There is one matter on which I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), and that is that this piece of legislation is needed if we are leaving the EU. That is the first basic point that needs to be made in considering this Bill on Report.
Then one has to consider why the Report stage becomes so controversial. The difficulty is that throughout the whole of this Brexit process, we are collectively going through an exercise in both deception and self-deception about the implications of leaving the European Union and the sort of relationship we may have thereafter.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has produced a White Paper. It is far from perfect. It, too, continues with some of those obfuscations, I have to say. To give an example—I know that this has irritated many of my right hon. and hon. Friends—it talks about the common rule book and then says, “Don’t worry—we will be escaping the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.” We may escape its jurisdiction, but I am the first to accept that the reality is that we are going to be bound by its jurisprudence, without any ability to influence how that jurisprudence develops. That is one of the costs that we are paying as a result of deciding to leave.
In exactly the same way, there are other costs that come from leaving and that we tend to brush under the carpet, including the economic costs that are going to come to this country. If we are going to make rational choices, we need to avoid continuing with exercises in self-deception. The reason I think it right to support the Prime Minister on the White Paper is that despite all the difficulties she has had, this represents the first sensible document to found a proper negotiation. I wish her well with it, even if I have criticisms of it, worry about the absence of services and a common market for that, and worry about some of its other aspects; nevertheless, it is well-intentioned.
Then I look at the four amendments tabled by some of my hon. Friends—36, 37, 72 and 73. The first thing to be said about them is that one—the one about Northern Ireland—correctly identifies an obfuscation that the Government have been practising for a considerable time. We and the European Commission are talking different languages when it comes to the backstop. I have no difficulty emphasising the fact that no Parliament of the United Kingdom is ever going to support a backstop that goes simply for Northern Ireland alone.
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I turn then to new clause 36 and amendment 73. The first thing that strikes me about them is that they are designed directly to undermine the White Paper, and the second is that they do not do the job, because they are inadequately drafted. Therefore, the second obfuscation is that the Government accepted amendments that they know cannot do what they are intended to do. Not only that, but they said so to my right hon. and hon. Friends and they have decided not to say, “Oh, in those circumstances we withdraw them,” but to persist with them because they are just an exercise in bullying. It is not my job as a Member of Parliament to put on the statute book clauses that are inadequate, incomprehensible and, on top of that, seek to undermine the Government. That is why I describe those two amendments as entirely malevolent and why I shall vote against both this evening.