncontrolled discretion.
I hear my right hon. and learned Friend-and old friend, because we are still capable of having a dinner for two hours and not talking about Europe throughout it; in fact he paid, and it was lunch. The simple fact is that we are not just leaving this to a single word. As I said earlier, the House of Lords Constitution Committee looked at the matter, in the context of this Bill and the sanctions Bill, and said that we should require the Minister to give “good reasonsâ€-that was the test-which is what we have proposed in our amendment.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will make a little progress, because I am quite sure that my next section will provoke quite a lot more interventions than the last one. Let me turn to Lords amendment 19 and parliamentary approval of the outcome of the negotiations. This is the Hailsham amendment, which Lord Bilimoria described in the other House as the “no Brexitâ€ amendment. What it amounts to is an unconstitutional shift that risks undermining our negotiations with the European Union. It enables Parliament to dictate to the Government their course of action in international negotiations. Labour Members ask what is wrong with that. Well, I will read them a quote from Professor Vernon Bogdanor, who is not exactly a well-known leaver, but he is a constitutional expert. He described this at the weekend as “a constitutional absurdityâ€ that“would weaken the position of Britain's negotiators.â€I agree with him that this is not practical, not desirable and not appropriate.
I give way to the hon. Gentleman who has campaigned long on this issue.
I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. What the Lords amendment seeks to do is to reassert parliamentary sovereignty such that this House approves and gets to vote on every scenario that can be conceived of in terms of the way that we withdraw from the European Union. On the Secretary of State's amendment, may I ask him a factual question? I am not asking him whether or not he thinks we will be in a situation where there is no deal. I am simply asking him this: is it not the case that his amendment to Lords amendment 19 gives his Government a passport to take this country out of the European Union with no deal, with this House having had no say on it whatsoever?
I start by saying to the hon. Gentleman that I respect his point of view. He has the honesty to say that he would like us to stay in the European Union irrespective of the referendum result. Although I disagree with it, it is honest position to take. But what he describes as giving the Government the right to take us out of the European Union under, frankly, any circumstances was article 50, which was passed by this House and the other House by a very large majority, so I am afraid that he is not right in that respect.
I will give way in a moment. It is accepted practice that Governments negotiate treaties, and this was the case for the European Communities Act 1972, the Lisbon treaty, the Nice treaty, the Amsterdam treaty and the Maastricht treaty. I do not remember any argument over Parliament undertaking those treaties from people who today argue that this amendment is appropriate.
I give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I do hope the Whip's Office was not responsible for his injury.
I hope that our Whip's Office is kinder than the Government's Whip's Office will be in getting this measure through. Mr Speaker, I hope to catch your eye in a moment to talk about what the effects on the Labour vote will be in those constituencies that voted to leave, but on this crucial issue, is it not true that if we pass what the Lords want us to do, we, as Aneurin Bevan said, will be sending our negotiators back naked into the negotiating room? The European Union will know that the Government are beaten and that it can then impose any terms whatsoever on them.
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. It is certainly the case that the European Commission reads every newspaper in Britain, particularly the Financial Times and The Times. It reads them all, but, more surprisingly, it believes them. The simple truth is that it looks at any option that it thinks the British political system will throw up, which will allow it to get a negotiating advantage. Let us remember, too, that most, if not all, of the 27 would much rather that we did not leave-full stop. If it sees an opportunity to create that outcome, that is what it will do.
I want to make a little progress, and then I will give way again. Furthermore, the Lords amendment sets deadlines that would simply allow the other side to use time against us, as it has already tried to do. What we have proposed in lieu is an amendment that builds on commitments that I first set out to the House in a statement on 13 December last year. The amendment provides that the withdrawal agreement cannot be ratified unless both the agreement and the future framework have been approved by a motion of this House. It also prevents the agreement from being ratified unless an Act of Parliament has been passed to implement it. This is all before the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 as well. Therefore, this is in addition to the Government's commitment to introduce the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill if Parliament votes in favour of a final deal.
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. It is not clear what the choices are on a meaningful vote. Is a meaningful vote going to be between the deal that might be struck with the European Union on the current status quo, or a deal struck with the European Union and the World Trade Organisation? We need to know that.
People keep using the phrase “meaningful voteâ€. What it conceals in some cases, and I suspect that that is the case for the hon. Gentleman, is that they want to reverse the result of the referendum, and nothing we do will be organised to allow reversal of the result of the referendum.
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
I will give way in a moment. The Government have also made provisions to allow the vote to happen in this House before the European Parliament votes on the deal, as long as it is practical. This follows the spirit of the Lords amendment, but our proposal has some significant differences. First, we have attached a deadline to the Lords' consideration of a motion on the final deal. It is not right that the Lords could have a veto on the deal simply by filibustering or refusing to consider the motion. Anyone who suggests that this is unlikely should consider that it was a concern raised by their lordships' themselves in debate.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Not for the moment, no. Secondly, we have removed Parliament's power to give binding negotiating directions to the Government. As I have said, this would represent a profound constitutional shift in terms of which branch of the state holds the right to act in the international sphere. I turn again to Vernon Bogdanor, who said:“Parliament's role is to scrutinise legislation and policy; 650 MPs, still less 800 peers, cannot themselves negotiate.â€
I will give way in a moment. Instead, we have provided that, in the event that Parliament rejects the deal put to it, the Government will be legally obliged to make a statement on their proposed next steps in relation to article 50 negotiations within 28 days of that rejection. This House would of course then have plenty of tools at its disposal to respond, but I am as confident as ever that we will secure an agreement that this House will want to support.
I think that everybody in this House would accept my right hon. Friend's proposition that we cannot bind the negotiations, but clearly the point of concern, which he is getting to now, is this: if there were no deal, does the amendment in lieu cover that circumstance? If it does not, how does he propose to deal with that?
If there were no deal for some reason other than the House rejecting it-it is incredibly, almost implausibly, unlikely, but let us imagine that the Government decided that they would not have a deal at all-we would of course do the same thing and come back and make a statement to the House, and the House would then have the right to respond.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I recognise some of the problems that he has and why the Government came forward with their amendment in lieu, and some of the deficiencies that can be identified in the Lords amendment. But the simple fact is that the Government have not made provision for no deal, and there is a way of doing it. The amendment that I have tabled provides a mechanism for doing that. One of the key issues for me at the end of this afternoon will be whether we make some progress on having a proper structure to address no deal. I do not think that this Bill can finish its course and get Royal Assent until we have that.
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his view on this. He sort of expressed it in an amendment that he tabled late last night, so I only saw it this morning. I have not really had a lot of time- Well, this is an interesting demonstration of the Labour party's perception of how easy it is to make constitutional law on the fly. Its own voters will come to a view on that. Let me say this with respect to my right hon. and learned Friend's proposed amendment-as he knows, I am always open to have a conversation with him on this although he seems to have fallen foul of my telephone security system-I always want to keep three principles in mind. First, we must never do anything that undermines the Government's negotiating position, or encourages delays in the negotiations. That is very, very important. Secondly, we cannot change the fundamental constitutional structure, which makes the Government responsible for international relations and international treaties.
Will my right hon. Friend allow me?
In a moment. We cannot do that. This constitutional structure has stood for hundreds of years and many thousands of treaties. As I said earlier, nobody suggested for a moment that the House of Commons should negotiate the Maastricht treaty, the Lisbon treaty, or one or two other controversial treaties that came before the House. We cannot change that structure now, on this basis.
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Not for the moment. Thirdly, we must-under all circumstances-respect the result of the referendum. That is what this House voted for when it voted on article 50. I am very happy to talk to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) again in the next day or two, and we can discuss how we can meet his concerns in that time, within those principles.
Is not the kernel of the problem that all the amendments tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and others make no deal more likely, because they give every incentive to the European Commission not to agree to a deal? The amendments would bind the Government and we would end up with the worst possible result. Therefore, they should be resisted.
My hon. Friend goes to the heart of the problem, which is that we have to consider that anything passed in this House and the other House will have a very serious effect on the negotiating strategy of the other side. I hope that this House will recognise that the Government have taken a fair and positive approach to the new clause, retaining those elements that are sensible and viable, while removing those elements that are practically and constitutionally untenable. These constitutional and practical concerns also apply to Lords amendment 20, on a mandate for negotiations on the future relationship. The Government cannot demonstrate the flexibility necessary for a successful negotiation if their hands are tied mid-way through that process. That will do nothing but guarantee a bad deal for Britain. It is for the Government to set the direction during the negotiation. That is the key point. I do not need to remind the House about the importance of this legislation. The purpose of this Bill is to maintain a functioning and effective statute book when leaving the European Union-a statute book that people and business can rely on. That is what our approach will deliver.
Rather than praising the Lords for the number of amendments they have passed, would it not be more in line with Labour party philosophy and views to say that they have gone way beyond their constitutional remit in trying to overturn not only the decision of the electorate but the decisions of both the Labour party and Conservative party manifestos, which together received 82% to 84% of the vote at the last general election?
I respect my hon. Friend's argument and his long-held views, but I have to fundamentally disagree. None of their lordships' amendments seeks to frustrate the Brexit process in any way or to allow this House to overturn the referendum result.
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and pay tribute to the work that our Front-Bench Brexit team in this House and in the Lords have done to improve the Bill. The Secretary of State was not courageous enough to take my intervention, so may I ask my hon. Friend what does more to harm the Prime Minister's hand at the negotiating table-the principle of parliamentary consent; the Foreign Secretary making damaging, unguarded remarks at a private dinner; the Brexit Secretary playing the hokey cokey about whether he is going to stay in the Government; or the spectacle of Ministers resigning because their own Government are too intransigent to listen to the constructive and sensible direction on Brexit that many of us would like them to pursue?
My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is nothing more damaging. As the Secretary of State himself said, the EU monitors with great interest developments in this House and what is said across the country. It sees the open warfare and disagreement in the Cabinet and the Foreign Secretary continually undermining the Prime Minister's approach.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I am just going to make some progress. Lords amendment 19 is of critical importance. In many ways, it is the most important amendment that we will consider over the 12 hours allotted. Before I explain why and set out the reasons why we agree with Lords amendment 19 and disagree with the Government's amendment (a) in lieu, it is worth taking a little time to remind the House how we arrived at this point. As hon. Members may recall, before 7 February last year Parliament was to be given absolutely no role in approving the final terms of the UK's exit from the EU, because there was no commitment from the Government to a parliamentary vote of any kind. Under pressure, the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), came to the Dispatch Box during the Committee stage of the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill with a concession-a vote on a motion in this House and the other place on the article 50 deal, including the framework for a future relationship. We welcomed that concession, but we were clear that it did not provide for a meaningful vote, merely a vote on a non-binding motion and one that would essentially take the form of “take it or leave itâ€-accept the final draft withdrawal agreement, even if it is found wanting, or accept that the UK will walk away without a deal, triggering the hardest of departures from the EU.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way.
Is it not the case that some of the staunchest Brexiteers, including the Secretary of State himself, have always defended parliamentary sovereignty, but when it comes to a meaningful vote on the deal, they seem to ignore it?
That is absolutely right, and I thank my hon. Friend for that point.
Some people in this House have been quite clear that they want to prevent Brexit. Others disguise that fact with the very careful construction of terms. In the Lords, where there are no constituencies to vote Members out-sadly-people have been more honest. Surely my hon. Friend was wrong to say that there was nobody in the Lords who was saying that this was actually a “stop Brexitâ€ vote; we have already heard a quotation. The aim was to prevent Brexit; the Lords have no responsibility to anybody and they said that that was their aim.
I have to disagree with my right hon. Friend's point. I did not say that there were no lordships that do not intend to block Brexit, just as there are hon. Members in this House for whom that is the intention. But the aim of the Lords amendments, as they are designated, is not to frustrate Brexit. There is no majority in this House for overturning the referendum result, as my right hon. Friend well knows. It is disingenuous to say that that is the aim of this amendment.
I am happy to clarify that.
Thank you, Mr Speaker. As I was saying, the choice that faces us under the Government's amendment is between the draft withdrawal agreement, even if it is found wanting, and the hardest of departures-the most disorderly exit. Let us remind ourselves of what that would mean: legal chaos, significant damage to our economy, the erection of a hard border in Northern Ireland and serious harm to Britain's standing in the world. That is why in Committee we tabled new clause 66, which would have guaranteed both Houses a vote on the motion on the terms of withdrawal-and, just as critically, a vote in the event that no such agreement is reached.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am going to make a bit of progress. However, we also recognised in Committee stage that there were other requirements needed to ensure that Parliament has a meaningful vote, one of which is the need for a vote on a statute. That is why we supported amendment 7 in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and other hon. Members-an amendment that ultimately passed in this House by 309 votes to 305. That amendment took a slightly different approach in that it was quite deliberately aimed at restricting the use of, and limiting the potential abuse of, the extensive and wide clause 9 power in the Bill as it then stood.
Would the hon. Gentleman care to reflect on the fact that the decision to transfer the vote to the people was done quite deliberately and voluntarily by this House by six to one, as a sovereign Act of Parliament? Any attempt to reverse that is in defiance of the decision that was taken by Act of Parliament.
The hon. Gentleman makes the same point as many others have done, and I have dealt with it in saying that their lordships' amendment is not about overturning the referendum result. No, it is not-not at all. It is about giving Parliament a say in shaping the direction under one scenario that could well occur.
Would it not be one of the most supreme ironies of this entire Brexit debacle if, at the end of it, the European Parliament has a meaningful vote and 27 member states have a meaningful vote, but the state that is leaving-and leaving in a state-does not have a meaningful vote?
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Commission cannot approve the deal on the European Union side until the European Parliament has given its consent, and if it does not give its consent, the Commission cannot move on and ratify.
My hon. Friend is making the points about a meaningful vote with a great deal of power. Does he agree that if we get to a stage-which I suspect some Eurosceptics want-where we are approaching a disorderly, no-deal, hardest-of-hard Brexits, this House has a right not to be given a fait accompli of a deal that is inadequate, or no deal at all? Is that not what this battle to have a meaningful vote on the deal is actually all about?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is the choice that faces every hon. Member in the Chamber today when we come to vote on Lords amendment 19.
I am going to make some progress. I want to return to amendment 7 in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield. As I said, that amendment took a very different approach that was about restricting the clause 9 power. That amendment having been passed, the Government cannot now give the final withdrawal agreement domestic legal effect without first gaining parliamentary approval in primary legislation for the planned EU withdrawal and implementation Bill. But what his amendment 7 did not do, consciously and deliberately-I remember him saying so at the time-was deal with a scenario in which Parliament does not approve the draft withdrawal agreement. That scenario, I would argue, cannot be ruled out given how badly this Government are handling the negotiations and the limited time they have left before agreement must be reached.
I am going to make some more progress. With their new clause, their lordships have developed the right hon. and learned Gentleman's amendment 7 in its guarantee of a statutory vote and made explicit provision for what would happen if Parliament were not to approve the deal when it is put before us later this year. In those circumstances, under the provisions of their lordships' amendment, it would be for Parliament, by resolution of this House-the Government having found time for that resolution-and subject to consideration in the other place, to give direction to the Government about how then to proceed. It is not about Parliament taking over the negotiations or about stripping Ministers of their authority to make decisions.
The hon. Gentleman said earlier that no Lords amendment is intended to frustrate the result of the referendum, but amendment 19 says very clearly that Her Majesty's Government“must follow any direction in relation to the negotiations...approved by a resolution of the House of Commons, and...subject to...a motion in the House of Lords.â€That is entirely transferring responsibility for the aims and the detail of everything we negotiate to Parliament and away from the Government. Can he name any precedent for that in the whole history of this nation?
If such a scenario were to occur-this is the important point; I take head on what the hon. Gentleman has said-it would be for Parliament, although we are talking about any unknown number of hypothetical situations at that point, to direct the Government by resolution. Is he saying that Parliament would come forward and support a resolution to overturn the referendum result? There is no way that that could happen. He knows that there is no majority for that in this House.
No, I am going to make some progress. The aim of this amendment is to establish a clear process, with appropriate deadlines, by which Parliament can approve the outcome of the article 50 negotiations, and to provide clarity on what should happen if a majority of hon. Members in this House come to the conclusion that the final deal the Government return with is not good enough for the country.
I am not giving way; I will make some progress. The amendment is about ensuring that in a scenario where this House rejects the withdrawal agreement, Parliament does not then simply become a passive spectator to what happens next but instead secures a decisive role in actively shaping how the Executive then proceed.
My hon. Friend has said that supporting this amendment would not necessarily lead to a resolution of this House saying that we wish to maintain membership of the European Union. Can he explain, for the purposes of clarity, what safeguards are in place to prevent such a thing from happening, given that we cannot bind Parliaments and that, as such, if we vote for this amendment, we could resolve to tell the Government that re-entry is the point of the negotiation?
My hon. Friend is dealing in hypotheticals. Under that scenario, it might be the case that an hon. Member tries to bring forward a resolution, and that the Government provide time, but does he believe, realistically, that such a resolution could pass and would command a majority in this House? It would not. This is not about frustrating Brexit. Ministers know full well that there is no majority for that in this place, and it is disingenuous, as I said, to argue as much. Lords amendment 19 is about trusting this sovereign House of Commons to do what is right for the country.
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is Government's job to bring forward policy and Parliament's job-the Commons, in particular-to legislate? It seems to me that far from taking back control or establishing sovereignty, the Government appear to want to deny Parliament its fundamental role as legislator.
My right hon. Friend makes a good point. Lords amendment 19 is about trusting this sovereign House of Commons to do what is right for the country should it come to pass that the Government bring back a deal that does not secure approval in this House.
I will not give way. By contrast, the Government's amendment (a) in lieu of amendment 19 would guarantee precisely the opposite. It would ensure that in the event that this House does not approve the withdrawal agreement, Parliament would have almost no role whatsoever.
I am not going to give way at this point. Yes, the amendment provides for a statutory guarantee of a vote before the withdrawal agreement is put on the statute book, but it removes from the Bill what their lordships deliberately chose to insert: provision for the legislature to constrain Ministers in deciding to crash us out of the EU without a deal should Parliament choose to reject the deal. What does the Government amendment offer in its place? It offers provision to send a Minister back to the House within 28 days with a statement-a statement!-as to how the Government intend to proceed: a commitment that does not go much beyond what was set out in the written ministerial statement that was hurriedly issued on 13 December in a last-ditch attempt to thwart the House in voting for the right hon. and learned Gentleman's amendment 7.
I am not giving way; I will make some progress. It almost beggars belief. The vast majority of Members of this House want the Government to succeed and to return with the best deal possible, but let us be clear about what it would mean were the House to decline to approve the deal they bring back. That would represent a catastrophic failure of the Government's Brexit policy and their handling of the negotiations. In such a scenario, are hon. Members really content for the sum of their role to be the chance to listen to a ministerial statement and attempt to catch the Speaker's eye to ask a question? That is what hon. Members will be giving their consent to if they vote for the Government's amendment in lieu today. It is the same “take it or leave itâ€ vote that the Government offered last year, with a few extra baubles.
Does my hon. Friend understand that Labour voters in the midlands and the north, who voted in large numbers to leave the European Union and who are a little bemused at the arguments even among the Cabinet over how that is delivered, do not wish to see the negotiations carried out by 650 Members of Parliament and want to see Brexit got on with? If the Lords amendments are agreed to, how will we explain to those Labour voters that the unelected House of Lords can overturn both the Commons and the referendum?
I will tell my hon. Friend how we will explain it to them. We will say that their lordships asked us to consider and vote on whether, in the event that a majority of Members of this House do not approve the deal, we should take control of the situation and shape how the Executive then proceed. I think they would support that.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am going to make some progress. There has been a considerable amount of debate over the past 16 months about what is meant by a “meaningfulâ€ vote. Any member of the public watching our proceedings today will struggle to understand how a vote on the draft withdrawal agreement that simply takes the form of “take it or leave itâ€ could in any sense be genuinely meaningful. In reality, it would be anything but. It would be meaningless, not meaningful. It would be a Hobson's choice.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I will give way one final time.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I put it to him gently that his proposition presupposes that the European Union would wish to re-engage in negotiations. Were there to be a meaningful vote and this House were to veto the deal, we would be likely to crash out without a deal and not deliver the pragmatic common-sense Brexit that I think he and I would like to see.
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. Crashing out of the European Union without a deal is exactly what this amendment is designed to prevent. Yes, it is.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I said that that was the last intervention; I am not giving way again. I want to turn briefly to the amendment tabled yesterday evening by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield. We welcome it as a significant improvement on the Government's amendment in lieu. His amendment is a clear acknowledgment that the Government's amendment is deficient, that there is a need to make provision for a scenario in which Parliament does not approve a motion on the withdrawal agreement and that this House may need to insist on a decisive role for Parliament in what we all acknowledge would be an unprecedented situation. We recognise that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has, throughout this process, been at great pains to secure a consensus around how this complex legislation can be improved in the context of the many challenges that the Government face. In taking such an approach, his and his colleagues' intent has not been, as many have suggested and as is plastered across the front of many of the tabloids today, to sabotage the will of the people or betray their country. They are simply trying to secure what the vast majority of hon. Members of this House desire: a proper process codified in law that ensures that the right decisions are made at the right time and that Parliament has the tools to hold the Executive to account effectively on some of the most significant decisions any of us will be asked to take.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am not going to give way at this stage. The amendments in this group are, at their core, about what we, as hon. and right hon. Members, believe the role of Parliament should be in the Brexit process. They are about ensuring that Parliament plays an active role in shaping our country's future, rather than accepting that the House of Commons is to be little more than a spectator and a passive observer to one of the most important decisions that has faced our country in generations. They are about ensuring that the withdrawal agreement cannot be ratified unless we approve it and, in the event that we do not approve it, that the UK cannot crash out of the EU by ministerial fiat. They are ultimately about reasserting the primacy of the House of Commons, so that this House, should the situation arise, is able to do what is right for our country.
Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. I will try to be as brief as I can. Everybody knows that that is an effort for me, but I really will try to be positively terse where I can, and I am afraid that if I give way at all, it will be very briefly. That is only right, because the programme motion we have just passed, which I voted against, allows just three hours for debate on this whole group. I am well aware that hundreds of Members will find it almost impossible to get in, and therefore if I abuse the privilege you have given me, Mr Speaker, I should cause a great deal of damage to the quality of the debate. First, let me say that I have never known an issue of this importance to be taken in this way. I remember being in debates on the European Communities Bill back in 1972 and in debates all the way through Maastricht, when there were hours and hours of debate and repeated votes before the approval of this House was obtained. Nobody throughout would have dreamt of arguing that as part of the process, the House of Commons could be excluded and the Government could be given an absolute privilege to proceed. Such a suggestion would have been treated as a complete absurdity.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
I will not, I am afraid, because had the suggestion been put to my hon. Friend during the Maastricht debates that if the Government got defeated on a resolution, they could take it over on their own and let Parliament know in due course what was going to happen, I do not think he would have welcomed it. I understand that we are in a different position.
You've got to give way to him now; you've mentioned him.
I thought my hon. Friend and I had debated this quite long enough for everybody already, but I will give way to him.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend explain whether he believes it is possible, with the meaningful vote, to manage to maintain the Brexit process? Does he not accept that the effect of the meaningful vote is actually to reverse the Brexit process, and furthermore, to use a certain expression, that it is completely failing to understand the nature of the amendments to suggest otherwise?
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
No, I have taken too long already. I apologise to my right hon. Friend. The Government would of course be in a bit of a dilemma-I imagine we would all be even more excited than we have been for the past few days-but the fact is that they would have to go away and work out what resolution to bring forward that would carry the House of Commons. I assume that would be a continuation of the negotiations, but the House would demand that its approval was sought for the next turn in the negotiations, and the directions in which they would go, to satisfy its objections. I regard that as a perfectly serious proposition. The public debate on the whole question of Brexit has largely been ridiculous-not just in the Daily Express, but in many other areas-but in this place we actually need to take seriously what we are doing not only for the future prospects of generations of our citizens, but for the constitutional position of this House. We have already given up all kinds of things that I have always taken for granted. I have never known such a weak Parliament for allowing things to get through, ending with the latest timetable resolution, but to take the Government's amendment would be the ultimate in doing so. With this amendment, the Government have had to accept the decision of the House when we successfully defeated them before Christmas. They have had to come back and set out a better process of parliamentary approval before ratification. The big question then is: what if the Government reject it and there is no deal? In the House of Lords, the Minister was quite clear in resisting the amendment: “Oh, this meaningful vote is going to be deal or no deal-take it or leave it.â€
Yes.
“Yes,â€ says my hon. Friend behind me. That is what he wants.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
No, I will not give way. It would be a yes/no vote. Members may not like the deal, but if they vote against it, all they will get is no deal. The result is that, whatever deal they come forward with, only a handful of my right hon. and hon. Friends would vote against it, because they do not want any deal at all, but they are an absolutely tiny minority in this House of Commons. What do the Government say in their amendment that the House will be faced with? The amendment says that, within 28 days, a written statement will be produced. It will be one of the piles of written statements we have every day, and-dare I suggest it?-not every Member of Parliament usually bothers to go through those piles of written statements every day. Well, obviously I am exceptionally negligent in not doing so. What is the written statement going to say? It could say, “Well, in that case, as there's no deal, we're leaving.â€ or, “Well, we're going to do this, and that's it-that's the end of the parliamentary process.â€ It might as well say, “O House of Commons, get lost!â€ This is a wholly inadequate response to the votes we will have had in Parliament.
No, I want to make two more points. I will now be very brief, and I will not expound on all the points I would have expounded on. The argument that we are undermining the Prime Minister's position in the negotiations is equally ridiculous. It is based on the proposition that, out on the continent, people do not know that there are divisions in the Cabinet or what the situation is in the House of Commons, and were a whisper to get out about some slightly unusual votes in the House of Commons, this would undermine the position of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister and make that position much weaker. I suspect that the feeling among those on the continent at the moment is that they are utterly bewildered by the Anglo-Saxons and that they have no idea what we think we are doing. They are not hostile to this country; they are waiting for us to make up our minds about what we wish to negotiate before the negotiations start. All the other Governments have to get the approval of 27 national Parliaments. What they are watching is an attempt by the real zealots in this House to stop this Parliament playing any part in the process, which is totally unacceptable. The time has come to say that all Government policies on any subject, great or small, depend on the ability to command a majority in the House of Commons on the key principles and the direction in which the country is going. I will certainly vote on that basis and I hope that the Government regret the rather intolerant response and all the pressure they have been applying on my right hon. and learned Friends in trying to resist such an obvious proposition.
The hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that, rather than deriding the House of Lords, we should be thanking them for introducing 15 sensible amendments and that the Government should also be thanking them for making hundreds of their own amendments because they made such a Horlicks of the Bill in this place in the first place.
Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the SNP's official position is that we should stop Brexit outright?
The hon. Gentleman confirms that he and his party want to keep Scotland in the European Union. Can he confirm to me whether he wants to keep Scotland in the common fisheries policy as well?
Certainly not, as currently constituted. If there were a common fisheries policy that actually protected Scotland's fishing industry, instead of it being used by successive UK Governments as an excuse to sell it out, that might be a different matter. There has of course been a public vote on the possibility of one of the consequences of a hard Brexit: a hard border across the island of Ireland.
Is my hon. Friend aware that the front page of today's Financial Times refers to a shortage of doctors? The Tories in Scotland have the cheek to blame the Scottish National party for the lack of doctors, when they are the ones not giving them the visas to get in to the country. The Tories sold out fishing once and then twice. They told us that they would not accept fisheries in the transition agreement and now they are talking as if they are saving the fisheries-the people who have sold out fishermen twice!
Few of us can speak on the fishing industry with such knowledge and authority as my hon. Friend. The nearest we have had to a public vote anywhere on any of the consequences of a hard Brexit was the public vote against the possibility of a hard border across the island of Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland and the people of the Republic of Ireland overwhelmingly rejected such a notion when they endorsed the Good Friday agreement and, of course, the people of Northern Ireland, the only people in the United Kingdom who would be affected by a hard border, voted to remain in the EU. How can anyone argue that the best way to give effect to those votes is for decisions to be taken by Ministers who represent a party with no MPs in Northern Ireland? The people of Northern Ireland have no way of re-electing or not re-electing those Ministers, based on whether their decisions are in the interests of those people.
Is the hon. Gentleman as outraged as I am that it looks as though we will have no possibility to debate those issues today? Is he as surprised as I am that, unless the Department for Exiting the European Union has not kept its website up to date, we do not even have a Minister from DExEU here listening to the debate?
I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are quite used to seeing Government Ministers abandoning their posts as soon as anybody from the third party in Parliament gets up to speak. He will have to take it up with them why that might be. At the end of this entire process, we owe it to ourselves, to each and every one of us, to acknowledge that later this year some Members of Parliament-possibly those on the Conservative Benches, possibly those on the Opposition Benches-may in all conscience want to go back to their constituents and say, “I recognise the way that you voted in June 2016. I respect your right to take part in that vote, but in all conscience I cannot be part of a decision that I believe in my heart of hearts will be deeply damaging to your community and to these islands and nations.â€ Members of Parliament must have the right to say to their constituents, “On this occasion, what I fundamentally believe to be in your interests differs from what you believe to be your wishes.â€ Each of us should be given the right to go back to our constituents and face the potential political consequences. I have no qualms whatever about the political consequences of following my own conscience if it is against the wishes, expressed or otherwise, of my constituents. That is a decision we all have to be prepared to take from time to time. This is possibly the most important occasion of this Parliament-and of many previous Parliaments. Members of Parliament must be given the opportunity to decide for themselves where they place the balance between what we believe is best and what our constituents have told us they want. If Members of Parliament are not prepared to face up to that very difficult dilemma, there is a question whether they should be Members of Parliament at all.
The hon. Gentleman has been very generous in giving way. Surely we cannot ignore a referendum that was voted for by this House. The people made a decision and we cannot go against that decision. To say that perhaps they did not realise what they were doing when they voted to leave the European Union is an insult to the electorate.
I will not give way because I know a number of people who did not support the programme motion will struggle to get in. The mantra of the “most powerful devolved Parliament in the worldâ€ has never been true, but it sounds even more hollow if that “most powerful devolved Parliament in the worldâ€ can be stripped of its powers by a party that never wanted it to have those powers, never wanted it to exist in the first place and are intent on acting not just against the majority view of the Parliament of Scotland but against the majority view of Opposition Members of the Parliament of Scotland. In their continued belief that they and only they are the guardians of common sense, the Government are determined to force this place to have a binary decision on whether we accept the final deal. This is the same Government who keep telling us that the customs union is not a binary decision, the single market is not a binary decision and controlling immigration is not a binary decision. The only time it is a binary decision is when they have to make a decision. The Government are determined that the final decision this Parliament will have to take on what the future will be is “take it or leave itâ€. For some of us, other futures are available. The Government would do well to reflect on that fact before it is too late. If the only choice they offer is take it or leave it, they may find that the people of Scotland, the people of Wales and the people of Northern Ireland will interpret take it or leave it in a very different way from that which the Government intend.
I agree with the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) that we should use the language of respect. I, for one-and many of my colleagues, I am sure-would never use words such as “traitorâ€. We all accept that there are very different views in this place, but this is not the EU negotiating Bill. It is not a Bill designed from its inception to give the Government guidance about what sort of deal we should have. I thought-this has been explained to us many times by the Government-that this Bill was simply to try to transform and transfer, in an orderly way, EU laws into our legal system. That was what I understood the Bill to be; it is not an EU negotiating Bill. I said earlier that we should use the language of respect. I know that it is not in order to call any Member “disingenuousâ€, but I think that it is in order to call an argument disingenuous, and I do so now. I respect the House of Lords. I understand that it is not elected. I understand that it should try to improve legislation. I serve on the Procedure Committee, and when the Committee considered these matters, there was a detailed debate on the sifting committee and I could understand how the House of Lords can try to improve how we deal with legislation. That seems entirely sensible and credible, but many of us suspect that these amendments, particularly Lords amendment 19, are designed not to improve the legislation or to improve the sifting process by which we transfer these laws, but to frustrate the whole process.
My hon. Friend will remember that we had many hours of debate and decisive votes before we sent the article 50 letter. That was the point when Parliament made up its mind to back the referendum. We cannot keep chopping and changing.
I agree with that. As I was saying, although it is perfectly in order for the other place to try to improve legislation, when it seeks to frustrate it, I think that Members of the elected House should start to get worried. Lords amendment 19 is very clear in saying:“Her Majesty's Government may implement a withdrawal agreement only if Parliament has approved the withdrawal agreement and any transitional measures...Her Majesty's Government must follow any direction in relation to the negotiations under Article 50â€and so on. What would be the result of that amendment? I say to colleagues that we are not just acting in a vacuum. What would be the result if we fail to overturn this amendment from the other place?
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
My hon. Friend takes a very different point of view from me, so in all courtesy, I give way, but this must be the last time I do so.
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that the amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) deals with the issues that he is raising?
No, I do not agree. I talked to my right hon. Friend the Brexit Secretary earlier today. He simply said-he does understand these things-that all the amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) would do would be to implement what the House of Lords wants to do in fewer words, so I do not accept that, I am afraid. We have to bite this bullet now. We have to support the Government and reject the amendment. As I was asking, what would be the result-we do not operate in a vacuum-if the House of Lords had its way? Of course it would be a catastrophe for the Government. There would be banner headlines in every single newspaper tomorrow saying that the Government had been defeated and that the whole Brexit momentum was in danger. Much more important than that-this is why I think the argument is disingenuous-is the fact those who support the House of Lords are dressing up their arguments in terms of parliamentary sovereignty. It is in order, is it not, for Parliament to debate and amend a Bill, as the House of Lords can do? That is what we do all the time, but what the Lords really want to do is to create a situation in which the whole process is frustrated.
These arguments were put-almost as forcefully as my hon. Friend is putting them-when we had our debates before Christmas in Committee. This House then passed an amendment on a meaningful vote, defeating the Government. People had foreseen that that would undermine the Prime Minister, cause an election and represent a crisis, but the next morning, apart from the fact that there was now to be a meaningful vote, nothing stirred. The position of the Prime Minister was not weakened and negotiations have not been hindered. My hon. Friend is putting his arguments with his usual great eloquence, but, with great respect, they avoid what we are really talking about, which is the important process of parliamentary accountability.
I am afraid that my right hon. and learned Friend was not listening to his own speech. Was I not listening-was I not two or three feet away from him-when he said that the amendment that we passed earlier was not going to make much difference to the whole process? It was like giving a statement, was it not? What we are talking about is completely different. This really is the ultimate wrecking amendment, and it is not the wrecking of parliamentary sovereignty; it is the wrecking of the will of the people and democracy. There are so many compromises that we all have to make. There are so many things that I do not understand about this negotiating process, and about how we have got stuck on the hook of Ireland, the backstop, “max facâ€ and all these other things, but the essential thing is this: the people want us to leave the EU. They want to regain control of their borders and they want us to be out of the European Court of Justice. All this Bill does-it is not the EU negotiating Bill-is simply to implement the will of the people. Parliament, do not stand against the people! Implement their will.
Many Members will today be speaking under pressure or while considering different interests. Some will be observing what the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) called the pure Churchillian principle of accountability and thinking clearly about our consciences and judgments, while others will be concerned about the will of the people as expressed by their own or other people's constituents, or by parts of the UK such as Scotland that are distinct. Others will be thinking about their party and-dare I say it?-some may even consider the views of their party Whips. People will come to different conclusions and weigh these things differently, and the most vocal people will be those who are not necessarily balancing them with the greatest difficulty. We should respect those on both sides who are struggling to reconcile these different pressures. We are weighing up a difficult constitutional matter, and two constitutional questions are wrapped up in Lords amendment 19. One is about how we reconcile the rights of a plebiscite with those of Parliament-we have debated that many times, and the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) was very unambiguous about where he stands-and the other is about how we balance the rights of the Executive with those of the legislature. We have debated that in different contexts. A few weeks ago, we were talking about exactly how to weigh war powers and accountability. Lords amendment 19 takes us forward in one crucial respect with regard to the so-called meaningful vote. It gives additional clarity. It might be better had we taken the wording proposed by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), but the amendment does give clarity, and it would not have the exaggerated consequences that some have predicted, as was set out very sensibly by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke).
Does not the right hon. Gentleman concede that when Lord Bilimoria introduced Lords amendment 19, he said that it had the ability to stop Brexit? Will the right hon. Gentleman not concede that this is a wrecking amendment?
The House would have to vote in that way, fully conscious of what it was doing. We just have to wait and see how the House chooses to proceed. The overall effect of the Lords amendment is clearly to-
Stop Brexit.
No, but stopping Brexit is one option we need to consider. Although Lords amendment 19 takes us forward, it would not, as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe just explained, have the damaging consequences anticipated by many exaggerated predictions. It would not necessarily undermine our negotiating position. The EU countries have their own legislation to consider and have already made it clear that their objective is a smooth, quick, clear Brexit. Anything that might cause major disruption-if they were unfair to the UK, for example-and therefore lead to Parliament's rejecting the deal would not necessarily be in their interests, and they would, I am sure, reject that. The crucial point, which is made in the article by Professor Bogdanor that the Brexit Secretary has quoted at length, is that whereas the amendment is a necessary step, it is not sufficient, and that is because Parliament cannot overthrow the judgment of the people in a referendum. The article is quite clear about that, and so are the Liberal Democrats, although we approach this from the opposite direction to some of the Brexit supporters on the Government Benches. We believe that when Parliament has considered the final deal or the absence of a deal, the public should have the final say on the matter. This is not an extraordinary observation. Countries that rule by plebiscite, such as Switzerland, regard confirmatory referendums as a matter of course. The people vote and then the legislature and Executive review the matter. At the end, there is a confirmatory referendum to determine whether the people accept the proposal. There is no reason why that should present a problem. It is a matter of fundamental-
I will complete my remarks and then let others contribute. Our amendment (a) to Lords amendment 19 expresses that thought very clearly. I notice that the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who probably more than anyone else is reconciling these different forces today, has accepted that the logic of the position is not simply for the House to have a meaningful vote, but to go back to the people and then accept the result of that vote. Were there to be a vote on the final deal, I would accept it fully, and I would then then work with people who support Brexit to make that work. If we continue on the present path, however, with a definition of Brexit that is narrow and specific, as in the Lancaster House speech-it was supposedly drafted by the Prime Minister's then adviser-and that many of us would not accept as a proper definition of Brexit, which the Prime Minister has pursued in a stumbling and incoherent way, we will not accept that, and we will not accept the result of the Brexit negotiations even after Brexit has taken place. The public need to have a vote on the final deal at the end of the process.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
My concern about my right hon. and learned Friend's amendment is that it would change the constitutional balance and separation of powers. There is a perfectly reasonable way of ensuring that the Government do the proper thing, and that is a vote of no confidence. As long as the Government maintain the confidence of this House, they ought to be able to negotiate international treaties, but if they fail in their negotiations, the House has a remedy that has been a remedy for very many years.
I take my hon. Friend's point, but I would like him to consider for one moment the last part of my amendment, new section 5C, which deals with what happens if, on 15 February 2019, we have no deal. His invitation would be for the House to express no confidence in the Government and to get rid of them. Can one imagine a more chaotic process than the triggering of a general election five weeks before we fall off the edge of the cliff?
I agree with what my right hon. and learned Friend is saying. I think that, far from suggesting that his amendment was wrong, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) gave the very reason why it is sensible to adopt this structural process to deal with the different scenarios that the House may face.
I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. Let me explain. I did take on board the Government's concerns regarding the Lords amendment, but I could see that the micro-management of their negotiating position after the autumn, if there were no deal, could present difficulties. My amendment sought to avoid that by doing two things. First, it sought to provide a mechanism whereby no deal, if there is no deal, must come to this House. That would provide great reassurance to all Members that there was a system in place to deal with the position. Similarly, there would be a system in place to deal with the rejection of a deal, and finally-and only then would there be a mandatory condition -a system that would operate if by February we were still faced with an impossible position of having no deal at all.
Of course I accept that my right hon. and learned Friend and other colleagues wish to discuss further the role that Parliament will play in all the Brexit scenarios that may present themselves to us. We cannot bind the negotiations, nor can we disrespect the referendum result, but-as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his speech-we do commit ourselves to meeting to see how we can build on Her Majesty's Government's amendment (a) in lieu today, ahead of the Bill's stages in the House of Lords, and to meeting my right hon. and learned Friend tomorrow to make that important progress on what we have achieved today.
I take my hon. and learned Friend's comments at face value, and I am most grateful to him for making them. He must understand, however, that, as usual when we reach this stage of a process, we face some difficult challenges. There is a Lords amendment, and if we agree to it, that is what will go into the Bill. Alternatively, we may endorse the Government's approach and support the amendment in lieu. The Government could, I think, adopt my amendment; it is a rather arcane procedure, but they could include it. If they do not want to do that, however, I shall need some pretty cast-iron assurances that when the Bill returns to the Lords, with the Government's amendment in lieu, we will implement significant parts of what I have put forward, because we cannot allow a situation in which there is no mechanism for dealing with no deal.
Overnight, I read my right hon. and learned Friend's amendment (ii) to Government amendment (a) very carefully, and I think that there is much merit in the approach that he urges the House to adopt in subsection (5A). I need more time to think about the other parts of the amendment- -but by indicating my position on a key part of it, I am indicating that the Government are willing to engage positively ahead of the Lords stages.
Again, I am very grateful to my hon. and learned Friend, and let me say to the House that I do not think his views should be dismissed. I am conscious that if we are to make progress, we ought to try to do this by consensus. However, my hon. and learned Friend must also understand-as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State must understand-the difficulty in which the House finds itself when faced with a choice of this kind. I have been through the same process in opposition and now in government. If the House makes the concession of allowing the dialogue to continue-and I can see the merit in that-it must be done in good faith. Let me say to my hon. and learned Friend that without that good faith, the other place will put the amendment back in, and the good will will be gone when the Bill comes back to this House.
I can give my right hon. and learned Friend that assurance. Everything that I do with him and other colleagues is always in good faith, and that will remain the case.
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. I was glad to hear what he said about the principle-which, in my view, is entirely innocuous-that“Within seven days of a statement under subsection (4) being laid, a Minister of the Crown must move a motion in the House of Commons to seek approval of the Government's approach.â€That is not exactly rocket science. The second principle is that there must be a mechanism providing for a Minister to come to the House of Commons by a suitable date-and I think 30 November 2018 must be the one-in the event of no deal, so that the Government can tell the House how they intend to proceed and seek the approval of the House for that. I know that subsection (5C) causes my hon. and learned Friend much more difficulty. I understand the constitutional issue, and I will come to that before I finish my speech; but the reality is that without a mechanism whereby the House can properly shape the crisis that will be enfolding us at the end of February if we have no deal, we will do it in an ad hoc way, which is likely to be infinitely more damaging to the wellbeing of the citizens of the United Kingdom than putting together a package that can be looked at now.
As usual, I am listening very carefully to my right hon. and learned Friend's observations. They will form a clear basis for a formal set of discussions that we can start at the earliest opportunity ahead of the Lords-
Of course, Mr Speaker. I was about to give a clear undertaking to use my right hon. and learned Friend's comments as the basis for structured discussions ahead of the Lords stages.
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. Obviously, the House will have to make up its mind about how it wishes to proceed, but, as I have said, there must be a proper understanding of the disquiet that is felt on both sides of the House.
I know that the Solicitor General has spoken in good faith, but would it not be best for those discussions to take place in a forthright way, for us to vote with their lordships for their lordships' amendment and for the Government to return to the matter in the House of Lords after the discussions?
I fear not. I think the reality is that if we accept the Lords amendment, that will be the end of the matter. That is the problem that we face in this House.
Both my right hon. and learned Friend and I accept without hesitation the good will of our hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General, who is doing his best to resolve the slightly odd situation that we are all in. I think that the majority of Ministers-although I do not know about my hon. and learned Friend-would give my right hon. and learned Friend the undertaking for which he is asking now, and that the majority of our party would be quite happy with an arrangement of the sort proposed in his amendment. However, all we can have is what we had in Committee-offers of good faith, discussions and earnest attempts-because our proposals will be vetoed by the hard-line Brexiteers in the Government.
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. I think that we will hear more about that as the debate unfolds.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No. I am sorry. Let me end by saying this. The idea that it is wrong, in a crisis, for Parliament to direct the Government what to do is plainly fallacious. It cannot be right. We are entitled to do that. Of course, if the Government do not want to do what we direct them to do, that is another matter.
It is with some hesitation that I involve myself in the negotiation that the Government are clearly attempting to conduct with their own Back Benchers. I simply want to observe that this is the single most important amendment that we will be discussing today and tomorrow in relation to the role that Parliament should and indeed must play in determining what kind of Brexit happens. I simply do not accept the argument that the Secretary of State and other Conservative Members have advanced in trying to suggest that this proposal is somehow illegitimate or improper, or is intended to overturn the result of the referendum. Is it improper for this House to decide that in leaving the EU, we wish to remain within a customs union with it? Is it improper for this House to decide that we wish to remain in a single market, or to continue to have the European arrest warrant system, or that we want to co-operate in future with our friends and neighbours on foreign policy, defence and security? If the answer to all those questions is no, it is not improper; this Lords amendment is about giving Parliament the ability to ensure it can exercise that judgment when the time comes. It seeks to make it clear who will be in control when we come to the end of the process: the Government can go away and negotiate, but they will have to win the consent of the House when they return. The Government's attempts to neuter the Lords amendment will not work for a number of reasons that have been set out already. I say to the Solicitor General that, frankly, we do not have more time, which is why this is the moment when we have to make the choice. Secondly, as has been clearly pointed out, it makes no provision for what happens in the event of there being no deal. The House is aware of what the consequence of no deal would be for the border in Northern Ireland, our trade, the rights of British citizens abroad and EU citizens here, future co-operation on security and many other matters.
Given all that the right hon. Gentleman has been outlining, is it not fascinating that when Brexiteer MPs ask themselves about a vote on Brexit, they fear they will lose it and therefore that Brexit will be reversed? That displays no confidence in their argument at all.
I say to the hon. Gentleman that the British people have made their decision about the fact that we are leaving the institutions of the European Union in March next year, but it is for this House to decide the way in which we leave and the future of our relationship with our friends and neighbours, who will remain our friends and neighbours after we have left.
I will not give way again as many other Members wish to speak. The question is: who decides what happens next in the circumstances either of there being no deal or of Parliament rejecting the deal the Government bring back in October or November? In the event of a rejection I think it is pretty safe to assume that Parliament will, in moving an amendment to the motion asking for approval of the withdrawal agreement, set out its reasons why. Parliament might say for example that it declines to give approval to the withdrawal agreement because it makes no provision for the UK remaining in a customs union with the EU. In those circumstances, as many Members- including the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the Father of the House-have made clear, it is perfectly reasonable for the House of Commons then to expect the Government of the day to go back to those with whom they have been negotiating. As always happens in negotiations, people come back and say, as the Chief Whip is now experiencing, “I'm really sorry, I have tried, but the Members will not wear it; we need to talk about doing something else.â€ It is perfectly reasonable for the House to do that; otherwise, as we have heard many times, the notion that we have somehow taken back control has no force whatsoever. We need a mechanism that can enable the House to have its say both in the event of there being no deal because an agreement cannot be reached and in circumstances where the House of Commons says it does not accept the deal the Government have brought back.
The only opportunity.
My hon. Friend is correct: it is the only opportunity to make it clear to the Government that we intend to have our say when the negotiations have been concluded. This is the one chance that we have to exercise the sovereignty that we all believe properly rests with this House, whether we voted leave or remain in the referendum. I hope very much that the House, recognising that this is its one chance, will take that opportunity by voting later today for Lords amendment 19.
The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) has spoken with passion and clarity, and above all she has spoken about courage and about putting our country first. I should like to pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who has done exactly that today. This involved personal sacrifice-and who knows what the electorate might do in the future-but he is using his judgment and making an assessment about what is in the best interests of his constituents, and that is greatly to be respected. I was fascinated to hear the exchange between the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and those on the Government Front Bench a moment ago. It seems to me that the obvious solution would be for the Government to signal that they will accept the amendment in lieu tabled by the right hon. and learned Gentleman-
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No, I am not going to give way. There are lots of others who want to speak- No, sit down. If the Government were to accept the amendment, and if the House were to approve that-as it would, because this would be done by consensus-that issue would then go to the House of Lords. Through the discussions that would subsequently take place there, it might be amended or tweaked in some way, and there would then be an opportunity for the other place to send it back here for final confirmation. However, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman were simply to take the word of Ministers on this question-I understand that that sometimes happens-the leverage of this House could be lost if those discussions came to naught.
We have to be realistic, and there is an issue here. If the Government wanted to accept the entirety of the amendment, that could probably be done this afternoon and that would be the amendment that went back to the Lords, incorporated in theirs. In fairness to the Government, I have always appreciated that there might be some tweaking to be done. I understand that. Having said that, does the hon. Gentleman agree that there needs to be some certainty that the substance of this amendment will come with the acceptance of the Government in the other place?
That is right, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I suggest that it is far better to have that amendment in the Bill as it goes to the other place, which may decide to tweak or change it following discussions. That seems to reflect what feels like the majority view in the Chamber today on the need for a sense of certainty that something will be done. This is not just a matter of one Minister, because a Minister's word can be given and then changed-
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Does my hon. Friend recall that, during the general election, the Prime Minister said that she was being obstructed in Parliament and needed a big majority? Well, she got her answer at that election. Coming back to another point that my hon. Friend has made, the midlands rely on trade, and we should not be jeopardising hundreds of thousands of jobs in the west midlands.
My hon. Friend says it perfectly. We would be failing in our duty if we were simply to delegate all our decisions to the Prime Minister and say, “That's it. Everything has been done.â€ Leaving the customs union or the single market was not on the ballot paper, and those are things on which we have a right to express our view.
I want to conclude. The other problem with the deal is the future relationship, because when that motion comes, my constituents expect that it will be about not just the divorce proceedings, the money and the process of leaving, but what our future relationship will be. It must be. If there is simply a side of A4-a flimsy statement of words-with the famous fudge that we are so used to hearing about stapled as an annex to the back of it, that will be unacceptable. We have a duty to press Ministers to do a proper deal that safeguards our constituents' interests. As MPs, we must ensure that we exercise pressure on the Government to do things properly. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield clearly now has the majority of the House with him, because we would not see the Government Chief Whip scuttling around so rapidly-I have never seen him move so quickly-trying to find a form of words. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will take this opportunity to get his amendment in lieu in the Bill now and send it to the House of Lords. The Lords can always amend, change it or look at it again, and we can come back to this next week and do things properly. It is not our fault that only 12 hours were allocated to this whole ridiculous process; we could have had far longer. The Government have made their bed, and they must now lie in in it. They set up this process, and they cannot realistically complain, “Ooh, I didn't have the chance to read this overnight.â€ If they want a particular change, they need to accept the will of the House. They can always table amendments in the House of Lords. That seems the best way forward.
I am somewhat troubled by what the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) just said, not least because he wants to kick the matter back to the House of Lords. I thought that the whole argument in respect of the amendment tabled by Viscount Hailsham was about the primacy of the House of Commons. Why would we go back to the other House and ask the Lords for an opinion when it is this House that voted 6:1 in favour of having a referendum? Furthermore, this House endorsed the decision taken by the people to leave the European Union. That is what is now being put under pressure, and it is complete nonsense-junk-to suggest that the amendment about the meaningful vote is not in fact an attempt to reverse the decision of the people.
It has been said that the amendment of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) is a compromise, but people should read it. Proposed new subsection (5C) is absolutely clear. It states:“If no political agreement has been reachedâ€, the Government must come back for“a resolution in the House of Commonsâ€. That is exactly the same thing as in proposed new subsection (5) in Lords amendment 19. It is not a compromise; it is a wrecking amendment.
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, because I have the texts of the two amendments in front of me and was just about to make the point that they are not that different. Both state that the Government“must follow any direction in relation to the negotiations under Article 50(2)...which has been-(a) approved by a resolution of the House of Commonsâ€. What on earth is that supposed to mean? There is no way in which this House of Commons-650 Members of Parliament-can arrive at a motion that would prescribe what the Government will do in the negotiations. It is not simply a question whether we are somehow or other departing from normal constitutional procedures; it is that the amendment is complete nonsense and makes no sense. Furthermore, what would such a resolution say? I heard the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who chairs the Exiting the European Union Committee, talk about the customs union and the single market and so forth. However, the amendments talk about approving a resolution of the House of Commons. Who would devise it? What would it say? How on earth would we get 650 people to agree either on what the motion would say or on what the outcome would be? I have listened to this debate with great interest, and I must say that this is just a cover for a reversal of the decision. That has to be said, and it has to be said clearly. I find it extraordinary that there should be some attempt to throw the matter to the House of Lords so that they can then tell us-we, the people who are elected by the people of this country, who themselves were given the right by the transfer specifically of the responsibility to make the decision on behalf of themselves, their families and future generations-what to do. This is what people fought and died for, which is who governs this country. I say-
Thank you, Mr Speaker. You did quite a good job to shout down the shouter downers. The reality is that this is about who governs this country. This country is governed ultimately by an Act of Parliament that gave the sovereign right to the people. It was a deliberate and voluntary transfer and-the primacy of the House of Commons rests in this-it was done by 6:1 in this House. Some Opposition Members did not vote for that referendum.
My hon. Friend knows that I am not a remoaner and that I am completely committed to delivering Brexit, but he is not being fair to the thinking behind the amendment. Many of us are committed to delivering Brexit. Our fear is this, and the question for him is this. I do not want to tie the Prime Minister's hands or to put her negotiations in Europe at the whim of this great colourful Parliament. I want her to be able to go and negotiate, but if we were to vote down a deal or have no deal, is his view that the House would then be locked into accepting no deal, or that this sovereign House at that point should have the ability to say to the Prime Minister, “Go back and push harder.â€?
I absolutely disagree with the notion that this House has the right to overturn the decision taken by the people. Furthermore, approval on the terms of the amendment is completely unacceptable. I repeat that the amendment states that the Government“must follow any direction in relation to the negotiations under Article 50(2)...which has been-approved by a resolution of the House of Commonsâ€. That is not acceptable for one simple reason: the decision was taken by the people. We gave them that decision and we have to stand by it.
Resigning ministerial office has been an incredibly difficult decision. I did that in order to support my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve)-my trusted friend-in his attempt to amend the Government amendment to Lords amendment 19. I am devastated to have had to take this decision. I owe the House an explanation and there are four points I would make. For me personally, this is a matter of deep principle. I believe in the Burkean principle that our institutions guarantee our human rights. Most important of all, a Government's first responsibility is to protect their citizens. That is usually understood in military terms, but I believe it applies more generally. It means that, sometimes, when a majority of our people want something that is against the good of society, the Government and Parliament have a responsibility to protect us. That was the case on the death penalty, when for decades politicians went against the majority view and refused to reinstate it. I believe it now needs to be the case on the Brexit process.
Congratulations and well done, sir.
I thank my right hon. Friend for that. I believe there is growing evidence that shows the Brexit policy our Government are currently pursuing to deliver on the 2016 referendum is detrimental to the people we were elected to serve.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his courageous decision. Does he agree that there is no majority in this House or in the country for a destructive, cliff-edge, no-deal Brexit?
The hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) said that if Brexit is worth doing, it is worth doing well. I absolutely agree, and I absolutely agree that people in the country want to see Brexit being done well. That means leaving the European Union properly by getting out of the single market and not being in the customs union. If we stay in either of those, we are not really leaving the EU. I urge the House to reject Lords amendment 19. I spent a few hours-I was going to say “an interesting few hoursâ€, but it was not particularly interesting-reading the entire House of Lords debate on that amendment, as I am sure most Members in the Chamber have. I regret very much that many leading Lords made it clear that they wanted to stop Brexit. I believe that Lords amendment 19, dressed up as it is in the language of parliamentary democracy, is not right and not true. If that means saying that it is disingenuous-if that is the word we have to use-that is what it is, although I would probably use a stronger word.
Did the hon. Lady note that the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) talked in his speech about the rights of Parliament but not the duties? The duty of this Parliament is to implement the wishes of the British people.
I agree with the hon. Lady. I also think that the people of this country will see through Lords amendment 19.
Will the hon. Lady give way?
No, I will not. The people of this country will see that Lords amendment 19 is really about trying to go back on Brexit. Their lordships can say what they want, but that amendment is actually about reversing Brexit. We want to take back control, but taking back control was about the people of this country taking back control and our complying with our constitutional duties as a parliamentary democracy. The European Commission has tried to be as negative and difficult as possible, and I find it absolutely amazing that anyone would think that if, at the end of the day, we did not negotiate a good deal and we said no, we would send that back for renegotiation. Do hon. Members really think that the European Commission would give us a better deal if it knew that the more obstructive it was, the more likely it would be that any deal would be sent back for renegotiation? The reality is that the European Commission does not want us to leave. It does not want to give us a good deal; it wants to punish us.
Will the hon. Lady give way?
No, I will not. If Lords amendment 19 is agreed to, it will be a recipe for the EU to try to get no deal so that we will have to go back from this Parliament, cap in hand, and ask for changes. What it really wants is for those changes to be staying in the single market, staying in the customs union, still having the European Court of Justice looking over us, still paying our money-more and more money-and reversing the decision. Whatever is said today, this is really about whether we believe in giving people the right to have their say. We said in the letter that went to everyone, which cost a huge amount of money:“This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.â€
In addition to the referendum, will the hon. Lady reflect on the fact that at last year's general election, both parties stood on a ticket of leaving the customs union, ending freedom of movement and repatriating our laws. Both parties were quite unequivocal, and that result needs to be respected.
The hon. Gentleman is right that all the manifestos referred to honouring Brexit by leaving the customs union and the single market. Labour put it in a slightly more nuanced way, but, particularly in leave areas, people were told that we would be leaving the single market and the customs union. This will be very important vote. As we have heard, it is absolutely crucial that we do not allow Lords amendment 19 to be carried. Today we must make a decision. We either support those 17.5 million people who voted to leave, or we say that we will allow people who really want to stop Brexit-by using procedural mechanisms, legal challenges and legal words-to put the whole thing in doubt. I am confident that, in the end, we will not allow the Lords-the unelected House of Lords, which is full of former EU commissioners and people who are funded by the European Union-to decide what we are going to do.
I want to focus my remarks on Lords amendment 19, which is about the fundamental question of the engagement of Parliament in the process and the outcome of Brexit. It has been argued that the amendment has been tabled to, in essence, frustrate the Brexit process, but that could not be further from the truth. At its heart, this debate is about what we mean by a meaningful vote. The Prime Minister and other senior Ministers have promised Parliament a meaningful vote. I echo the words of the noble Lord Hailsham, who said that“in a parliamentary system of government, parliamentarians, and in particular Members of the House of Commons, have a right and a duty to determine what is meant by ‘a meaningful vote'.â€- If the decision of Parliament, on the basis of good argument or after effective scrutiny, is to reject the terms of the deal, then Parliament should have the right to determine and suggest further negotiations or options on how we move forward. There is an important principle that did not get as much of an airing in the Secretary of State's speech as I would have expected-namely, the role of Parliament. In a parliamentary democracy, is it not right that whatever the outcome, deal or no deal, this country's future should be determined by Parliament-ultimately, by the House of Commons-and not by Ministers? That is what ought to be meant by a meaningful vote. It is in the interests of this country for there to be an orderly, stable and predictable Brexit process that enables businesses and families to plan ahead and do all they can to manage the risks of transition-a point often made to me by businesses in my constituency. If the Government are as confident as they make out about getting a good deal, they should have no problem accepting this amendment.
The hon. Lady claims that she is very worried about the fact that we could have a bad deal or no deal, but will she not concede that in advocating amendment 19, she is more or less guaranteeing that the EU will offer us a bad deal to create a constitutional crisis in our country?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment, but I do not agree. Legislation is passed in this House not just to plan for when things go well but to provide protections and a route map for actions when things do not go well. There may well be an honest intention to reach a deal by October 2018, but there is no guarantee. I am not talking down the Government's negotiation attempts, but there is a real possibility that that may not happen. Let me be clear: this is not about an unnecessary extension of, or thwarting of, the process; it is about providing for clarity in this House, in the circumstances that may arise, about what happens in the final months before Brexit. This can only be helpful in managing the risks of Brexit for our country in the event that a deal is well under way but not reached, or that a deal has not been agreed. It would certainly not be against the spirit of the referendum result, and it could be precisely in the national interest at the time.
I have heard a number of times that the meaningful vote might or would enable the European Union to give us a bad deal. I argue that it is the contrary. A UK Government with any wit about them would say to their negotiating opponents, “We'll never get this through Parliament unless it is improved.â€ It actually strengthens their hand in the negotiations, rather than weakens it, if they have any wit about them.
I find that assessment of the circumstances very hard to follow. We are not negotiating on our own; we are negotiating with another party, and clearly it is in their interest to put a bad deal on the table in that situation. That would delay the exit process, which is effectively what these amendments seek to do. I am not saying that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield is looking to frustrate the process of Brexit, but it would delay the process of Brexit and raise the possibility of that process never happening at all. We are handing over the negotiating advantage to the EU.
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I want to reiterate the commitment that I have given at the Despatch Box on behalf of the Government to further discuss the matter with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield and others. I am particularly interested in new subsections (5A) and (5B) of his proposals and want to use that as the basis of a structured discussion as we reach the Lords amendments.
I am about to conclude, Mr Speaker. The amendment would hand over the negotiating advantage to the EU and raise the prospect, whether Members intend it or not, that we may never leave. Opposition Members should not support it.
I say to the Secretary of State that if he goes naked to the negotiating table-flaunting it all-it is because he and his supporters have conducted their ideological warfare on the airwaves and in our newspapers, not because of any votes we may have today. The Liberal Democrats have tabled amendment (a) to Lords amendment 19, which would provide people with a final say on the deal. It would be an opportunity to test the will of the people, and I do not quite understand why the Government-and, indeed, the Brexiteers-are so scared by the concept of testing the will of the people. We have heard a lot about the will of the people, and I must say that it is now the only reason the Government can deploy for supporting Brexit. If we look at the economic grounds, we know from the impact assessments that it will do us damage. On the diplomatic grounds, our friends despair at what we are doing. On the security grounds, we hear threats and counter-threats about not delivering on the security agenda. On savings, we know there will not be any because, among other things, the Government will have to set up a whole series of parallel institutions doing exactly the same thing as the EU ones. On trade, do we really think we are going to get a huge boost from trade with Trump as a protectionist President? Our amendment (a) to Lords amendment 19 would provide the people with an opportunity to have their views known on this subject, against a background in which much has changed since the referendum vote two years ago. It would give them a say on the final deal, which they are entitled to and deserve, and I think that would put this issue to bed once and for all.
Two great dramas are being played out. The Father of the House asked how we, as part of a representative system of government, should implement a referendum result. There has also been a drama on this side of the House. Two thirds of Labour constituencies voted to leave-
But two thirds of Labour voters voted to remain.
I am not disputing that. If my hon. Friend wants to intervene, he can do so and give me another minute. I am not trying to impugn anybody's motives, but when we signed up to the referendum, rather than the normal four sides of A4 of additions-
May I just say to the right hon. Gentleman that with regard to the issues we have been discussing, I and the Government are looking very carefully at amendments that may be tabled in the other place? Such amendments will be the product of any discussions I have with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve).
For the referendum, it was not four sides, but a small telephone directory of people-they are generally talked about in a disdainful way-who were saying they had nowhere else to go. My real concern is what happens to representing those key Labour interests. I hope that there will be those further discussions and, in the process of coming to a good resolution and ensuring that the majority of the two thirds of the Labour constituencies are well represented, may I be part of any of those private discussions?
I want to say how grateful I am that the Lords have given the consideration they have to the Bill, and they have improved it considerably before sending it back to us. I accept that the Solicitor General has given an important concession today and I would have supported the Lords amendment had that concession not been made.
I think it would be very helpful to the House if the hon. Lady could spell out in a little more detail exactly what the consensus is-
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Having failed to secure three days of debate on the Lords amendments through an earlier Liberal Democrat amendment-which we can see was in fact desperately needed, because we are not going to have any time at all to discuss Northern Ireland or the devolution settlements- I must now seek your guidance on another matter. There is a Liberal Democrat amendment on the amendment paper that would provide for a final say on the deal. It is supported by more than 20 Members of Parliament, and more have indicated that they would support it if it was pushed to a vote, but that is not going to be possible. Indeed, the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), with his new-found freedom, may have wanted to support it. I seek your advice on what we can do to make our proceedings more transparent to the public and ensure we vote on matters that are dear to the public's heart, such as a final say on the deal. I also seek your advice on how to stop the Government closing down debate on matters that they consider to be uncomfortable or that would expose their incompetence or inconsistency.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to raise a real concern among Labour Members. We voted against the programme motion-we presented an alternative-and we will not be able to debate our amendment on the devolution settlement in the House because we will not have sufficient time. We therefore-
Insufficient parliamentary time has been allocated for debate. We presented an alternative programme motion that would have afforded sufficient time. I therefore seek your advice, Mr Speaker, in relation to how the Labour party will stand up for the people of Scotland and the devolution settlement, and how we can deliver that amendment. It is not acceptable that we are unable to debate it in Government time, so we seek your advice.
indicated dissent.
I beg to move Government amendment (a) to Lords amendment 25.
This group of amendments covers two subjects: first, the operation of competences returning to this country from the European Union that intersect with devolved competences under the three devolution settlements; and, secondly, the Lords amendment on Northern Ireland and the Belfast agreement. Let me turn first to the matters that apply to devolution. In its original form, the Bill, in what was then clause 11, provided for all those powers to be held initially at Westminster and transferred to a devolved level only when agreement had been reached on an appropriate UK-wide framework to protect and preserve the UK single market and respect our international obligations. The key charge against the old clause was that it was not right to hold otherwise devolved powers returning from the EU in Westminster by default.
Is the right hon. Gentleman not ashamed, embarrassed and appalled that we have only 15 minutes to discuss these critical devolution issues? These amendments were designed in the House of Lords, but we, the directly elected Members, have not had the opportunity to debate them. Is he not ashamed of himself?
No. I think that the Government allowed perfectly adequate time for debate on these issues. As the hon. Gentleman knows, these questions on devolution matters have been discussed in great detail by me, my Ministers and officials, and the Welsh and Scottish Governments and legislatures for many months. As I hope to explain, the Government have made very substantial compromises to address precisely the concerns raised by both Scotland and Wales. I am pleased that the Welsh Government have accepted the merits of the compromise we proposed and reached an agreement.
Does not the Minister agree that there might be more confidence in the Government's approach if he had managed to table his amendments in this House before the Bill went to the other place?
The purpose of a parliamentary process is to examine in detail. In respect of these clauses, the House of Lords has done its job as a constructive revising Chamber. I certainly had very good conversations with Members of the House of Lords from the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, as well as those from my own party and Cross Benchers. As I said, we continued very detailed conversations with not just the Welsh Government, who have agreed, but the Scottish Government. I want to put on record that although we have not been able to reach a final agreement, the Scottish Government have engaged for many months in a very constructive fashion. Many of the detailed changes embodied in this group of amendments actually reflect things that the Scottish Government, as well as the Welsh Government, sought from us. We have, alongside the amendments, designed, working with the devolved Governments, a comprehensive intergovernmental agreement. This makes it clear that the UK Government will always seek agreement from the devolved Governments and should act by agreement, wherever possible. In response to the request from both Wales and Scotland, we have underpinned that principle with a commitment that we will not normally ask the UK Parliament to approve regulations to preserve existing frameworks without devolved consent for those regulations.
Is it not the case that the Minister is placing legal constraints on the Governments of Wales and Scotland, but only political constraints on the Westminster Government?
It is simply not possible, by legislation, to constrain the UK Parliament. The UK Parliament is sovereign. I know the hon. Gentleman's party in the Welsh Assembly opposed the compromise on offer, but I was very pleased to see that the Labour Government in Wales and the Liberal Democrats in Wales were prepared to accept what I thought was a reasonable compromise, to vote in favour of a legislative consent motion and to commit themselves to repeal the Welsh Government's continuity Bill at the earliest possible occasion. The Scottish and Welsh Governments have also been clear that we should not try to use these regulations as a mechanism to avoid seeking legislative consent when creating future frameworks. We agree, and we have spelled that out in terms in the agreement. They asked us for a guarantee that we would not legislate for England where devolved powers to legislate for their respective nations were frozen, and we have put that into the agreement as well. That is why I do not accept the case that has been put forward by the Scottish Government for withholding consent for these proposals.
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Does he not acknowledge that when we passed the Scotland Act 1998-the right hon. Gentleman was a Member of Parliament at the time-it was very specific about what are reserved matters? We cannot get away from the fact that what this Government are doing is legislating on matters that are devolved. This is a power grab. Will the Secretary of State commit today not to legislate without a legislative consent motion from the Scottish Parliament on behalf of the Scottish people?
Not only do the agreements that we have reached with the Welsh Government and embodied in these amendments respect the devolution settlement- indeed, Welsh Ministers have said very firmly that they believe that devolution is fully respected-but I think that we have complied in full with our obligations under the Sewel convention. The right hon. Gentleman should look again at the statement by Mr Mike Russell, the Minister for UK Negotiations on Scotland's Place in Europe from the Scottish Government, who described the situation we are in as a “novelâ€ one and said:“In normal times, such a bill would follow a normal timetable, but these are not normal times.â€- It is the Scottish Government who are saying that we are not in a normal situation.
At a time when President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, the most difficult of partners, can show that an agreement can be reached, is it not telling that the only person who cannot reach an agreement is Nicola Sturgeon, because all the SNP cares about is grievance and independence?
My hon. Friend puts his finger on the truth. It is of course a great disappointment that the Labour party in the Scottish Parliament, despite its protestations of Unionism, on this occasion decided to ally itself with the Scottish nationalists.
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the 119 powers coming to the Scottish Parliament and the 24 powers being reserved are exactly what people in Scotland want? It strengthens devolution but maintains Scotland in the United Kingdom. Does he also agree that perhaps if Holyrood had had more than 25 hours of debate versus the 252 hours of debate here, we could have reached an agreement, and we would not be here today?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding the House that we should bear in mind, when listening to the criticisms of the allocation of time here, that it is sometimes a question of people living in a glass house flinging rocks around. I say to him, too, that of course Scottish business has been very clear that we need UK-wide frameworks to protect a single UK market that brings great benefits both to Scottish business and Scottish consumers. It is only a few weeks since the Scottish Retail Consortium, the Scottish Food and Drink Federation and the Scottish Bakers said in terms in public that the maintenance of United Kingdom-wide frameworks on such matters as food standards and food labelling was of vital importance to the future wellbeing of their member companies and the customers whom they serve.
While Government MPs and the SNP fight over flags, I would rather fight for my constituents, so can the Minister tell the House when I will be able to debate this particular clause on behalf of my constituents, because this elected House has had no time either to debate that clause or the very important issues in Northern Ireland and in Wales?
I say to the hon. Gentleman, who I suspect does not share the views of the Labour party at Holyrood on this matter, that he should address his concerns and criticisms to his own Front-Bench team. It was their decision to divide, but it was approaching the ridiculous for us to have three separate Divisions on whether the word “necessaryâ€ should replace the word “appropriateâ€. It was open to the Opposition to accept a single vote grouping those three amendments, but they chose not to, and that has used up a significant amount of our time. We have ensured that no existing power will be taken from the devolved institutions and have provided for a significant increase in the decision-making powers of the devolved Administrations after exit. In doing so, however, we have also made sure that we do not compromise on those important common approaches we have to safeguard our internal market, manage our common resources and allow us to be an open and competitive trading nation as we develop new arrangements to replace the EU frameworks.
Will the Minister accept that the programme motion passed earlier today has led to the ridiculous situation that these important amendments, including amendments on the Irish border, have to be debated in such a short period and it looks as though his is the only voice that will be heard?
There is a balance between my giving way frequently and allowing more time for others to speak. I repeat to the hon. Lady that it was the choice of her Front-Bench team to have 11 or 12 Divisions, in a number of cases duplicating in one Division what had already been determined in another. I will turn now to Lords amendment 25 on the Northern Ireland border. In many ways, the amendment is, as a number of noble Lords noted, a statement of Government policy and was prompted very eloquently in the Lords by my noble Friend Lord Patten. It seeks to ensure that we will not act incompatibly with the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and that we will have due regard to the joint report of December last year. It seeks to protect north-south co-operation between Northern Ireland and Ireland and to prevent, among other things, physical infrastructure on the border with Ireland.
I welcome the decision to tidy up the jurisdiction and sovereignty issues raised in the House of Lords in the Patten amendment. Will the Minister confirm that the powers in the amendment are restricted purely to the purposes of the Bill?
I can confirm that the right hon. Gentleman's interpretation of the Government amendment in lieu is exactly as he has described.
The Minister will be well aware that there is considerable concern in Northern Ireland that we should have no hard border. The Government have repeatedly confirmed their commitment to that, and I do not doubt the Minister's bona fides, but that commitment appears to be contradicted on the ground by decisions of the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who has in recent weeks asked for funding for up to 400 additional police officers for operational duties along the border post Brexit and, significantly, is retaining three disused border police stations. What does the Minister think he is doing? Is he preparing for a hard border?
As the hon. Lady knows, Ministers in the United Kingdom Government have no power to direct or even give guidance to the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland or the Northern Ireland Policing Board. The Government could not have been clearer about our commitment to ensuring no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That was a key element of the joint report agreed last December, and it is a commitment that the Prime Minister described in her Mansion House speech as a fundamental underlying principle of our approach to our negotiations with the European Union. We said in the House of Lords that we agreed with the spirit and intent of Lord Patten's amendment, but that it was not drafted in a legally appropriate way. We therefore tabled a number of amendments to try to tidy it up and ensure that it was in a fit form, which I hope will command consensus in the House. It reflects the reality that the withdrawal agreement-
I beg to move amendment (a) to Lords amendment 51.
Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman prepared to accept free movement as the cost of a customs union, or is he not?
I will come to that issue, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that free movement has nothing to do with the customs union.
Given the reports that we are hearing just now that No. 10 has rejected the agreement that was made yesterday with sensible Conservative MPs on the Grieve amendment, at least the third part of it, there is no guarantee now-absolutely none-that there will be a meaningful vote. Is it not absolutely essential that a loud voice goes out from this House today to say that we want the least damaging Brexit possible-in the customs union and in a single market?
I am grateful for that intervention. I have not seen the news that is just coming through. If that is the case, it is extremely concerning. A strong message needs to go out from this House about the proper role of Parliament in the article 50 process and one that argues for the best possible outcome in terms of a close economic relationship with the EU.
I will give way-
Give way!
I have already given way, so I cannot be accused of not giving way.
I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. We need to be very clear about this. Something may have happened, but I heard the Prime Minister saying very clearly from the Dispatch Box that an amendment would be forthcoming, that it would largely incorporate much of the amendment that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) tabled yesterday, that discussions and negotiations are continuing, that that amendment will be tabled in the Lords in due course and that the job will be done on a meaningful vote involved for this House.
I am grateful for that intervention. I have not seen whatever news is coming out, but having observed the proceedings yesterday and the various interventions, it seems to me that what the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) was saying was very clear for us all to hear. He spoke about the specific paragraphs that were of huge importance, and we heard about what the proposed amendment in the Lords would contain. Obviously, we will have to wait and see what the wording is, but, from my point of view, as someone who was observing it, I thought that it was pretty clear what was being said from the Front Bench about what was likely to happen in the course of next week.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way on that very point?
I will, but I must say that I was not anticipating spending the whole afternoon on re-interpreting yesterday, but let us see how we get on.
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, though it was fun yesterday, the truth is that, if this House wants a meaningful vote, there are ways and means by which we will have a meaningful vote irrespective of what the legislation says?
I could not help noticing yesterday that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) was spelling that out, the Government's position was that, should article 50 be voted down, they guarantee that they will make a statement within 28 days and that that was not particularly convincing-the Brexit Secretary himself found that to be a cause of some amusement. That is certainly not enough. What is needed is the opportunity for this House not only to vote on the article 50 deal, but to have an appropriate and proper role if the article 50 deal is voted down. I am afraid that we are rehearsing yesterday's argument, but we on the Labour Benches voted for the amendment, which would have given not only a meaningful vote, but a proper role for Parliament afterwards to decide what happens next.
Well said, Mr Speaker.
It's right hon. Gentleman.
I will press on, make my case and take some further interventions later on. I was saying that the proposal in Lords amendments 1 and 2 that the Government should seek to negotiate a customs union with the EU as part of the future arrangements is a sensible one for many reasons. The first is the economy. Over a number of decades, our manufacturing model has adapted to the arrangements that we currently have with the EU, including the customs union. Thus, typically, we see, across the UK, thousands of manufacturing businesses that operate on the basis of a vital supply chain in goods and parts from across the EU. The car industry is an obvious example, but not the only one. Such businesses operate on the basis of a just-in-time approach. Whereas years ago there were stockpiles of parts and so on, these days there is a just-in-time approach. Parts come in and are assembled, and the finished product then goes quickly and seamlessly across the UK and/or out to the EU. That is the manufacturing model that this country has operated for many years, and MPs across the House know that that is what goes on in their constituencies.
The outgoing president of the CBI said today that manufacturing sectors, particularly the car industry, would be severely damaged if the UK did not stay in a customs union with the EU. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that those comments are very concerning?
One of the risks for Members taking interventions is that the very next point we are about to make is stolen, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will just remind the House that the president of the CBI this morning said:“If we do not have a customs union, there are sectors of manufacturing society in the UK which risk becoming extinct... Be in no doubt, that is the reality.â€This is at the heart of the debate. If we destroy the manufacturing model that I just described, we destroy a vital part of the economy and job losses will be considerable. That is why there are such high levels of concern across the business community about the Government's current approach.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is being very generous in taking interventions. Will he just tell the House whether he believes that Britain should remain in the EEA-yes or no?
For the benefit of the House, I am going to go through the customs union argument before moving on to discuss the EEA and the single market, and then I have other remarks to make. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will deal with his point when I deal with the EEA. I am currently dealing with the customs union.
Is Labour in favour of staying in the customs union, or a customs union that approximates to a customs arrangement that would allow us to make free trade deals with states other than the EU-the customs union, or a customs arrangement?
The current customs arrangements are in the membership treaty. Therefore, if they are to be replicated and if there is to be a customs union that does the work of the current customs union, there needs to be a new treaty. That is why we are in favour of a customs union, but a customs union that does the work of the customs union that we are currently in. Although this was a point of great heat and discussion weeks and months ago, I think most people now understand that there will have to be a new agreement that replicates and does the work of the current customs union.
I am going to make some progress; I have taken a lot of interventions and I will take others later. The concern about the customs union is not confined to the business community. It inevitably extends to trade unions, on behalf of those they represent; those who depend on the manufacturing sector; and those who work in and operate our ports and places of entry and exit. I have visited Dover to look at the operation there and to talk through with management and staff the impact of any change to the current customs arrangements. I have also visited Holyhead, the second biggest port, where there are high levels of concern.
I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman wants to separate out the customs union from the single market, but we cannot separate those two things if we are talking about frictionless trade and just-in-time deliveries. Checks would be required not just for customs and rules of origin, but for product regulations and conformity with standards. Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), is the right hon. and learned Gentleman therefore willing to accept free movement of people as the price of access to the single market?
I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will discuss the single market and the EEA, and I will deal with his question then. At the moment, I am making a case on the customs union, although I accept the proposition that the customs union on its own does not produce frictionless trade, and nor does it answer the question, “How would you prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland?â€ I will specifically deal with this matter later in my speech, and I will take further interventions then.
Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that the Dutch Government and the European Commission have begun to advise businesses not to take car parts produced in the UK for export because of concerns about rules of origin. Will today's proposals address that?
I had heard that. It is not an isolated example; there are others. This is deeply troubling, which is why the amendments before the House today are so important.
My right hon. and learned Friend has already reminded the House that the Cabinet has not made up its mind on what sort of customs arrangement it wants. Is it his understanding, as it is mine, that the maximum facilitation option would entail infrastructure on the border in Northern Ireland, so it would get us back to the hard border that everyone says we want to avoid?
The main problem with maximum facilitation is that it involves technology yet to be invented and certainly yet to be made to operate. Nobody knows quite what it is, whether it can be developed and delivered, and if so, when. On the Northern Ireland border-although I will speak about Northern Ireland later-the commitment is to no infrastructure, no checks and no controls. I will come to that point specifically when I deal with Northern Ireland.
My right hon. and learned Friend will be aware that the permanent secretary of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs indicated that the implementation costs of maximum facilitation would be £17 billion to £20 billion a year. This information was shared across Whitehall, so Ministers are well aware that it would be damaging to our economy.
Yes, I did see that figure. It is deeply concerning that those sorts of costs are even contemplated for that option in relation to technology that has not been developed or, in many respects, even invented. That is why there is such a bitter dispute going on in the Cabinet.
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
I am going to press on, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. I will take other interventions later. I realise that all sorts of fanciful promises about new customs arrangements were made during the referendum and have been made since, but we have a duty to protect our economy, jobs and the manufacturing sector across the UK. That is at the heart of today's debate. The only way to uphold that duty is to negotiate a customs union with the EU. There is, of course, another important aspect. In December last year, our Government made a solemn promise in the phase 1 agreement: no hard border in Northern Ireland. And that was spelt out-no infrastructure, no checks and no controls. Now, in all the to-ing and fro-ing yesterday, what may have been missed is that one amendment that went through, without any dissent from the Opposition, was a Government amendment to Lords amendment 25 for that obligation to be legally binding in UK law. That is a very significant amendment; after the political commitment in December to no hard border, no infrastructure, no checks and no controls, we now have a binding law to that effect. This goes to the issue of maximum facilitation, because if maximum facilitation does involve infrastructure, checks or controls, it would be unlawful under the provision passed yesterday. Therefore, it cannot happen.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right. We did not get to debate that amendment because we ran out of time yesterday, but it is huge. It means that, logically, we will have to come to a customs union agreement, partnership- -I'll do that. I do not care what we call it, but that is what we will need to avoid any border at all in Northern Ireland. It is great progress.
It is a significant amendment, and it was also a significant amendment in the Lords. Even as amended-taking it back to being closer to the wording of the phase 1 agreement-the amendment is still a very significant measure.
It also goes further than that, does it not? Not only will we have to stay in a form of customs arrangement amounting to a union, but we will also have to have a high level of regulatory alignment. Otherwise, the life that takes place along the border will be impossible because of different regulations on either side.
I agree, and I will develop that argument, because a customs union alone will not solve the conundrum of how to keep to the solemn commitment to having no hard border in Northern Ireland.
I will not repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) have said, because I was about to make the same point. It was the most significant thing that happened yesterday, but given the circus that surrounded everything and the timetable that stopped us debating it, nobody so far has taken any notice. However, it does bear on today's debate, because yesterday's legally binding commitment extends the needs of the Irish border to the whole United Kingdom. We are talking about Dover-and we settled that yesterday-and we are not having a border down the Irish sea. The United Kingdom has therefore got to negotiate an arrangement with the EU as a whole that has no new frontier barriers. Effectively, we are going to reproduce the customs union and the single market, and the Government will be unable to comply with yesterday's legal obligation unless it does so.
I am grateful for that intervention. When the phase 1 agreement was reached in December, I thought that commitment was the most significant thing that had happened since the referendum, with regard to indicating what our future relationship with the EU would be. I think that it is clear to everyone who has considered this and visited Northern Ireland to talk it through that the only answer to having no hard border, in the end, is a customs union and high-level single market alignment, and that is why yesterday was so significant. The fact that that was accepted by the Government and turned into domestic law gives it a status that it did not have until yesterday, because previously it was a political agreement at international level. I am not suggesting for one moment that it was not solemnly entered into by the Government, or indeed that they would resile from it as a matter of international negotiation, but it will now become a matter of domestic law. It is probably the most significant thing that happened yesterday.
May I just remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the vast majority of people, not only at the referendum but at the general election-85% of those who voted-voted to leave the customs union and the single market? It was a very clear result. Let me ask him this one straightforward question, for clarity: in their search for a customs union, are the Opposition willing to sacrifice our ability to negotiate trade deals outside the EU in order the achieve that customs union with the EU?
We all want new trade deals. At the moment we have got an excellent trade deal with the EU, and we have 37 additional agreements with 67 countries through our membership of the EU. The first thing we need to do is preserve that. Lots has been said about new trade agreements and how they will be fast and how we will get much better terms than would be offered to any other country in the world. In fact, we are told that they will be queuing up to give us preferential treatment, and quickly. I think the Brexit Secretary said that by March next year we will have had trade deals with countries in an area that is geographically 10 times larger than the EU. Well, he has only a few months left to pull that one off. The Opposition consider that if new trade deals are struck together and jointly with the EU, we have a better chance of getting quicker and better trade deals.
On Monday I was in Ireland with the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, and I think that what happened yesterday will be welcomed across the island. I remind the House that many things that happened in Northern Ireland over the past 40 years did not necessarily arise because of a border; they arose because of civil rights discussions across the island. The House must be mindful that, as we go forward in these discussions, we need to be careful when talking about our relationships across the island, both north and south, and within the United Kingdom.
This is a matter that I know every Member across the House is really concerned about. The commitment to having no hard border in Northern Ireland, which was set out in the Good Friday agreement, was not just a question of how technically one might get people or goods across a line in the road between the Republic and the north, and nor is it as we go forward; it is a manifestation of peace. I had the privilege of working for the Policing Board in Northern Ireland for five years, implementing some of the Good Friday agreement. Having talked to both communities consistently over those five years, I know that this is deep in the hearts of everybody there. This is more than a technical issue; it goes to the heart of what was achieved 20 years ago. We must always bear that in mind.
My right hon. and learned Friend speaks truthfully and eloquently about preserving peace in Northern Ireland, and of the centrality of the border to that. He also says that in order to achieve that we must effectively be in a single market and a customs union. Does he accept that one of the concrete ways we might deliver that is to be in the customs union and the European economic area, which is entirely possible, as Michel Barnier pointed out yesterday?
I assure my hon. Friend that I will come to the EEA later and take interventions on it, but first I want to deal with the customs union.
I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. He referred, quite rightly, to his service to the people of Northern Ireland through the Policing Board in earlier years. I am aware that he visited Northern Ireland recently and met the present chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. He will therefore be aware that the chief constable has recently withdrawn from sale three unused border police stations and asked for funding for an additional 400 police officers to deal with the border arrangements after Brexit. Can he throw some light on why on earth the chief constable would do that if we are not going to have a hard border?
I did go to Northern Ireland recently and I did have a meeting with the chief constable, who I know in any event. We spoke in confidence, and I will not break that confidence, but the facts about staff, posts and buildings, as the hon. Lady has just laid out, are right. Although having no hard border was a political commitment made in December, and it is now a legal commitment, there is a concern that that should be delivered. That is not a concern solely of the Police Service of Northern Ireland; it is a concern across the piece.
I will take two more interventions, from the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), but then I really must press on-I keep saying that, and I must do it.
May I just bring the right hon. and learned Gentleman back to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron)? My understanding from his answer, as it tailed off, is that he is only in favour of trade deals severally and jointly with the European Union. Is he not aware that currently the EU has trade deals in operation with under 10% of the world's economies? Is he saying that under Labour's vision we would be unable to secure trade deals with the other 90%? Does his vision also include the fact that at the moment four fifths of the tariffs collected under the customs union are paid to Brussels? Does he want to see that sort of arrangement continue under his vision?
The EU has trade deals with 67 countries through 37 agreements. It has a further 49 agreements with developing countries. There are 200 countries in the world, 28 in the EU, and 67 are already in extra agreements with the EU, and there are 49 in the developing country agreements. That is a considerable number of countries in the world.
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the crux of today's debate is whether we want a close working relationship with our neighbour and social, cultural and economic partner, the European Union? Ultimately, that is why so many of us-including the business community, trade unions and many Opposition Members -want a customs union.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments, and I agree.
I just want to finish this point- I do not think that anybody could accuse me of not having taken interventions. I need to move on.
I am grateful for that, Mr Speaker. To finish my point about Northern Ireland, I think that the conclusion of the vast majority of people who have considered this in great depth and with concern is that there is no way of delivering on the solemn promise that there should be no hard border in Northern Ireland unless the UK is in a customs union with the EU and there is a high level of single market alignment. The so-called backstop argument that has been going on in recent weeks is testament to that, because the Government are trying to find a post-implementation period phase when in truth we will be in a customs union and in high-level regulatory alignment with the single market. For our economy, and to enable us to keep our solemn commitments on Northern Ireland, I urge hon. and right hon. Members to vote to uphold Lords amendments 1 and 2. I now turn to the EEA and amendment (a) to Lords amendment 51, which is in my name and those of other shadow Front Benchers. I understand why their lordships have become so concerned about the state of negotiations that they want an amendment to cover the single market. The Prime Minister's red lines of October 2016 were a profound mistake. If we are to keep to our duty of protecting our economy, including the manufacturing sector and the services sector, and our solemn promise in relation to Northern Ireland, we need a customs union with the EU, and we also need a strong single market deal based on shared regulations and institutions.
Can my right hon. and learned Friend explain the tangible difference between us being in a customs union with full access to the single market and our being members of the EU, other than the fact that we will not be electing Members of the European Parliament?
Obviously, politically, we will not be in any of the institutions, and we will not be a member of the EU. We are dealing with the question of whether we should have a close economic relationship with the EU, which everybody recognises is a critical issue, and working through the best configuration for that. I do not think that the mere fact that there has been a vote to leave the EU can be interpreted as the wish of anybody who voted to make our economic relationship with the EU any worse. I do not think that anybody was voting to harm the ability of businesses in this country to do business.
I am going to press on and then I will give way again. The EEA has a number of real benefits with regard to shared regulations and shared institutions, but it also presents real challenges. I have taken this option very seriously. I went to Norway to discuss it with that country's political leaders, trade unions and businesses, and I also visited an EEA border-the Norway-Sweden border-to see what it was like. The EEA undoubtedly works well for Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, but their economies are very different from ours, as is their size-Norway has 5 million people, Iceland has 300,000 and Liechtenstein has 37,000. Those countries chose not to be in a customs union with the EU. The European Free Trade Association is, after all, a free trade association, and those countries have struck trade deals in their own right as a group. I am sure that those trade deals work well for them, but I think that the 37 trade deals that the EU has struck work better for the UK than the EFTA trade deals would.
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
I will just complete this point. The EEA excludes agriculture and fisheries, which presents a problem in relation to the solemn commitment to no hard border in Northern Ireland. When I went to the border between Sweden and Norway, there was infrastructure, checks and controls-not for people, but for goods. The EEA also provides very little flexibility on the four freedoms, including freedom of movement and the way in which single market rules are implemented. Some say that those challenges can be overcome. I will continue to listen to those arguments, because there is no doubt that, in addition to a customs union with the EU, we need a strong single market deal, but I do not think we can ignore those challenges.
Despite their small populations, Iceland and Norway represent the two biggest catch sectors in Europe's fishing industry. If the exclusion of the common fisheries policy is so bad in terms of UK membership, how on earth is it that Iceland and Norway, which depend heavily on fishing, are still in the EEA and benefit from it?
I am obviously not making my point in the right way. If the question we are trying to answer is how we ensure there is no hard border in Northern Ireland, it is very difficult to see how we can answer that by adopting the EEA model as it is, because agriculture is outside of the agreement that Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein have struck. That is the point I was trying to make.
It seems to me that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is, in effect, making the same argument on this issue as the Government, which is that we want to negotiate a free trade deal without the bureaucracy or the regulations-in other words, to have the best of the EU and the single market but without the downside. That is a very valid position to take, but can he confirm that he is in concurrence with the Government's position on that?
No, our position is not the same as the Government's at all. I recognise that we need a strong single market model. All I am saying is that I think there are challenges in the EEA model, which is not the only model, and that we would be better off with a model that does not tie us to a particular deal that another country has done. However, and this is why our amendment is important, that model should ensure full access to the single market and no new impediments to trade, with common rights, standards and protections as a minimum, underpinned by shared institutions and regulations. That is a long way from the Government's position because they are not prepared to sign up to those commitments. The frustration in the negotiations is that nobody yet knows, because the Cabinet is still divided, whether the Government really want to negotiate something that is close economically to the EU, which will require shared regulations and institutions, or if they want to negotiate something else altogether.
I hope that all of us who support Brexit wish the UK to have access to the single market on the terms we have now, with the conditions about regulation that will follow from that. A key part of the campaign was that we should have control of our borders and not be subjected to foreign courts. Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that we might have to pay for the privilege of gaining free access to the single market but controlling our borders?
I accept that freedom of access was bound up with the referendum, and that is why every time I have stood at this Dispatch Box, I have said that we accept that freedom of movement will end when we leave the EU. The question is: what comes next, what does it look like and how do we negotiate it with the EU? That does not make things easy, but I think the Government's approach, which was to abandon any argument for the customs union or the single market at the outset for fear of having that discussion with the EU, was wrong in principle.
I absolutely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that, when we leave the European Union, freedom of movement should end, and this is about what comes next. Does he agree that the EEA Norway-Liechtenstein-Iceland model does not allow us to have control over how freedom of movement will change and ties us in to “no sayâ€? Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland have signed up to having no say over freedom of movement.
I have looked very carefully at the provisions in the EEA agreement, and there has been a lot of discussion about articles 112 and 113 in particular. I have to say that my reading of those articles is that they are what are called “in extremisâ€ provisions, which actually do allow some flexibility on all obligations under the EEA agreement, but only in extreme circumstances and for a short period. The argument that others have put to me is that there is a different interpretation, but we are still discussing that matter.
I will give way once more and then I really will have to get on.
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the EEA would become a viable option only if Britain were able to negotiate fundamental changes to the EEA agreement, which would be a huge challenge for the United Kingdom?
In fairness to those who advocate joining the EEA, there is a recognition that the EEA agreement, unamended, would not be the right deal for the UK, but the argument is that it could be amended.
I am going to press on because I have used up far too much time. Our amendment (a) puts forward a strong single market proposition-
indicated dissent.
The Solicitor General shakes his head. If that is not the case, he should accept Lords amendment 4 and get on with it. This is the same argument we have been making since the Bill started its life back in September 2017. There is good reason to be concerned. I know these are old examples, but they are real ones. The Foreign Secretary has complained of “back-breakingâ€ EU workers' rights, and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has claimed that the Government should“have the potential to... if necessary rescindâ€employment protections after Brexit. Such examples give Opposition Members, trade unions and working people across the country huge cause for concern that, in the absence of enhanced protection, these rights will be vulnerable.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is making a very powerful case. I can tell him that Government Members should also be concerned about this matter. I am sure he agrees that it is perfectly possible to carry out Brexit-without incorporating the charter of fundamental rights, which I know is a subject of difficulty-while at the same time securing these rights through this perfectly sensible amendment.
I am grateful for that intervention. I would have thought that this is not controversial. The Prime Minister said that she did not want to reduce these rights, and we take her at her word, but if the Government convert them into a form in which they lose their protection, they make them vulnerable. I would have thought that any Government who want to change these rights would have the decency to do that through primary legislation so that this House can carry out the proper scrutiny process. It is very straightforward. I now turn the charter of fundamental rights. Through the Bill, thousands of EU provisions are being converted into our law-only one is not being converted. All the others can be converted, changed, modified or brought into our law in some shape or form, but the charter apparently cannot be converted, and that is wrong in principle.
I am very interested in my right hon. and learned Friend's point, particularly in relation to the charter of fundamental rights. Does he agree that amendment (c) in lieu of Lords amendment 3 -it talks about environmental principles, and potentially rights, being put into primary legislation-may leave us in the anomalous position of having more environmental rights after Brexit than social and civic rights? Is that not a disgrace?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. She makes the case very well and powerfully. As far as the charter is concerned-
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
I will make this point about the charter and then I will give way. The charter has enabled the evolution of important rights, adding significantly to the fields of equality and non-discrimination, especially lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, and the rights of children, workers and the elderly. As Liberty, Amnesty International and the Equality and Human Rights Commission have argued, excluding the charter from the Bill“will lead to a significant weakening of the current system of human rights protection in the UKâ€. Human rights develop over time. This country and the House have played long and distinguished roles in that development. Brexit should not be used to end that tradition or to reduce our human rights protection in the UK. We therefore call on right hon. and hon. Members across the House to vote for Lords amendments 4 and 11. I shall now come on, briefly, to the environmental provisions. Lords amendment 3 seeks to maintain environmental principles and standards as we leave the EU. The amendment has our full support. The EU's environmental principles are hard-wired into the treaties, and they underpin all its environmental policies and laws, which are then enforced by EU institutions and agencies. These environmental principles and the enforcement mechanisms that uphold them must be retained and replaced if Brexit is not to weaken protection for our natural environment. I know that amendment (c) in lieu, tabled by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), is designed to address some of those concerns. If it is supported by the Government-I assume it will be-it will introduce some helpful developments in the Government's policy, including proposals to enable the watchdog to initiate legal proceedings. However, it does not go far enough, so we urge Members to support Lords amendment 3.
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with me that the amendment, as it stands, asks the Government not to act in accordance with the duty on them, but only to have regard to it, which is a much less stringent legal test? Does he also agree that while it creates the ability to initiate legal action, it does not provide a legal remedy or access to justice for UK citizens?
I agree with my hon. Friend, which is why I am saying it is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough on its own and more is needed. I turn finally to the question of refugee family reunion. I am pleased that Lords amendment 24 is before us, and I pay tribute to Lord Dubs for his tireless campaign on this issue. Labour supports Lords amendment 24, which is long overdue. We recognise that some concern has been raised about the scope of family reunion that qualifies under the Government's clause, and I would welcome any clarification from the Minister on that issue. However, in general, Labour will support the amendment. In conclusion, the Lords amendments address crucial issues. Along with Labour's single market amendment, they would be a huge step forward in improving the Bill and protecting jobs and rights. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will support them today.
May I just pick my hon. and learned Friend up on his point about law? We are signed up to thousands of treaties in international law that bind us, and including on international tribunals. Membership of the EEA does not require any direct effect of that law in this country, so I fail to see how, on that point, the Government can be right. It is perfectly plain that we can be a member of the EEA without any direct effect from the European Court of Justice.
I am sorry, but with respect to my right hon. and learned Friend, I do not agree. He knows that the EEA is a creation that came after what were the European Communities. As I will go on to explain, we have significant concerns about what will happen not just to the EEA as it stands now, but with the inevitable development of EU rules, which will mean that we have little say. The issue of being law takers rather than lawmakers is particularly important to me.
Will the Solicitor General give way?
No, I will not give way. I made that point during the long debates in the referendum campaign. As a dedicated and fervent remainer, I said that when we leave the EU, it means we leave the whole shebang-there is no cherry-picking when it comes to not only the attitude of the UK but, importantly, the position of our negotiating partners.
I entirely agree with the Solicitor General. Does he agree that a customs partnership-a customs union-is a non-negotiable nonsense that the EU thinks comes with all four freedoms? Will he further confirm that we have many fine industrial companies in this country, with complex supply chains operating just in time, importing components from non-EU countries?
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct to draw our attention to the wider world and the reality of trade in the United Kingdom. I absolutely understand the point about just-in-time supply, representing, as I proudly do, large motor manufacturing companies in Swindon. I get the point, which is why the Government's policy to seek trade that is as frictionless as possible has been at the very heart of everything we have set out to do right from the beginning of the negotiations.
Representing a constituency that voted by a margin of almost seven to three to leave the EU, I am getting a little tired of hearing people who lost the referendum try to write the terms of our exit. To be totally clear on this, the Solicitor General is absolutely right that it was not just the issue of free movement that was of concern to my constituents and others in the north of England who voted in huge numbers to leave the European Union. There was also the issue of parliamentary sovereignty- being in control of our own laws. Therefore, I am afraid that being a rule taker has to be 100% out of the question on our exit.
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about democracy. One of the complaints that was constantly levelled against our membership of the EU was the lack of democracy, and I am pretty sure that if we end up in the position of a rule taker, those arguments will only grow louder and longer.
Is it not the case that if we are no longer a member of the single market and we want full access to the single market, we will have to be a rule taker?
Therein lies the problem with amendment (a) to Lords amendment 51, tabled by the Labour Front Benchers. What precisely does that amendment mean? Everybody should ponder that question, because I do not think that even they can answer it. The truth is that we are back to the old chestnut of access to the single market, and that in truth means subjection to the four freedoms.
During my time chairing the Internal Market Committee in the European Parliament, there were many occasions when Norwegian officials came to ask me to lay amendments to legislation on their behalf, particularly in areas such as offshore oil and gas and financial services. There were other sectors where their interests and our interests were more closely aligned with those of Europe, and alignment made sense. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the Government's position of continuing close alignment on issues such as medicines, chemicals and aviation makes complete sense, but that having regulatory co-operation and dialogue in other areas also makes sense?
My hon. Friend speaks with considerable experience from her time in the European Parliament. I agree with the approach that she urges; that is, of course, the Government's approach, and it is understood not just here but, importantly, by those with whom we negotiate. It is vital in these debates for us never to forget that we have to put ourselves in the shoes of our negotiating partners and to understand what they will accept, before we become too carried away with positions that quite frankly-I say this with respect to Members on the Labour Front Bench, and particularly to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras-just cannot be sustained.
I thank my hon. and learned Friend for giving way. Does he accept that disrupting complex supply chains in the motor industry can lead to economic disaster, but when we disrupt complex supply chains in medicines, I am afraid it means that people will turn up at their pharmacy and the drug they need might not be available on the shelves? The public will never forgive us for that. I am really sick and tired of hearing some colleagues say that those who “lostâ€ the referendum have no right to have any say in the type of Brexit we have.
As my hon. Friend knows, I was one of the 48%, and I do not forget that. That means that I do listen to the voices of concern about the supply of important goods and life-saving medicines. That is the Government's position. That is why we are striving to make sure that we achieve trade that is as frictionless as possible.
I will give way in a moment, but I need to develop- Ah, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is back! Shall I give way?
Oh, go on.
I have to say, I have never been given quite such a greeting for an intervention, but I am very grateful to the Solicitor General for giving way. Will he confirm that this is all about immigration? Immigration is the cold beating heart of his Brexit. What is he going to do about nations such as Scotland, which require immigration to keep our economies competitive?
Welcome back. The hon. Gentleman clearly does not know me very well when he describes the Brexit that I and many other colleagues want to achieve as some sort of cold Brexit. We want to achieve the openness and willingness to trade that embodies the spirit of what it is to be British. That includes immigration that we can truly control in a way that the British people will accept. Frankly, although it is nice to see him back, I do not think I will be taking any more interventions from him.
I will, however, taken an intervention from the right hon. Gentleman.
I am very grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman. Since one of the Government's objectives is to maintain membership of the European Medicines Agency, to which the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) referred a moment ago, will he confirm that that will require the United Kingdom to abide by the rules of its operation and to accept judgments of the European Court in respect of its operation? If that is the case, has he not just confirmed that we are in fact going to be a rule taker?
The right hon. Gentleman, as ever, makes a pertinent point. Well, I am being polite to the right hon. Gentleman, because I think that is what he deserves. I say to him that questions about participation in international institutions will be made on the basis of the United Kingdom being a third country and the status of the United Kingdom becoming somewhat different from that which it currently enjoys. The point is that the consent to such further international ties will lie here in Westminster. That answers the point that has been raised, quite properly, by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), on the signing of treaties and the fact that the United Kingdom has, on many occasions in its history, chosen to share the power it has enjoyed and participate as a full and vigorous member of the international community.
As ever, my hon. and learned Friend is quite outstanding at the Dispatch Box, but I have to ask him this: what is the Government's solution to ensuring that we have frictionless trade? What is the Government's policy to deliver it?
As my very old and good friend knows, the Government have indeed-
I ask that the record be corrected. As my right hon. Friend knows, the White Paper published some months ago sets out the options the British Government have been looking at. Option 1 is the proposed new customs partnership, and option 2 is the streamlined customs arrangement. Currently, two ministerial groups are taking forward work on those models. We accept that the precise form of any new customs arrangements will of course have to be the subject of negotiation.
It is obvious, as we listen to the debate, that there is a real tower of Babel in this place in Members' different views. I listened very carefully to my hon. and learned Friend yesterday, when he was replying to questions posed to him by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). Is my hon. and learned Friend quite clear-this is a very serious and important question-that there is no way, given the complexity of the negotiations and the likely outcome, that the Government will allow the House of Commons, by a voteable resolution, to influence, unpack or defeat those negotiations?
Mr Speaker, I might risk straying into yesterday's business, but I will briefly say that my hon. Friend knows that I have said repeatedly that we do not support or endorse the notion of this House mandating or directing the Government by resolution. We believe in full, vigorous democratic accountability, but that, frankly, is not the way that negotiations are conducted or treaties signed. The shadow Secretary of State dealt with the question of Northern Ireland in some detail. We of course recognise the unique circumstances that apply to the border with the Republic of Ireland, and we have been consistent in our commitment to avoid a hard border. We believe that our joint report commitments can be fulfilled through the overall UK-EU future partnership, but it is necessary to ensure there is a backstop solution for the Northern Ireland border that avoids a hard border and protects the constitutional integrity of the UK internal market. No Prime Minister could ever sign up to the solution for Northern Ireland and Ireland that, I am afraid, the Commission has set out, because it threatens the constitutional and economic integrity of our United Kingdom. We are Unionists and we are proud to be so.
Does the Solicitor General accept that if we were to leave with no deal and we were trading under World Trade Organisation rules, that would necessitate a border, and that leaving with no deal is therefore inconsistent with Government policy as he has just stated it?
I entirely agree. The Government's policy is to achieve a deal, because we are mindful of the points the hon. Gentleman and others understand.
I am very grateful to the Solicitor General for his remarks. Indeed, the Prime Minister's remark about no British Prime Minister being able to accept the EU version of the backstop was also what the shadow Secretary of State said, when he said that the Labour Front Benchers could not accept such a proposition. I welcome that. Yesterday's amendments apply to the powers in the Bill itself. Having said that, nobody in Belfast, among all the parties in Northern Ireland, or in London or Dublin, is advocating a hard border in the island of Ireland. Our point has been that what is agreed must not come at the expense of a border down the Irish sea, or of hiving Northern Ireland off into a special set of rules. In terms of taking back control of our borders, laws and money, the EEA proposition is clearly defective. Does the Solicitor General therefore share my surprise that one of the parties in Northern Ireland that does not want a hard border is actually advocating that proposition, despite what the shadow Secretary of State has quite properly enunciated today?
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am surprised that there can be that level of divergence on what is a most important point. He makes the vital assertion, which I think is right, that the important amendments considered yesterday, which were outlined very carefully, relate to the powers in the Bill and how the Bill will operate. Of course they are consistent with Government policy, and there is absolutely no question but that their terms are entirely consistent with what the British Government want to achieve. It is important to note, however, that they relate to the powers in the Bill: a correcting power, the withdrawal agreement power, consequential powers and transitional powers.
Does the Solicitor General not accept that the answer he has just given to the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds), on the nature of the border between Dublin and Belfast, necessitates similar arrangements between Dublin and Holyhead if we are to sustain the Union between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain?
The issue of the border will apply to the length and breadth of our United Kingdom. I have no doubt about that. I think the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) made the proper point that we do not want a hard border in the Irish sea between one part of our kingdom and another. That is a different point, I think, from the one made by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams).
In the light of what the Solicitor General has just said in response to the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds), and given that no one wants a hard border on the island of Ireland-the new IRA dissidents would become very active along the border, it would agitate Sinn Féin to campaign for a border poll and it would do the United Kingdom no good at all-may I urge him to tell the Prime Minister to stop using the phrase “no deal is better than a bad dealâ€?
I was with the hon. Lady until her last point. We need to make sure in these negotiations that the other side understand where we are coming from. When negotiating, one must negotiate hard, one must negotiate tough and one must negotiate in a way that advances the interests of the whole United Kingdom. She is absolutely right to talk about a border poll. I am not glib about that-I am far from complacent about what might happen. Both she and I understand that.
I am very clear: I do not want to see a hard border on the island of Ireland or down the Irish sea, not least because of the implications it would have for Welsh businesses and ports. Is the Solicitor General aware that Labour's sister party, the Social Democratic and Labour party, which does not have a voice in the House at present, has made it very clear that it urges the House to support Lords amendment 51 because EEA membership allows the regulatory alignment that would enable us to avoid a very hard border?
I say to our friends and colleagues in the SDLP-I think in particular of Margaret Ritchie, the former Member for South Down, who, as we know, is rather unwell, and who was a dear friend and colleague prior to the election-that I must respectfully disagree with them on this issue. A commitment to the EEA is, I am afraid, a problem in the sense that I have outlined-it is a gateway to the four freedoms. I want to deal with the issue of Liechtenstein and other countries. Liechtenstein has, of course, negotiated an immigration quota system, but it is a country of only 37,000 people. It is probably less than half the size of most of our constituencies. I do not see a permanent exemption on free movement being afforded to a country of the size of the United Kingdom, and that is why the intervention from the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) was so important. For all those reasons, we cannot accept amendment (a) or the original Lords amendment on the EEA.
One consequence of free movement is that we restrict unskilled migration to Europe. Is it not the case that if we no longer have free movement but have a single immigration system, unskilled migration will, by definition, have to be open to people from anywhere?
My hon. Friend is quite right, and that is why we need to create a system that does not discriminate between EU and non-EU countries.
Sir Martin Donnelly, the former permanent secretary at the Department for International Trade, said recently in a speech:“To provide UK business with guarantees of full and equal access to the single market without equal acceptance of EU regulatory structures would require not so much a skilled negotiating team as a fairy godmother specialised in trade law.â€Is that not the truth? Is it not the truth that the EEA exists, whereas the Solicitor General's negotiating stance and wish list do not and will not?
The hon. Gentleman is normally a great optimist and a man of sunny disposition who never lets anything get him down, least of all some of his local issues, which I know he has undeservedly suffered from in the past. He needs to have the courage to understand that in these negotiations there are interests on both sides-the UK and our friends in Europe-that must drive us towards the sort of arrangement or deal that will not only facilitate trade from our country to theirs but will protect, preserve and enhance the important business in goods and services that exists between us and other EU members.
One group that has made its position very clear is the North East England chamber of commerce, which represents 3,000 businesses in my region. It has said that the north-east is hugely reliant on the EU for global trade, that 62.3% of exports go to the EU and that remaining in the EEA will reduce barriers and give chamber members the best chance to make a success of Brexit. Should the Government not be listening to the creators of thousands of good jobs in my region?
Of course we are listening to the job creators-I have mentioned that in the context of my own constituency experience, which is not dissimilar to the hon. Lady's-which is why we have committed ourselves to the most frictionless possible trade. That said, any deal will have to represent Britain's position as a third country rather than a part of the EEA structure.
May I return the Solicitor General to what seems to have been the Opposition's first admission that they are seeking a customs union that would not allow us to negotiate trade deals with countries outside the EU? They might be pessimistic about the way forward-they have quoted the CBI-but many people out there are saying that, provided we can negotiate trade deals with countries outside the EU, the future is very bright. It is a vital point that Labour would let down the electorate by not allowing us to trade.
My hon. Friend is right to remind us of one of the key planks of the Government's policy: that important freedom to negotiate free trade deals that comes from being in law a third country.
Not yet. I always enjoy interventions from the hon. Gentleman, who is a king of You Tube, but I will stop there-and perhaps draw a veil of charity over that. On the customs union, I want to reiterate the commitment given by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House last week that the Trade Bill and the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill will be brought back to the House by mid-July at the latest, which will give all right hon. and hon. Members the opportunity to have the debate that I know they are itching to have on these important issues. I am sure that they will therefore forgive me if I move on to deal with the other important points the amendments raise. I want to deal with amendment (c) in lieu of Lords amendment 3, which was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and which we support, as I think I have already indicated to him. It enjoys support from many corners of the House, and I would commend it as a clear commitment to what is after all the Government's policy. It respects the position their lordships took about the need for a report, and we urge the House to vote for it.
Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?
I had better not. I have to move on, I am afraid, and I have taken an intervention from my hon. Friend already. I want to deal with the charter of fundamental rights, which was mentioned by the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras. We continue to strongly believe that it would not be right to retain rights of action based on incompatibility with the charter or the general principles of EU law after we have left. To keep these in our domestic law, as Lords amendments 5 and 53 seek, would undermine two crucial principles. First, it is not consistent with the proper restoration of parliamentary sovereignty if legislation, including primary legislation, can continue to be disapplied or quashed by the courts on the basis of elements of the EU legal system intrinsically linked to our membership and obligations. I will deal right away with the comparison made with the Bill's treatment of the principle of the supremacy of EU law. It is not a comparison that I accept. I would draw a clear distinction between the need to maintain, in a strictly limited sense, a rule that has been central to the hierarchy and interpretation of our statute book for over 40 years and the charter itself. The latter document came into effect in 2009. It was expressly intended only to reaffirm rights that exist elsewhere, as protocol 30-signed up to by the United Kingdom and Poland-made clear. Suddenly to remove the principle of supremacy would have significant and unintended consequences and would be likely to result in a confused and incoherent statute book. It would merely introduce more uncertainty to the law's meaning and effect.
Has my hon. and learned Friend not just highlighted the problem himself? Supremacy carries with it implications that the law, by its very nature, can override other laws. The reason why the general principles of EU law existed before they were incorporated in the charter was a wish to ensure in part that such laws could not apply abusively; yet we are keeping the supremacy and removing the mechanism by which the abuse can, in exceptional cases, by challenged. That seems a very strange thing for a country that wants to enhance its freedoms to do.
In the Exiting the European Union Committee, we heard that absolutely the opposite was also the case: that not retaining the charter would create a great many legal uncertainties. The position remains that if we are taking EU law into our law, the underpinning of that EU law-the charter-should be part of that as well.
I hear what the hon. Lady says, but I disagree with her. I think that the arguments in the Lords were very finely balanced. I am sure she has read parts of the Lords Hansard and will have noted the force of the arguments that were put against the position that she occupies-and, indeed, the view of the House of Commons when we dealt with this issue in Committee and on Report. I was disappointed that the Lords were not even willing to consider our own significant amendment in respect of the general principles, which I will come on to. I understand fully the concerns that have been raised about the protection of rights. It is, of course, vital that as we leave the EU, we do not see any dilution of domestic protections for our rights and liberties. I do not, however, accept that these amendments are necessary to the realising of that aim. The charter did not create any more rights. It reaffirmed the rights that were already recognised in EU law-the law being retained in the UK under the Bill. The charter applies to EU institutions and member states only when they are acting within the scope of EU law. It is not-I repeat, not-as broad a body of law as the European convention on human rights and should not be compared to it.
Article 26 of the charter concerns disability rights. Liberty and Amnesty International specifically say that it“goes further than domestic laws and provides for specific measures to ensure the ‘independence, social and occupational integration and participation' of disabled people in community life.â€That provision is stronger than domestic law. How will the Government ensure that it is protected?
The hon. Lady and I share an interest in-indeed, a passion for-the position of people with disabilities in this country. However, I think that that analysis is wrong: I do not think that article 26 enhances rights in the way that both she and I would understand. It does not give any extra domestic remedy to people with disabilities who might face discrimination or other injustices. I know that she is familiar with recent important Supreme Court decisions relating to benefits. We already have an important and vigorous domestic legal system whereby people who live with lifelong conditions or, indeed, other disabilities can challenge the authorities and seek redress of grievance.
With respect to the hon. Lady, I must press on. I am concerned that some people-including no less than the former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith-seem almost to be contradicting themselves 10 years on. Lord Goldsmith, who was the Attorney General, made his position absolutely clear to Parliament:“The United Kingdom's position, like my position, has always been that the charter affirms existing rights, it does not create any new justiciable rights in any member state and does not extend the power of the courts.â€- It was not the noble Lord but, I think, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) who described the charter as having no more significance than a copy of The Beano. I simply ask: what has changed? For that reason, I do not accept that the rights contained in the charter will add anything to the rights of individuals in our country. Equally, I do not accept that rights saved by the Bill will not be justiciable if general principles challenges are excluded. Other sources of rights will continue to exist and operate in UK law. None the less, we have listened to the concerns that have been raised, particularly in relation to accrued rights. We want to get the balance right. When we last debated the matter here, I agreed to a change that delayed the prohibition of certain rights of challenge on general principles grounds, when the cause of action arose before exit day, for three months after exit. This week, we tabled an amendment in lieu that goes considerably further. It delays that prohibition for three years, subject, of course, to the normal statutory limitation periods, which will continue to apply.
Having had a gentle dig at my hon. and learned Friend a moment ago, I now thank him, because I know that it was his personal intervention which at least secured that. It is a great improvement, and I think it will be greatly valued. It is likely to apply in very few cases, but it provides a higher level of support.
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. I have listened to representations from him and from other Conservative Members on the issue. I believe that we have now struck a reasonable and fair compromise between the concerns and arguments raised by Members in all parts of the House, and I urge Members to support the Government's amendment. It is the Government's ambition to leave our environment in a better state than that in which we found it. That is what we owe to our children and our grandchildren, and that is why the Prime Minister said in January:“We will use the opportunity Brexit provides to strengthen and enhance our environmental protections-not to weaken themâ€. On 10 May, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs launched a consultation on the development of a new independent statutory body to safeguard the environment alongside approaches to embed EU environmental principles in our own domestic law. However, the Government have listened to concerns raised in both Houses that certainty is required more quickly, and we recognise the intentions behind the amendments tabled.
The trouble is that there is a huge gulf between the lovely statements that the Environment Secretary has made and the reality of this amendment. The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) has already pointed to some of the criticisms of it, but there is also a major criticism that it only focuses on the role of central Government; it does not cover local authorities or arm's length bodies, and moreover it seems to address only policies, not day-to-day activities. Those are two big problems.
The hon. Lady deals with the nub of the issue, and I shall address those particular points in turn. While she makes an important point about the reach of this provision, my main intention is to try and replicate what were general EU principles in the same way, to create the framework in domestic law that both she and I would embrace and which will allow the development of statutes here in Parliament and the policies that will I think in very large measure deal with the issues she is concerned with. I am sorry that she is shaking her head; I am doing my very best and I will explain in further detail. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced that we will bring forward an environmental principles and governance Bill in draft form in autumn of this year to deliver those proposals, with the introduction of a Bill early in the second Session of this Parliament. For this reason we warmly welcome the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) in lieu of the amendment tabled by Lord Krebs. Despite the good intentions behind Lords amendment 3, we cannot accept it. It would create legal uncertainty; it does not take into account that a significant proportion of environmental legislation and policy is devolved. That is one of the issues I wanted to address directly to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). As we have seen today, we have already had a number of tensions about devolution, and the Government therefore tread very carefully in the field of domestic law before expanding too widely upon policy areas that are rightly the province of Edinburgh, of Cardiff and indeed, when the Assembly sits, of Stormont.
Will the Solicitor General give way?
Not at the moment. Lords amendment 3 would create a risk-averse approach to the design of better and more effective environmental standards. For example, it would require the Government to extend the scope to all public authorities-the hon. Lady's point. That goes much further than the European Commission, which can take action only against a member state, not individual public authorities within that state. The Government therefore have instead proposed that the body should focus on national Government, to retain that focus on the most significant national issues. The requirement of a direct duty in Lords amendment 3 to apply those environment principles listed in the amendment across a wide range of Government activities goes far beyond the way it works at EU level currently. Such a far-reaching duty does not exist anywhere in EU law, so instead of replicating and bringing down those principles, we are in danger of creating some intended consequences that would cause concern to Members across this House. However, we recognise that an early reassurance of our intentions is needed, and we therefore move to support the amendment in lieu.
I was tempted by their lordships' amendment, but I do think we have managed to produce something that can satisfy everybody in this House, because, as my hon. and learned Friend has just said, there is subsequent legislation that we can build on. This is the framework; the principles will be in the Bill and we will be able to construct a national policy in the way that my hon. and learned Friend has just outlined.
My right hon. Friend is right. He was an outstanding Minister in the Department and I am grateful to him for his continued passion for the causes he represents so eloquently. The amendment in lieu provides further reassurance for the House and sets out that the Government will publish draft legislation no later than six months after Royal Assent to this Bill.
On that point of timing, there is a real problem, particularly if we end up with no deal, because then we would not have a watchdog and the principles in place fast enough; we would have a yawning governance gap. What measures is the hon. and learned Gentleman planning to put in place as a contingency in the event of no deal, and in particular will he look at having a shadow body, just as there was a shadow climate change committee, that would get up and running as soon as possible?
As I have said, the backstop is six months-no later than-rather than the full period, and in any event I can reassure the hon. Lady that the domestic framework of environmental law, which is, rightly, among the most stringent in the world, will continue to apply. What we are talking about here are the general principles of EU law, which will be replicated domestically; it is not about the directly effective remedies, very analogous to the position regarding disability, that I know she and others will be concerned about. So I have no doubt that those existing frameworks carry on, whether there is a deal or no deal.
I give way to the Chairman of the Committee.
Thank you, Mr Speaker; I have almost forgotten my point now, but I will try to grab it back. The Solicitor General raised a couple of issues. The first is the applicability to local government. At present, all agencies of government have to act in accordance with the environmental principles. Can he confirm that that will be the case with the new body? The Solicitor General also mentioned the issue of fines. At present the Government are taking action on air pollution only because of the threat of fines from the European Court of Justice. What remedy will citizens in this country have if the Government pollute with waste and water pollution after we leave the EU?
I am grateful to the Committee Chair and I reassure her that we are seeking to replicate the framework that currently exists. There is going to be legislation and the consultation is, of course, a vital part of that. I know that the hon. Lady will play a vigorous and active part in that. We can get this right and deal with many of the concerns and issues she so strongly puts forward, not only today, but on all occasions when she speaks on these matters.
Will the Solicitor General give way?
Very well, I will give way to the hon. Gentleman; why not?
Does the Solicitor General accept that with the new powers of Ministers to change things as appropriate they could reduce our air quality standards to below that required by the EU, and we would not have the institutional framework to fine the Government and enforce those standards even if they were lower?
No. That is not true, I am afraid. Perhaps I will be a bit more polite to the hon. Gentleman and say that he raises a proper concern, but I can reassure him that that is not the case, and it is certainly not the approach of this Government. May I now deal with the issue of the protections?
Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?
No; may I develop this point? This amendment will deliver robust protections. In particular, it acknowledges that there may be circumstances where the new environmental body should be able to take the Government to court; this is the important enforceability point. That power will be proportionate and appropriate, and used only as a provision of last resort, supplementing established processes including parliamentary scrutiny. The amendment also requires that the Government list the environmental principles, such as the “polluter paysâ€ principle and the precautionary principle, in the proposed draft Bill. The draft Bill and forthcoming policy statement will provide further details of how these principles will be interpreted and how they will apply. It will also set out that the principles should have an effect in the UK after we leave the EU that is equivalent to that before we leave. It will ensure that their primary focus will be on the formation of policy at a national level. In addition, the statutory policy statement will set out how, as at EU level now, the environmental principles will be considered in the context of the Government's wider policy objectives. That includes the applicability of the principle of proportionality. A policy statement will be presented here in Parliament for scrutiny before it comes into effect. As at EU level, the principles will also be considered in the context of wider objectives to ensure balanced decision making, meaning that Ministers of the Crown will also be required to give proper consideration to other important policy objectives, such as delivering a thriving economy and building the homes that people need, when making decisions. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset for tabling his amendment, and I urge hon. Members to support it. I want to move on to the important issue of refugees-
Will the Solicitor General give way?
Please forgive me, but I need to press on. The Government recognise and share the strength of feeling in this House and beyond on the important matters of asylum and refugees, not least in relation to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. I should be clear that what we are discussing here is the situation concerning asylum seekers-that is, people who have made an application for international protection and have not yet had their claim decided. That is entirely distinct from the equally important issue of refugees: people who have had their claims considered and been found to be in need of protection. We as a country can be proud of the role that we have played in supporting children affected by the migration crisis. Since the start of 2010, we have granted more than 51,000 children resettlement, refugee status or alternative forms of protection. Our resettlement schemes have provided protection to more than 6,500 children. These are among the most vulnerable refugees, who the Government, with the UNHCR, have brought directly to the UK from conflict regions, together with their family members, so that they do not have to make appalling, perilous journeys to Europe, often in the hands of traffickers or smugglers.
I am pleased that the Government have decided to back the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), which mirrors the amendment that I tabled on Report to extend the provisions on family members in accordance with the Dublin III regulations. Does the Solicitor General also realise that there is a further amendment here that the Government have not yet backed? It would ensure that children seeking asylum could be reunited with their brothers or sisters who might be under the age of 18, who might be their only surviving family members and who might be in good, stable, loving foster care in this country? Under the current terms, those children would not qualify. Surely it must be the intention of the Government to extend this?
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.
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- 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.
While I understand that the interests of the child should be at the heart of everything we do, this is just about a little piece of legal text to say that if it is in the best interests of the child, they should be able to join their sibling. For the limited number of cases that the Solicitor General is talking about, I can see no reason whatsoever why that would not be a kind, compassionate, logical thing to do.
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.
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.
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. 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- 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.
Will the Minister give way?
I cannot give way, because I really must press on. We are committed to proper scrutiny and engagement with Parliament and the public on our corrections to EU law and future changes. In addition to all the changes we have already made to the Bill, there will be a presumption in favour of engagement or consultation where it is proportionate and sensible to do so. Of course, Departments will consult where there is a statutory duty to do so. Departments across Whitehall have already undertaken engagement or consultation with stakeholders for active discussions on areas where that has been proportionate and sensible, and that will only increase. Most of those who have supported Lords amendment 4 are well intentioned, but some must have known that it would have hugely detrimental effects on how we could deliver a functioning statute book ahead of our exit and in the future. Instead of protecting the law in the crucial areas of employment, equality, health, consumer standards and environmental protection, it would weaken it. By calling this amendment “enhanced protectionâ€, some are seeking to hide a great danger. By limiting the changes that delegated powers could make to retained EU law relating to the specified policy areas to only those that are deemed technical, the amendment would fundamentally limit our ability to properly correct deficiencies. That risks dramatically increasing the amount of primary legislation that needs to be enacted ahead of our exit, putting more pressure on this place ahead of Brexit. Even the changes deemed to be “technicalâ€ enough to be achieved through delegated powers would still face a lengthy enhanced scrutiny process, which the Lords could force to be as long as the 18 months required for legislative and regulatory reform orders. In other words, our statute book could not be made ready for exit by 29 March 2019.
I note and understand the points made by my hon. and learned Friend, but the intention behind the amendment was not to create difficulty for the Government, but to find an easier way of providing enhanced protection for areas of law. That suggests that the Government should have come back with an amendment in lieu.
I hear my right hon. and learned Friend. Both he and I have had anxious discussions about the definitions within the amendment. We are seeking to allow protections to be carried forward through our existing framework, so that the sort of changes that need to be made can apply to a whole range of areas. Changes could relate to the trade in seal products-cruelty to seals-or to protecting people on offshore oil and gas installations from fire and explosions, which is in the working time regulations, or to the protection of the marine environment. We need that element of flexibility. That is not a way of avoiding the procedures of the House; it is about making the law clear, certain and usable to protect all the different categories that we are dealing with. I am worried that we would be kneecapped, not just as a Government, but as a Parliament. There is a lot of work to be done ahead of Brexit, and we need to concentrate on what is fundamental and what will involve change. Lords amendment 4 fundamentally affects how we can do that, so we must oppose it. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union left the House in no doubt yesterday of the importance of this legislation. The Government listened in the other place and showed flexibility by tabling amendments that genuinely improved the Bill, but we rightly held firm on those areas where amendments proposed would have an adverse effect. I am somewhat downhearted that the House of Lords has not shown the same level of respect that we show to them and has sought to overturn decisions taken here on important issues relating to the protection of rights. I therefore ask the House to stand behind the Government tonight in ensuring that this legislation is fit for purpose, respects the referendum result, and respects the constitutional role of this House.
Thank you, Mr Speaker- As you can tell, there is huge strength of feeling on this issue across the House of Commons, and that is right, because what happens here has a significant impact outside this place. That is why SNP Members will continue to make the case for our constituents in this place. This matters. We have a clear and coherent position on such issues, unlike the two biggest parties in this place. We know that the customs union is important to trade, that the single market is important to jobs, as the UK Government's own analysis has demonstrated, and that the fundamental rights that we enjoy as European citizens are critical to our constituents. People deserve their voices to be heard well outside this place. I have heard from Government Members that this is just procedural, that we should just roll over and that we should not have a voice in this particular debate. Well, that is not what we are here for. Even if we just left this to the Government, they are not making much of a job of persuading even their own MPs.
The hon. Gentleman and I share a friendship as members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and I welcome him back to the Chamber. People watching these proceedings will have seen that the Minister took more than an hour to make the Government's case. We have to be here to represent our constituents, and the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) will be as disappointed as I am that the Scottish National party had five questions at Prime Minister's questions today that, incidentally, went to Government Members, because SNP Members had walked out and were not here to ask them.
I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman-
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I remind the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) that, in 1987, Scottish Labour Members marched out of this Chamber because they did not think the Government were taking Scotland's interests seriously. It is remarkable: the Government have not changed in their attitude, but the Labour party certainly has. That is why there are so many fewer Labour MPs.
What my hon. Friend will see, as I see and the people of Scotland will observe right now, is representatives from Scotland being shouted down the minute they get to their feet to put the Scottish interest. It is no surprise and no wonder that the people of Scotland find all these unedifying scenes appalling and repellent. That is why we will continue to put the voices of Scotland.
I will teach Members a lesson on the matter at hand, and maybe they will learn something. If the Government are proposing a very significant change that affects everybody-it affects generations to come much more than it affects anybody in this Chamber-which is what is happening with the EU withdrawal Bill, they should have the courage and the confidence to campaign on more than a blank sheet of paper, which was all the leave campaigners did. They should set out their arguments in a detailed White Paper, for example, and get experts together-maybe even some Nobel laureates-to discuss the key issues, perhaps in a fiscal commission working group. They should then look at the challenges we have, and bring politicians and practitioners together in, say, a sustainable growth commission. That is a sensible way of preparing. We are in this situation now because two years-two years!-have passed since the EU referendum, but we still do not know what leave looks like. We still cannot get agreement from Government Members. I know that we are to blame the Prime Minister for all this, but I will briefly say something kind about her. Regardless of her failings, those who spent years arguing for leave have had their entire political careers to prepare for this moment, yet they did not lay the groundwork, which has led us into the mess that not just this place and the devolution settlement have been left in, but our economy has been left in, according to the Government's own analysis.
I take the hon. Gentleman back to the question about immigration that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) raised earlier. Perhaps this was in the Sustainable Growth Commission's report but, when we have net migration to the United Kingdom of over 200,000 people, why are so few of them choosing to make their home in Scotland?
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
No, because I have almost taken longer than I intended already. Let us address freedom of movement. Personally, I do not have any hang-ups about freedom of movement-people coming to work here, contribute to the economy, provide skills that we do not have or do unskilled work that British people will not do-but it could be tightened up. People should not come here for benefits and so on, or hang around if they have lost their job. I am sure that we could start to negotiate on the basis of tightening that up.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way on that point?
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
I will not give way, because of the time. Who knows whether the EEA option may turn out to be a temporary state, but as a potential starting point, with a customs union, it would provide a means of solving the Northern Ireland problem, keep goods flowing freely, ensure common standards, maintain the flow of data, protect employment and environmental rights and enable us to continue to co-operate in really important areas such as aviation, consumer safety, medicines and space research. Crucially, it would also gain us a place in the room when some future decisions are being taken. In the EEA, not all EU legislation has to be transposed, and there are consultation mechanisms and a separate court. When it comes to EU agencies, in many of which UK regulators have led the way, we could continue to influence what happens because we would be part of the conversation, even though we would not have a vote, which is not the case under the transition period that we will shortly be entering. The EEA option would diminish in part-I acknowledge that it would do so only in part-the rule taker problem. However, given that we are leaving, I see no outcome in which the United Kingdom will be a rule maker. We will have to follow the rules of our biggest export market for goods and services because so much of our prosperity depends on doing so. I think the Solicitor General accepted that in his answer to my earlier question, although he tried to couch it-and I see the argument-in terms of us, as a free sovereign country, being able to choose to follow the rules of other people. Indeed we can, and the same is true of the European Court of Justice and any other part of the agreement that we may seek to reach.
I have a lot of sympathy with the points that my right hon. and learned Friend is making, and indeed those that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) made earlier about the EMA, but will he not agree that the purpose of the Bill is to give effect to the continuity of the law at the moment? We have a Trade and a customs Bill coming after the summit. Is that not where these issues should substantively be addressed? In my view, these are mischievous amendments dealing with substantive issues with which I have a lot of sympathy, but this is the wrong Bill to give effect to them.
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 pieâ€ 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.
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.
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.
I want to speak to Lords amendment 51 and the amendment to it tabled by those on my own Front Bench. These amendments focus on our future trading and economic relationships, and our aims on this side of the House are clear. We want to secure frictionless trade with the EU, and we do not want to see new barriers or a race to the bottom on workers' rights, environmental standards or consumer rights, and nor do we want a hard border in Northern Ireland. How can we achieve those aims? My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has already said that we are committed to a customs union but, as he also said, a customs union on its own will not achieve those aims. In modern trade, we need to do more than just get rid of tariffs; we need to ensure that multinational supply chains and crucial manufacturing industries-including the automotive and aerospace industries that are so crucial to the west midlands-are not affected by other, non-tariff barriers. Crucially, 80% of our economy is accounted for by services-we are a country whose economy is dominated by services-and those are governed by common rules and regulations, not by tariffs. In the west midlands alone, service industries account for £93 billion a year of GDP and 74% of our local economy. In the north-west, services account for 75% of the economy and £125 billion. When it comes to trade, we sell over £100 billion of services to the EU every year at a surplus. It is essential to have an agreement that covers both manufacturing and services. The bottom line is that any serious Government party or any Opposition party that aspires to government must care as much about the creation of wealth as about its fair distribution. That is why these questions are so central.
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would be extremely irresponsible of any Government to exclude options that could ultimately lead us away from long-term economic decline?
I agree. It is irresponsible to exclude options-that is what I am saying. The second big objection to the EEA agreement is that there is a customs border between Norway and Sweden, but that exists because those nations have chosen not to be in a customs union. It is our policy to be in a customs union. It is not a matter of irreversible legal necessity; it is a matter of choice. Michel Barnier said just two months ago:“It was the UK's decision to leave the EU, but it is not obliged to leave the single market and the customs union because it is leaving the EU.â€As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) said, Michel Barnier confirmed yesterday that it is open to us to be in both the EEA and the customs union. If Members are against the EEA, they should be against it because of content, but they should not be against it due to spurious arguments about having to choose between the customs union and the EEA. That is not the case. The situation in Northern Ireland cannot be dealt with purely by being in a customs union, because it requires regulatory convergence on goods and services that are exported. That fact is clear to our sister party, the Social Democratic and Labour party-sadly it is no longer represented in this House-which wrote to us last night with a heartfelt plea to keep the EEA option available and to vote in favour of Lords amendment 51.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I cannot give way anymore because so many Members want to speak. I know that there is a great deal of working-class disaffection behind the Brexit vote, and that people want action on migration and free movement. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras read out a list of things we can address, and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke about others in his speech last week. There are things that we can do, and we need to address working-class discontent, but we do not take the first step in doing so by voting for a path of making our country poorer, and of not generating the wealth required for the public services, regeneration, housing, and the better chance in life that our working-class communities need.
My father does not speak perfect English, but I do not know what more integration he could have done when one of his sons is a Member of the British Parliament. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in all this talk of immigration, we should be very moderate in how we reflect on it? Immigration has been of enormous benefit to the United Kingdom, when his own family and succeeding generations came to this country. Does he agree that British citizens living in Italy and elsewhere also need to be thought of?
I will speak about Lords amendment 3, on the environment, as well as the amendments on the customs union and the EEA. First, let me put this in context. As hon. Members know, I have been in the European Parliament for many years and witnessed many intense times in European negotiations, including the negotiations on the banking crisis and the eurozone crisis. It is utterly normal that all the discussions intensify and accelerate and that new ideas come forward, as the European Council meeting gets closer. That is to be expected; it is normal. On Second Reading, I made it clear that I thought the Bill was far from perfect and that it would require many amendments. Many amendments have been made, both in this place and in other place. We should not be scared of the need to make amendments because this is legislation of a kind that has never happened before. I have been very glad to add my name to the amendments on environmental protections, which is a very important issue for many of my constituents, who write to me saying that they want to ensure that we keep a long-term focus on protecting the world's environment.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Has he read the report by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee? Members of that Committee went all around the world and could not find anywhere where there was the frictionless trade of which he speaks. They include a number of leavers, but they came to that conclusion. He has to face up to that reality and tell us how he will to deliver the borders of which he speaks.
That is exactly why I have been setting out the case for how we can use technology and these sorts of system, with a trusted traders scheme, and how we can build on the WTO's trade facilitation agreement, to which the European Union has signed up. We should be making this investment-we should have been making this investment many years ago.
On either side of the Irish border, excise duties are different, VAT is different and the currency is different, and we have had a common travel area since 1923. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is no need to have friction with trade if we have a free trade agreement?
My hon. Friend makes the perfect case, and it is the case I have made in a report in which I set out how we can achieve that and manage it positively. We need to use technology and to engage with European member states across the water. After all, customs arrangements and the accounting of customs are not done by Brussels; they are bilateral. We can have bilateral discussions with the French and with the Belgians at the port of Zeebrugge. We must realise that there is no need to have a search point at the border and that the border is a tax point. That is the essential point, and it is the same in Northern Ireland. That is why I am personally confident that we can and should invest in this. That means investing properly in the road infrastructure on the way to the channel ports and investing properly in computer systems. It means investing in systems to ensure that checks can be carried out away from the border. It is no-regrets spending, and that is why the Government should be making that investment now, not waiting for whatever the deal is to do it.
Since the referendum, the debate has often been polarised in this place and outside it between hard-line Brexiteers who feel that we can walk away without a deal and walk off a cliff edge, and hard-line remainers who do not accept the result of the referendum and want to find whatever way possible to stay in the EU. That is why I am not supporting Lords amendment 51. The essential choice for Parliament is whether we accept the outcome of the referendum and the article 50 process and agree that the UK leaves the European Union in March 2019, or whether we seek to subvert that process. Perhaps the Norway option-the European economic area-suits that purpose. The EEA agreement helped three small countries that could not persuade their people to adopt EU membership and that accepted having no say in return for single market membership. They accepted the role of rule takers, not rule makers, with second-class membership of the European Union. Much has been said about Michel Barnier saying this morning that he will give us membership of the EEA plus the customs union. Of course he would-he would bite off the Prime Minister's hand for that deal, because apart from leaving without any deal, it is the worst deal for the United Kingdom.
Shame!
The right hon. Lady says, “Shame!â€ I am afraid to say that it is that sort of contribution to this debate that is so unhelpful and divisive, because we have to reach consensus on the way ahead. I believe that we have to be as close as possible to the single market and that there should be a customs arrangement. Importantly, however, I recognise that there is an issue of immigration, which has been overlooked for at least 15 years, since we first let in the A8 countries. I am afraid that the right hon. Lady does not reflect that on behalf of her constituents.
May I say to my right hon. Friend that, although she and I may disagree, she is making an excellent speech? She is right about the tone of this debate: it must be done properly.
I am sorry, Mr Speaker, because I know it is a courtesy to say so, but it is not a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). I have admired her for many years, but I found that one of the saddest speeches I have ever heard.
As you will remember, Mr Speaker, I said how much I respect the right hon. Lady for so much of her work, but on this I profoundly disagree with her. I will be voting for the very good amendment-Lords amendment 51-written and beautifully advocated by the noble Lord Kerr. I urge hon. Members to read it, because I agree with everything it says about the value of a customs union. In due course, the Bill about a customs arrangement will come back to the House. I ask British businesses to write to their local MP to explain why it is so important, just as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) said that one of his businesses had explained to him in good, simple, plain terms why having a customs arrangement is so important to his constituents, their jobs and the future of their children and grandchildren. I will be voting for the EEA amendment because, as I have said many times in this place, I believe in the value of the single market. I say to the right hon. Member for Don Valley that I am appalled that she, as a member of the Labour party, has stood up and shown that she does not understand and appreciate the considerable value that immigrants have brought to our country. These are human beings- I will take an intervention when I want-I am not afraid of a debate, and I will take one now.
I would urge the right hon. Lady to look at the record in Hansard. I made it very clear that I am not against all immigration, and I also said very clearly that nor are my constituents, but they want to feel that we have better systems in place and that immigration is fair and managed, and that is something they have not felt for a long time.
This may sound breathtakingly naive to some Members, but I think there is an opportunity to reboot the debate on immigration. I think what concerned many of our constituents was the inability to control the numbers coming in. Now that they, rightly, believe there is an opportunity to have that control, it is up to us, on all sides of the House, to make the case for the reasoned and controlled immigration from which our economy and society benefits. I rise to talk about environmental measures. In all the weighty subjects discussed today, some may say that is a trivial issue by comparison. I would say that it is not trivial at all: it is about the air we breathe, the rivers from which we get our drinking water and the kind of society we bequeath to future generations. The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), who is sadly not in her place, is a magnificent champion of the environment. She and I started on this issue from exactly the same point: we felt there was a lacuna, a vast hole or governance gap as some have called it, in the Bill. In my few remarks on Second Reading, I talked about the importance of putting into British law the regulations and laws that have seen our beaches cleaned up and our rivers start to get to a stage where we can be proud of them, where they are achieving what they are supposed to as functioning ecosystems. We are protecting landscapes and doing something to reverse the disaster, the tragedy and the crisis of species decline. We need to replicate, in a bespoke British way, the kind of measures we have benefited from in recent years. The Lords had a pretty good pitch at it, but there were flaws in their amendment.
The responsibility that we all have, which I take as seriously as everybody else, is to try to balance the concerns of our businesses and our constituents, including some that they might not have had at the time of the referendum. That is what I have tried to do. Another factor for me, as a former Northern Ireland Minister, is that I am not prepared to see the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland destroyed by a hard border, and nobody has yet come up with a solution for avoiding that. They are the principles and I shall take each in turn. In Knowsley we voted to leave in almost exactly the same proportion as the rest of the country. However, over the past week or so, constituents who have contacted me have wanted me to vote for all the Lords amendments, which I do not intend to do. Some wanted me to vote down all the Lords amendments, although there was a slight majority on this occasion for supporting the Lords amendments, and therefore presumably for a remain-type position. I have consulted businesses. A business roundtable organised by the Knowsley chamber of commerce last Friday was a really interesting event. Most of the 10 businesses that attended were involved in trade with Europe, in one way or another-either by exporting or by importing raw materials. What they had to say was fascinating. I will say a word about immigration. I almost always agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint)-
Quite right.
Mainly out of fear. My right hon. Friend had a point, in that we do need a much better managed migration process in this country, but some of the businesses I spoke to in Knowsley said they rely on skills that simply are not available in this country, such as specialist engineering and construction skills. If we cannot fill those vacancies without some migrant labour for particular skills, we cannot create the wealth that would otherwise be created.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is great concern in our food production sector right now that crops, fruit, vegetables and other produce will not be harvested this season because of the chronic shortage of migrant labour to pick it?
My right hon. Friend is right. As he will appreciate, we are not an agricultural community in Knowsley, although we do have some farms and we have the estates of the Earls of Derby. However, I know about the concern he raises and I share it. Having listened to what businesses and my constituents say, I now must make a choice about which, if any, of the amendments to support. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) about the amendment on the customs union tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). I am happy and comfortable to support it, and that fulfils one of my obligations to my constituents and businesses in my constituency. However, I also feel that I need to go further and support the EEA Lords amendment. I will refrain from using the analogy employed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) about sinking boats and lifeboats, because I am supporting it on a slightly more practical belt-and-braces basis-if one approach does not succeed, we might have the other to fall back on. I believe that there are practical implications for businesses, and therefore for jobs, if we do not address some of the concerns that businesses have. All we have at the moment are aspirations from the Government. Some of them are lofty aspirations, but we need more than that-we need hard solutions to the real problems that we are going to be confronted with.
A key question coming out of today is whether we wish to deal with the customs union and EEA issues now in this Bill or later, in the Trade Bill and the customs Bill, after the June EU summit. As things stand, there are reasons for immediate concern. We were promised a White Paper, planned for a few weeks ago. Not only has it not materialised but we are now being told that it will not appear until after the June EU meeting, when I thought the main negotiations were meant to be happening. Let us not forget that we are meant to be signing a deal in November, which is only five months away.
One reason why we need to make a decision now is that businesses are already relocating. International broadcasting contributes £1 billion to this country and it is prominent in my constituency. It dominates Europe, and it will move to Europe because it will not be able to get the licences that it needs in this country. That is happening now. We cannot wait three or six months.
It was a pleasure to listen to the thoughtful and considered speech of the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). She made some sensible points about immigration, on which I will focus in my remarks. Many Members have spoken in favour of joining the EEA but, as I said briefly at Prime Minister's questions, immigration was one of the most important issues that decided the referendum result, so we need to take that into account. Like the right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), I want immigration, but I want immigration to be controlled by Parliament. I want us to decide that we want people with the skills and talents that will make a contribution and increase this country's wealth, and they will be welcomed as a result. Immigrants themselves often want a properly controlled immigration system, because they know that they will be welcomed, they will be supported and they will not be scapegoated, as happens when we lose control of the system. The voters told us that they do not want a system in which we have no control, or very little control, over who comes to our country.
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
I will not give way. You are trying to get everyone in, Mr Speaker, and I will try to help you. I have listened to a number of contributions. Those who think the European Union will fundamentally renegotiate free movement are living in another world. I worked closely with the former Prime Minister David Cameron when he tried to renegotiate the terms of our membership, and he worked incredibly hard with every single European leader to try to get some movement on free movement, because he knew how important that would be to the case he was going to argue for our staying in the European Union. I have to tell colleagues on both sides of the House that, frankly, those European leaders were not willing to engage seriously with David Cameron on any meaningful reform. If they had, I suspect the country would have made a different decision. Even with our country having made that decision, European leaders are still not prepared to make any meaningful reform. They might talk about little tiny tweaks here or there that will not make any significant difference, but meaningful reform is not going to happen. We should not think the EEA is a solution, and we should control our immigration policy. We can then have a generous policy, and we can argue for what we think is the right shape for our immigration policy. That is why I oppose Lords amendment 51 on joining the EEA, and why I support the sensible approach that the Government have set out.
I want to say a few words in favour of Lords amendment 51 on the European economic area. Staying in the single market and the customs union is critical to jobs and prosperity. Trade figures published only last week show that 62.3% of the north-east's exports go to the EU. The president of the CBI has said today that the UK car industry is facing extinction. Such comments should worry us all, but they should send a chill around every community in the north-east of England. The north-east is home to Nissan, which exports many of the cars it builds. It directly employs around 6,500 people, with more than 25,000 people employed in the supply chain. Everyone in the north-east knows someone who does something for Nissan. I have never been one of those who say that companies like Nissan will close on Brexit day, but I worry about the long-term investment opportunities in industry in my region. In the north-east we know what happens when an industry is faced with slow but inevitable extinction.
The north-east has been neglected for far too long. Much of what needs to be done in our region could be addressed by our own domestic Government if they chose to do so. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, if we crash out of the European Union with an extreme form of Brexit, the people we represent will be poorer as a result?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She knows from her experience as a north-east Member of Parliament that Europe has been very good to the north-east of England as far as trade is concerned and in the investment we have had into the region from the EU. The coal industry once dominated the north-east of England. Today, all the pits have closed, but they did not close overnight. The dozens of collieries that closed did so over several decades because their reserves were depleted and because of the lack of investment. My father was twice made redundant because the collieries he worked down closed over the space of a decade. Just like Nissan today, and probably more so, back then everyone knew somebody who worked down the pits or at the National Coal Board. With the closure of the coalmines, communities were left behind. Some have not recovered, and the resentments they harbour played into the Brexit vote. There is a message in that for the decisions we are making now on the post-Brexit world. My region has seen industrial extinction in the past, so we have to make sure it does not happen in the future. Therefore, with 62% of our trade being with the EU, it would be a catastrophic mistake to put up barriers to trade if we can avoid it, and I believe the EEA amendment would help to avoid it. The vast majority of Labour MPs in the north-east knew what the economic consequences would be, and the majority of us campaigned to remain in the EU. The vote went the other way, but the economic consequences of leaving remain the same, as do the grievances in some of our communities.
Mr Speaker, I am going to help you by being brief and I am going to speak from first principles. I really wish, Mr Speaker, that I could fly you and Members on both sides of the House north into Scotland, north over the unedifying scenes that we saw earlier today and north into the clear sky of Caithness. I would take you to Scrabster, the small harbour that serves Orkney and Shetland and sits beside Thurso. At Scrabster, I have a constituent, Mr Willie Calder. He and his son, William, run Scrabster Seafoods Ltd, a highly successful company that indirectly employs 100 people in an area where jobs do not grow on trees. I met Mr Calder and his son a few days ago, and he put the situation to me very clearly. It takes him two days to get his fish products to the markets in the south of France. It takes him one day to get to his markets in the north of France. One day's extra delay, or even half a day's extra delay, at customs or a port would ruin him. It is as simple as that. The bottom line-this is where I am keeping it short, Mr Speaker-is this: Mr Calder's business, Scrabster Seafoods Ltd, matters to me a very great deal. My story is based on first principles, but it explains precisely where I am coming from. I sincerely hope that Members on both sides of the House and both sides of the argument will see where I am coming from. I say to them: please work for the best interests of the people whom I represent. I would be letting them down and betraying them if I did not stand up here and say that.
I accept the sincerity of the views that my hon. Friend is putting across to the House, but does she accept, too, that if we accept the EEA, we will have free movement of workers from the EU, which means that we will have to have restrictions on workers from around the rest of the world?
I am saying that there is a deal to be done. It is absolutely ridiculous to cut down our options, which is what has happened right after these debates. Artificial red lines have been drawn in the sand, reducing our chances of getting a good deal for this country. For that reason, I support the amendment on the customs arrangements. However, I will be abstaining on the EEA vote because I think that it is an issue to which we should return. I want my Prime Minister to go into negotiations knowing the feeling across the House-that we do not want to cut our ties, that we do not want a hard Brexit and that we want a sensible compromise. That is what I believe the majority of both leavers and remainers voted for; they voted for us to leave the political institutions of the EU, but to retain our relationship with it.
I rise in support of amendments (c) and (d) in lieu of Lords amendment 3, which address environmental standards and to which I have put my name. In addition, I want to express my pleasure that there has been progress today on the Dubs amendment, for which I thank the Solicitor General.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I have listened carefully to opinion right across the House about the outstanding matter on the Dubs amendment. The Government will look again at the particular issue raised by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), with a view to a potential amendment in lieu in the other place.
I rise to support Lords amendment 51 and amendment (a) to it. I do so from first principles, because it is the responsibility of every Member of this House to come here and champion, defend and represent the best interests of their constituency and our country. In this generation-defining moment, there is no more important time for us to vote at every opportunity in the way that we think will best protect our constituents. Given the manner of the negotiations, the way the Government are conducting Brexit and the contempt with which they have treated the House at various points as we have sought to influence Brexit, we have to look on the Order Paper for every opportunity to shift the centre of gravity of debate away from a hard Brexit, dictated by a minority group in a minority Government, towards a softer Brexit that delivers the mandate of the referendum to leave the European Union but in a way that protects jobs and livelihoods. The truth is that there is no such thing as a jobs-first Brexit outside the single market and the customs union. That presents the Labour party and the Conservative party with some political dilemmas, but we were all sent here to make our constituents' jobs safer, not to make our jobs easier. The evidence is overwhelming that if this country crashes out with a hard Brexit or, worse, if we are outside the single market and without the benefits that the single market provides, that will damage jobs and hamper livelihoods, and we will not be able to solve all the underlying problems creating the swamp of despair and hopelessness that led to people voting for Brexit.
Two years ago, we were told that the EU's unity would shatter, that we would be able to pick off individual countries and get a deal, and that the German manufacturing industry would change the German Government's position. The reality is that the European Union has kept a consistent position throughout the negotiations. Why? Contrary to the belief of the right-wing Rexiteers and the ideological Lexiteers-we do have some-the European Union is a rules-based, treaty-based organisation for which the four freedoms of the single market are integral. The idea that we can cherry-pick our relationship with a bespoke British deal, whereby we get the benefits of access to the single market without being a participant in the single market, is an illusion. Whether we have a red cake with great big red cherries or a blue cake with great big blue cherries, the fact is that we will not be able to eat that cake, because we cannot get a better deal or as good a deal as we have in the single market once we have left the European Union. The reality is that the belief that we could somehow have a bespoke deal that is as good as what we have now was always a fantasy, and the reality is now coming to a head. Because we wasted so much time after triggering article 50, we have ended up in a position where the clock is ticking very, very dangerously. We still have time to stop this process. We still have time to put any deal-if we do get a deal-to the people. But at the end of the day, if we in this Parliament do not assert our control, we will face disaster. I support Lords amendment 51 on the EEA simply because I think we need a backstop. I predict that we will come back to that issue in the future. I cannot support the Labour Front-Bench amendment to that amendment, because it would take out the EEA, and I will therefore abstain on it.
I rise to talk about Lords amendment 32. Unlike some of my fellow Scots who sit on the Opposition Benches, I will not pretend to speak for all of Scotland in this debate, but I will speak for my constituents, 54% of whom voted to leave the European Union. That should come as no surprise to those familiar with my constituency and its fishing communities. A University of Aberdeen study conducted before the EU referendum reported that 92% of British fishermen across the UK planned to vote leave. In a You Gov poll after the referendum, 79% of voters across the UK-not just fishermen-who expressed an opinion believed that the UK should leave the common fisheries policy. Some 16% agreed to a two-year transition period, and only 6% were in favour of remaining in the CFP. I support Lords amendment 32, but I would like to clarify what it means for our fishing industry. The amendment does not in any way compromise control over our waters. We will still be leaving the CFP. We will not be subject to the European Fisheries Control Agency and neither will we be required to align with current or future EU fishing regulations. Although the amendment avoids the prevention of the UK replicating EU law if we so require, the UK Government's ability to diverge from the EU and to pull out of EU agencies, including in areas such as fisheries or agriculture, should not be ignored or forgotten in the wake of the amendment. The amendment stipulates that nothing in the Bill will prevent the UK from replicating in domestic law any EU law made after Brexit, or from continuing to participate in, or have a formal relationship with, EU agencies. More importantly, it does not require the UK to align with the EU or to participate in new agencies, and nor does it introduce a presumption that the UK will do so. It does not change the fact that the UK will automatically leave the CFP and regain its exclusive economic zone as an independent coastal state when we leave the EU.
Will my hon. Friend give way? I will be very quick, but I wanted to put this on the record. It was a very close vote-48% to 52%-but right now we must achieve the best outcome for everyone. We must not go to the negotiating table with our hands tied.
I entirely agree. The idea that Parliament ought to engage in a process that could result in a war of attrition until we end up remaining is repellent. The referendum decision was clear, and we need to leave as soon as possible. Let us negotiate the best deal in the time remaining, but let us also recognise that it is in the interests of the EU as much as those of the UK to win a good deal, not least because of the EU's desperate need for £40 billion of British taxpayers' money.
It is now clear that “no dealâ€ is the worst possible outcome for our country, and the vast majority of Members understand that. The Bill provides an opportunity for the House to stamp its authority on how the Government approach the future negotiations. I will be voting for amendment (a) to Lords amendment 51, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, and not for the Lords amendment itself, but I urge the Lords to read the report of this debate and note the range of views expressed by Members who have said that they will support amendment (a). They have also said that they will vote against the Lords amendment, that they will abstain-as I intend to do-or that they will vote for it, but they are aligned on the wording of my right hon. Friend's amendment. I have one simple message for the Lords. I urge them to take heed of that fact, and, when they are deliberating on the Bill, to ensure that any amendment that they send back to this House unites all its Members. We need to unite behind an amendment that will influence the Government, and ensure that they take the right approach in future negotiations.
Never in the recent history of this Parliament has the next year been so important to the future of our country, for the simple reason that we are sent here to do two things: to represent our constituents, and 78% of my constituents voted to remain; and to look after the best interests of the country. There is going to be a lot of debate and argument over the next few months about the direction the country will go in, and much debate about the minutiae of the customs union and the single market, but this boils down to what is in the best interests of the country overall.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am sorry, I will not give way, because other colleagues want to get in.
Somehow, this whole debate has been hijacked by what I believe to be a minority in this House. It is claimed by some people that liberating this country from the European Union's customs union and single market will lead to a fantastic brave new world in which we are free to strike new deals with China and the US and other markets. However, that claim is presented as a choice between one or the other. Clearly, it is not. The public really are being deceived. For example, all countries in Europe trade with China. The UK already does so. We are not handicapped by being part of the EU in that regard. Quite the opposite: we are strengthened and enabled by it. I should like to present a simple fact in the debate. The UK's exports to China are one tenth those of Germany. The UK and Germany are both in the EU. The UK's exports to China are worth $18 billion, while Germany's are worth $180 billion. Is Germany handicapped in any way? No, it is not. Being a member of the EU does not work against any of us. UK plc needs to prioritise its largest customer, which is surely the EU customs union, and build its markets elsewhere. That is what the CBI says, and Paul Drechsler said this morning that UK manufacturing would be seriously threatened by a hard Brexit and switching to WTO rules. The public expect us in this place to act in their best interests and in the best interests of the economy, of jobs and of businesses. For that reason, we must stay in a customs union and some form of single market.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I do not have time. In recent months, we have seen the storm clouds gather. We have seen faltering growth, rising inflation and major manufacturing job losses. We have seen not only the prospect but the reality of global trade wars. Protectionism is around us everywhere and racism and hate crime are on the rise. There are faint echoes of the 1930s. Now is not the time to desert our neighbours in Europe. That is why I will be voting with my Front Benchers for Lords amendment 51, to keep all the options on the table and to ensure that we achieve the best negotiated outcome for the public, for our businesses and for our economy.
I rise to speak in favour of the Labour Front-Bench amendment and the amendments on the customs union. Despite two years having passed since the referendum, the Government are deeply divided and have no plan. Given the lack of clarity and the absence of any policy, it is incumbent on this House to help find a sensible way forward, and I hope colleagues on both sides will support a balanced, sensible approach that includes continued close working with the EU after we have left it. While a majority voted to leave, no one in this country voted to be worse off, no one voted for instability in Northern Ireland and no one voted for a shortage of NHS staff. A cliff-edge hard Brexit would be too far for most of those who wanted to leave, as well as for my constituents, a majority of whom voted to remain. After two years of Government indecision and distraction by hard Brexiteers, it is time for a sensible way forward. I urge colleagues across the House to consider the issues carefully and to reflect on the many real concerns about the direction in which we are currently heading.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am not going to give way, because the hon. Gentleman has already spoken, but I look forward to debating with him when his constituency fills up with lorries after we leave the single market. There is a lot I would like to say about the honest challenges raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley. She spoke to us in a respectful way, and I hope that she will see that I and others have been respectful to her and always will be.
I had not intended to speak in this debate today, but after listening to many of the contributions from both sides of the House, I think I must. It is becoming incredibly clear that those who know most about the motivation of those who voted by a decisive margin to leave the European Union are those who voted to stay in the European Union. They are now experts in the desires that motivated people to go out in record numbers to participate in that referendum. We are constantly being told what they did not vote to do, and I tell this House today what they did vote to do: they voted to leave the European Union. What we are having is a dress rehearsal for an attempt to reverse the decision they took. The single market and the customs union are the vanguard for keeping Britain in the European Union by the back door.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Prime Minister has been the most consistent one on the reasons why people voted to leave? She has outlined that people want to take back control of their money, borders and laws, with which single market and EEA membership are not compatible.
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The Prime Minister, in her two key speeches, has made it very clear that she respects the decision the British public took, which is about control of our borders. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) said earlier, this is not about being against immigration; it is about being able to deliberately discriminate equally between everyone, from across the world, rather than giving preference to one set of people simply because of where they live. It is about making our own laws again. The Supreme Court on the other side of Parliament Square will again become the supreme court of the United Kingdom, and we will not be subject to the European Court of Justice. And it is about taking back control.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will not give way because we are very short of time. It is also about ending the vast payments we make to the EU, for which we are somehow supposed to be grateful because we get a little bit of it back. In short, the British public voted to become an independent, self-governing country again. It is incumbent on this House to deliver on that verdict and to reject the Lords amendments, which have only one aim, which is to thwart the democratic will of the British people.
I just want to respond briefly.
The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) mentioned the Dubs amendment made by the Lords and, in her absence, I reiterate my assurance that the Government will go away and look at drafting an amendment for their lordships' House when the matter goes before them. On that basis, I hope she will not press the amendment in her name.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will appreciate the importance of these Divisions. You will also be aware from our earlier exchange that the annunciators are not showing them, but do we have the assurance of the House authorities that the Division bells themselves are fully working in all parts of the House?
I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendments 19C to 19E, 19G to 19L and 19P, and proposes Government amendments to Lords amendment 19P.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
I will give way to the Chairman of the Exiting the European Union Committee.
When the right hon. Gentleman appeared before the Committee recently, he confirmed that the motion asking the House to approve the withdrawal agreement would be amendable. Can he therefore explain to the House why the Government are now proposing amendments to Lords amendment 19P to include the reference to “neutral termsâ€? He will be well aware that Standing Order 24B says that, if a motion is considered by Mr Speaker to be in neutral terms, it cannot be amended. Why are the Government prepared to allow an amendable motion in one case, but not in the dire circumstances that the right hon. Gentleman is now describing?
The right hon. Gentleman has prefaced perfectly the rest of my speech, because that is precisely what I shall spend the next 10 minutes explaining to him. I think that the additional provisions speak for themselves. Our proposed amendment creates a formal structure, set out in law, for Parliament to express its views in all the various scenarios that might come to pass in our exit from the European Union, but it also passes the three tests that were set out by me and by the Prime Minister. I am glad to see that the amendment sent back to us by the other place accepts the vast majority of these provisions. The core of the disagreement now focuses on the exact nature of the motion offered to the House if any of the unfortunate circumstances that I have previously mentioned come to pass. Our amendment offers those motions in neutral terms. Questions have focused, understandably, on whether that means that they would not be amendable. Members will, of course, be aware that it is not within the competence of Governments to judge whether amendments can be tabled to motions, but for the sake of clarity, let me quote from Standing Order No. 24B:“Where, in the opinion of the Speaker or the Chair, a motion, That this House... has considered the matter, is expressed in neutral terms, no amendments to it may be tabled.â€I have written to the Chairman of the Procedure Committee setting out how the Government understand that this process will operate in practice and have laid a copy of that letter in the Libraries of both Houses.
I am enormously grateful to the Secretary of State for allowing me to intervene so early in his important speech. I am most unhappy about the repetition by the Prime Minister, and by others in the Government, of the mantra “no deal is better than a bad dealâ€. I should like the Secretary of State to give a guarantee to the people of Northern Ireland that the Government whom he represents here today will not be gambling with the constitutional status of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. No deal would lead to a hard border, which would inevitably be exploited by Sinn Féin and by new IRA dissenters. I need that guarantee.
The hon. Lady can be sure that we will not be gambling with the status of the border. I shall come back to the issue of no deal in a moment, because it is central to much of the issue of the amendability of motions.
Is not the importance of the position that the Government are taking that, if a “no dealâ€ option is ruled out, that will guarantee a worse deal in any negotiation? Anyone who has been party to a negotiation will understand that.
My hon. Friend is right, and I shall come back to that point in a second.
The satisfactory amendment that left the House of Lords would oblige the Government to table a substantive motion if their agreement were being rejected. No doubt they would draft that with a view to commanding the majority of the House, but other people could table a substantive amendment with alternative proposals for how to proceed. My right hon. Friend rejects that, and is trying to replace it with a situation in which the Government do not have to put anything in their second amendment, except that they take note. Then, if anyone tries to table a substantive motion as an amendment, I will give you a pound to a penny, Mr Speaker, that the argument will be “If you pass this, it will mean no deal, because the Government are not going to negotiate this, and it will bring the thing to an end.â€I cannot for the life of me see why the Government are hesitating about the Lords amendment, except, of course, that they have come under tremendous pressure from hard-line Brexiteers in the Government, who caused them to reject the perfectly satisfactory understanding that had been reached with Conservative Members who had doubts last week.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must ensure that Opposition Members whose constituents, like mine, voted strongly to leave vote with us, and vote to stop these amendments?
I take my hon. Friend's point, but, at the Dispatch Box and elsewhere, I have always insisted that people vote with their consciences, and their consciences should encompass how they represent the wishes of their constituents. If the European Union expects Parliament to direct the Government to reconsider its policies, to extend article 50 or even to revoke it, it will have an incentive to delay and give us the worst possible deal just to try to bring about such an outcome.
I am not giving way for the moment. I hope the hon. Lady will take that on board.
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
In a moment. Our amendment on the other hand is consistent with the notion that it is right for Parliament to express its view but not to instruct the Government on how to conduct themselves in an international negotiation.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
As I have said, it passes the three tests set out by myself and the Prime Minister. I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am reading here in the media for the first time a ministerial statement from the Secretary of State purporting to explain how “neutral termsâ€ would operate in practice, and I assume that you have seen the statement, Mr Speaker. It says:“Under the Standing Orders of the House of Commons it will be for the Speaker to determine whether a motion when it is introduced by the Government under the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill is or is not in fact cast in neutral terms and hence whether the motion is or is not amendable.â€Therefore, Mr Speaker, my question to you is this: what discretion does that leave you in practice if such a motion is cast in time-honoured neutral terms in the first place?
I am very grateful. Will my right hon. Friend commend our hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who on the radio today, with his characteristic openness, said that he hoped that, if the amendment of our right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) were passed today, the House would use that in order to suspend the triggering of article 50, which let the cat out of the bag as to what the motive is, which is to delay, frustrate or even stop entirely the UK leaving the European Union?
As I have said throughout, it is for people to go with their consciences on this matter and I do not attack anybody for doing that. May I pick up on the point of order raised with you, Mr Speaker? I would not want the House to think that in any way it had not been told about this. In my earlier speech, I outlined the issue of “Erskine Mayâ€ on this matter and Standing Order 24B and your rights in this, and made it plain that that is what we are relying upon. So I would not want the House to be misled in any way, or to believe it has been misled. The debates on this issue have been in the finest traditions of this House. Hon. Members have stood on issues of principle and argued their cases with the utmost integrity. That has shifted the Government's approach to a position where our Parliament will rightly and unquestionably have its say and express its view. For in this, the greatest democracy of all, we debate, we argue, we make our cases with passion, but we do it to a purpose and that is to deliver for our people, not just to please ourselves. They decided that we will leave the European Union and, whatever the EU thinks about that, we will do it, and we will do it in the best way we can. And in that spirit I commend this motion to the House.
Will the shadow Secretary of State confirm that the Labour party is not trying to frustrate Brexit, and that the policy of our party and our Front Bench is that we will be leaving the European Union in March 2019?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know how important this is for her constituency, and I can confirm that that has always been our position.
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way. At least he has allowed someone from this side to make an intervention, which the Secretary of State did not have the decency to do. Will he explain what on earth a meaningful vote would mean if there was a Hobson's choice Brexit-a choice between the deal we have done or no deal at all? Is not avoiding a Hobson's choice Brexit what this entire debate is now about?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, because it goes to the heart of the issue: If Parliament is given a vote on article 50, and if we do not like what the Prime Minister has brought back, we can have something much worse. Even a child could see that that is not an acceptable choice.
Perhaps those on the Opposition Benches are missing the central point. In any negotiation, ruling out the possibility of no deal will guarantee the worst outcome. Anyone who has conducted a negotiation in business understands that. If those on the Opposition Benches do not understand it, they are missing the central point.
I am grateful for that intervention. I have always been curious about this tactic. What will happen at the end of the negotiations if there is no deal is that we will be pushed over a cliff. Volunteering to jump first has never appeared to me to be a great tactic.
I will not give way, because I want to complete this answer. No deal was never a credible threat, and as each day goes past, it becomes less credible. There is no immigration law that can come into force in March 2019, and there are no staff to administer it. There are no customs arrangements. There is no infrastructure. If we do not have a deal, we will not have any arrangements for law and security. It is not a credible threat, and this notion that we have to pretend we are going to do something that is incredible has no bargaining impact. The third argument against our position is that it somehow passes an advantage to the EU, and it is based on the proposition that, but for this amendment, the Prime Minister would proceed undisturbed on her course to take us out of the EU without a deal-that she would calmly, and with the full support of this House, head for the cliff of no deal. That seems extremely unlikely. This amendment is about what will happen at the end of the negotiations, not at the beginning. It would allow Parliament to have a meaningful role once the negotiations are over, and it would not tie the Government's hands during the negotiations. What it would mean, however, is that the course that the Government would take, in the event that article 50 was voted down or that there was no deal, would have to be supported by a majority in this House. Standing back, that looks like common sense.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
The bit I do not understand is that many motions have been carried by this House in the past few years-motions tabled by the Backbench Business Committee, by the Opposition and by ordinary Members-but the Government have just let them go through and then completely ignored them. The only thing that has legislative effect is legislation. That is why we must have a meaningful vote, not a pretend one.
Yes, the hon. Gentleman is right, but if the Government were to concede to the amendment, as drafted in the Lords, for an amendable motion, the House must understand that the Government could ignore it. I can assure the House that it would not be enforceable in any court of law- No, that really must be understood. It could not be enforceable in any court of law, because that would entirely undermine the rights and privileges of this place. It would be for us to enforce it. Of course, the ultimate sanction that this House has is a motion of no confidence but, short of that, there are other means by which the House can in fact bring its clear view to bear on the Government.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
No, I will not. In view of that acknowledgement, I must say that I weigh that and the clear words of this statement against what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has told me about her anxieties. My judgment-it is purely personal-is that if that is the issue, having finally obtained, with a little more difficulty than I would have wished, the obvious acknowledgement of the sovereignty of this place over the Executive in black and white language, I am prepared to accept the Government's difficulty, support them and, in the circumstances, to accept the form of amendment that they want. I shall formally move my amendment at the end, because I do not want to deprive the House of the right to vote if it wishes. Members have the absolute right to disagree, but it seems to me that, with the acknowledgement having been properly made, I am content to go down that route.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
No, I want to end. We are facing some real difficulties at the moment. It is rightly said that those whom the gods want to destroy, they first render mad. There is enough madness around at the moment to make one start to question whether collective sanity in this country has disappeared. Every time someone tries to present a sensible reasoned argument in this House vilification and abuse follow, including death threats to right hon. and hon. Friends. There is a hysteria that completely loses sight of the issues that we really have to consider. There is an atmosphere of bullying that has the directly opposite consequence in that people are put into a position where they feel unable to compromise, because by doing so they will be immediately described as having “lostâ€-as if these were arguments to be lost or won. The issue must be that we get things right. Right at the other end of the spectrum, we get some other ridiculous things. I have had Daily Mail journalists crawling over the garden of my house in France. I do not quite know, but I think they were looking for silos from which missiles might be aimed at the mansion of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). The area where I have a holiday home has a history of monsters and witches chucking megaliths backwards and forwards across the channel. Such is the state of our discourse, and that is the very thing we must avoid. We are going to have differences and, if there is no deal, those differences may extend to my taking a different view, as a Member of Parliament, from what the Government might wish. This House has a right to act if there is no deal in order to protect the interests of the British people, and the responsibility in those circumstances lies as much with us as it does with the Government.
Does my hon. Friend agree that this Parliament finds itself in a very strange position? This Parliament actually does not want to have a vote. In fact, I think it voted not to have a vote. Even if it does not want to have a vote, it is still legitimate to have a vote. Not to have a vote is a bizarre dereliction of responsibility by this Parliament, which is why we need Scottish independence and not the mess and the carnage we see before us.
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The reason why some in this House are determined not to give Parliament a meaningful vote is that they are worried an overwhelming majority of parliamentarians on both sides of the House might vote against the cliff-edge scenario they have already plotted for us. But the real reason why some Government Members, and even one or two Opposition Members, are acting now to block the chance of this so-called sovereign Parliament to have any powers on this whatsoever is that they know that if they put their true agenda before the House, in all probability it would be greeted by a majority that is numbered in the hundreds, rather than in the tens or the dozens. They say the Government have to be protected at all costs from Parliament, because Parliament might do something the Government do not like. Is that not what Parliaments are for, especially a Parliament in which the Government have lost their democratic mandate to form a majority Government by their cynical calling of an unnecessary and disruptive election? The Prime Minister has asked us not to accept the Lords amendments because she does not want to have her hands tied. It is none of my business whether the Prime Minister likes having her hands, her feet or anything else tied, but surely the whole point of having a Parliament is so there is somebody with democratic credibility and democratic accountability to keep the Government in check when it is clear to everyone that they are going in the wrong direction. If plunging over a cliff edge is not the wrong direction, I do not know what is.
Although the hon. Gentleman says it is none of his business whether the Prime Minister has her hands, her feet or anything else tied, does he accept it is in the interest of the country for the Prime Minister to have the freedom to go and negotiate the best deal for the country? Parliament cannot negotiate the detail of that deal. Only the Prime Minister can do that.
These amendments contain no desire for Parliament to be involved in the negotiations, but we are being asked to believe there is no possibility that the negotiations will fail. That is what we are being asked to believe, except some of those who give us that promise are hoping the negotiations will fail, because some of them have already decided that they want to push for a no deal Brexit, despite the calamitous consequences outlined by the Secretary of State.
Does my hon. Friend agree this appears to have more to do with trying to hold the Tory party together-Tory Members are negotiating among themselves as we speak-rather than for the benefit of the whole United Kingdom?
First, let me say that I very much agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) about the nature of political debate in this country. He is absolutely right to point that out and I agree with him wholeheartedly. The second point I wish to make is that many people in this House seem to forget that there have been two meaningful votes. The first was when this House decided to give a referendum to the British people. The second was the referendum itself, in which the people voted to leave the EU. They were meaningful votes.
I am not going to give way, because time is limited. Since then, some people who did not like the result of that referendum and perhaps did not even expect it have had a new-found enthusiasm for the rights of this Parliament to decide all sorts of things. They were quite happy for all of these powers to be given over to the EU willy-nilly, but they now have this new-found enthusiasm that this House should decide everything.
I am not going to give way. As I was saying, if only that had been the case before. I excuse from this my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), because he did not vote to have a referendum and so there is absolutely no reason why he should feel in any way bound by its result. I perfectly respect that; his position has been entirely consistent. What I have no time for-
To make it clear, this totally irrelevant argument that we are trying to reverse the referendum is as irrelevant to me as it is to any other of my right hon. and hon. Friends. This House voted, by an enormous majority, to invoke article 50. We are now trying to debate, and have parliamentary influence over, what we are going to do when we have left and what the form of our new arrangements with Europe and the rest of the world will be. So will my hon. Friend stop, yet again, introducing-this is not just him, but he is the ultimate Member to do it-this totally irrelevant argument and try to say what is wrong with the process set out in the Lords amendment? What is the excessive power that it apparently gives this House to have a say when the negotiations are finished?
I am afraid that the public are not fooled by the motives of people who clearly want to delay, frustrate or overturn the result of the referendum. It is a shame some of them cannot admit it. The shadow Secretary of State said that people had said over a long period of time that if we did this or that, Brexit will be frustrated. May I just suggest to him that he gets out of London, because people around the country feel that Brexit is being frustrated? It is already being frustrated a great deal by this House. So he has this idea that Brexit has not been frustrated, but he needs to get-
How?
My right hon. Friend, who has taken a vow of independence since he lost his job as a Minister-he had never shown this before-asks how. I would invite him to get out- He is welcome to come up to Yorkshire-
I go there frequently.
He should speak to people then. I am perfectly content for this House to vote on whether it wants to accept the deal negotiated by the Government that they come back with. It is absolutely right that this House votes on whether or not to accept that deal, and the Government should accept the vote of this House. What it cannot do, having decided to give the people a vote in a referendum, is find some strange parliamentary mechanism in order to frustrate and overturn the result-
Will my hon. Friend give way?
My right hon. and learned Friend did not give way, and I am not going to give way either because time is limited. Parliament cannot vote to reverse the decision of the referendum. People outside this House need to know very clearly today that-
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I am not going to give way, as there is no time. I want people outside this House to know that those who are voting for this “meaningful voteâ€ today mean that if the Government decide that no deal is better than a bad deal- Does it not show how out of touch this place is that “no deal is better than a bad dealâ€ is even a contentious statement? It is a statement of the blindingly obvious, but amazingly some people find contentious.
I am not giving way, because I want to let other people have time to speak. Members should bear that in mind. I have given way to the Father of the House. I appreciate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) does not like hearing arguments with which she disagrees, but I am going to plough on regardless, despite her chuntering from a sedentary position. The fact that no deal is better than a bad deal is blindingly obvious to anyone with even a modicum of common sense. People in this House are being invited to accept that if the Government decide that no deal is better than a bad deal, this House should somehow be able to say to them, “You've got to continue being a member of the European Union while you go back and renegotiate this and renegotiate that.â€ I cannot stand aside and allow that to happen, and I do not think the British people will thank anybody in this House who votes that way. Let nobody be in any doubt: the constituents of anybody who votes for this meaningful vote today should know that they are voting to try to keep us in the European Union, against their will.
May I say to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that the argument he has just advanced is not true? I believe a very small number of Members of the House would cheerfully jump over the edge of a no-deal cliff, which is why we are having this argument this afternoon. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), for whom I have enormous respect, is right when he says that this is a very fraught, difficult and tense debate, where passions are running high. Given that the referendum split the country right down the middle, that is not entirely surprising. I gently say to him that, given the experience he went through last week, when he thought he had an assurance and then discovered that he did not, if I were him, I would be very, very cautious about accepting further assurances. However, I respect the decision that he makes. I would be cautious for the reason I put my question to the Secretary of State, who is no longer in his place. I listened carefully to what he said and I heard no explanation, no justification and no argument for why the Government are prepared for the House to debate an amendable motion to approve the withdrawal agreement-that is what he indicated when he came before the Select Committee-yet, when it comes to deciding what takes place in the event that the nation is facing the prospect of no deal, they are insisting on having a motion in “neutral termsâ€. That may or may not allow the Speaker to come to the rescue of the House by allowing the motion to be declared amendable. However, as I read Standing Order 24B, as long as the Government do their job in drafting the motion, the Speaker will have no choice but to declare it a motion in “neutral termsâ€ and it will therefore not be amendable.
Does not this compromise give enormous power to you, Mr Speaker? That is all very well, because you are a Speaker who has stood up for the rights of this House and of Back Benchers, and for the majority in this House to be able to have meaningful votes, but were you to fall under a bus in the next few months, what guarantee would there be that a future Speaker would stand up for the rights of this House in the same way that you have done?
It is not for me to advise you, Mr Speaker, but please do not cross any roads between now and the end of this process. It seems to me that the Government's intention throughout has been to seek to neuter this House when we come to the end of the process. We are talking about the possibility of facing no deal at all. In his speech from our Front Bench, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) set the position out very clearly: first, not only would we be facing economic difficulty of the most serious kind-with impacts on trade, on our services industry and on broadcasting-but there would be impacts on the security of our nation, because with no deal in place, how would the exchange of information continue? These are not minor matters; they go to the heart of the Government's responsibility to make sure that we are safe, that industry works, that taxes are raised and that public services are paid for. That is why people are getting exercised about this. It is not just some amendment to one Bill; it is the most important decision that the country has faced for generations. As my right hon. and learned Friend pointed out, we are not ready to cope with the consequences. Members should contemplate this, for a moment: if, because the House cannot do anything about it, we fall off the edge of the cliff, and future generations look at us and say, “What did you do at that moment? What did you do? Didn't you say anything?â€, are we, as the House of Commons, really going to allow our hands to be bound and say, “Well, at least I took note of what was happeningâ€? Our responsibility is not to take note; it is to take charge, to take responsibility and to do our job.
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that, if he looks at the Standing Orders, he will see that, if the House wants to take charge at that point, it will be able to do so. If necessary, I will join with him in doing just that.
I absolutely bow to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's expertise, but I am afraid that, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras pointed out earlier, under this Government, we have sat on these Benches on too many occasions, time and time and time again, on which the House has used the Standing Orders to debate a matter and pass a motion but the Government have sat there and said, “We're not taking any notice of you whatsoever.â€ That is why the opportunity to ensure that we have the right to amend a motion is, in the next few minutes, in the hands of this House. There will be no further opportunity to take back control, so I hope the House will do so by voting in favour of the amendment of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield.
I am grateful, again, to the other place for sending us the amendment. I have been concerned about this issue since the referendum, and have been open in my views about the need for a meaningful vote and parliamentary sovereignty. This is about our country's future and ensuring that we enhance, not reduce, our democracy. When I was re-elected last year, my constituents were under no illusions about how important I thought a meaningful vote was, as I had already made my concerns public and, indeed, voted for such a vote during the article 50 process. Views may differ regarding the desirability of no deal. In my view, it would be utterly catastrophic for my constituents and the industries in which they work, but surely all sides should welcome the certainty that the amendment would bring to the process. We are often accused of wanting to tie the Government's hands, but nothing could be further from the truth. How can the amendment tie the Government's hands during negotiations when it concerns the steps that should be taken when negotiations have broken down? In other words, it concentrates on events after the negotiations.
I will not give way. I support the Government's negotiation and strongly believe that the Prime Minister will succeed in her negotiation. However, it would be irresponsible not to have a process in place for what will happen should negotiations collapse. What is more, the amendment would ensure that, when the Prime Minister sits down to negotiate, our European partners know that she does so with the full backing of Parliament. Far from binding the Prime Minister, it would strengthen her hand. I encourage all my colleagues to recognise that the amendment would empower both Parliament and our negotiators. It lays out a contingency should disaster strike, and it delivers on the commitment to take back control to Parliament.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for selecting amendment (a); my pleasure at being able to speak to it is enhanced by the fact that this opportunity came completely out of the blue, and I welcome that. The principal purpose of my amendment is to provide clarity such that in all eventualities there will be the opportunity for people to have a final say on any deal that the Government strike, and such that Parliament will not be left stranded with no deal, with which would come the closure of our ports, food shortages, medicine shortages and general chaos. If Government Members do not believe that, I advise them to talk to the people at the port authority at Dover to hear what they think no deal would mean. I make no apology for the fact that I do want to stop Brexit, which I do not think will come as a surprise to many people in the Chamber. I do not, though, believe that the amendment tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), or, indeed, my own amendment, would achieve that aim. Brexit is a calamity. We are going to be poorer, more insecure and less influential, with fewer friends in the world and more enemies as a result of it, and that is happening already. Some Government Members know that and say it; some know it and keep quiet; and some know it and claim the opposite, although I am not going to embarrass those who shared platforms with me during the EU referendum campaign and said then that it would cause calamity, but now claim the opposite. Some Government Members deny it. Their life's ambition has been to achieve Brexit and they could not possibly accept that it is now doing us harm.
The right hon. Gentleman is making a fine speech. To put some numbers on this calamity, a no-deal Brexit would cause an 8% damage-event to GDP. For context, the 2008 crash was a 2% damage-event to GDP. The over-the-cliff Brexiteers are looking to damage the UK economy four times as much as the 2008 crash did. Well done, guys!
Absolutely. We understand the calamity that would be no deal. I think that nobody here or in the European Union believes that the Government would actually settle for that, because of the consequences that it would have for our economy.
I will just make a bit more progress in the minute and a half that is left. There would be, if time allowed, a chorus of the “will of the peopleâ€ from the Government Benches, but let me make two points about that. Two years on from 23 June 2016, who is clear about what the will of the people now is? The whole purpose of providing a final say on the deal is to test whether the will of the people is the same now as it was two years ago. As Members of Parliament, are we delegates or representatives? We are elected to use our judgment, from the Prime Minister downwards, who campaigned to remain because she used her judgment and thought that Brexit would cause us damage and would damage our communities up and down the country. Many Conservative Members used their judgment then. I am afraid that their judgment now seems to have left them. The Government's own assessment confirms that the impact of Brexit will be wholly negative. Therefore, the delegates in this House will push on with a policy that is detrimental to British families. The representatives in this House will recognise that a way out of this ideological nightmare into which we have got ourselves has to be found. Today, we will be able to decide and to demonstrate which of those two things we are-delegates or representatives.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) got it absolutely right in his response to the Chairman of the Brexit Committee that the constitutional power of this House to determine who is in Government is entirely unaffected by these amendments or the written ministerial statement that will be laid tomorrow. The powers, the authority and the rights of this House remain intact, and that is not dependent on whether a meaningful vote is amendable or unamendable. Mr Speaker, as an historian of this House and its powers, you know perfectly well that the Norway debate was held on the Adjournment of the House-whether or not it should adjourn for the Whitsun recess. That great issue of the time-whether we should have a few days off at Whitsun-led to a fundamental change in the Government and the whole history of our nation that flowed from it.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I do apologise to the hon. Lady, but I will not give way, because other people want to speak, and time is very short. Therefore, the rights of this House are intact. The legislation will ensure that the Government can pursue their objectives, which is very important. The Chief Whip is in his place. I commend him for the tactful way that he has discussed these issues with so many people over the past week to ensure that we could come to something that every Conservative Member is able to agree to and put their name to that maintains the privileges of this House, ensures that the Government can negotiate properly, and sends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State to the negotiating table with a united House of Commons behind them.
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak today. I will make just a couple of remarks. I want to reiterate the comments that have been made that this is not about reversing Brexit or about tying the hands of the Government. This is about what happens and the role of Parliament if things go wrong. It is about clarity, about what will happen in this Parliament and to the interests of our country in the event of no deal, or no deal being agreed by this House. It is incredibly disappointing to have reached this position. It could have been so different. A week after the referendum, I wrote to the then Prime Minister. I then wrote to the current Prime Minister. I made the argument that it was in the interests of our country that this House came together, that we had ways of working across parties, across this House and the House of Lords, and that we came to a solution together and worked through the issues together. But, step by step, we have seen a Government who have run and a Government who have hidden-a Government who have not even wanted to bring forward their own impact assessments so that we can take part in an evidence-based debate on the impact of Brexit on our country and get the answer right. A process by which this country comes together is essential if, in the autumn, we reach a situation in which what was unthinkable becomes thinkable. To have a way in which we handle that is our responsibility. Every large Government project has a risk register and a response to those risks. This is a critical risk for our country and it is vital that, in advance of such a situation, we all know what is going to happen and that we have a say, on behalf of our constituents, about what could be an incredibly catastrophic situation for our economy, our country and our society.
There are only two issues that come out of this debate. The first is about honour. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) tried to ensure that he got a deal from the Prime Minister. He went with other Members to negotiate with her and she made a promise to him about an amendment, but that promise was not necessarily fulfilled in the interpretation of the Members who heard her say it, so the House of Lords had to send this issue back to us today. This issue is definitely about honour. Other hon. Members have said that they believe that the House can pass resolutions and motions, and that they will be honoured, even if they are not necessarily binding. I believe that the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield is an honourable man, and he is again taking the Government at their word. That brings me to the second issue, which is that this is also about Parliament. If the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield has achieved anything, it is that he has moved the Government from where the Prime Minister was on “The Andrew Marr Showâ€ on Sunday, when she said that Parliament cannot tie the hands of Government. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield has managed to extract a statement from the Government, who are now saying that it is open for Members to table motions, that parliamentary time will be provided, and that it is open for this House, through Mr Speaker, to ensure that motions and decisions can be made. The right hon. and learned Gentleman believes that that is worth having and it is indeed true that it is a step forward. The difference that I have with him is that he believes that the Prime Minister and the Government should be given the benefit of the doubt yet again; I would suggest that he should not and could not necessarily trust their word. That is where we differ.
There is just one fundamental point that I would like to make about this debate, which is that the decision that was taken in the European Union Referendum Act 2015-by six to one in the primacy of this House of Commons and in the House of Lords, which endorsed it-was to accept that the people of this country, not 650 Members of Parliament, would make the decision in the referendum. I need say only one word about this: our constitutional arrangements in this country operate under a system of parliamentary government, not government by Parliament.
When I was training to be a priest in the Church of England, my professor of systematic theology was called John Macquarrie. He would say that he was often asked by parishioners, “What is the meaning of God?â€, but that actually the far more important question is, “What is the meaning of meaning?â€ To be honest, it feels as though that is what this afternoon's debate and last week's debate have been about: what is a meaningful vote? The first point is that a meaningful vote is surely not one that is meaningless. We had a meaningless vote on Monday afternoon after the SO24 debate. It was meaningless because we were voting on whether this House had considered the matter of the Sewel convention, and even if every single Member of the House had voted against that, we would none the less have considered the matter. This is exactly what we do with statutory instruments as well: we vote on whether we have considered the matter. The Government's motion will require the Government-not allow them but require them-to table a neutral motion. I disagree with the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), who said that the vote in 1940 was on the Adjournment. It was not-it was on whether this House should adjourn for a successive number of days, and it was an amendable motion that would have had effect-
I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman if he does not mind. Oh, all right.
I said that the vote was on the Whitsun recess, so I think that I covered that point.
But the hon. Gentleman managed to elide the fact that it was an amendable motion that had effect. The point is that if the Government do what their motion says they should do-namely, table a neutral motion-the written ministerial statement gives the Speaker no power whatever to decide that it is not neutral. Indeed, if a Speaker were to decide that a neutral motion was suddenly, somehow or other, not neutral and could be amended, we should remove him from the Chair because he would not be abiding by the Standing Orders of this House. So let us make it absolutely clear: if it is a neutral motion, it will be a motion that has no meaning whatever.
I am concerned that the editor of the Daily Mail has made a small doll that looks like me and is sticking pins in its throat, as every time I want to speak, I get this wretched infection. However, I want to make some very important points. I completely agree with all the arguments advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach). History will recall what a remarkably brave woman she has been throughout all of this. I, too, will vote for the amendment, because I agree with much of what has been said: this needs to be in statute. I pay real tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who has yet again shown outstanding leadership and courage, as indeed have many Members of the House of Lords. It is in tribute to them, if nothing else, that I shall vote for this amendment. But primarily I shall vote for it because it is in the interests of all my constituents. I was elected to come here to represent all of them, including the 53% who did not vote for me, and the 48% who voted to remain, who have been sidelined and abused. The big mistake that we have made, from the outset of all that has followed from the referendum result, is that we have not included them. Finally, I say gently to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that he has to remember that some hon. Members will vote with the Government today as an act of faith and trust in the Prime Minister that the sort of comment he made will no longer exist in this party, and that we will be more united. It is her role, if I may say so, to make sure that we have more temperate speeches.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), I hold the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) in very high regard for his integrity and fluency. I do, however, say gently that he is in danger of turning into a modern-day grand old Duke of York. There are only so many times you can march the troops up the hill and down again without losing integrity completely. In the little time remaining, I want to talk about neutral motions, which are at the centre of this dispute-
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. What means do I have to correct the record given that at Prime Minister's questions today, my neighbour, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), may have inadvertently cited my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Transport as being responsible for a timetabling issue that affects my constituency? The emails that she referenced were three years old, from a time when neither of my right hon. Friends were in their current roles. The timetabling issue and the current disruption are separate issues. I will continue to work with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport to ensure that the best service for my constituents is met. I felt that it was important to bring this point to the House.
You used to do it!
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I am sure that the hon. Member for Southport (Damien Moore) was as shocked as I was to read the content of many of the emails that were released both to him and to me under the Freedom of Information Act. Their content has had such serious implications for my constituents and his. Given that the Department has not released emails during the current Secretary of State for Transport's tenure and has stopped at the point at which the current Secretary of State was appointed, I wonder whether I could seek your guidance as to whether it might be in order to direct the Secretary of State to release those emails and come clean about what he knew, and when.
Very dextrous.