European Union (Withdrawal) Act — House of Commons, 2019-01-09
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick Bosco McFadden (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Ross Thomson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Sir David Crausby) After a month’s delay, we have to begin by asking: what exactly has been gained by putting this vote off from its scheduled date in December? What has the Prime Minister achieved by her tour of European capitals and her pleas to fellow EU leaders? There may well be some kind of letter, or statement, or clarification issued between now and the vote next Tuesday. No doubt the Government will try to make the most of that if it comes, but after a month’s delay, it does not feel as though anything of substance has changed in the proposals before us All of us are conscious of our responsibilities. We are conscious of the stakes before us, and also conscious that this issue, almost like no other, cuts across party political lines. After two years of debate on Brexit, we find our country deeply divided, sentiments unleashed that we thought we would not see again in Britain, our politics paralysed by irreconcilable red lines, issues that would normally be top of the political agenda neglected and downgraded because of the huge political energy sucked up—and all the while, the rest of the world look at the UK and wonder what has happened to us The Brexit vote in many parts of the country, including in the Black Country, which I have the honour of representing, was driven by a deep sense of loss—a loss of an industrial past that had brought good jobs and prosperity, a loss of a sense of pride and purpose for some of our towns and cities contrasted with a present where, far too often, the jobs are low-paid and insecure and where people and areas feel ignored and abandoned. Any attempt to understand how we got here has to appreciate that sense of loss. The question is how we respond to that sense of loss with leadership that offers some actual answers rather than simply giving people someone or something to blame Once the Brexit vote happened, the country had a choice: a complete break with the European Union with the consequence of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and huge economic and industrial disruption, or a rule-taking Brexit where we left legally speaking but still obeyed most of the same rules. It was a choice between a Brexit that raised the question of what is the price, and a Brexit that raised the question of what is the point. What was never on the cards was to pretend that we could keep all the current advantages of EU membership and have all the new freedoms promised by the Brexiteers. The failure to be candid about that is the root cause of the disillusionment with the draft agreement put before us. Even more damning, the failure to be candid about this had nothing to do with putting the national interest first. As always with this issue, year after year, it had far more to do with fear of being candid because of the internal politics of the Conservative party The flaws in this agreement are about far more than the Northern Ireland backstop. Let us be clear: the backstop is an insurance policy in case a trade agreement that does the same thing as the backstop is not reached, and that same thing is such a degree of alignment with EU rules that there is no need for a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. That requirement has not been imposed on us; it is reiterated and supported by the Government and signed up to explicitly in the agreement of December 2017. No one has done this to us. It is a commitment that we have made Brexit also promised to give the UK control over borders, laws and money, yet the agreement before us does the opposite. In fact, it crystallises the disempowerment of the United Kingdom. We will still be paying in for years to come, but we will no longer have any say over the laws we obey. That does not enhance sovereignty or control. It simply leaves us paying tens of billions of pounds for a worse deal than we have at present. And remember: this is only the withdrawal agreement. Negotiations on the future have not really begun, but we know a couple of things about them. We know that service industries, which form 80% of our economy, are to be thrown under a bus, and we know that the degree of access that we have to EU markets in the future will be closely related to the degree of alignment with the rules that we are prepared to make, even though we will no longer have a say over them On the economics, the Government have not even tried to deny that the proposal will make the country poorer compared to our current arrangements. Every study of every scenario, including the Government’s own, has admitted that. Never before—certainly not in peacetime—have a Government brought forth a proposition that they admit will make the country poorer and then said that we must proceed at all costs. Perhaps that is why this deal seems to satisfy neither leavers nor remainers This deal has done one great service to us. It has shown us how much worse the proposed arrangement is compared with the deal that we have now—whereby we are rule makers, not rule takers, usually to the significant advantage of our world-leading industries; there is no backstop or hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic; and there is no interference in the multinational supply chains on which our industries depend The Government’s argument does not really dispute that.They know that is true, and they have stopped really arguing for the withdrawal agreement on its merits. Instead, they are really desperate for the transition period, the singular advantage of which is that it is not really Brexit; it is staying in the European Union, except for the singular disadvantage of it, which is that we are absenting ourselves from the decision-making forums where the rules that we will obey are decided. The only argument that Ministers have left is that this agreement is better than the total chaos of no deal, but that is a humiliating choice for the country.