Author: johnredwood

Ministers fanned out yesterday to spread gloom and doom around the country about what will happen if we just leave next March. It was a poor version of Project Fear, without even any novelty to amuse connoisseurs of this most popular political genre. We were told that the ports will jammed by our own Customs officials, leading to long delays. I don’t believe them. The UK can put in the capacity it needs to handle any additional checks. If it fails to do so it will just have to let the lorries through against their pre filed electronic details as they do today whilst they put in capacity for additional checks. That is what I thought Customs officials had already told us.

So Ministers, I don’t believe you. I think the UK port and government officials will handle it just fine. You will not have to resign for failing to plan and equip our ports properly for the task. I am sure you are up to it.

I also enjoyed the contradictions in the stories. We were told that in a worst case there will be six months of delays, yet the Health Secretary only thinks we need six weeks of stocks of medicines. It was a curious irony from the BBC that to describe what it would be like they looked back to what had actually happened to cross Channel trade in 2015 when we were still firmly in the EU. It was unhelpful then to face the disruption, but we got through it. I cant see why this should be bad like that, when on both sides of the Channel the authorities tell us they want it to work on 30 March.

Still the UK government has failed to set out its schedule of tariffs for March 30th. The Trade Secretary has promised me it is due any moment, so why shouldn’t I believe him. I trust the schedule will say there will be no tariffs on imported components for UK car factories, shooting that particular fox of the Project Fear campaign.

Project Fear has done great damage to the reputation of the UK establishment. It has led them to make all too many nonsensical forecasts. It reminds Leave voters Remain still have nothing positive to say about the EU they seem to love so much. I was amused to see several Ministers decided to fulfill the instruction to meet business to tell Leave voters they were wrong in or near their own constituencies so their time was not completely wasted.

Almost two and a half years have now passed since the people spoke in the referendum. It was the largest democratic vote in our history. The people voted in very large numbers to take back control of our laws, our money and our borders, and to reclaim the lost sovereignty of the United Kingdom electorate. They did so in the teeth of enormous hostility and propaganda from many elements of the political and big business establishment.

The people were told they were too stupid to understand the arguments and that there were huge dangers if they dared to vote to leave the EU. They were told by both campaigns, and by the Government in a formal leaflet, that we would be leaving the single market and the customs union. Rightly we were told that the EU would not allow us to cherry-pick bits of the single market and customs union and that those were an integral part of the whole. Voters were given a set of entirely bogus and dishonest forecasts about what would happen in the short term after the vote. Practically every one of those forecasts was wildly too pessimistic, which has led to the distrust between the vote leave majority and the establishment that pushed out those predictions.

I urge the House to move on from “Project Fear”, to move on from gloom and doom, and to understand that many millions of decent, honest voters made a careful and considered decision. They do not believe those who tell them it will all go wrong, that it must be reversed or that they must be told to think again and vote again because they did not do their homework. It is deeply insulting to the electors, and I am sure that this Parliament is worthy of something better than that.

The people were saying something wonderful for this Parliament. They were saying, “We believe in you, Parliament. We believe you can make wise laws. We believe you can make even wiser laws than the EU. We believe you can make better judgments about how to spend the taxes we send you than the EU, which spends so much of the money on our behalf in ways of which we do not approve. We believe, O Parliament, that if you help us to take back control of our laws and democracy, we will get better answers. Or, of course, Parliament, if you do not give us a better answer, we the people will have our sovereignty back, and we will dismiss you.”

One of the things that most annoys people about the EU among the leave-voting majority is that we cannot sack them. Whatever they do, however bad they are, however much money they waste, however irritating their laws, we have to put up with them. We cannot sack them; we cannot have a general election. [Interruption.]

Scottish National party Members say that they feel the same about the Union of the United Kingdom, but we gave them the democratic opportunity, and their people said that they like our system of government, because this is their democracy too. [Interruption.] The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) should understand that her colleagues in Scotland, and her voters in Scotland, believe in UK democracy, and they have exactly the same rights of voice and vote and redress as all the rest of us.

Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. Ever since the referendum, the narrative has been to find explanations for why the people voted as they did—any explanation other than the fact that they wanted to leave the European Union. Does he consider that the majority in favour of the amendment in the name of our right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) shows that the game is up, and that there is now a majority in the House against leaving the European Union? The game for us must be to find some orderly way around that, irrespective of the majority who are now against us.

John Redwood: I do not prejudge the evil intents of other Members. I hope that all Members will agree that we must implement the referendum result. We had a general election in the summer of last year. I remember that in that general election Labour and the Conservatives got rather more than 80% of the vote in Great Britain, the Democratic Unionist party did extremely well in Northern Ireland, and all three parties said that they would faithfully implement the referendum decision of United Kingdom voters on leaving the European Union. I trust that they will want to operate in good faith in the votes that may be to come.

My advice to Ministers, as well as to the rest of the House, is that what we should now be doing is celebrating the opportunities and the advantages that we will gain after March, when we have left the European Union. We should be having debates about how we will spend all the extra money on improving our public services instead of giving it to the EU. We should be having a debate about all the tax cuts that we need to boost our economy, so that instead of growth slowing after we leave, we speed it up by deliberate acts of policy. We will be empowered in this place to take these good decisions if only Members would lift their gloom and their obstinate denial of opportunity, and see that if we spent some more money and had some tax cuts, it would provide a very welcome boost to our economy in its current situation.

I want to see us publish a schedule of tariffs for trading with the whole world that are lower than the tariffs that the EU currently makes us impose on perfectly good exporters, particularly of food products, from elsewhere in the world. Why do we have to impose high tariffs on food that we cannot grow for ourselves? I want us to have a debate on urgently taking back control of our fishing industry so that we can land perhaps twice as many fish in the UK and not let them all be landed somewhere else, and build a much bigger fish processing industry on the back of domestic landings from our very rich fishing grounds.

I wish to see us get rid of VAT on, for instance, green products and domestic fuel. We are not allowed to do this because we are an impotent puppet Parliament that does not even control its own tax system for as long as we remain in the European Union. I wish to see us take back control of our borders, so that we can have a migration policy that is right for our economic needs and fair to people from wherever they may come all around the world, rather than having an inbuilt European Union preference. I wish us to be a global leader for world trade. Now that the United States of America has a President who says that he rather likes tariffs, there is a role for a leading great power and economic force in the world like the United Kingdom to provide global leadership for free trade.

We will do none of that if we sign this miserable agreement with which the Government have presented us, because we will be locked into their customs arrangements for many months or years. We will not be free to negotiate those free trade deals, let alone provide the international leadership which I yearn for us to provide. I want us to have our seat back at the high tables of the world in the big institutions like the World Trade Organisation, so that with vote and voice and purpose, we can offer something positive, and have a more liberal free-trading democratic world than the one that we currently have. That is something that we are not allowed to do for as long as we remain members of the European Union.

I say this to Members. Lift the gloom. Stop “Project Fear”. Stop selling the electors short. Stop treating the electors as if they were unable to make an adult decision. Understand that they made a great decision—a decision I am mightily proud of—to take back sovereign control to the people, to take back the delegated sovereign control to this Parliament. It is high time that this Parliament rose to the challenge, instead of falling at every opportunity. It is high time we did something positive for our constituents, instead of moaning and grumbling and spending every day—groundhog day—complaining about the vote of the British people.

I was not present at the meeting I read about between the ERG and the Chief Whip as I was speaking on the advantages of leaving when the meeting was said to have taken place.

It is quite clear there is no UK Parliamentary fix that the government could offer to make the Agreement acceptable. The whole point about the Withdrawal Treaty is it will override anything the UK Parliament might want to do in future were we stupid enough to sign it.

I assume those ERG members who were present will have the same view as I do that the current Agreement is unacceptable and would take a lot of amendment by the EU and UK working together on it before they could consider voting for it. I would go further and think it would be best to observe the words of the Conservative Manifesto which said a Future Trading or Partnership Agreement has to be negotiated in parallel with any Withdrawal Agreement.

This is how my pamphlet begins roughly like this:

Let us make 29 March 2019 our Independence day.

We should be proud of our democratic past and confident about our democratic future.
Restoring the right to govern ourselves is not a threat but a promise. It is not a problem but a whole host of opportunities.

The UK has made such a contribution to the language and architecture of freedom, and to the ways and words of democratic government. The British people had the courage to say they wanted to restore our leading place amongst the nations of the free. We voted against more laws and taxes we do not approve for ourselves. We voted to take back control of our own destiny.

People say we should think most of the young. I agree. I do. I want to give to them the most precious political flower of all, the flower of freedom. Because I believe in our young people and their potential, I want to give them the means to do as they wish through a self governing country.

My generation had that taken away from us by successive transfers of power to the EU without the consent of many British people. Gradually, directive by directive and treaty by treaty, we lost control of so much of our public policy, lawmaking and taxation.

Bureaucracy, the lowest common denominator, the suffocating hand of centralised authority, comes from Brussels. By taking back control here at home, we can so much more prosperous, inventive, adventurous and engaging with the wider world.

Parliament was told on Monday that the Speaker will accept votes on up to six amendments to the government’s motion to approve its EU Withdrawal Agreement. The official Opposition has already tabled an amendment that declines to approve the Agreement and asks for customs union and single market membership. This is very likely to be selected for a vote. There is a Lib Dem amendment seeking a second referendum. There is a Hilary Benn/Dominic Grieve amendment seeking to reject both the Withdrawal Agreement and exit without an Agreement. There are then amendments seeking to avoid or amend the Irish backstop. There may be other amendments before the Speaker makes a decision on which ones to select for votes.

Under the procedure laid down the votes on amendments will take place before the vote on the government’s main motion proposing the Withdrawal Agreement. Were any of the amendments to be carried, the final vote will then be on the amended motion rather than on the government’s original motion proposing the Withdrawal Agreement. It is important to recognise that were the government to lose an amendment the straightforward issue of whether to accept or reject the Withdrawal Agreement will not be voted on. Presumably the government would find the Opposition amendments unacceptable, having tried to vote them down in the first place. It therefore seems likely the government would ask Conservative and DUP MPs to vote against the motion as amended.

Yesterday the government managed to lose three important votes. The votes on whether the government has been guilty of contempt of Parliament or not was mainly lost owing to the disaffection of the DUP over the Withdrawal Agreement. The third one was over how to proceed in January with what should be a neutral motion on leaving if we are leaving without an agreement, if that is the course owing to the defeat of the Withdrawal Agreement. This was lost owing to Conservative opponents of the government from the Remain side who want to keep open a route to thwart Brexit. It shows the difficulty of whipping against the background of a Withdrawal Agreement which suits neither side in the referendum argument, by a government which has lost the reliable support of the DUP. Supporters of Mrs May also wanted to use the threat of no Brexit to try to get pro Brexit MPs to vote for the May Agreement. This in unlikely to work as the Agreement is penal and does not get us out of the EU in any normal sense of that phrase.

The government should now publish the Attorney General’s advice as Parliament requires. It should accept Parliament and much of the country does not want the Withdrawal Agreement, and notify the EU accordingly.

Leaving without an Agreement looks more likely given the bad response of most MPs to the proposed Withdrawal Agreement and delayed exit. So let’s make the most of the money, the freedoms and the opportunities leaving brings. More than half the voters expect things to get better when we leave, and so they can. That requires the government to cheer up and take some action.

1. Relax the current tight money policies a bit – they are slowing our economy too much
2. Set out a new budget with an additional £15bn of spending increases and tax cuts for 2019=20 at least, financed by saving the Withdrawal payments
3. Encourage import substitution with a farming policy based on more home grown food
4. Allow UK vessels to land a much larger share of our fish by taking control of our fishery in 2019
5. Encourage more fish processing industry
6. Novate all existing EU trade deals promptly
7. Intensify negotiations with the USA, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and the others who are keen to sign Free Trade Deals with us once we have the power to do so
8. Make clear there will be no new checks at our ports on imports from the EU in the short term, and any longer term extra checks will be done away from the border or with sufficient capacity at the port to avoid delays
9. Set a new tariff schedule which lowers our external tariff, removing all tariffs from imported components for manufacturers and from items here the tariff raises little net revenue

It’s high time the media allowed a proper debate on how to take advantage of the opportunities of leaving after months of just recycling false scare stories about the costs.

It is normally right for the government to withhold its legal advice from freedom of information requests or Parliamentary questions. Where the government is pursuing a court action to collect more tax or prosecute some criminal or to justify its actions, it should keep its own legal advice to itself to give it the best chance of a successful court outcome. The case of the legal advice on what the consequences of an International Treaty will be before we have signed it is altogether different. Parliament is to decide whether to sign this Treaty or not. Parliament therefore needs to know the legal implications of what we are being asked to sign.

Not that many of us need the Attorney’s advice to grasp just how dangerous legally this Treaty is. It is a Treaty with many long term commitments that we cannot get out of. It is a Treaty which undermines the whole idea of Brexit, by bringing back considerable powers for the EU and for its European Court of Justice. It is a Treaty which prolongs the uncertainty over our possible exit from the EU, damaging business. It is a Treaty which removes most of the bargaining powers the UK currently enjoys when we embark under its provisions to try to negotiate a Future Partnership Agreement. This is not a deal, but a straightjacket. This is not Brexit, but a new servitude.

I am against the whole idea of a Withdrawal Treaty. I voted to come out of the extensive Treaty commitments we currently have under the EU Treaties. I did not vote to enter a new binding Treaty with the EU I cannot get out of. Nor did I vote to end up in an Association Agreement with the EU, which is what they have in mind for the so called Future Partnership. Two Treaties to replace one, and probably at a similar expensive financial price, is not what we Leave voters voted for. We did at least like Article 50, the leave clause, in the current EU Treaties. The two new proposed Treaties have no get out clause!

The Attorney General had a successful career at the criminal law bar and doubtless wrote a detailed and careful opinion. He is also a politician and Minister who will be asked to explain parts of his advice to the Commons under the control of the government’s overall message on this Agreement. Parliament wants to see the full advice as some MPs think the most critical sentences about the Agreement are likely to be played down or ignored in any edited highlights for the Commons. It will certainly be a testing session for the Attorney to deliver enough of the shocking truth about this Agreement whilst defending the government that wishes to sign it.

Whatever happens on the publication of some or all of the advice, of one thing readers should be clear. There are quite enough of us MPs in the Commons who have read the draft Agreement and have serious doubts about the wide ranging powers it gives to the EU over us to ensure Parliament with or without the full advice will hold a debate knowing the main legal pitfalls of this unwise Agreement. You do not have to be a lawyer to understand the prose of this Agreement. In so many clauses of this document it places more burdens and restrictions on the UK long after we are meant to have left the EU.

A whole series of emails are arriving in my email box and doubtless in the email boxes of other MPs drafted to ask How will I represent the constituent, given their view. There are different versions, with some of the drafts used by people who want to leave, some who wish to remain, and some who want a second referendum. Some are individually worded by constituents. There are several different views, but an MP of course only has one vote.

There is, however, common ground in the vast majority of the emails I receive. Whether coming from Remain or Leave supporters, the big majority dislike the Withdrawal Agreement. Both sides sees this as an attempted compromise which suits few. Both see the Agreement turns us into a rule taker and bill payer. It removes our bargaining levers by legally binding us to give the EU what it wants before we have secured what we might like. Most people see this rightly as a very bad deal, with no agreement on what we might get out of an eventual Future Partnership Agreement. Some Remain voters think it would be better to stay in the EU to have vote and voice as well as taking their rules and paying the bills. Leave voters say the Withdrawal Agreement is not leaving, as we stay in the single market and customs union and carry on paying large sums to buy more time for talks.

This makes my task that much easier. My judgement has been throughout that this Agreement has to be voted down. In the light of the extensive correspondence I have received I do not have to worry about whether I am speaking for my constituents in so doing, as a majority tell me they too want it voted down. The question of what we should then do produces a variety of answers amongst constituents. I will return to these issues over the period of the vote and the sequel to the vote. I feel I need to honour my promises to electors in the 2017 General Election when I said I would support carrying out the will of the nation in the referendum.

The resignation of yet another Minister, the eleventh to go on this matter so far, is a reminder of how Mrs May cannot win this vote unless Labour change their minds. Ministers give up interesting jobs reluctantly, in order to vote against the government. That is eleven more votes against the Agreement so far. It is difficult to see how the Prime Minister could carry on if she goes down to defeat on this central policy she has designed.
The sooner we tell the EU we cannot sign the Withdrawal Agreement the better. The sooner we table a proper Free Trade Agreement and see if they want one the better.