Exiting the Eu: Sectoral Impact Assessments

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:29 pm on 1 November 2017.

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Photo of Jacob Rees-Mogg Jacob Rees-Mogg Conservative, North East Somerset 6:29, 1 November 2017

I congratulate Keir Starmer on his motion. The Opposition are absolutely right to table motions on Opposition days that force the Government to do things. It has been a general waste of this House’s time to have motions on motherhood and apple pie, which has been the tendency in recent years. To ensure that we have a serious, substantial matter on which to vote is a very encouraging trend and one that I hope will continue.

I have no doubt that the motion is, in all senses, binding. It is not parliamentary wallpaper. It is exercising one of our most ancient rights, to demand papers. It is interesting that in the instructions given to Select Committees they are given the right to send for people and papers, but that is the right of this House delegated to those Select Committees. It is not something inherent in Select Committees, and it is therefore something clearly that this House can, at any time, call back to itself, as, quite rightly, the Opposition have proposed today.

As to the papers themselves, I have no particular view—this is, in normal circumstances, a matter for the Government—and I would have gone along with the Government had they wished to oppose the motion. But in the event that they do not, they must publish these papers to the Brexit Select Committee in full. The motion does not allow for redaction, and a happy chat across the Dispatch Box between the shadow spokesmen and the Ministers does not reduce the right of this House to see the papers.

However, it may well be that the Select Committee, of which I happen to be a member, may decide not to publish large sections of those papers, for confidentiality reasons, but on the basis of the motion, unless a further motion is passed to amend it at some stage, that right must be with this House, not with Her Majesty’s Government.

My one criticism of the motion is that I think it a marginal discourtesy to the Select Committee not to have asked it in the first place whether it wanted this motion to be tabled, but in the grander scheme of things that is a minor complaint.

The Canadian example is important, and my right hon. Friend Anna Soubry criticised me for referring to the Canadian Parliament, but it is in a way a sister Parliament of this one.