United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Commons, 2020-09-21
Topic: International Affairs
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): That is why I gave way to my right hon. Friend—because he was there. I think he was a very good Minister too, by the way, for what it is worth The point is that for 10 years, Labour Governments and other Governments simply refused to put prisoners’ voting rights through. Finally, there was a fudge negotiation, where not all of what was asked for was agreed, but it was agreed that what had been done, I think on furlough—as I recall, prisoners on furlough had voting rights—was okay. That was not what was asked for Let us not be too pompous about this idea that international law is some God-given gospel that says, "Absolutely nobody can ever trespass away from this." Many of these things are fudged anyway, and implementation is very important. I come back to section 38, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) initiated. That made it very clear that we would, if necessary, place our constitutional law ahead of both of those I make that point because in truth, we are now in exactly that state. That is why I believe that I can happily vote for this tonight. I am happy that, following the debate between my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst and the Government, they have tabled amendment 66, which will give Parliament a chance to say yea or nay when the moment comes. But we are not in breach until we decide to implement this. This has been done before. It is important to show that we want to do this if necessary, but we would rather find an agreement between the parties I come back to the point that I made about good faith in principle. I see that Monsieur Barnier has threatened our negotiators that, if they do not agree with him—he has not, by the way, wanted to move anywhere near the Joint Committee to discuss these matters—the EU will, if necessary, not give us the status of third country. That seems a bizarre threat to make. The list of third countries, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) mentioned, is long and peculiar. Belarus, for example, which we watch almost nightly on the television, would have third country status. We would not have it, apparently. Others include the Central African Republic, China, the Islamic Republic of Iran—the list goes on. I think there are now 137 countries that would have third country status, but apparently to Mr Barnier, it would be quite acceptable for a country that has been very close to the EU for years to not have third country status. I think it is a hollow threat, but it is a peculiar threat to make, and it gives an indication of bad faith The EU is meant to avoid bad faith in this, and so are we. The whole idea of the Bill is to say, "Stop. Let’s consider this again. We do not want—and you should not want—to end up in a situation where we are running around on your laws. This is not what the agreement was meant to be, and we are not prepared to see our constitutional settlement trashed in the pursuit of your own vainglorious idea that somehow you’re going to keep hold of us and run us afterwards." As my right hon. Friend said, we did not vote to be a subsidiary state; we voted for independence. That is the key point I am going to vote for this Bill, and I vote for it with a clean heart. I vote for it because so many areas—from state aid, to transfer of goods and agriproducts to labelling—will be affected unnecessarily. If the EU seriously wants to help and to get this done, it needs to return to the table, go into the Joint Committee as it said it would and accept what we are saying: we will not allow our constitution to become the prisoner of an EU that wants to have all power over the UK.