European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-11-14
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): There is no doubt that some of the problems we have are not going to be helpful in our negotiation. Equally, it is right to say that the more we can have mature, considered and sensible debate in this House, the more we improve our ability to negotiate with our EU partners I have tabled a number of amendments. As with all amendments, some are multiple choice—we have to do this in this House, because it is how we go about looking at and examining legislation—and some are probing amendments. Some are, in my view, more important than others. I tabled the one that hon. Gentleman highlights because the Government did not really explain that they wanted multiple exit dates. I wanted to tease out why and to suggest that one exit date might be better because of the consequences for the use of Henry VIII powers thereafter, but there might actually be a justification for what the Government are doing. All that needs to be worked through in the legislation, and that is what I have sought to do I say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench that over past weeks we have had some really sensible, constructive discussions on some of the areas covered by the amendments that I have tabled. I hope very much indeed that we can achieve some degree of consensus, in which case some of the amendments, whether on triage or the way we treat retained EU law, might not be required. I do not wish to get diverted into all that; I shall come back to it in later debates. The trouble is—I repeat this—that it all gets marred by events such as those last Friday, when extraordinary amendments are suddenly magicked out of the blue that simply do not make any sense at all When I read the amendments and those consequential on them, which I must say I saw only this morning, I saw another problem: as has already been highlighted, one of the consequentials seemed to me to totally undermine the purpose of the main amendment, to the point where the conspiracy theorist in me made me think it was a sort of double deceit or double bluff—that it was intended in some way to give the impression to some of my right hon. and hon. Friends who really worry about this that they were being offered this tablet of stone on our departure, but it was in fact teasingly capable of being shifted. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General sent me a text earlier that said that I was mistaken and that that was not the intention—that it was the very reverse I am not a parliamentary draftsman, and I know that there are always different ways in which an amendment to a statute can be read. I remain of the view, though, that the wording is very peculiar indeed if the intention is to exclude the possibility of playing around with the exit date, which is being offered as a talisman. I must say to my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General that I did naughtily begin to wonder whether in fact the parliamentary draftsman was so appalled at the folly of what the Government were doing that he had sneakily altered amendment 383 to try to offer them a lifeline in case they came to regret what they had done. I am sure that that is being very unfair to the parliamentary draftsman, whom I know always does what is requested of him or her.