I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is engaged by Lords amendments 3, 13, 18, 22, 72, 103 and 121 to 124.

Clause 1

Repeal of the European Communities Act 1972

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 110.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Lords amendment 128, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 37, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 39, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 125, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 19, amendment (a) thereto, Government motion to disagree, amendments (i) and (ii) to Government amendment (a) in lieu, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.

Lords amendment 52, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 10, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 43, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 45, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 20, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendments 11 to 14, 18, 21 to 23, 44, 47, 102 to 107, 112, 113, 115 to 119, 121 to 124, 126, 127, 130 to 134, 136 to 140, 142 to 148, 150, 152, 154, 156 to 158, 171 and 172.

Let me start with the obiter dictum that there is a difference between eating into time and exhausting patience.

Over nine months, across both Houses, we have debated more than 1,000 non-Government amendments and hundreds of Government amendments to the Bill. Before us today are 196 Lords amendments—the outcome of hundreds of hours of debate in the other place. I beg your indulgence, Mr Speaker, in paying tribute to my ministerial team who have brought the Bill this far: my hon. Friends the Members for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and for Worcester (Mr Walker), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland), my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington); and, in the other place, Baroness Evans, the Leader of the House of Lords, and her team—Lord Callanan, Lord Keen, Baroness Goldie, Lord Duncan and Lord Bourne. I extend the same thanks to Opposition Front Benchers.

It is worth at this early point remembering that the Bill has a simple, clear purpose: to ensure that the whole United Kingdom has a functioning statute book on the day we leave the European Union. That involves the considerable task of converting 40 years of EU law into United Kingdom law. This is an unprecedented task, carried out under a strict timetable.

The Government respect the constitutional role that the House of Lords has played in scrutinising the Bill and, whenever possible, we have listened to sensible suggestions to improve it. However, when amendments seek to—or inadvertently—undermine the essential purpose of the Bill, which is to provide for a smooth and orderly exit, or the referendum result, we must reject them. For example, on the interpretation of Court of Justice of the European Union case law, we have worked closely with former Law Lords such as Lord Hope, Lord Judge, Lord Browne, Lord Neuberger and Lord Thomas to develop a solution that has genuinely improved the Bill. Our other Lords amendments represent the outcome of similarly productive discussions. The role of the House of Lords is clear: to scrutinise legislation that comes from this House, not to recast it or repurpose it. Of course, it should not undermine decisions that were put before the British people in manifestos or in referendums.

The House of Commons’ improvements to the Bill span a number of areas, ranging from narrowing the types of deficiencies that can be corrected using the delegated powers in the Bill to bolstering the rights of individuals by extending the ability to bring certain challenges under the general principles to three months after exit day. I will address in turn the main issues covered by this group on which the House of Lords has asked this House to think again but where their lordships’ approach has either undermined the essential purpose of the Bill, or attempted to overrule well-considered amendments from this House.

The first such area is the sifting system proposed in this House by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), the Chairman of our Procedure Committee. The proposal was that a committee would consider instruments subject to the negative procedure that were brought forward under the main powers in the Bill, and could recommend that they be subject to the affirmative procedure instead. This unanimous recommendation of the cross-party Procedure Committee was clearly born out of careful and detailed consideration by that Committee, and the Government were happy to accept it. My hon. Friend’s amendments were agreed by this House following an extensive debate.

What we have back from the other place—Lords amendments 110 and 128—is both an imposition on our procedures by the other place and a threat to the workability of the whole process of correcting the statute book. This is for two important reasons. First, a binding recommendation following the sifting process is not a recommendation at all—it is an instruction to the Government that would mark a significant departure from established procedures for handling secondary legislation. It is equally unacceptable, as the Chair of the Procedure Committee has noted, for the opinion of a Committee of the unelected House to govern procedure in this place. The Commons Procedure Committee’s proposals have teeth. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne said in December:

“The political cost to my Front-Bench colleagues of going against a sifting committee recommendation would be significant. The committee will have to give a reason why it is in disagreement, the Minister will be summoned to explain his or her Department’s position, and it will be flagged up on the Order Paper if a particular SI has not been agreed between the sifting committee and the Government. That will result in a significant political cost”.—[Official Report, 12 December 2017; Vol. 633, c. 266.]

He was right.

Secondly, although I understand concern about the pace at which committees will be required to operate, an extra five sitting days, as the Lords propose, would risk taking the process for a negative statutory instrument into what might well be its fifth or sixth calendar week. That would seriously jeopardise our ability to deliver a functioning statute book in time. For our part, the Government are poised to do everything we can to support the speedy work of the sifting committees. On a slightly wider point, I understand that the House of Lords wants to improve the Bill in various ways. Some of its changes can individually seem sensible and proportionate when seen in isolation, but the cumulative effect of those changes could sometimes make it impossible to deliver the smooth and orderly exit we want.

I turn now to the question of exit day. After considering the issue at length, this House accepted amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) that set exit day in the Bill, but allowed that time to be altered in the unlikely event that the exit date under article 50 differed from that written into the Bill. That is a sensible approach. It provides certainty about our exit day, but it also incorporates the terms of article 50. Let us remember that exit day will be determined by international law rather than by this House.

We discussed this issue at length when we considered the Bill that became the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017. Their lordships have suggested that this House abandons the conclusions of the lengthy and considered debates that we have already had on this issue by returning the Bill in broadly the same state in which it was first introduced. I accept the helpful scrutiny of the Lords on many aspects of the Bill, but this House has already reached a sensible position, which commanded a significant majority, and we propose to adhere to this House’s original decision on this matter.

At the heart of the Bill are the delegated powers that are essential for the United Kingdom’s orderly departure from the European Union. Those powers will ensure that the statute book continues to function as we leave the European Union. As we have consistently said, we do not take the powers lightly, which was why, in addition to the changes approved by this House, we made further amendments in the Lords. When using the principal powers in the Bill, Ministers must now give their good reasons for the changes they are making, exactly as the Lords Constitution Committee recommended. We have introduced further safeguards by preventing the powers in the Bill from being used to establish public authorities. We have also removed the international obligations power from the Bill entirely, as it has become clear that there are better and more effective ways to ensure that the Government’s international obligations continue to be met than through the use of that power.

That means that the approach before us is substantially different from what we first introduced, while still protecting the core purpose of the Bill. This reflects the fact that the Government have listened to the views of Parliament throughout the Bill’s passage, but we cannot accept Lords amendments 10, 43 and 45, which replace “appropriate” as a reason for using the powers to “necessary”. This House has accepted the premise of the Government’s approach to delivering a functioning statute book—specifically, that we will preserve and incorporate EU law, and then make the appropriate corrections via secondary legislation. Given the scale of the task and the speed necessary, that could never have been done through primary legislation, but at every turn we have sought to ensure proper parliamentary scrutiny.

Given that that fundamental premise has been supported, there needs to be sufficient flexibility for Ministers to propose changes that might not be strictly considered necessary, but that everyone here would think appropriate. “Necessary” is not a synonym for sensible, logical or proper; it means something that it is essential to do.

Does the Secretary of State recall that on page 21 of the original White Paper on the great repeal Bill, the Government pledged to make changes to retained EU law by delegated legislation only “where necessary”? Does he accept that if this House does not accept the Lords amendments, the Government will be breaking the pledge that they made in their original White Paper?

With great respect, the hon. and learned Lady is a lawyer, and she knows that the words in an Act of Parliament matter, and matter very precisely, rather more than an individual word—[Interruption.] They matter very precisely. Let me explain why.

As I said, “necessary” is not a synonym for sensible, logical or proper. In many cases, changes such as correcting inconsistencies, changing terminology, removing redundant provisions, or improving clarity and accessibility could be left unmade, even if the consequences were perverse. That is not the best outcome for businesses or individuals across the United Kingdom. I do not believe that their lordships intended to constrain our ability to change the names of documents such as European aviation documentation. Nor do I think that they intended to require us to use cumbersome terms such as “national regulatory authorities of member states”, and then to have to designate our national regulators underneath that. That would be an inefficient way of making Ofcom the regulator for our open-access internet legislation, for example. This will be UK law, applied only in the UK. It would be confusing to businesses and individuals to keep laws that suggest otherwise, but such changes, while appropriate, might fail the “necessary” test.

I understand the point that my right hon. Friend is making, but I have to say that I am not sure that I agree with him. I think that all the examples that he has given would meet the necessity test without any difficulty at all. Where the necessity test provides a higher bar is that if it were thought that a Minister was using powers to change legislation in a way that was not necessary, he would be prevented from doing so. My right hon. Friend cites examples, but I just do not think that the test would be a problem for a Minister at all.

My right hon. and learned Friend, as I have known for a long time, is a very good lawyer, but I am afraid that other lawyers disagree quite seriously.

The Lords amendments effectively increase the risk of judicial review. What that does—[Interruption]. This is an incredibly serious point, because that process asks judges to make a policy decision that this House should be making by saying yes or no to a statutory instrument. It really is as simple as that.

I am rather sorry that my right hon. Friend is so distrustful of judges on what are essentially procedural or constitutional matters, but could he define “appropriate” to me? It is one of those vague words that I suspect means “if the Minister feels that he or she wants to, one way or the other”. A decision could almost certainly not be challenged by judicial review, because the word is so wide and vague that there is no conceivable argument that could be raised to challenge the Minister’s opinion. We cannot take powers in that way meaning that the Government are able to legislate on matters that will be important to some individuals entirely at a Minister’s uncontrolled discretion.

I hear my right hon. and learned Friend—and old friend, because we are still capable of having a dinner for two hours and not talking about Europe throughout it; in fact he paid, and it was lunch.

The simple fact is that we are not just leaving this to a single word. As I said earlier, the House of Lords Constitution Committee looked at the matter, in the context of this Bill and the sanctions Bill, and said that we should require the Minister to give “good reasons”—that was the test—which is what we have proposed in our amendment.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will make a little progress, because I am quite sure that my next section will provoke quite a lot more interventions than the last one.

Let me turn to Lords amendment 19 and parliamentary approval of the outcome of the negotiations. This is the Hailsham amendment, which Lord Bilimoria described in the other House as the “no Brexit” amendment. What it amounts to is an unconstitutional shift that risks undermining our negotiations with the European Union. It enables Parliament to dictate to the Government their course of action in international negotiations. [Interruption.] Labour Members ask what is wrong with that. Well, I will read them a quote from Professor Vernon Bogdanor, who is not exactly a well-known leaver, but he is a constitutional expert. He described this at the weekend as “a constitutional absurdity” that

“would weaken the position of Britain’s negotiators.”

I agree with him that this is not practical, not desirable and not appropriate.

rose—

I give way to the hon. Gentleman who has campaigned long on this issue.

I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. What the Lords amendment seeks to do is to reassert parliamentary sovereignty such that this House approves and gets to vote on every scenario that can be conceived of in terms of the way that we withdraw from the European Union. On the Secretary of State’s amendment, may I ask him a factual question? I am not asking him whether or not he thinks we will be in a situation where there is no deal. I am simply asking him this: is it not the case that his amendment to Lords amendment 19 gives his Government a passport to take this country out of the European Union with no deal, with this House having had no say on it whatsoever?

I start by saying to the hon. Gentleman that I respect his point of view. He has the honesty to say that he would like us to stay in the European Union irrespective of the referendum result. Although I disagree with it, it is honest position to take. But what he describes as giving the Government the right to take us out of the European Union under, frankly, any circumstances was article 50, which was passed by this House and the other House by a very large majority, so I am afraid that he is not right in that respect.

rose—

I will give way in a moment.

It is accepted practice that Governments negotiate treaties, and this was the case for the European Communities Act 1972, the Lisbon treaty, the Nice treaty, the Amsterdam treaty and the Maastricht treaty. I do not remember any argument over Parliament undertaking those treaties from people who today argue that this amendment is appropriate.

rose—

I give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I do hope the Whip’s Office was not responsible for his injury.

I hope that our Whip’s Office is kinder than the Government’s Whip’s Office will be in getting this measure through.

Mr Speaker, I hope to catch your eye in a moment to talk about what the effects on the Labour vote will be in those constituencies that voted to leave, but on this crucial issue, is it not true that if we pass what the Lords want us to do, we, as Aneurin Bevan said, will be sending our negotiators back naked into the negotiating room? The European Union will know that the Government are beaten and that it can then impose any terms whatsoever on them.

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. It is certainly the case that the European Commission reads every newspaper in Britain, particularly the Financial Times and The Times. It reads them all, but, more surprisingly, it believes them. The simple truth is that it looks at any option that it thinks the British political system will throw up, which will allow it to get a negotiating advantage. Let us remember, too, that most, if not all, of the 27 would much rather that we did not leave—full stop. If it sees an opportunity to create that outcome, that is what it will do.

rose—

I want to make a little progress, and then I will give way again.

Furthermore, the Lords amendment sets deadlines that would simply allow the other side to use time against us, as it has already tried to do. What we have proposed in lieu is an amendment that builds on commitments that I first set out to the House in a statement on 13 December last year. The amendment provides that the withdrawal agreement cannot be ratified unless both the agreement and the future framework have been approved by a motion of this House. It also prevents the agreement from being ratified unless an Act of Parliament has been passed to implement it. This is all before the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 as well. Therefore, this is in addition to the Government’s commitment to introduce the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill if Parliament votes in favour of a final deal.

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. It is not clear what the choices are on a meaningful vote. Is a meaningful vote going to be between the deal that might be struck with the European Union on the current status quo, or a deal struck with the European Union and the World Trade Organisation? We need to know that.

People keep using the phrase “meaningful vote”. What it conceals in some cases, and I suspect that that is the case for the hon. Gentleman, is that they want to reverse the result of the referendum, and nothing we do will be organised to allow reversal of the result of the referendum.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

I will give way in a moment.

The Government have also made provisions to allow the vote to happen in this House before the European Parliament votes on the deal, as long as it is practical. This follows the spirit of the Lords amendment, but our proposal has some significant differences. First, we have attached a deadline to the Lords’ consideration of a motion on the final deal. It is not right that the Lords could have a veto on the deal simply by filibustering or refusing to consider the motion. Anyone who suggests that this is unlikely should consider that it was a concern raised by their lordships’ themselves in debate.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Not for the moment, no.

Secondly, we have removed Parliament’s power to give binding negotiating directions to the Government. As I have said, this would represent a profound constitutional shift in terms of which branch of the state holds the right to act in the international sphere. I turn again to Vernon Bogdanor, who said:

“Parliament’s role is to scrutinise legislation and policy; 650 MPs, still less 800 peers, cannot themselves negotiate.”

rose—

I will give way in a moment.

Instead, we have provided that, in the event that Parliament rejects the deal put to it, the Government will be legally obliged to make a statement on their proposed next steps in relation to article 50 negotiations within 28 days of that rejection. This House would of course then have plenty of tools at its disposal to respond, but I am as confident as ever that we will secure an agreement that this House will want to support.

I think that everybody in this House would accept my right hon. Friend’s proposition that we cannot bind the negotiations, but clearly the point of concern, which he is getting to now, is this: if there were no deal, does the amendment in lieu cover that circumstance? If it does not, how does he propose to deal with that?

If there were no deal for some reason other than the House rejecting it—it is incredibly, almost implausibly, unlikely, but let us imagine that the Government decided that they would not have a deal at all—we would of course do the same thing and come back and make a statement to the House, and the House would then have the right to respond.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I recognise some of the problems that he has and why the Government came forward with their amendment in lieu, and some of the deficiencies that can be identified in the Lords amendment. But the simple fact is that the Government have not made provision for no deal, and there is a way of doing it. The amendment that I have tabled provides a mechanism for doing that. One of the key issues for me at the end of this afternoon will be whether we make some progress on having a proper structure to address no deal. I do not think that this Bill can finish its course and get Royal Assent until we have that.

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his view on this. He sort of expressed it in an amendment that he tabled late last night, so I only saw it this morning. I have not really had a lot of time—[Interruption.] Well, this is an interesting demonstration of the Labour party’s perception of how easy it is to make constitutional law on the fly. Its own voters will come to a view on that.

Let me say this with respect to my right hon. and learned Friend’s proposed amendment—as he knows, I am always open to have a conversation with him on this although he seems to have fallen foul of my telephone security system—I always want to keep three principles in mind. First, we must never do anything that undermines the Government’s negotiating position, or encourages delays in the negotiations. That is very, very important. Secondly, we cannot change the fundamental constitutional structure, which makes the Government responsible for international relations and international treaties.

Will my right hon. Friend allow me?

In a moment.

We cannot do that. This constitutional structure has stood for hundreds of years and many thousands of treaties. As I said earlier, nobody suggested for a moment that the House of Commons should negotiate the Maastricht treaty, the Lisbon treaty, or one or two other controversial treaties that came before the House. We cannot change that structure now, on this basis.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

Not for the moment.

Thirdly, we must—under all circumstances—respect the result of the referendum. That is what this House voted for when it voted on article 50. I am very happy to talk to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) again in the next day or two, and we can discuss how we can meet his concerns in that time, within those principles.

Is not the kernel of the problem that all the amendments tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and others make no deal more likely, because they give every incentive to the European Commission not to agree to a deal? The amendments would bind the Government and we would end up with the worst possible result. Therefore, they should be resisted.

My hon. Friend goes to the heart of the problem, which is that we have to consider that anything passed in this House and the other House will have a very serious effect on the negotiating strategy of the other side. I hope that this House will recognise that the Government have taken a fair and positive approach to the new clause, retaining those elements that are sensible and viable, while removing those elements that are practically and constitutionally untenable. These constitutional and practical concerns also apply to Lords amendment 20, on a mandate for negotiations on the future relationship. The Government cannot demonstrate the flexibility necessary for a successful negotiation if their hands are tied mid-way through that process. That will do nothing but guarantee a bad deal for Britain. It is for the Government to set the direction during the negotiation. That is the key point.

I do not need to remind the House about the importance of this legislation. The purpose of this Bill is to maintain a functioning and effective statute book when leaving the European Union—a statute book that people and business can rely on. That is what our approach will deliver.

May I start by paying tribute to their lordships for the diligent and considered manner in which they so thoroughly scrutinised the Bill? In particular, I pay tribute to Labour colleagues in the other place for the extensive effort they put into securing many of the cross-party amendments that we are debating today.

This Bill began life as a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation. Many of its original flaws stem, I suspect, from the fact that at the time it was being drafted, the Government had yet to fully work through precisely how withdrawal would have to take place. Indeed, some of us still remember the Secretary of State’s glib dismissal of the need for any transitional arrangements after 29 March next year, and the misplaced magnanimity with which he made it clear that he would only consider granting transitional arrangements to “be kind” to the EU. But as with so many aspects of the Brexit process—even if not yet in every respect—reality has slowly caught up with the Government, just as the very real deficiencies in this Bill have now been subject to thorough scrutiny in the other place.

If anything has vindicated the Opposition’s decision to vote against this legislation on Second Reading, it is the succession of defeats that the Bill has faced in both Houses, as well as the scores of amendments that the Government themselves have had to table. That said, after successive defeats in the other place and the latest round of concessions from Ministers, some of the worst aspects of the Bill have been ameliorated.

As we only have three hours of debate on the first group of amendments, I intend to touch only briefly on most of the Lords amendments towards the end of my remarks, and focus instead on what we believe to be the critical issue in this first group. That is the issue of what form parliamentary approval of the withdrawal agreement should take. Many of the amendments passed in the other place are of great significance in terms of their constitutional implications and how they might shape what is left of the Brexit process. It is deeply disappointing that the programme motion only allocates 12 hours to debate them.

Rather than praising the Lords for the number of amendments they have passed, would it not be more in line with Labour party philosophy and views to say that they have gone way beyond their constitutional remit in trying to overturn not only the decision of the electorate but the decisions of both the Labour party and Conservative party manifestos, which together received 82% to 84% of the vote at the last general election?

I respect my hon. Friend’s argument and his long-held views, but I have to fundamentally disagree. None of their lordships’ amendments seeks to frustrate the Brexit process in any way or to allow this House to overturn the referendum result.

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and pay tribute to the work that our Front-Bench Brexit team in this House and in the Lords have done to improve the Bill. The Secretary of State was not courageous enough to take my intervention, so may I ask my hon. Friend what does more to harm the Prime Minister’s hand at the negotiating table—the principle of parliamentary consent; the Foreign Secretary making damaging, unguarded remarks at a private dinner; the Brexit Secretary playing the hokey cokey about whether he is going to stay in the Government; or the spectacle of Ministers resigning because their own Government are too intransigent to listen to the constructive and sensible direction on Brexit that many of us would like them to pursue?

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is nothing more damaging. As the Secretary of State himself said, the EU monitors with great interest developments in this House and what is said across the country. It sees the open warfare and disagreement in the Cabinet and the Foreign Secretary continually undermining the Prime Minister’s approach.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I am just going to make some progress.

Lords amendment 19 is of critical importance. In many ways, it is the most important amendment that we will consider over the 12 hours allotted. Before I explain why and set out the reasons why we agree with Lords amendment 19 and disagree with the Government’s amendment (a) in lieu, it is worth taking a little time to remind the House how we arrived at this point.

As hon. Members may recall, before 7 February last year Parliament was to be given absolutely no role in approving the final terms of the UK’s exit from the EU, because there was no commitment from the Government to a parliamentary vote of any kind. Under pressure, the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), came to the Dispatch Box during the Committee stage of the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill with a concession—a vote on a motion in this House and the other place on the article 50 deal, including the framework for a future relationship. We welcomed that concession, but we were clear that it did not provide for a meaningful vote, merely a vote on a non-binding motion and one that would essentially take the form of “take it or leave it”—accept the final draft withdrawal agreement, even if it is found wanting, or accept that the UK will walk away without a deal, triggering the hardest of departures from the EU.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I will.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way.

Order. No discourtesy intended to the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) had the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) in mind.

Is it not the case that some of the staunchest Brexiteers, including the Secretary of State himself, have always defended parliamentary sovereignty, but when it comes to a meaningful vote on the deal, they seem to ignore it?

That is absolutely right, and I thank my hon. Friend for that point.

Some people in this House have been quite clear that they want to prevent Brexit. Others disguise that fact with the very careful construction of terms. In the Lords, where there are no constituencies to vote Members out—sadly—people have been more honest. Surely my hon. Friend was wrong to say that there was nobody in the Lords who was saying that this was actually a “stop Brexit” vote; we have already heard a quotation. The aim was to prevent Brexit; the Lords have no responsibility to anybody and they said that that was their aim.

I have to disagree with my right hon. Friend’s point. I did not say that there were no lordships that do not intend to block Brexit, just as there are hon. Members in this House for whom that is the intention. But the aim of the Lords amendments, as they are designated, is not to frustrate Brexit. There is no majority in this House for overturning the referendum result, as my right hon. Friend well knows. It is disingenuous to say that that is the aim of this amendment.

Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman is not accusing any individual Member of being disingenuous—[Interruption.] I need it to be clear that that is not the case. Would the hon. Gentleman be good enough just to confirm that he is not making any such suggestion?

I am happy to clarify that.

That is good enough. The hon. Gentleman may continue.

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

As I was saying, the choice that faces us under the Government’s amendment is between the draft withdrawal agreement, even if it is found wanting, and the hardest of departures—the most disorderly exit. Let us remind ourselves of what that would mean: legal chaos, significant damage to our economy, the erection of a hard border in Northern Ireland and serious harm to Britain’s standing in the world. That is why in Committee we tabled new clause 66, which would have guaranteed both Houses a vote on the motion on the terms of withdrawal—and, just as critically, a vote in the event that no such agreement is reached.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I am going to make a bit of progress.

However, we also recognised in Committee stage that there were other requirements needed to ensure that Parliament has a meaningful vote, one of which is the need for a vote on a statute. That is why we supported amendment 7 in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and other hon. Members—an amendment that ultimately passed in this House by 309 votes to 305. That amendment took a slightly different approach in that it was quite deliberately aimed at restricting the use of, and limiting the potential abuse of, the extensive and wide clause 9 power in the Bill as it then stood.

Would the hon. Gentleman care to reflect on the fact that the decision to transfer the vote to the people was done quite deliberately and voluntarily by this House by six to one, as a sovereign Act of Parliament? Any attempt to reverse that is in defiance of the decision that was taken by Act of Parliament.

The hon. Gentleman makes the same point as many others have done, and I have dealt with it in saying that their lordships’ amendment is not about overturning the referendum result. [Interruption.] No, it is not—not at all. It is about giving Parliament a say in shaping the direction under one scenario that could well occur.

Would it not be one of the most supreme ironies of this entire Brexit debacle if, at the end of it, the European Parliament has a meaningful vote and 27 member states have a meaningful vote, but the state that is leaving—and leaving in a state—does not have a meaningful vote?

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Commission cannot approve the deal on the European Union side until the European Parliament has given its consent, and if it does not give its consent, the Commission cannot move on and ratify.

My hon. Friend is making the points about a meaningful vote with a great deal of power. Does he agree that if we get to a stage—which I suspect some Eurosceptics want—where we are approaching a disorderly, no-deal, hardest-of-hard Brexits, this House has a right not to be given a fait accompli of a deal that is inadequate, or no deal at all? Is that not what this battle to have a meaningful vote on the deal is actually all about?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is the choice that faces every hon. Member in the Chamber today when we come to vote on Lords amendment 19.

rose—

rose—

I am going to make some progress.

I want to return to amendment 7 in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield. As I said, that amendment took a very different approach that was about restricting the clause 9 power. That amendment having been passed, the Government cannot now give the final withdrawal agreement domestic legal effect without first gaining parliamentary approval in primary legislation for the planned EU withdrawal and implementation Bill. But what his amendment 7 did not do, consciously and deliberately—I remember him saying so at the time—was deal with a scenario in which Parliament does not approve the draft withdrawal agreement. That scenario, I would argue, cannot be ruled out given how badly this Government are handling the negotiations and the limited time they have left before agreement must be reached.

I am going to make some more progress.

With their new clause, their lordships have developed the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s amendment 7 in its guarantee of a statutory vote and made explicit provision for what would happen if Parliament were not to approve the deal when it is put before us later this year. In those circumstances, under the provisions of their lordships’ amendment, it would be for Parliament, by resolution of this House—the Government having found time for that resolution—and subject to consideration in the other place, to give direction to the Government about how then to proceed. It is not about Parliament taking over the negotiations or about stripping Ministers of their authority to make decisions.

The hon. Gentleman said earlier that no Lords amendment is intended to frustrate the result of the referendum, but amendment 19 says very clearly that Her Majesty’s Government

“must follow any direction in relation to the negotiations…approved by a resolution of the House of Commons, and…subject to…a motion in the House of Lords.”

That is entirely transferring responsibility for the aims and the detail of everything we negotiate to Parliament and away from the Government. Can he name any precedent for that in the whole history of this nation?

If such a scenario were to occur—this is the important point; I take head on what the hon. Gentleman has said—it would be for Parliament, although we are talking about any unknown number of hypothetical situations at that point, to direct the Government by resolution. Is he saying that Parliament would come forward and support a resolution to overturn the referendum result? There is no way that that could happen. He knows that there is no majority for that in this House.

rose—

No, I am going to make some progress.

The aim of this amendment is to establish a clear process, with appropriate deadlines, by which Parliament can approve the outcome of the article 50 negotiations, and to provide clarity on what should happen if a majority of hon. Members in this House come to the conclusion that the final deal the Government return with is not good enough for the country.

I am not giving way; I will make some progress.

The amendment is about ensuring that in a scenario where this House rejects the withdrawal agreement, Parliament does not then simply become a passive spectator to what happens next but instead secures a decisive role in actively shaping how the Executive then proceed.

My hon. Friend has said that supporting this amendment would not necessarily lead to a resolution of this House saying that we wish to maintain membership of the European Union. Can he explain, for the purposes of clarity, what safeguards are in place to prevent such a thing from happening, given that we cannot bind Parliaments and that, as such, if we vote for this amendment, we could resolve to tell the Government that re-entry is the point of the negotiation?

My hon. Friend is dealing in hypotheticals. Under that scenario, it might be the case that an hon. Member tries to bring forward a resolution, and that the Government provide time, but does he believe, realistically, that such a resolution could pass and would command a majority in this House? It would not.

This is not about frustrating Brexit. Ministers know full well that there is no majority for that in this place, and it is disingenuous, as I said, to argue as much. Lords amendment 19 is about trusting this sovereign House of Commons to do what is right for the country.

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is Government’s job to bring forward policy and Parliament’s job—the Commons, in particular—to legislate? It seems to me that far from taking back control or establishing sovereignty, the Government appear to want to deny Parliament its fundamental role as legislator.

My right hon. Friend makes a good point.

Lords amendment 19 is about trusting this sovereign House of Commons to do what is right for the country should it come to pass that the Government bring back a deal that does not secure approval in this House.

rose—

I will not give way.

By contrast, the Government’s amendment (a) in lieu of amendment 19 would guarantee precisely the opposite. It would ensure that in the event that this House does not approve the withdrawal agreement, Parliament would have almost no role whatsoever.

rose—

I am not going to give way at this point.

Yes, the amendment provides for a statutory guarantee of a vote before the withdrawal agreement is put on the statute book, but it removes from the Bill what their lordships deliberately chose to insert: provision for the legislature to constrain Ministers in deciding to crash us out of the EU without a deal should Parliament choose to reject the deal. What does the Government amendment offer in its place? It offers provision to send a Minister back to the House within 28 days with a statement—a statement!—as to how the Government intend to proceed: a commitment that does not go much beyond what was set out in the written ministerial statement that was hurriedly issued on 13 December in a last-ditch attempt to thwart the House in voting for the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s amendment 7.

rose—

rose—

I am not giving way; I will make some progress.

It almost beggars belief. The vast majority of Members of this House want the Government to succeed and to return with the best deal possible, but let us be clear about what it would mean were the House to decline to approve the deal they bring back. That would represent a catastrophic failure of the Government’s Brexit policy and their handling of the negotiations. In such a scenario, are hon. Members really content for the sum of their role to be the chance to listen to a ministerial statement and attempt to catch the Speaker’s eye to ask a question? That is what hon. Members will be giving their consent to if they vote for the Government’s amendment in lieu today. It is the same “take it or leave it” vote that the Government offered last year, with a few extra baubles.

Does my hon. Friend understand that Labour voters in the midlands and the north, who voted in large numbers to leave the European Union and who are a little bemused at the arguments even among the Cabinet over how that is delivered, do not wish to see the negotiations carried out by 650 Members of Parliament and want to see Brexit got on with? If the Lords amendments are agreed to, how will we explain to those Labour voters that the unelected House of Lords can overturn both the Commons and the referendum?

I will tell my hon. Friend how we will explain it to them. We will say that their lordships asked us to consider and vote on whether, in the event that a majority of Members of this House do not approve the deal, we should take control of the situation and shape how the Executive then proceed. I think they would support that.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I am going to make some progress.

There has been a considerable amount of debate over the past 16 months about what is meant by a “meaningful” vote. Any member of the public watching our proceedings today will struggle to understand how a vote on the draft withdrawal agreement that simply takes the form of “take it or leave it” could in any sense be genuinely meaningful. In reality, it would be anything but. It would be meaningless, not meaningful. It would be a Hobson’s choice.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way one final time.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I put it to him gently that his proposition presupposes that the European Union would wish to re-engage in negotiations. Were there to be a meaningful vote and this House were to veto the deal, we would be likely to crash out without a deal and not deliver the pragmatic common-sense Brexit that I think he and I would like to see.

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. Crashing out of the European Union without a deal is exactly what this amendment is designed to prevent. [Interruption.] Yes, it is.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I said that that was the last intervention; I am not giving way again.

I want to turn briefly to the amendment tabled yesterday evening by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield. We welcome it as a significant improvement on the Government’s amendment in lieu. His amendment is a clear acknowledgment that the Government’s amendment is deficient, that there is a need to make provision for a scenario in which Parliament does not approve a motion on the withdrawal agreement and that this House may need to insist on a decisive role for Parliament in what we all acknowledge would be an unprecedented situation.

We recognise that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has, throughout this process, been at great pains to secure a consensus around how this complex legislation can be improved in the context of the many challenges that the Government face. In taking such an approach, his and his colleagues’ intent has not been, as many have suggested and as is plastered across the front of many of the tabloids today, to sabotage the will of the people or betray their country. They are simply trying to secure what the vast majority of hon. Members of this House desire: a proper process codified in law that ensures that the right decisions are made at the right time and that Parliament has the tools to hold the Executive to account effectively on some of the most significant decisions any of us will be asked to take.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I am not going to give way; I am going to conclude.

The question of what form parliamentary approval of the withdrawal agreement takes is one of the most significant decisions this House will have to take. To be meaningful, a vote cannot simply take the form of a binary “take it or leave it” choice. It must provide a means by which Parliament can indicate to the Government that it desires a re-examination of particular aspects of the draft withdrawal agreement or even a change of approach. Unless hon. Members insist on it, Parliament will not have a genuinely meaningful vote on the terms of our withdrawal, as this House insisted upon in December. That is why we must insist on it and why I urge hon. Members to agree with Lords amendment 19 when we go through the Division Lobby in a few hours.

I want briefly to turn to some of the other Lords amendments in this group, starting with Lords amendments 37, 39 and 125, with which we agree. We remain of the view that amending the Bill to incorporate a specified exit day and time was an ill-conceived and unnecessary gimmick that unduly fetters the Government. Ministers are well aware, just as they were when they amended the Bill in Committee, that exit day for the purposes of the Bill is a very different matter from the actual date on which the UK will cease to be an EU member state, which is a settled matter and a legal certainty. Common sense dictates that we return to the situation before November in which there was a necessary degree of flexibility around exit day for the purposes of the Bill, although we agree with their lordships that it is Parliament, not Ministers, who would agree the various exit dates.

We agree with amendments 110 and 128, which we believe strengthen parliamentary scrutiny—for example, by ensuring that Ministers cannot overturn decisions made by the triage committee. We also agree with amendments 10, 43 and 45, which rightly circumscribe the scope of the sweeping delegated powers in the Bill. We debated that issue extensively in Committee, and we remain of the view that concerns about the subjectivity inherent in the word “appropriate” must be addressed. Lastly, we agree with amendments 20 and 52.

I know that many Members on both sides of the House wish to speak, so I have sought not to repeat or rebut every argument made about each of the Lords amendments in this group with which we agree, but simply to set out, with particular focus on Lords amendment 19, why we believe they must be retained.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I am not going to give way at this stage.

The amendments in this group are, at their core, about what we, as hon. and right hon. Members, believe the role of Parliament should be in the Brexit process. They are about ensuring that Parliament plays an active role in shaping our country’s future, rather than accepting that the House of Commons is to be little more than a spectator and a passive observer to one of the most important decisions that has faced our country in generations. They are about ensuring that the withdrawal agreement cannot be ratified unless we approve it and, in the event that we do not approve it, that the UK cannot crash out of the EU by ministerial fiat. They are ultimately about reasserting the primacy of the House of Commons, so that this House, should the situation arise, is able to do what is right for our country.

Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. I will try to be as brief as I can. Everybody knows that that is an effort for me, but I really will try to be positively terse where I can, and I am afraid that if I give way at all, it will be very briefly. That is only right, because the programme motion we have just passed, which I voted against, allows just three hours for debate on this whole group. I am well aware that hundreds of Members will find it almost impossible to get in, and therefore if I abuse the privilege you have given me, Mr Speaker, I should cause a great deal of damage to the quality of the debate.

First, let me say that I have never known an issue of this importance to be taken in this way. I remember being in debates on the European Communities Bill back in 1972 and in debates all the way through Maastricht, when there were hours and hours of debate and repeated votes before the approval of this House was obtained. Nobody throughout would have dreamt of arguing that as part of the process, the House of Commons could be excluded and the Government could be given an absolute privilege to proceed. Such a suggestion would have been treated as a complete absurdity.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

I will not, I am afraid, because had the suggestion been put to my hon. Friend during the Maastricht debates that if the Government got defeated on a resolution, they could take it over on their own and let Parliament know in due course what was going to happen, I do not think he would have welcomed it. I understand that we are in a different position.

You’ve got to give way to him now; you’ve mentioned him.

I thought my hon. Friend and I had debated this quite long enough for everybody already, but I will give way to him.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend explain whether he believes it is possible, with the meaningful vote, to manage to maintain the Brexit process? Does he not accept that the effect of the meaningful vote is actually to reverse the Brexit process, and furthermore, to use a certain expression, that it is completely failing to understand the nature of the amendments to suggest otherwise?

I am grateful my hon. Friend—he is a genuine personal friend, and always has been—and he has brought me to the point I was moving on to.

This debate is being dominated, as far as the Brexiteers are concerned, by the argument that the amendment on the meaningful vote—Lords amendment 19, as amended by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve)—is really an attempt to get around the referendum. For the past several months, I have found that I am told on practically every subject, when the details get a little difficult and the argument gets a little odd, “Ah, you’re not accepting the will of the people.” I first faced that when I opposed our withdrawal from Euratom, and I still do not believe that the public voted for that.

For the avoidance of doubt, as I have repeatedly made clear, I was on the losing side in the referendum—much as I regret it—but after the majority on article 50, we are going to leave the European Union. I have not joined the campaigns to have a second referendum, and I hope I do not live to see another referendum on such an important subject in my lifetime. The fact is that the key decision was then taken, but I will not go back over the quality of the debate and the arguments put forward by the leading figures on both sides that then dominated the national media.

Once the decision was taken by this House, on invoking article 50, that we are leaving, hundreds and hundreds of detailed questions arose about what new arrangements we are going to have for our relationships with the European Union on a huge range of subjects, some of which we have scarcely looked at at the moment, and for our relationships with the rest of the world, because all our trade agreements are based on the European Union as that is how we have entered into them for the past several decades.

The idea that the yes/no vote—leave or remain—on referendum day actually decided each and every issue that now arises, if I may say so to people for whom I actually have respect, is, frankly, intellectually lazy. It is a refusal to engage with what we are actually talking about. I realise that many of the public are exasperated. The prevailing mood among the public is, “What are they all doing, and why don’t they get it over with?” I am sorry about that, but the fact is that leaving poses a lot of questions. I do not think that most members of the public feel that their vote decided the issues we are talking about today in relation to parliamentary scrutiny and control. I am only guessing, but if we had said, “Of course, if you vote leave, you are giving the Government the absolute right to do what they wish in the negotiations and come to whatever agreements they want,” I do not think it would have been easy for my right hon. and hon. Friends to get a majority for such a proposition.

Let me get on to what we are really talking about, because I have already taken longer than I wished. As I have said, any suggestion that Parliament should hand over absolute discretion to any Government to handle such things would have been treated with absolute outrage, not the usual cheers and counter-cheers, expressed to any Minister who dared to do so. It is said—the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) is persuaded by this, but I do not agree with him—that the next argument we will face is, “Well, what you’re saying is that the House of Commons should take over the negotiations.” Of course we are not. I quite agree that that is a ridiculous proposition.

The Lords amendment was proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend Lord Hailsham. As we are all aware, he and others gave a lot of thought to putting together a parliamentary process that would be practicable and workable; the drafting might be improved, but the Government could have done that if their lawyers thought it was worth while. My right hon and learned Friend had in mind that a further resolution would be required, but this second resolution, after the proposed settlement had been rejected, would of course be moved by a Minister. The amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield makes that even clearer. The idea that we would have a mass meeting of 650 people to decide what resolution to put forward is not postulated in the Lords amendment, and nobody is suggesting that.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

No, I have taken too long already. I apologise to my right hon. Friend.

The Government would of course be in a bit of a dilemma—I imagine we would all be even more excited than we have been for the past few days—but the fact is that they would have to go away and work out what resolution to bring forward that would carry the House of Commons. I assume that would be a continuation of the negotiations, but the House would demand that its approval was sought for the next turn in the negotiations, and the directions in which they would go, to satisfy its objections. I regard that as a perfectly serious proposition.

The public debate on the whole question of Brexit has largely been ridiculous—not just in the Daily Express, but in many other areas—but in this place we actually need to take seriously what we are doing not only for the future prospects of generations of our citizens, but for the constitutional position of this House. We have already given up all kinds of things that I have always taken for granted. I have never known such a weak Parliament for allowing things to get through, ending with the latest timetable resolution, but to take the Government’s amendment would be the ultimate in doing so.

With this amendment, the Government have had to accept the decision of the House when we successfully defeated them before Christmas. They have had to come back and set out a better process of parliamentary approval before ratification. The big question then is: what if the Government reject it and there is no deal? In the House of Lords, the Minister was quite clear in resisting the amendment: “Oh, this meaningful vote is going to be deal or no deal—take it or leave it.”

Yes.

“Yes,” says my hon. Friend behind me. That is what he wants.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

No, I will not give way.

It would be a yes/no vote. Members may not like the deal, but if they vote against it, all they will get is no deal. The result is that, whatever deal they come forward with, only a handful of my right hon. and hon. Friends would vote against it, because they do not want any deal at all, but they are an absolutely tiny minority in this House of Commons.

What do the Government say in their amendment that the House will be faced with? The amendment says that, within 28 days, a written statement will be produced. It will be one of the piles of written statements we have every day, and—dare I suggest it?—not every Member of Parliament usually bothers to go through those piles of written statements every day. [Interruption.] Well, obviously I am exceptionally negligent in not doing so. What is the written statement going to say? It could say, “Well, in that case, as there’s no deal, we’re leaving.” or, “Well, we’re going to do this, and that’s it—that’s the end of the parliamentary process.” It might as well say, “O House of Commons, get lost!” This is a wholly inadequate response to the votes we will have had in Parliament.

No, I want to make two more points. I will now be very brief, and I will not expound on all the points I would have expounded on.

The argument that we are undermining the Prime Minister’s position in the negotiations is equally ridiculous. It is based on the proposition that, out on the continent, people do not know that there are divisions in the Cabinet or what the situation is in the House of Commons, and were a whisper to get out about some slightly unusual votes in the House of Commons, this would undermine the position of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister and make that position much weaker.

I suspect that the feeling among those on the continent at the moment is that they are utterly bewildered by the Anglo-Saxons and that they have no idea what we think we are doing. They are not hostile to this country; they are waiting for us to make up our minds about what we wish to negotiate before the negotiations start. All the other Governments have to get the approval of 27 national Parliaments. What they are watching is an attempt by the real zealots in this House to stop this Parliament playing any part in the process, which is totally unacceptable.

The time has come to say that all Government policies on any subject, great or small, depend on the ability to command a majority in the House of Commons on the key principles and the direction in which the country is going. I will certainly vote on that basis and I hope that the Government regret the rather intolerant response and all the pressure they have been applying on my right hon. and learned Friends in trying to resist such an obvious proposition.

Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. It is always a daunting prospect to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), although I am grateful to him on this occasion for warming up the audience a wee bit.

I do not often go along with the tradition of spending the first part of a speech being enormously grateful for getting the chance to speak in this place. After all, speaking here on behalf of our constituents is the absolute right of all Members. Today, however, it is appropriate for me to acknowledge that I am one of the privileged few because I will get to speak today and, who knows, perhaps even tomorrow, whereas the vast majority of elected Members in this place will not have a chance to speak at all.

If we all got an equal say over the next couple of days, every MP would speak for about 10 seconds—and no, I am not going to call time on myself just yet. Each of the amendments, many of them vital for the future, would be debated for about three minutes. In reality, most MPs will not be called and we will be asked to vote on amendments that have never been before this House and that will literally not even be mentioned by name, rank or serial number in the debate because there will not be time. Anybody who believes that that is an example of participative democracy at its best needs to get out of here and spend some time reconnecting with the real world.

The programme motion that the Government got through today is an absolute travesty of democracy, following days and days on which the business collapsed and the Government were inventing things to talk about because they did not have the political courage to bring this Bill or umpteen other Brexit-related Bills before the House. The idea that we can give proper consideration to 160 or 170 amendments in effectively nine or 10 hours of debate is utterly laughable. It is an indication of how far the hard Brexiteer propagandists and sloganisers have parted company from any kind of rational logic that they and, indeed, many in the Government denounced the Lords for approving 15 amendments that the Government did not like, while welcoming the fact that those self-same Lords approved 166 amendments that the Government asked them to approve. One hundred and sixty-six amendments were requested by the Government, and 15 by the rest of the world, and it is the rest of the world who are the villains and the enemies of democracy in this.

It was inevitable but deeply disturbing to see how the battle lines have been drawn on the front pages of some so-called newspapers, and I know that there was a point of order on this exact point earlier today. Their lordships are the “traitors in ermine”, the “enemies of the people”, as, indeed, are judges in the Supreme Court, for daring to do the job that they are there to do. I am not a fan of the unelected House of Lords, but they are there for a purpose and, whether we agree or disagree with the way in which they have discharged their purpose, the abuse that has been heaped on them in the past few weeks is utterly uncalled for and has no place in any kind of civilised debate.

The hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that, rather than deriding the House of Lords, we should be thanking them for introducing 15 sensible amendments and that the Government should also be thanking them for making hundreds of their own amendments because they made such a Horlicks of the Bill in this place in the first place.

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. It seems like the definition of an enemy of the people is not based on where they take the decisions but on whether the decision finds favour or disfavour with Her Majesty’s Government. That is not democracy, Mr Speaker. We are heading to dictatorship if someone’s integrity or patriotism is judged on whether or not they agree with the minority of people who sit on the Government Front Bench.

As I have said, and I shall come back to this later, I am not a fan of the House of Lords. I do not think that it is a democratic institution, but it is not the real threat to our democracy. The real threat to such democracy as we have in these islands does not come from people who disagree with what I say or with what the Government say but from those who use terms such as “traitor” or “enemy” to denounce anybody who holds or expresses a view that differs from their own.

This weekend, we will mark the second anniversary of the murder of one of our colleagues. Possibly the last words she heard in this life were “death to traitors”. Surely, in the name of God, we should know that, when we allow the language of hatred to become normalised, the actions of hatred will follow. Today, someone has pleaded guilty to planning to murder another of our colleagues. I say to colleagues on all sides that we can disagree passionately and fervently with each other, but please get the language of violence out of the vocabulary of this debate and of all debates, not just in the few days before we remember Jo’s sacrifice but every day thereafter, so that Jo and others did not die in vain.

As I have mentioned, the SNP are not fans of the House of Lords, but when the House of Lords has passed amendments to turn a bad Bill into a slightly less bad Bill, we will seek to retain those amendments. Let us be clear that, even with those amendments, this is still a bad thing. It will be damaging to all our interests, but if we can make it the least bad thing that we possibly can, we will have achieved something.

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the SNP’s official position is that we should stop Brexit outright?

I am not quite sure how to break this to the right hon. Gentleman, but nothing would please me more than to allow his country to implement the decision that its citizens have taken and for my country to be given the right to implement the decision that the people of my country took.

We support the removal from the Bill of a purely arbitrary and symbolic exit day; it does nothing to improve our chances of getting a less damaging deal and makes the prospect of a cliff-edge no deal more likely. It was agreed to only because the Prime Minister was too weak at the time to stand up to the hard-line minority in her own party, who are a vanishingly small minority across the House of Commons as a whole. Recently, the ubiquitous “sources close to the Prime Minister” have been working very hard to spin the line that she is now prepared to face down some of the extremists in her party. May I suggest that she would make a good start by facing them down by supporting the removal of an unnecessary exit day from the Bill and supporting that Lords amendment?

On the amendments to change “necessary” back to “what the Minister deems appropriate,” I am flummoxed by the idea that it needs to be put into legislation that a Minister only does things that they think are appropriate. Do the Government seriously think that their own Ministers will do things that they think are inappropriate? I know that they do things that I think are inappropriate all the time, but imagine having legally to prohibit them from doing things that they thought were stupid, rather than trying to stop them from doing things that everybody else thinks are stupid.

The Secretary of State, who obviously has much more important things to do than staying to listen to the defence of his legislation, told us twice that “necessary” is not a synonym for logical, sensible or proper. The trouble is that the entire Bill is written on the assumption that Her Majesty’s Government are a synonym for logical, sensible or proper, and, indeed, that the whim of a Minister is a synonym for logical, sensible or proper.

The Government do not have a monopoly on logic, good sense or propriety. A Government who lost their overall majority in this place at the demand of the people of these islands should surely have the humility to accept that sometimes, just sometimes, when the ermine-coated lords along the corridor disagree with them, they have got it right and the Government have got it wrong.

The hon. Gentleman confirms that he and his party want to keep Scotland in the European Union. Can he confirm to me whether he wants to keep Scotland in the common fisheries policy as well?

Certainly not, as currently constituted. If there were a common fisheries policy that actually protected Scotland’s fishing industry, instead of it being used by successive UK Governments as an excuse to sell it out, that might be a different matter.

There has of course been a public vote on the possibility of one of the consequences of a hard Brexit: a hard border across the island of Ireland.

Is my hon. Friend aware that the front page of today’s Financial Times refers to a shortage of doctors? The Tories in Scotland have the cheek to blame the Scottish National party for the lack of doctors, when they are the ones not giving them the visas to get in to the country. The Tories sold out fishing once and then twice. They told us that they would not accept fisheries in the transition agreement and now they are talking as if they are saving the fisheries—the people who have sold out fishermen twice!

Few of us can speak on the fishing industry with such knowledge and authority as my hon. Friend.

The nearest we have had to a public vote anywhere on any of the consequences of a hard Brexit was the public vote against the possibility of a hard border across the island of Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland and the people of the Republic of Ireland overwhelmingly rejected such a notion when they endorsed the Good Friday agreement and, of course, the people of Northern Ireland, the only people in the United Kingdom who would be affected by a hard border, voted to remain in the EU. How can anyone argue that the best way to give effect to those votes is for decisions to be taken by Ministers who represent a party with no MPs in Northern Ireland? The people of Northern Ireland have no way of re-electing or not re-electing those Ministers, based on whether their decisions are in the interests of those people.

Is the hon. Gentleman as outraged as I am that it looks as though we will have no possibility to debate those issues today? Is he as surprised as I am that, unless the Department for Exiting the European Union has not kept its website up to date, we do not even have a Minister from DExEU here listening to the debate?

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are quite used to seeing Government Ministers abandoning their posts as soon as anybody from the third party in Parliament gets up to speak. He will have to take it up with them why that might be.

At the end of this entire process, we owe it to ourselves, to each and every one of us, to acknowledge that later this year some Members of Parliament—possibly those on the Conservative Benches, possibly those on the Opposition Benches—may in all conscience want to go back to their constituents and say, “I recognise the way that you voted in June 2016. I respect your right to take part in that vote, but in all conscience I cannot be part of a decision that I believe in my heart of hearts will be deeply damaging to your community and to these islands and nations.” Members of Parliament must have the right to say to their constituents, “On this occasion, what I fundamentally believe to be in your interests differs from what you believe to be your wishes.” Each of us should be given the right to go back to our constituents and face the potential political consequences. I have no qualms whatever about the political consequences of following my own conscience if it is against the wishes, expressed or otherwise, of my constituents. That is a decision we all have to be prepared to take from time to time.

This is possibly the most important occasion of this Parliament—and of many previous Parliaments. Members of Parliament must be given the opportunity to decide for themselves where they place the balance between what we believe is best and what our constituents have told us they want. If Members of Parliament are not prepared to face up to that very difficult dilemma, there is a question whether they should be Members of Parliament at all.

The hon. Gentleman has been very generous in giving way. Surely we cannot ignore a referendum that was voted for by this House. The people made a decision and we cannot go against that decision. To say that perhaps they did not realise what they were doing when they voted to leave the European Union is an insult to the electorate.

I never suggested that, although it is perhaps worth remembering that at least one of the right hon. Gentleman’s own colleagues, a Conservative MP, has admitted that they did not vote in the referendum because the question was too hard for them to understand. I wonder how many other people were in the same position. There is a big, big difference between not fully understanding and being stupid. It is an insult for Conservative Members to suggest that anyone who admits they did not fully understand it, or still do not feel they understand it, is stupid.

My comments were not based on suggesting that people did not understand. My comments were based on the fact that the ultimate responsibility we have is to act on what we believe to be the public’s best interest, not simply to follow what we think will get us re-elected next time around. The fact that so many Brexiteers are horrified at the idea that Members of Parliament should be given the chance to make that statement to their constituents suggests that an awful lot of them think that such a statement may be needed. They think that we will get to the end of the process and a large number of MPs will want to go back to the people and say, “I’m sorry. I supported it this far but I cannot support it any longer because I can see the damage it will cause.” I will leave that for Members to think about. I do not expect anybody to be persuaded just now, but I appeal to Members to think about that over the next wee while. It is fundamental to the nature of the representative democracy we have in this place.

Of course, it goes without saying, on the other amendments the SNP will be supporting, that, in this partnership of equal nations, the elected Parliaments of all the equal nations must have a say on the final deal. They must have a much greater say than they have had up until now. With the contempt shown for the devolved nations through the process so far, it is difficult to believe that the intention has been anything other than inflammatory.

rose—

rose—

I will not give way because I know a number of people who did not support the programme motion will struggle to get in.

The mantra of the “most powerful devolved Parliament in the world” has never been true, but it sounds even more hollow if that “most powerful devolved Parliament in the world” can be stripped of its powers by a party that never wanted it to have those powers, never wanted it to exist in the first place and are intent on acting not just against the majority view of the Parliament of Scotland but against the majority view of Opposition Members of the Parliament of Scotland.

In their continued belief that they and only they are the guardians of common sense, the Government are determined to force this place to have a binary decision on whether we accept the final deal. This is the same Government who keep telling us that the customs union is not a binary decision, the single market is not a binary decision and controlling immigration is not a binary decision. The only time it is a binary decision is when they have to make a decision. The Government are determined that the final decision this Parliament will have to take on what the future will be is “take it or leave it”. For some of us, other futures are available. The Government would do well to reflect on that fact before it is too late. If the only choice they offer is take it or leave it, they may find that the people of Scotland, the people of Wales and the people of Northern Ireland will interpret take it or leave it in a very different way from that which the Government intend.

Order. I remind the House of what it knows, namely that the time available for this debate is very limited. I want to accommodate as many right hon. and hon. Members as possible, so we will begin with a limit on Back-Bench speeches of 10 minutes, although it is not obligatory to take the full allocation of time.

I agree with the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) that we should use the language of respect. I, for one—and many of my colleagues, I am sure—would never use words such as “traitor”. We all accept that there are very different views in this place, but this is not the EU negotiating Bill. It is not a Bill designed from its inception to give the Government guidance about what sort of deal we should have. I thought—this has been explained to us many times by the Government—that this Bill was simply to try to transform and transfer, in an orderly way, EU laws into our legal system. That was what I understood the Bill to be; it is not an EU negotiating Bill.

I said earlier that we should use the language of respect. I know that it is not in order to call any Member “disingenuous”, but I think that it is in order to call an argument disingenuous, and I do so now. I respect the House of Lords. I understand that it is not elected. I understand that it should try to improve legislation. I serve on the Procedure Committee, and when the Committee considered these matters, there was a detailed debate on the sifting committee and I could understand how the House of Lords can try to improve how we deal with legislation. That seems entirely sensible and credible, but many of us suspect that these amendments, particularly Lords amendment 19, are designed not to improve the legislation or to improve the sifting process by which we transfer these laws, but to frustrate the whole process.

My hon. Friend will remember that we had many hours of debate and decisive votes before we sent the article 50 letter. That was the point when Parliament made up its mind to back the referendum. We cannot keep chopping and changing.

I agree with that. As I was saying, although it is perfectly in order for the other place to try to improve legislation, when it seeks to frustrate it, I think that Members of the elected House should start to get worried. Lords amendment 19 is very clear in saying:

“Her Majesty’s Government may implement a withdrawal agreement only if Parliament has approved the withdrawal agreement and any transitional measures…Her Majesty’s Government must follow any direction in relation to the negotiations under Article 50”

and so on. What would be the result of that amendment? I say to colleagues that we are not just acting in a vacuum. What would be the result if we fail to overturn this amendment from the other place?

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

My hon. Friend takes a very different point of view from me, so in all courtesy, I give way, but this must be the last time I do so.

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that the amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) deals with the issues that he is raising?

No, I do not agree. I talked to my right hon. Friend the Brexit Secretary earlier today. He simply said—he does understand these things—that all the amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) would do would be to implement what the House of Lords wants to do in fewer words, so I do not accept that, I am afraid. We have to bite this bullet now. We have to support the Government and reject the amendment.

As I was asking, what would be the result—we do not operate in a vacuum—if the House of Lords had its way? Of course it would be a catastrophe for the Government. There would be banner headlines in every single newspaper tomorrow saying that the Government had been defeated and that the whole Brexit momentum was in danger. Much more important than that—this is why I think the argument is disingenuous—is the fact those who support the House of Lords are dressing up their arguments in terms of parliamentary sovereignty. It is in order, is it not, for Parliament to debate and amend a Bill, as the House of Lords can do? That is what we do all the time, but what the Lords really want to do is to create a situation in which the whole process is frustrated.

These arguments were put—almost as forcefully as my hon. Friend is putting them—when we had our debates before Christmas in Committee. This House then passed an amendment on a meaningful vote, defeating the Government. People had foreseen that that would undermine the Prime Minister, cause an election and represent a crisis, but the next morning, apart from the fact that there was now to be a meaningful vote, nothing stirred. The position of the Prime Minister was not weakened and negotiations have not been hindered. My hon. Friend is putting his arguments with his usual great eloquence, but, with great respect, they avoid what we are really talking about, which is the important process of parliamentary accountability.

I am afraid that my right hon. and learned Friend was not listening to his own speech. Was I not listening—was I not two or three feet away from him—when he said that the amendment that we passed earlier was not going to make much difference to the whole process? It was like giving a statement, was it not? What we are talking about is completely different. This really is the ultimate wrecking amendment, and it is not the wrecking of parliamentary sovereignty; it is the wrecking of the will of the people and democracy. There are so many compromises that we all have to make. There are so many things that I do not understand about this negotiating process, and about how we have got stuck on the hook of Ireland, the backstop, “max fac” and all these other things, but the essential thing is this: the people want us to leave the EU. They want to regain control of their borders and they want us to be out of the European Court of Justice. All this Bill does—it is not the EU negotiating Bill—is simply to implement the will of the people. Parliament, do not stand against the people! Implement their will.

Many Members will today be speaking under pressure or while considering different interests. Some will be observing what the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) called the pure Churchillian principle of accountability and thinking clearly about our consciences and judgments, while others will be concerned about the will of the people as expressed by their own or other people’s constituents, or by parts of the UK such as Scotland that are distinct. Others will be thinking about their party and—dare I say it?—some may even consider the views of their party Whips. People will come to different conclusions and weigh these things differently, and the most vocal people will be those who are not necessarily balancing them with the greatest difficulty. We should respect those on both sides who are struggling to reconcile these different pressures.

We are weighing up a difficult constitutional matter, and two constitutional questions are wrapped up in Lords amendment 19. One is about how we reconcile the rights of a plebiscite with those of Parliament—we have debated that many times, and the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) was very unambiguous about where he stands—and the other is about how we balance the rights of the Executive with those of the legislature. We have debated that in different contexts. A few weeks ago, we were talking about exactly how to weigh war powers and accountability.

Lords amendment 19 takes us forward in one crucial respect with regard to the so-called meaningful vote. It gives additional clarity. It might be better had we taken the wording proposed by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), but the amendment does give clarity, and it would not have the exaggerated consequences that some have predicted, as was set out very sensibly by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke).

Does not the right hon. Gentleman concede that when Lord Bilimoria introduced Lords amendment 19, he said that it had the ability to stop Brexit? Will the right hon. Gentleman not concede that this is a wrecking amendment?

The House would have to vote in that way, fully conscious of what it was doing. We just have to wait and see how the House chooses to proceed. The overall effect of the Lords amendment is clearly to—

Stop Brexit.

No, but stopping Brexit is one option we need to consider.

Although Lords amendment 19 takes us forward, it would not, as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe just explained, have the damaging consequences anticipated by many exaggerated predictions. It would not necessarily undermine our negotiating position. The EU countries have their own legislation to consider and have already made it clear that their objective is a smooth, quick, clear Brexit. Anything that might cause major disruption—if they were unfair to the UK, for example—and therefore lead to Parliament’s rejecting the deal would not necessarily be in their interests, and they would, I am sure, reject that.

The crucial point, which is made in the article by Professor Bogdanor that the Brexit Secretary has quoted at length, is that whereas the amendment is a necessary step, it is not sufficient, and that is because Parliament cannot overthrow the judgment of the people in a referendum. The article is quite clear about that, and so are the Liberal Democrats, although we approach this from the opposite direction to some of the Brexit supporters on the Government Benches. We believe that when Parliament has considered the final deal or the absence of a deal, the public should have the final say on the matter. This is not an extraordinary observation. Countries that rule by plebiscite, such as Switzerland, regard confirmatory referendums as a matter of course. The people vote and then the legislature and Executive review the matter. At the end, there is a confirmatory referendum to determine whether the people accept the proposal. There is no reason why that should present a problem. It is a matter of fundamental—

I will complete my remarks and then let others contribute.

Our amendment (a) to Lords amendment 19 expresses that thought very clearly. I notice that the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who probably more than anyone else is reconciling these different forces today, has accepted that the logic of the position is not simply for the House to have a meaningful vote, but to go back to the people and then accept the result of that vote. Were there to be a vote on the final deal, I would accept it fully, and I would then then work with people who support Brexit to make that work. If we continue on the present path, however, with a definition of Brexit that is narrow and specific, as in the Lancaster House speech—it was supposedly drafted by the Prime Minister’s then adviser—and that many of us would not accept as a proper definition of Brexit, which the Prime Minister has pursued in a stumbling and incoherent way, we will not accept that, and we will not accept the result of the Brexit negotiations even after Brexit has taken place. The public need to have a vote on the final deal at the end of the process.

rose—

I think the right hon. Gentleman has completed his speech.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Order. The right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) cannot give way; he has concluded his oration. We await the thoughts of the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) at a later stage, perhaps.

I was amused to discover that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was a little taken aback by the amendment I tabled late last night. I tabled it with his best interests at heart. Having spent last week understanding that he might imminently be joining me on the Back Benches and realising that Lords amendment 19, if endorsed by the Commons, might precipitate the same thing again, I thought I ought to do what I could to help him. That is why I tabled my amendment, in addition to the one he has tabled, in lieu of the Lords amendment.

I must tell the House that I really am worried: the irrationality of the debate on the detail of Brexit is truly chilling. A person opens their newspaper and discovers they are about to prevent Brexit, when what the House is doing is legitimately looking at the detail of one of the most complex legal and political exercises in which we have ever engaged in peacetime, and, as a result, our ability to have a rational debate entirely evaporates. If we continue in this way, we will make mistakes and not achieve the best possible outcome.

The House of Lords was not acting irrationally when it agreed amendment 19. It had picked up on something that ought to be of great concern to everybody in this House—namely, that although we can make provision for achieving a deal, if we do not achieve a deal at all, we will be facing an immense crisis. It might be that some of my colleagues on the Government Benches are excited at this prospect and think it a wonderful moment, but I am not; I think it will be catastrophic. The question, therefore, is: how do we take sensible steps, in anticipation of this, to try to ensure a coherent process for dealing with it? That is what this is about. It is not about obstructing Brexit.

If we want to obstruct Brexit, there are plenty of other ways to do it. We could replace the Government with one that would like to stop it, although, having already triggered article 50, we would still have to get the consent of our EU partners. There is, then, a complete constitutional incoherence in imagining that the Bill and the way it is presented somehow leads to that dastardly outcome.

My concern about my right hon. and learned Friend’s amendment is that it would change the constitutional balance and separation of powers. There is a perfectly reasonable way of ensuring that the Government do the proper thing, and that is a vote of no confidence. As long as the Government maintain the confidence of this House, they ought to be able to negotiate international treaties, but if they fail in their negotiations, the House has a remedy that has been a remedy for very many years.

I take my hon. Friend’s point, but I would like him to consider for one moment the last part of my amendment, new section 5C, which deals with what happens if, on 15 February 2019, we have no deal. His invitation would be for the House to express no confidence in the Government and to get rid of them. Can one imagine a more chaotic process than the triggering of a general election five weeks before we fall off the edge of the cliff?

I agree with what my right hon. and learned Friend is saying. I think that, far from suggesting that his amendment was wrong, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) gave the very reason why it is sensible to adopt this structural process to deal with the different scenarios that the House may face.

I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. Let me explain. I did take on board the Government’s concerns regarding the Lords amendment, but I could see that the micro-management of their negotiating position after the autumn, if there were no deal, could present difficulties. My amendment sought to avoid that by doing two things. First, it sought to provide a mechanism whereby no deal, if there is no deal, must come to this House. That would provide great reassurance to all Members that there was a system in place to deal with the position. Similarly, there would be a system in place to deal with the rejection of a deal, and finally—and only then would there be a mandatory condition —a system that would operate if by February we were still faced with an impossible position of having no deal at all.

Of course I accept that my right hon. and learned Friend and other colleagues wish to discuss further the role that Parliament will play in all the Brexit scenarios that may present themselves to us. We cannot bind the negotiations, nor can we disrespect the referendum result, but—as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his speech—we do commit ourselves to meeting to see how we can build on Her Majesty’s Government’s amendment (a) in lieu today, ahead of the Bill’s stages in the House of Lords, and to meeting my right hon. and learned Friend tomorrow to make that important progress on what we have achieved today.

I take my hon. and learned Friend’s comments at face value, and I am most grateful to him for making them. He must understand, however, that, as usual when we reach this stage of a process, we face some difficult challenges. There is a Lords amendment, and if we agree to it, that is what will go into the Bill. Alternatively, we may endorse the Government’s approach and support the amendment in lieu. The Government could, I think, adopt my amendment; it is a rather arcane procedure, but they could include it. If they do not want to do that, however, I shall need some pretty cast-iron assurances that when the Bill returns to the Lords, with the Government’s amendment in lieu, we will implement significant parts of what I have put forward, because we cannot allow a situation in which there is no mechanism for dealing with no deal.

Overnight, I read my right hon. and learned Friend’s amendment (ii) to Government amendment (a) very carefully, and I think that there is much merit in the approach that he urges the House to adopt in subsection (5A). I need more time to think about the other parts of the amendment—[Interruption] —but by indicating my position on a key part of it, I am indicating that the Government are willing to engage positively ahead of the Lords stages.

Again, I am very grateful to my hon. and learned Friend, and let me say to the House that I do not think his views should be dismissed. I am conscious that if we are to make progress, we ought to try to do this by consensus. However, my hon. and learned Friend must also understand—as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State must understand—the difficulty in which the House finds itself when faced with a choice of this kind. I have been through the same process in opposition and now in government. If the House makes the concession of allowing the dialogue to continue—and I can see the merit in that—it must be done in good faith. Let me say to my hon. and learned Friend that without that good faith, the other place will put the amendment back in, and the good will will be gone when the Bill comes back to this House.

I can give my right hon. and learned Friend that assurance. Everything that I do with him and other colleagues is always in good faith, and that will remain the case.

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. I was glad to hear what he said about the principle—which, in my view, is entirely innocuous—that

“Within seven days of a statement under subsection (4) being laid, a Minister of the Crown must move a motion in the House of Commons to seek approval of the Government’s approach.”

That is not exactly rocket science. The second principle is that there must be a mechanism providing for a Minister to come to the House of Commons by a suitable date—and I think 30 November 2018 must be the one—in the event of no deal, so that the Government can tell the House how they intend to proceed and seek the approval of the House for that.

I know that subsection (5C) causes my hon. and learned Friend much more difficulty. I understand the constitutional issue, and I will come to that before I finish my speech; but the reality is that without a mechanism whereby the House can properly shape the crisis that will be enfolding us at the end of February if we have no deal, we will do it in an ad hoc way, which is likely to be infinitely more damaging to the wellbeing of the citizens of the United Kingdom than putting together a package that can be looked at now.

As usual, I am listening very carefully to my right hon. and learned Friend’s observations. They will form a clear basis for a formal set of discussions that we can start at the earliest opportunity ahead of the Lords—

Order. I do apologise, but the Solicitor General must address the House. This is not a private conversation with another Member, conducted sotto voce. I want the whole House to hear what the Solicitor General wants to blurt out, preferably briefly.

Of course, Mr Speaker. I was about to give a clear undertaking to use my right hon. and learned Friend’s comments as the basis for structured discussions ahead of the Lords stages. [Interruption.]

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. Obviously, the House will have to make up its mind about how it wishes to proceed, but, as I have said, there must be a proper understanding of the disquiet that is felt on both sides of the House.

I know that the Solicitor General has spoken in good faith, but would it not be best for those discussions to take place in a forthright way, for us to vote with their lordships for their lordships’ amendment and for the Government to return to the matter in the House of Lords after the discussions?

I fear not. I think the reality is that if we accept the Lords amendment, that will be the end of the matter. That is the problem that we face in this House.

Both my right hon. and learned Friend and I accept without hesitation the good will of our hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General, who is doing his best to resolve the slightly odd situation that we are all in. I think that the majority of Ministers—although I do not know about my hon. and learned Friend—would give my right hon. and learned Friend the undertaking for which he is asking now, and that the majority of our party would be quite happy with an arrangement of the sort proposed in his amendment. However, all we can have is what we had in Committee—offers of good faith, discussions and earnest attempts—because our proposals will be vetoed by the hard-line Brexiteers in the Government.

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. I think that we will hear more about that as the debate unfolds.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No. I am sorry.

Let me end by saying this. The idea that it is wrong, in a crisis, for Parliament to direct the Government what to do is plainly fallacious. It cannot be right. We are entitled to do that. Of course, if the Government do not want to do what we direct them to do, that is another matter.

Order. We will have one more speech of up to 10 minutes, but then the limit will have to be cut, because I want to accommodate the maximum number of colleagues.

It is with some hesitation that I involve myself in the negotiation that the Government are clearly attempting to conduct with their own Back Benchers. I simply want to observe that this is the single most important amendment that we will be discussing today and tomorrow in relation to the role that Parliament should and indeed must play in determining what kind of Brexit happens.

I simply do not accept the argument that the Secretary of State and other Conservative Members have advanced in trying to suggest that this proposal is somehow illegitimate or improper, or is intended to overturn the result of the referendum. Is it improper for this House to decide that in leaving the EU, we wish to remain within a customs union with it? Is it improper for this House to decide that we wish to remain in a single market, or to continue to have the European arrest warrant system, or that we want to co-operate in future with our friends and neighbours on foreign policy, defence and security? If the answer to all those questions is no, it is not improper; this Lords amendment is about giving Parliament the ability to ensure it can exercise that judgment when the time comes. It seeks to make it clear who will be in control when we come to the end of the process: the Government can go away and negotiate, but they will have to win the consent of the House when they return.

The Government’s attempts to neuter the Lords amendment will not work for a number of reasons that have been set out already. I say to the Solicitor General that, frankly, we do not have more time, which is why this is the moment when we have to make the choice. Secondly, as has been clearly pointed out, it makes no provision for what happens in the event of there being no deal. The House is aware of what the consequence of no deal would be for the border in Northern Ireland, our trade, the rights of British citizens abroad and EU citizens here, future co-operation on security and many other matters.

Given all that the right hon. Gentleman has been outlining, is it not fascinating that when Brexiteer MPs ask themselves about a vote on Brexit, they fear they will lose it and therefore that Brexit will be reversed? That displays no confidence in their argument at all.

I say to the hon. Gentleman that the British people have made their decision about the fact that we are leaving the institutions of the European Union in March next year, but it is for this House to decide the way in which we leave and the future of our relationship with our friends and neighbours, who will remain our friends and neighbours after we have left.

I will not give way again as many other Members wish to speak.

The question is: who decides what happens next in the circumstances either of there being no deal or of Parliament rejecting the deal the Government bring back in October or November? In the event of a rejection I think it is pretty safe to assume that Parliament will, in moving an amendment to the motion asking for approval of the withdrawal agreement, set out its reasons why. Parliament might say for example that it declines to give approval to the withdrawal agreement because it makes no provision for the UK remaining in a customs union with the EU. In those circumstances, as many Members— including the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the Father of the House—have made clear, it is perfectly reasonable for the House of Commons then to expect the Government of the day to go back to those with whom they have been negotiating. As always happens in negotiations, people come back and say, as the Chief Whip is now experiencing, “I’m really sorry, I have tried, but the Members will not wear it; we need to talk about doing something else.” It is perfectly reasonable for the House to do that; otherwise, as we have heard many times, the notion that we have somehow taken back control has no force whatsoever.

We need a mechanism that can enable the House to have its say both in the event of there being no deal because an agreement cannot be reached and in circumstances where the House of Commons says it does not accept the deal the Government have brought back.

The only opportunity.

My hon. Friend is correct: it is the only opportunity to make it clear to the Government that we intend to have our say when the negotiations have been concluded. This is the one chance that we have to exercise the sovereignty that we all believe properly rests with this House, whether we voted leave or remain in the referendum. I hope very much that the House, recognising that this is its one chance, will take that opportunity by voting later today for Lords amendment 19.

Order. I am sorry to disappoint colleagues but do so in the spirit of maximisation: a six-minute limit now applies.

I have never written a speech before and then had it typed out, Mr Speaker, and now I do not know why I bothered: not only have you cut the time, but you can see how the debate has advanced.

I am sorry but I am going to speak, as ever, frankly. This has got to stop; this is unseemly; this is the most important piece of legislation that this House has considered arguably since the second world war, and we sit here and watch a peculiar sort of horse-trading over the perfectly excellent amendment put forward by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who served in the Government for decades—[Interruption.] He served in the Government for a number of years, but he has served this party for decades and he has never rebelled once. I gently say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who in just eight years rebelled 58 times, and to the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, who along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) rebelled in total 160 times, that we here understand the concept of being loyal to leadership and, indeed, being true and honourable to our principles—and I believe they are men of conscience and principle.

Let us look around us at what is happening. There are good men and women of great ability, and indeed courage, who are, unfortunately, no longer in our Cabinet, such as my right hon. Friends the Members for Ashford (Damian Green), for Putney (Justine Greening) and for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd)—all great people who have been lost from our deeply divided Cabinet. Never before have we had a Cabinet that is so divided, and with some of its most senior people, who hold the greatest offices of state, at every twist and turn, when our Prime Minister moves towards securing a Brexit that will serve everybody in our country—the softest, most sensible of Brexits—both publicly and privately undermining her and scuppering her attempts. It simply has to stop, and the moment for it to stop is now.

I know absolutely that the Solicitor General is a man of great honour, whose word will always be true, but I say with the greatest respect to him that he is not the most senior person around today and it is not his decision. He knows that I say that as somebody with great respect and love for him. So where is the Secretary of State? All he has to do is accept the amendment of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield. If he does not, he will force Members who for decades have never before rebelled to traipse through a Lobby or sit and abstain, just as they did in the Lords—and who I will support in each and every one of those important amendments on the EEA and the customs union and amendment 19.

Those Lords were Members of this place once; they include a former Chief Whip, a former Deputy Prime Minister, more Secretaries of State than we could shake a stick at, a former Leader of the House and two former party chairmen. For decades they were always loyal to every leader. Meanwhile, there lurk some, I am afraid, who for decades have plotted and connived. They have got rid of leaders and anybody and anything that stood in their way, and they will continue so to do. Even if they are supported by Russian bots and their dirty money, they will do what they have had a lifetime’s ambition to do, which is to take us over the cliff into the hard Brexit that my constituents did not vote for. I will continue to represent my constituents. We reckon that overall 52% voted to leave, but the 48% who voted to remain have been put to one side in this process and ignored. That has to stop. We have to come back together and we have to do the right thing.

I know and understand how difficult it is for many of my colleagues to go through the Lobby and vote against their party, but I say this: I am getting a little tired of the right hon. and hon. Members on the Back Benches, in government and even in the Cabinet who come up to me and others in quiet and dark corridors; of the British businesses that demand private meetings in which they lay bare their despair but refuse to go public; of the commentators who say to me, “You’re doing a great job. Keep on going,” in the face of death threats which have meant that one of our number has had to attend a public engagement with six armed undercover police officers—that is the country that we have created and it has got to stop; and of the journalists who fight nobly for every cause but on this most important of issues are mute. It has got to stop. Everybody now has to stand up and be true to what they believe in.

Finally, Mr Speaker, I hope you will give me time to find and read out some great words:

“The House is made up of 651 robust individuals whose position gives them a powerful say in what the Executive can and cannot do. The powers of the House are sovereign and they have the ability to upset the best-laid plans of Ministers and of Government, which no Minister ever forgets, and nor should any Back Bencher”.

Those words were true then, and they are true now. They were spoken by the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Accept the amendment!

The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) has spoken with passion and clarity, and above all she has spoken about courage and about putting our country first. I should like to pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who has done exactly that today. This involved personal sacrifice—and who knows what the electorate might do in the future—but he is using his judgment and making an assessment about what is in the best interests of his constituents, and that is greatly to be respected.

I was fascinated to hear the exchange between the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and those on the Government Front Bench a moment ago. It seems to me that the obvious solution would be for the Government to signal that they will accept the amendment in lieu tabled by the right hon. and learned Gentleman—

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I am not going to give way. There are lots of others who want to speak—[Interruption.] No, sit down.

If the Government were to accept the amendment, and if the House were to approve that—as it would, because this would be done by consensus—that issue would then go to the House of Lords. Through the discussions that would subsequently take place there, it might be amended or tweaked in some way, and there would then be an opportunity for the other place to send it back here for final confirmation. However, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman were simply to take the word of Ministers on this question—I understand that that sometimes happens—the leverage of this House could be lost if those discussions came to naught.

We have to be realistic, and there is an issue here. If the Government wanted to accept the entirety of the amendment, that could probably be done this afternoon and that would be the amendment that went back to the Lords, incorporated in theirs. In fairness to the Government, I have always appreciated that there might be some tweaking to be done. I understand that. Having said that, does the hon. Gentleman agree that there needs to be some certainty that the substance of this amendment will come with the acceptance of the Government in the other place?

That is right, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I suggest that it is far better to have that amendment in the Bill as it goes to the other place, which may decide to tweak or change it following discussions. That seems to reflect what feels like the majority view in the Chamber today on the need for a sense of certainty that something will be done. This is not just a matter of one Minister, because a Minister’s word can be given and then changed—

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I will not give way.

Ministers can come and go, but we across this Chamber need that level of certainty. We of course accept the fact that there will be further discussions. The question about taking back control was put to us consistently throughout the referendum. As someone was saying earlier, we obviously cannot call hon. Members hypocrites, but we can point out the hypocrisy in general of the argument of those who might have said in one breath that we should take back control and then had the audacity to come here and say, “Oh well, the UK Parliament clearly has to be cut out of this issue altogether.” I know that we were all elected in 2017 on a mandate drawn up subsequent to the referendum. Our mandate, collectively, has a value, and we should not diminish that and pretend that we should be cut out of this process altogether when there are so many things at stake.

This is not a binary question, and I do not believe that the British people voted to take back control from Brussels only to give that control unilaterally and in its entirety to the Prime Minister and her friends. This is a matter for us, and our constituents would expect nothing less than for us to say, “Hang on a minute, what about our jobs in the manufacturing sector? What about the car industry? What about those who work in the financial services sector?” All the people working in those sectors have the right to expect us to do our job with due diligence.

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has rightly pointed out that we could find ourselves in a situation in which no deal is reached because the discussions and negotiations have collapsed. There is no certainty that the motion would then come forward. When the Secretary of State was intervened on and asked what would happen if no deal were to materialise, he said that the Government would come forward with a statement. When he was asked how the Government were going to prevent us from falling over the cliff, no answer was forthcoming. This is an incredibly important point. We have a duty to safeguard our constituents from harm. That harm could affect not only their livelihoods and their jobs but all the revenues that taxpayers pay towards our public services. So if we care about our NHS, we have to ensure that there is a safeguard in place. If we care about schools and council services, we need this insurance policy in place. We should not go through such a crucially important issue without those particular safeguards.

Does my hon. Friend recall that, during the general election, the Prime Minister said that she was being obstructed in Parliament and needed a big majority? Well, she got her answer at that election. Coming back to another point that my hon. Friend has made, the midlands rely on trade, and we should not be jeopardising hundreds of thousands of jobs in the west midlands.

My hon. Friend says it perfectly. We would be failing in our duty if we were simply to delegate all our decisions to the Prime Minister and say, “That’s it. Everything has been done.” Leaving the customs union or the single market was not on the ballot paper, and those are things on which we have a right to express our view.