As ever, it is a pleasure to speak for the Opposition under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I take this opportunity to welcome the Minister, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), to his place in the Department for Exiting the European Union team. Taking up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (John Grogan), I shall be impressed if the Minister knows the Government’s plan B; he will be the first Minister to have achieved that objective if he does. I look forward to hearing from him later.
I thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for opening the debate. He made an important point on public polling reflecting his friend’s opinion that everybody is fed up with hearing about Brexit. There is almost a momentum behind the current process of people looking forward to 29 March, because then it will all be over. However, as he rightly pointed out, it will not be. We are certainly not nearing the end, and we are not really nearing the end of the beginning. The biggest discussion is yet to be had, because the declaration on our future relationship is so lacking in detail. He also made the important point that this is a critical moment in our history. The decisions that we take over the next few days will shape our country for generations. The situation could not be more serious.
The Labour party campaigned in the referendum to remain, because we believed that it was right, economically and politically, for our country and for the continent that we share, but we accepted that we lost, which is why we voted to trigger article 50, to begin the negotiations to leave. However, the last two years have been largely squandered, with negotiations within the Conservative party taking precedence over the negotiations that needed to take place with the EU27. I understand the predicament of the Government and the warring factions within the Conservative party, but it has left us in a difficult position, and the country is paying the price.
It did not have to be like this, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) indicated. The Opposition urged the Prime Minister to reach out two years ago to the majority in Parliament in favour of a sensible Brexit and, in the spirit of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), to look towards national reconciliation by saying that, yes, people voted to leave the European Union, but by the closest of margins. The referendum gave a mandate that we should no longer be members of the EU, but not that we should rupture that relationship, which was built over 45 years.
If the Prime Minister had said then that she would seek a deal that was right for the people of this country and their livelihoods, she could have begun to pull together the 48% and the 52%. If she had said that that would have involved a customs union, a close relationship with the single market and continued participation in the agencies and partnerships we built together with the EU, I think she could have achieved that. She would have had a clear majority in Parliament and united the country, and the Northern Ireland border, as raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, would certainly not have been an issue.
However, the Prime Minister instead let the Brexit extremists within the European Research Group shape the agenda. She set her red lines and boxed herself in, and the result is this doomed deal that satisfies nobody. We face a vote next Tuesday in which the Government are likely to be defeated, and we will then move into uncertain territory. It appears that a clear majority in Parliament will reject the deal and, while there is also certainly a majority in Parliament that will ensure that we do not leave without a deal, it is not clear whether there is a majority for any other outcome. Parliament, like the people we represent, is conflicted.
When the deal is voted down, we will need maximum flexibility. The Opposition will demand a general election, as we have made clear. I hope that, despite their experience in the general election last year, Conservative Members may yet come to recognise that an election to break this deadlock would be in the interests of the country. If they do not, other options must be kept open, including a public vote.
I understand the concerns of the petitioners who made the case against a public vote, which have been reflected by hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). However, it is interesting that, as we move towards the Brexit endgame, the debate is changing fundamentally. Some honesty is finally beginning to break out. Those who spent the last two years endlessly repeating the mantra that no deal is better than a bad deal have been hitting the TV studios over the last couple of weeks to urge MPs to back the Prime Minister’s deal because, they argue, the alternative is no deal, which they rightly say would be a catastrophe.
Even more significantly, claims that the country will be more prosperous have been abandoned, including by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. Instead they argue for the Prime Minister’s deal on the basis that failing to deliver on the 2016 referendum would have serious social and political consequences. That serious point has been made in the debate and it should not be lightly dismissed. However, we should also recognise that there will potentially be even more serious social and political consequences if Parliament votes for a damaging Brexit on a false prospectus.
The Government have confirmed that we will be economically worse off, to varying degrees, under every Brexit option. Instead they say that the Prime Minister’s deal deserves support because it delivers on other pledges, with a particular focus on taking back control of our borders. On the Government’s website, “40 reasons to back the Brexit deal”, the top reason is on migration, with a promise that free movement will come to an end once and for all.
However, the expectations unleashed by the rhetoric of taking back control are a long way from the reality. The Government have had complete control of non-EU migration for the last eight years. In every one of those years, net migration from outside the EU was higher than from within it, and it has stayed at a steady level. As last week’s figures from the Office for National Statistics show, the recent decline we have seen in EU migration has simply been replaced by rising numbers from beyond the EU, with non-EU migration hitting a 14-year high. But on that central issue, the Home Secretary has said this morning that we are unlikely to see the Government’s plans before next Tuesday’s vote; the much-promised White Paper on immigration has apparently been delayed again—and beyond next Tuesday.
We potentially face a future that is poorer, with less money for public services, and with migration numbers changing little. That is a long way short of the wild promises made during the Brexit campaign, and potentially the social and political consequences of people being in that position five years down the road are very serious.
Therefore, when the Prime Minister’s deal is inevitably voted down, all options have to remain open. As I said, that includes a further public vote. That is not something on which there are divisions between Opposition and Government Members. The hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) made the case for a public vote when he resigned as Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation on Friday. His predecessor as Universities Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), has also made the case, as have former Conservative Cabinet members and the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, saying that a public vote may be the only way out of the predicament in which we find ourselves.
A public vote would not be without difficulties, and nobody could predict the outcome. However, the public do have information that was not available two years ago. They can see now, in contrast with then, what Brexit looks like, so there is a case for giving them a chance to reject Brexit or give informed consent to the Prime Minister’s deal. We will explore all the options available, but we believe that we should not rule out the chance to give the people the final say.
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