I must start by saying to the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) that people often do not trust politicians because they fail to answer questions, or, in her case, fail to accept the question posed in the first place. It would have been helpful if she had answered some of the questions when people sought to intervene. If she wants to intervene on me, I am very happy to give way to her or anyone else during the debate. Perhaps she did not want to take any interventions because she felt her arguments were rather weak.
The past week has been an absolute shambles. Anyone —in the United Kingdom or elsewhere—who looked at our Government and what they are doing with Brexit could not think anything but that this is a most depressing spectacle of a Government completely out of control destroying the best interests of the United Kingdom. What is happening is nothing to do with national interest, but everything to do with the Tory party interest. Who will be the next leader? What particular version of Brexit will be delivered by the Government?
Earlier there was an exchange about whether the country knew what it was voting for two and a half years ago. Clearly, it cannot have done. The Prime Minister has set out her deal, which has promptly been rubbished by a large number of her own MPs who think a different deal is what people wanted. The public are justified in not knowing what was offered to them two and a half years ago, because the Tory party does not know now what should be offered to the people.
I will not give the time of day to the bluffers in that party who believe that no deal is manageable. Some actually believe that. The Government have done a good job of setting out precisely what the impact of no deal would be, but some say, “Well, it would lead to a few transitional problems”. I suspect those people are sitting on family fortunes large enough not to be disturbed by the slight transitional problems that might occur if a no deal is what happens. Although the Prime Minister said she would not, I think Ministers should make some contingency plans for what happens if there is no Brexit. I hope that that is where we end up.
The opening speech and later contributions have set out the impact of no deal on EU citizens in the UK who are already demoralised and disturbed by what is happening about their futures here. Also, UK citizens in the EU are all too often completely forgotten in this process. I
am getting reports from places such as France where UK citizens who have been long-term residents are being asked to go to a place many miles away from where they live to fill in forms that they have not had to fill in before, and they are very worried. Sometimes they are very elderly, and they do not know what is happening. If they have read some of the laws being prepared for the French Senate, they should be worried. They should also be worried about what French employers are being told about what they have to do to prepare for no deal and the checks that they might have to carry out on UK citizens. We seem to have completely neglected the interests of those citizens in this process.
Those who are arguing that no deal is manageable clearly have not spent much time with many businesses. Everyone I talk to, whether in the haulage industry, the pharmaceutical sector, universities or the NHS, is very concerned by the suggestion that no deal is a possibility. Some have already made costly investments to try to cope with it, such as ensuring that they have cold storage available for medicines. Some have made the preparations. The largest companies could probably cope with no deal, but smaller ones would not be able to. Many companies that operate with small margins will probably go to the wall if they suddenly find that the relationship that they had with a supplier in the EU no longer functions as a result of there being no deal. If we end up in a no-deal scenario, people such as the Minister and the Brexiters will have to explain to those companies why they have been put out of business.
I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood is at least here. At least she has had the nerve to come and attempt to defend the policy that she supported. Where are the others? Where are those who have been so prominent in saying that this is a brilliant deal for the UK that will deliver fantastic benefits in terms of trade deals and so on? Incidentally, I have found it hard to identify any company that thinks that there will be a huge trade deal out there for them. Companies that already export very successfully around the world are saying to me, “I’m not quite sure what this trade deal will give me that I don’t already have, because I’m already trading successfully around the world. I worry that the very successful trade that I do with the EU will be damaged as a result of what the Government are doing.”
We need to establish whether the article 50 process can be stopped. There is no point in trying to cancel the process before 29 March, as the petition suggests, if that is not possible. That is why the Wightman case, which seeks to establish whether article 50 can be revoked, and with which I am peripherally involved, is critical. The Government have said, “It’s a hypothetical question. We’re not going to revoke article 50, therefore we’re not going to tell you what our legal advice on the subject is.” I think that Members are entitled to know whether article 50 can be revoked. If we get to 29 March 2019 without a deal, I suspect that everyone in the Chamber will want to know the answer to that question. Ministers will no longer be able to hide behind the words: “It’s a hypothetical question. You’re not entitled to know the answer.”