I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.
I know that Opposition Members feel the same as me, because they have not raised a single meaningful reason why the Bill should be voted down. As my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) said on Thursday with a logician’s concision, to say that we will oppose the whole Bill because we disagree with a few clauses is a non-sequitur. If we go hunting for the sequitur, however, I believe that we can find it in the admirably principled intervention made by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) earlier. The truth is that if the Bill were to fail tonight it would be very difficult to bring it back. The Government would have to introduce a new Bill in a new Session, or this one would have to be reintroduced in a suitably different form so as not to fall foul of the same question rules. In short, voting this Bill down runs the risk of having no Bill. It runs the risk of legal black holes, of terrible uncertainty, and of investor panic and economic shock. That is what the Opposition will be voting for tonight.
I will go further than that. The Opposition Front Benchers know full well that if they defeated the Government they would not stop there; they would try to bring the Government down. The Opposition wish to vote this Bill down tonight because they know that defeat on such a central piece of legislation might cause the Government to fall. That is their motivation—nothing more, nothing less. The shadow Secretary of State does not want the Government to go back to the drawing board, he wants the drawing board for himself. He says that he wants the article 50 process to succeed. I believe him, but I do not believe that he wants this Government to succeed in doing it. I believe that he will put the interests of his party above the interests of the country in that regard. If he succeeded in his aims, he would do so only after a period of terrible turbulence for the country and after a terrible loss of time—and time, right now, is a terribly precious commodity. He says that he sees this not as a great repeal Bill but as a great power-grab Bill. Well, that is certainly the purpose for which he intends to use it. He is accusing Government Members of that of which he is guilty. I ask him to do the honourable thing and to put his political ambitions on ice for the purposes of the vote tonight so that this House can move more quickly to a detailed discussion of the essential clauses within this Bill.
7.50 pm