Mr Speaker, I very much think that I will not need to take cognisance of your allowing me longer than Members who will speak later.
I see the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke)—my constituent—regularly and I congratulate him on his speech. He said that he agreed with every single word of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who moved the motion, and I can say—very carefully—that he will probably not agree with a single word that I say. I feel a little alone today. We will have an important debate about this issue in a few weeks’ time, when there will be a very different tone in the Chamber, and I hope that saying my few words today will not stop my being called when it comes to our real debate on this issue.
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe said in the final sentence of his speech that we should stay in the customs union and the single market, but there is no doubt that he was really saying that we should stay in the EU. I am afraid that a lot of Members in the Chamber are using the issue of the customs union as a way of restarting the process of trying to stay in the EU. They will not achieve that, but they are sending a message that the European Union will love. The EU will love seeing such division in this Parliament and that we cannot unite in telling it that we want a proper agreement in which we do not need tariffs and under which we can work with the EU as we would want to work with the rest of the world.