argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): I will give way in a second The debates on this Bill have typified this Government’s approach to parliamentary scrutiny. I understand their difficulties when they have no majority and their Members include people like me and those who are trying to interrupt me—we are allegedly on the same side of the House—who fundamentally disagree with each other I have attended every day of our debates on this Bill. We spent yesterday discussing parliamentary scrutiny, but our proceedings have not been a great advertisement for such scrutiny. The Government’s reaction to each and every proposal is to say how carefully they have listened, how important it is and how they will go away and think about it, but then to explain why the drafting of the Bill will not currently be amended. I am sure that I have done that myself when taking legislation through the House, and it is always a joy to find out that one can get away with it for quite a long time. After a bit, one gets used to the fact that one can get away with it as long as one is suitably polite and flattering to those who are proposing amendments. The actual reasons that have been given for rejecting proposals have been all about administrative convenience—that they are obscure drafting amendments. I congratulate the parliamentary draftsmen on creating arguments of such extraordinary minutiae to support the amazing aspirations of civil servants who see a mountain of work before them and hope that most of it can proceed with the minimum of political scrutiny What we have not heard, and I will have to hear it today, is the political argument against Parliament having a meaningful say. What is the constitutional argument that says Parliament should be denied a statute before the Government enter into all these commitments? I have not so far heard a word expressed to try to explain that to me. That should be the key, dominant thought in the Government’s mind as they negotiate. Of course they will have to think about what will satisfy the Foreign Secretary and the Environment Secretary, and of course they will have to get something for which the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Sun will criticise them least, and so on, but I do not think Parliament is an afterthought to those vital considerations; I think it is the parliamentary process that matters. The rest is a problem for some press officer.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Marcus John Hudson Fysh (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: Foreign Trade
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
John Charles Baron (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): 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 market" and "customs union" 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): 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?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: Foreign Trade
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Bernard Christison Jenkin (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): 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?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): 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?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): 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?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): I am most grateful to have the opportunity to participate in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook). I agreed with virtually every word that he said In speaking to amendment 7, in the name of my hon. Friends, myself and other hon. Members, I am conscious that it has taken on a life of its own. When the Committee stage of the Bill started, it was my intention—and I hope one that I have observed and honoured throughout—to try to approach the amendments that I tabled in the spirit in which they are intended, which is to try to improve difficult legislation while entirely recognising the many challenges that the Government face. Brexit is full of risk and full of complexity—legal and otherwise—and the Government are entitled to my support, wherever possible, to carry Brexit out as smoothly as they can and with the least impact on the well-being of the citizens of our country. That has been my aim throughout I very much regret that—as often tends to happen in these matters—while some sessions in Committee have led to sensible amendment and the Government considering matters, or going away to look again and making some helpful suggestions, in the case of amendment 7 we seem to have run out of road. What happens in those circumstances, I regret to say, is that all rational discourse starts to evaporate. The purpose of the amendment, the nature of it, is entirely lost in a confrontation in which it is suggested that the underlying purpose is the sabotage of the will of the people, which it most manifestly is not. That is then followed by a hurling of public abuse; large numbers of people telling one that one is a traitor; and, I regret to say, some of one’s hon. and right hon. Friends saying slightly startling things. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), for example, said that I am grandstanding, when I do not remember ever having suggested such a thing to him about the way that he has expressed his views on Europe at any time in his career—including, I might add, when I tried to be a loyal member of his team when he was leader of my own party.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
John Charles Baron (Conservative, Centre-right): 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?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): I note what my hon. Friend has said and I am very grateful to him for the way in which he put it, but I happen to disagree with him. If he listens to me he will understand why I think that I am right on that point The consequence is that we completely lose sight of what the key issues are, and if I may say so before I move on, that matters a lot, because in the course of this, we also lose sight of the fact that we are the Parliament of a deeply divided country on this issue. When I go and lecture to sixth-formers occasionally and talk to them, I point out that the parliamentary process is not just about the imposition of the will of the majority on the minority; it is the process by which we obtain consent for what the majority chooses to do The difficulty with this referendum is that, having invoked the public will, which, I regret to say, is not entirely tempered in its expressions of view by some of the courtesies that we extend to each other here, we run the risk of losing sight of the fact that 48% of the electorate did not wish for the policy that we are currently pursuing and have deep concerns about, not trying to reverse it, but the extent to which it will have an adverse impact on their well-being, and request us as a Parliament to pay as much attention to what they are saying as we undoubtedly have to do to those who voted in the referendum and said that they wanted to leave. The most worrying aspect of the debate, as it has progressed, is how we become polarised and so fixated on ends that we fail completely to look at means. We look at the top of the mountain, but not at where we are going to put our foot next. As a consequence, we run serious risks of badly letting them down—all of them, collectively—by enacting bad legislation and taking very foolish decisions Of course, when this confrontation comes along, the negotiations immediately stop, the conversation ceases, the Government’s steamroller is invoked, and the atmosphere can suddenly get really quite unpleasant; and I regret it. As a consequence—I will come back to this in a moment—I have to tell my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench that I think they have lost a series of opportunities in the dialogue we have had on this to come to a sensible outcome. With that, I turn to the issue that is, in truth, under debate.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): 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?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): 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?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Jonathan Simon Djanogly (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.