I can only refer the hon. Lady to surveys carried out immediately before the referendum. Citizens in every country in the European Union were asked a number of questions on what they thought the EU was about, and it is a matter of fact that UK citizens were less well-informed about the EU—not because they are stupid, but because this Parliament and the free press in this country have failed to keep them adequately informed. For example, Government MPs referred to the Syrian refugee crisis during debates on the European Union Referendum Bill, but the Syrian refugee crisis had nothing to do with our EU membership. In fact, it had everything to do with our membership of the human race—and as far as I am aware, there have not yet been any proposals for us to leave that.
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We then had a premature and unilateral decision by the Government that having a democratic mandate to leave the European Union—certainly from two of the four partners in this Union—they would also take us out of the single market and the customs union, without putting specific questions on that to the people.
It is now becoming increasingly obvious that drawing that red line far sooner than they needed to has created a lot of the difficult, and in some cases impossible, dilemmas that the Government now have to address. For example, leaving the single market and the customs union makes it impossible to respect all the requirements of the current constitutional relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic. We simply cannot honour commitments made about where borders will not be placed if the Republic of Ireland is in the customs union and the United Kingdom is not.
Having drawn such a red line, the Government have in effect painted themselves into a corner. They then published a Bill, following a White Paper, but without first publishing it in draft form. For a Bill of this importance, that must be extremely unusual, if not unique.
The Bill is intended to enable a smooth exit from the European Union, but it has already failed. If we speak to any of the 4.5 million citizens on either side of the channel whose livelihoods and whose right to continue to live where they currently live could be affected by leaving the EU, we find that they certainly do not think the process has been smooth and trauma-free. It is
500 days since their future was cast into doubt, and it is still in doubt. Any legislation or action by the Government to try to ease their concerns has been far too little—it has not gone far enough—and has all come far too late. It is morally indefensible that the Government have taken so long to do so little about what they describe as the No. 1 priority in these negotiations.
I want to turn to the objectives of clauses 2 and 3, which we are now debating. I do not have a problem with what they are attempting to achieve. It stands to reason that if we are going to walk away from an international treaty that has helped to shape our legislation for the better for the past 30 or 40 years, we must make sure that the good legislation of those 30 or 40 years is not all lost. I do not think anyone would argue with the principles or intentions of the first few clauses.
One of my concerns about clause 2 is the lack of clarity. Other Members have already spoken about that much more eloquently than I ever could. Although clause 3 appears to be well intentioned, there is a danger that, because it sets a specific cut-off date, it fails to recognise that a lot of the most important and significant European legislation is not issued in a single document on a specific day, but comes out in several stages. EU developments in data protection law are a good example. If we are not very careful, we could find that some bits of the jigsaw are in place and some are not in place on the day we leave the EU. I suspect that having half the legislation on data protection is about as useful for someone jumping out of an aeroplane as having half a parachute.
I ask the Government to give serious consideration to the amendments to clause 3. They should at least give us the opportunity to continue, if need be, to adopt legislation passed by the EU after we have left that is clearly part of a package that simply cannot be subdivided without making life very difficult indeed.
My final comment on the legalistic aspects of the Bill is that, as a non-lawyer, I find it astonishing that the entirely new concept in the structure of our legal system appearing in the Bill does not seem to be have been raised anywhere else. I may be wrong, but I cannot find it mentioned in the White Paper, the Lancaster House speech or any other major speeches that Ministers have made. It was not in the draft Bill because, as I have said, the Government were in such a haste to get out that they did not take the time to publish a draft Bill in the first place. That is indicative of the fact that since the day of the referendum—in fact, I would argue that this has been the case since the day Parliament passed the European Union Referendum Act 2015 and set the date of the referendum—speed has taken precedence over everything else.
The Government have recklessly made the situation even worse by setting a deadline for themselves of March 2019, even though they did not need to set it. Neither did they need to trigger article 50 when they did. Scrutiny of this Bill will therefore not be as detailed as it might have been, and even the Government accept that scrutiny of all the secondary legislation that might or might not come under Henry VIII powers will not be as detailed as they would usually like it to be, because everything will be sacrificed on the altar of speed. All of us accept, including some Government Members—in fact, I hope that most of them accept this—that whatever else happens, a deal has to be agreed and completed before we leave the European Union.