argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Charles Ashley Rupert Walker (Conservative, Centre-right): I have an admission to make: I am not an intellectual. [Hon. Members: "No!"] No, I am not. I really have tried it for the past few months, but I just cannot get on with it, so I am not going to give a highbrow, intellectual speech. My speech will be more of a three-minute cry of frustration, because I really, really do want to leave the EU; I have campaigned for it for a number of years and I am very keen to go We have talked at length about unicorns, and the proudest stallion unicorn of all is the unicorn of perfection—a unicorn that canters across broken fields with unrealisable dreams underfoot. But the unicorn of perfection must sadly be slayed, because perfection does not exist. When I am out in my constituency, meeting people who do not email me and do not write to me, so they are not self-selecting, they say three things to me: "Get on. Get on. Get on." These people voted to leave. These people voted to remain. But they want to get on and they want this Parliament to make a decision. They have accepted the result of the referendum It will be impossible for this House to come up with a perfect deal—a bowl of porridge that everyone finds to their satisfaction. But we can find something that 80% of our fair-minded constituents can get behind and say, "Do you know what? As a fair-minded citizen of this country, I’d have liked a little more of that and a little less of this, but I can live with it. I can get on and move on, and we can have certainty." It is impossible for this House to appeal to the implacable 10% who bookend the 80%—the remainers who want to remain at any cost and the leavers who want to leave at any cost. The demands of these people cannot be met by this House That is why tonight I will be supporting the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady). I will go through that Division Lobby to hopefully give the Prime Minister further instruction to go back to the EU and deliver a deal that 80% of my country and my constituents can unite behind.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles (Conservative, Centre-right): In the short time available to me, I will not try to match my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), who said almost everything that I would have said and much more entertainingly. I will try to explain why I have taken a step that many of my hon. Friends consider to be somewhat rash—the step of signing the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and supporting the Bill promoted by her The reason I have done so is that on the morning after the referendum, I sent a message to my constituents in which I committed to do my best to make a success of Brexit. Since then, I have left hospital in a wheelchair to vote for triggering article 50, and I have voted with the Government in every single Division on the withdrawal Act and every other piece of legislation advancing the delivery of a successful Brexit—unlike, I would point out, 117 of my fellow members of the Conservative party, including all the members of the ERG I am seriously committed to making a success of Brexit, but there are two parts to that sentence. There is Brexit and there is success, and Brexit on 29 March with no deal will not be a success. It will be a disaster. It will sour the British people against the operation of their Government for a generation, and I cannot have that on my conscience I will tell the House what the proposed amendment and Bill would do. They would rule out a no-deal Brexit on 29 March. They do not rule out a no-deal Brexit forever, because the only way of doing that is to revoke Brexit. I will never vote for that, and the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford will never vote for that. I do not believe that more than 100 Members of this House will ever vote to revoke Brexit, because that would be a political disaster at least as cataclysmic as the economic and human disaster of a no-deal Brexit on 29 March What we seek is to buy ourselves a little time to find a compromise and make a success of Brexit. I hope that we will be successful with this amendment tonight, but if we are not, it will be because the Prime Minister made a pledge at the Dispatch Box to come back to the House on 14 February with a motion that is equivalent to this one and equally amendable. My hon. Friends and I from across the House will move an equivalent amendment again, with an equivalent Bill attached, and I hope that Members will support them.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): It may be a bit of cliché now, but I say to the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) that the best way to prevent no deal is to vote for a deal. [Interruption.] Well, I am afraid it is pretty obvious We have heard so much in this debate about compromise, and we have all had to compromise. This is where I agree with my right hon. Friends the Members for Ashford (Damian Green) and for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). We come to this debate from different directions— I voted to leave in the referendum, and we only won by 52% to 48%—and we cannot get a deal for ourselves that gives us 100% of what we want, so we have to settle for most of what we want Frankly, what the Prime Minister has provided us with is leaving the EU, getting control of migration and, after a process of perhaps two or three years, getting out of the customs union. I am not a hard Brexiteer or a soft Brexiteer, but a measured Brexiteer, and that is what the Prime Minister is trying to do. We cannot of course have government by a sub-committee of the 1922 committee. We cannot keep kicking this can down the lane, as we have been told again and again. We have to come to a decision, and probably within the next two weeks we will have to make that final decision I say to the Government that I, like so many of my colleagues, will be supporting amendment (n). We want to give the Government some negotiating push to try to resolve this, but we have heard again and again that the EU will not contemplate any amendment to the withdrawal agreement. I say—and I repeat—that there is a solution to this, and we may have to do this in the end if we are going to get this deal through Parliament and reassure in particular our colleagues from Northern Ireland: we may have to issue a letter of reservation, under the Vienna convention, to the treaty. It would say that as both parties agree that the backstop is temporary, if it proves not to be temporary but subsists after 2021, we reserve the right under the Vienna convention to end the backstop and get out of it The EU could of course refuse to ratify the treaty, but we do not have to issue the letter of reservation at the time. I believe, however, that if we make absolutely clear our intention that the backstop should be temporary—that is what we have all agreed: the EU has agreed, the DUP has agreed, the Conservative party has agreed, the Labour party has agreed—and we are all agreed, this problem is surmountable. However, the Government must now take action I just make one final plea. We talk so much about compromise. At the end of the day, although the Prime Minister is accused of running down the clock, she is doing her level best to deliver what the British people want. So let us finally support her, and let us push this deal over the line.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). I again give this caution: we do not seem to be listening in this House. If we continue to say, "This is a Conservative party problem," we fundamentally misunderstand why people voted for Brexit. We can go on and on about the machinations of the Conservative party and about the party being united, but people in this country, in working-class areas, voted in swathes for Brexit. What were they voting for? I tell the House now that it was not stuff to do with the Conservative party We are limited in our options. I was particularly touched by the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). I understand—I can kind of feel—his trepidation about no deal, and absolutely share it; but we cannot get rid of no deal by taking that option away, because without that, we have nothing to fall back on. Should we have done this at the beginning? Yes. Should we have bound Opposition parties into this, and have made this an endeavour of national renewal? Of course we should, but we are where we are, and we cannot capitulate and let the United Kingdom fall out on a deal that is not good enough We have one option left, and that, I am afraid, is to support the Brady amendment. Many of us in this place have said that the Northern Ireland backstop is the problem, so we must now do what the EU keeps saying we cannot do: get behind the Prime Minister and show that we are united on that front. Let us get a result on that backstop agreement—something: a sunset clause, or some sort of unilateral exit—and then let us get on and deliver it. Let us get into the realm of possibility I see the exciting new proposals that came forward today; I am pretty lukewarm about them, to be honest, because this has been going on for two years. We have a deal, but there are aspects of it that are not good enough. Let us tackle those aspects, focus on what we are doing and actually deliver Brexit. Let us get this done, so that we can get out of the European Union on 29 March and get on with something else. I have sat through the debate, and it has been extraordinarily painful to hear the arguments rehashed again and again. I have huge respect for those who continue to say, "This or that is going to happen," and "This or that is what I want," but we are here now; we are starting now. The agreement has a fundamental flaw that we cannot accept, but let us get on and do something about the backstop that is within the realms of what we can do. If we ask for too much—for the unreasonable—the European Union will shut the door. Let us ask for something deliverable, get that backstop amended, and get out the European Union.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): As colleagues will know, I voted against my party for the first time in my career when I could not support the Prime Minister and the Cabinet’s withdrawal agreement. I felt it breached two very important manifesto commitments, largely around the Northern Ireland protocol, putting barriers in the way of different parts of the United Kingdom and potentially trapping us in an indefinite customs union I want to give the Prime Minister the best opportunity to go back to the European Union and secure the changes that are necessary. In my judgment, supporting the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) provides the best opportunity to support the Prime Minister in her return to the European Union I do not want to make her task more difficult. That is why I think it is fundamentally wrong to rule out a no-deal Brexit. The best way to secure a Brexit with a deal is to get a deal before this House that can get its support. My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) said she thought there was some merit in ruling out a no deal to get something in return. The problem is that if this House rules out a no-deal Brexit without the Prime Minister getting something in return, that makes her life more difficult. It makes it more difficult for her to secure a deal and less likely that we will get the deal we need to rule out a no-deal Brexit The amendment in the name of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) is flawed for that reason. We have already established that her Bill has a number of problems. I understand that the Labour Front-Bench team is not keen on the length of the delay; her Bill says it would be nine months. I asked her a question and established that the Bill could be used—I accept not by her or my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), but by others—as a mechanism for cancelling Brexit, against the wishes of the public. The Bill needs more scrutiny than the one day in which it would be rammed through this House I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) that it is perfectly proper for the House to look at its procedures, but if it decides to ram through a piece of contested legislation that has not been agreed to in a procedure usually used for emergency legislation agreed by both Front-Bench teams, I think Back Benchers will rue that precedent, because a future Government will use it to ram through legislation without proper scrutiny. I urge the House to reject amendment (b).
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Paul Barclay (Conservative, Centre-right): Recent weeks have proved the strength and vigour of Parliament, but it is now time to agree its will. It is time for us to establish what deal the House is for, to deliver certainty to our citizens and businesses and to offer clarity to the European Union. As we debate inside the Chamber, we should not lose sight of the fact that outside, the EU rightly expects us to continue to respect our shared values: to protect citizens’ rights, to honour our international obligations and to preserve the integrity of the peace process and avoid a hard border. That is a commitment that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister holds extremely dear Indeed, many Members in all parts of the House find much in the withdrawal agreement that is common ground. That is an integral part of bringing the country back together as we move forward in the national interest. However, many of the amendments simply prolong uncertainty and delay, despite the paradox that they were presented in a spirit of making progress in the delivery of certainty.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for showing such great generosity in allowing Members to intervene on him. If Members vote for the possibility of extending article 50 this evening by up to nine months and the EU allowed it, has he estimated how many billions of pounds that would cost, and could he estimate where that money would come from—which public services would be damaged because that money was going to Brussels rather than public services in the UK?
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Paul Barclay (Conservative, Centre-right): I want to make some progress. The key point that flows from the point made by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) is that by not backing a deal we prolong the level of uncertainty, and that drives cost. That is exactly why so many businesses in Scotland as well as the rest of the United Kingdom say that the best way to end unnecessary costs under a no deal is to back the Prime Minister’s deal What we see in the debate is a marked difference of focus. We have on the Benches behind me colleagues on different sides of the referendum debate, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), coming together to look at how they can work on solutions, and we have a proposal from my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) that will do just that. It will help us unlock the conversation with the European Union and get us even closer to delivering on the result of the referendum—a result, indeed, that so many on Opposition Members were committed to supporting in their manifesto.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Paul Barclay (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is absolutely right: at best they delay Parliament in terms of getting clarity on an agreed plan, and at worst they disguise attempts to stop Brexit. It would be better if those Members who want to go back on their manifestos and indeed stop Brexit were more explicit about their intentions, because, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has repeatedly set out, there is only one way to stop no deal and that is to secure a deal or go back on the biggest vote in our democratic history In the remaining time, let me turn briefly to the Leader of the Opposition’s amendment because it contradicts what was said by the shadow Trade Secretary who said that a customs policy would give the EU "power to decide our tariffs & quotas with 3rd countries. We’d be forced to liberalise our market but have no reciprocal access to theirs", The Leader of the Opposition’s amendment would leave the door open for a second referendum, which is something his own Front-Bench colleagues have said they oppose.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Paul Barclay (Conservative, Centre-right): I have five minutes left and will come on to that point—[Interruption.] Unlike my opposite number, I will take interventions and I will come on to the alternative arrangements, because they go to the heart of the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West Before doing so, I want to touch briefly, in the time available, on the amendments tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford. I do not for a minute question the principled spirit in which they have been proposed, but the reality is that they would have significant wider implications beyond Brexit. That is not just my view or, indeed, that of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. It is also the view of leading constitutional experts such as Philip Cowley and Vernon Bogdanor, the latter of whom said that "the proposals…have international as well as domestic implications." The House needs to consider carefully the lack of debate and clarity on the amendments’ proposed policy and the lack of certainty as to their intent and consequences. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), the former Chief Whip, has pointed out, the danger is that they will, in essence, act as a Trojan horse against the stated intention I do not for a minute doubt my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) when he says that changing Standing Orders has precedence—of course it does—but there has been no debate about that with the Procedure Committee or in this House. The wider constitutional implications, which have been referred to by leading experts in the field, cannot simply be swept away in the short-term convenience of the moment My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) tabled a principled amendment, but she spoke of a simple vote on saying no to no deal. That issue was taken head on by the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) when he pointed out that the practical effect of taking no deal off the table would not facilitate the amendment’s intention. I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is not just DUP Members who hold that view. On 24 January, Michel Barnier himself said that "it is not enough to vote against the No Deal…if no positive suggestions are put on the table, then we will be more or less bumpy or heading for the No Deal on March 30, as in an accident." The way to address no deal is by backing the deal of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister There has been much discussion of the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). Although it is not the subject of an amendment on today’s Order Paper, it has given us many technical questions to consider and we will seek the experts’ views. We will take forward the spirit of goodwill on which it builds, as part of reaching the common ground the House needs.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Paul Barclay (Conservative, Centre-right): That will be part of the negotiation that we will discuss in terms of the technical issues. What is not in doubt is that our commitment is shared by the hon. Lady, who has criticised Labour Members who, unlike the sister parties of the Labour movement in Northern Ireland, have not backed this deal or reflected the will of either the Labour movement in the south or that in the north. The fact is that they have walked away from the deal, even though the deal is the way to secure our steadfast commitment, which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister repeated today, to ensuring that no hard border returns to Northern Ireland.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 — House of Commons, 2019-01-29
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Paul Barclay (Conservative, Centre-right): Given that I have just a minute left, I will not give way Across leave and remain constituencies, we hear the same overwhelming call for the House to get on with it. Although 17.4 million people did not vote for no deal, they voted to leave. Time is of the essence. Citizens and business want certainty; the EU wants clarity; the Prime Minister needs a mandate and the House must therefore come together. It is time to act in the national interest. That is why the House should back amendment (n) tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West.