UK’s Withdrawal from the EU — House of Commons, 2019-02-27
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): I agreed entirely with my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) when she said the atmosphere of this debate was notably different from that of previous debates, and I am delighted if the system of amendable motions, previously so vociferously attacked, may have made some small contribution to enabling sensible debate to take place, because it is, frankly, doing exactly what I hoped might come out of it: breaking the logjam and enabling this House to look sensibly at problems relating to Brexit and to come to conclusions In that spirit I am also delighted that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister indicated yesterday that she would move on this issue of removing no deal and extending article 50 for that purpose and enabling the House to express its opinion. It is manifestly obvious that a no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic. I do not want to repeat all the things that have been said. The Government’s own documentation is there, and on top of that I only have to sit in my constituency surgery to have pharmaceutical companies, of which I have many, coming in and explaining the cost to them of having to anticipate no deal—all of which, I might add, will ultimately be manifested in the takings of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the lack of those funds to pay for public services We are impoverishing ourselves; we are making it harder to deliver a good quality of life for our citizens, and we are doing it with a relentless enthusiasm which at last we have found some common sense to check. I have very little doubt that when this matter comes back we will extend article 50, and I hope very much that the Government will finally adopt a policy of indicating that no deal is completely unacceptable But I also agree with the point that has been made that there is no point in extending article 50 if we do not know what to do with that. I do not know if this House is going to be capable of coming to a consensus. As a Member of this House, I accept that if there is a majority in this House for some form of Brexit and we vote for it and it is deliverable, that is doubtless what will happen, whatever my personal views may be. However, I will just say this—and I will repeat it, I suspect, ad nauseam until this whole sorry saga is over: I only have to look at the emails I get on Brexit from people who want to leave to see that the principle theme is the demand to leave in the form of catastrophic no-deal Brexit The reason that I am getting those emails is that people have, in my opinion, been thoroughly misled over a long period by a form of propaganda that believes that the EU is evil. This was rather highlighted by the extraordinary speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), who put forward the stab-in-the-back theory. I am sorry, but these are mad fantasies. They are absolute fantasies about the EU and its relationship with us. So people are writing in and saying that is what we should be doing, but I have to say that we are not going to be doing it The fact is that we are likely to be offering an extraordinary halfway house palliative that a large number of Members of the House absolutely know will be less good than remaining in the EU. Maybe that is a burden that we are going to have to carry because of the 2016 referendum result, but speaking personally I find it deeply unacceptable that I should park every aspect of my own opinion and evaluation of these options simply in order to go along with an instruction that is now nearly three years old and seems to be running out of steam in virtually every single one of its characteristics That is why I urge my right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench not to ignore the possibility of consulting the public. If the public want the Prime Minister’s deal, which is the only deal we are ever likely to get, then so be it; but if not, they should have the option to express the view that they want to stay. Ultimately, my own opinion is that that would be very much better than anything else we have done I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) has been successful with his amendment, and I am happy to have supported him. I should also like to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), in conclusion, that he talks about dysfunctional relationships, and some people looking at the two of us would say that our relationship has been dysfunctional for a long time, but we have stayed in the same party, and that is a good reason for our staying in the EU as well.