Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:57 pm on 15 July 2020.

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Photo of Aaron Bell Aaron Bell Conservative, Newcastle-under-Lyme 5:57, 15 July 2020

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend Marco Longhi, and indeed, before that, my hon. Friends the Members for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) and for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones). I thought it was supposed to be an Opposition day debate, but here we are with the last hour taken up by speeches from the Conservative Benches, mostly from new MPs—and MPs who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover pointed out, took seats from the Opposition.

But I do thank the SNP for putting on this debate. Naively, I assumed that we would be talking about the European Union’s openness to extend the transition period for negotiations, but it seems that most of the day has instead been spent talking about Scottish independence—plus ça change. To be fair to SNP Members, I enjoy debating with them because they believe in something: they know where they stand. They know where they stand on Brexit and they know where they stand on Scottish independence. They will not let a referendum get in the way of that, but it is an honest position. Whereas, as many colleagues have said, where are Labour Members? I acknowledge that Paul Blomfield is there on the Opposition Front Bench. In fact, he made a good point when he informed the SNP, with regard to today’s motion, that that ship has sailed, as indeed it has. There is no possibility of extending the transition period under the terms that were available because we chose not to do that, because, as the Paymaster General said, we enshrined in law our intention to leave on 31 December. We were elected on that mandate. Why would we go against that? Why would we prolong the uncertainty and hinder our recovery?

Covid makes it even more important that we get things sorted out and leave on 31 December. Businesses are already facing a huge amount of uncertainty as we come out of this terrible pandemic, with all the economic carnage it is causing. We must resolve our situation, one way or the other, with the European Union at the same time, rather than asking businesses to go back to work—putting the people of this nation back to work—and then having further disruption at whatever point we extend the transition period to. It is really very important that we resolve this.

That brings me to my next point about the tactics for negotiation and why this motion is fundamentally misconceived. We saw again and again in the previous Parliament the consequences of Parliament trying to usurp the Executive’s authority to negotiate, and what an awful mess that made. We allowed a situation to develop where the EU chose to pursue parallel negotiations with other Members, including the new Leader of the Opposition. Where is he on this?