Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU — House of Commons, 2016-10-12
Topic: International Affairs
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): No, I will not Parliament has a duty to ensure that the various final options are considered accordingly and not simply forced through; Parliament has an obligation to ensure that each of them is properly debated and clearly presented to the British people. Every Member appreciates that each of the different possible outcomes of our leaving the EU has both advantages and downsides, and it would be morally repugnant for anyone to pretend that there is only one sort of Brexit. That would be a lie: it would be to perpetrate a deception on the British people. The debate of June has moved on. We can no longer debate whether we leave the EU, but we absolutely must debate how we do that The Government are clearly experiencing certain strains between their Treasury wing and their Brexit triumvirate, but my purpose is not to make political hay with that dispute. In fact, I believe that it is right that the Government are having a serious debate and considering the various options. Our point is simply that this is not a discussion that the Government can keep to themselves. Parliament must be part of that discussion, and the British public have a right to their say Our role as politicians and leaders of our different communities is to present all the different possible options for how to leave the EU to our constituents and to let them inform the final decision that this sovereign Parliament must make. Our sovereignty rests on the sovereignty of the people It is important, too, that we also understand the limits of that sovereignty. It is said that politicians propose and markets dispose. Sovereignty does not give us control over the confidence that others have in the strength of our currency. It was not for no reason that the Bank of England put £70 billion of extra liquidity into the UK economy immediately after the referendum result and lowered interest rates by a quarter point. Some commentators who are fond of reminding us that after the Brexit vote the sky did not fall in should perhaps consider that Mark Carney and the Monetary Policy Committee were pumping liquidity into the system precisely to prop it up. Sovereignty certainly does not give us control over the markets; over the past week, we have seen all too clearly the markets’ violent reaction when they thought that the Government were proposing to leave both the single market and the customs union. Today the pound stands at a 168-year low The Government can insist. They can exercise the royal prerogative and decide to withdraw from the preferential terms of access to the world’s largest consumer market that the UK currently enjoys, but they are very mistaken if they confuse that exercise of sovereignty with any real control over the investment decisions that companies will then take about the future of our constituents’ jobs and wages. If the market is right to have devalued the UK’s stocks so significantly, and if it is right in thinking that investors will no longer invest and that the UK’s economic prospects have declined, we need to understand that our current account deficit—which currently runs at £28.7 billion, and which the fiscal rule was supposed to abolish, before it was abolished itself—is only likely to widen. The Government have a responsibility to set out precisely how they propose to deal with that economic fact, because, again, this is about the jobs, wages and wellbeing of our constituents As the Chancellor himself said, "the British people did not vote…to become poorer or less secure", but we must be open with the electorate that the prize of regaining full sovereignty is that we will no longer have any control over the regulation and standards in a market with which we currently have 44% of our exports and 53% of our imports. We must be open with the electorate that the control over the movement of people from the EU that the Prime Minister spoke of at Prime Minister’s questions earlier today will also affect the capacity of companies to hire those with the skills they need to grow and prosper, and to employ more people here in the UK I am not in the habit of quoting the Daily Mail—I often like neither what it says, nor the way in which it says it—but none of us should ignore what it says today. In an otherwise misleading and confused editorial, it says: "what the public voted for was simple: to regain control of our borders in order to end mass immigration; reclaim control of our laws; and stop sending billions of pounds to Brussels None of this is possible inside the single market—which requires the free movement of workers" If the Government believe that—and I believe they do—the question must be asked why they will not admit that they have ruled out maintaining the access we currently enjoy to the single market Immigration is the political heart of the Brexit debate, and we in the Labour party state unequivocally that those EU workers currently in the UK contributing to our economy must be allowed to stay, just as the 1.2 million UK citizens living and working in the rest of the EU must be. We in the Labour party also put it on record that the principle of the free movement of workers must be changed, and our new relationship with the EU must put in place clear and fair immigration controls that work to the benefit of the British people However, there will be a cost in terms of market access, investment, jobs and our constituents’ livelihoods. Why are the Government afraid to say so? The answer is that they do not want to admit the financial consequences that must inevitably follow from such an admission. The free traders are actually fighting against the financial consequences of leaving the largest free trade market in the world The Government have 170 days. The Secretary of State can continue to duck and dive as he did today—42 minutes in which he said nothing—but democracy demands that the Government should publish the terms of Brexit and submit them to the scrutiny of this sovereign Parliament, and the people of Britain will not trust this Government until they do.