Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a wealth of difference between free trade and being part of the single market? He has talked at length about tariff barriers. The big issue about membership of the WTO is non-tariff barriers. He really should keep up with where the debate is at. That is where it is at right now. All this focus on tariffs was a very clever red herring for people who do not know about trade agreements, but I have actually studied them, I have worked on them for years, and I can tell him that there is a wealth of difference between trade agreements and membership of the single market. That was yet another lie perpetrated during the referendum campaign.
We need people to be given a say and to have real control over the terms of any Brexit deal. We need maximum public engagement and parliamentary scrutiny. That means that the Government must set out their plan for what they want Brexit to look like. They need to present that to the people in an early general election to secure a mandate that currently they do not have, then they need to ensure full and proper parliamentary debate and scrutiny, and only then allow MPs to vote on whether to invoke article 50 and set in train the formal process of leaving, so that we know what direction that train is going in. In addition, we should argue for
wider public engagement, giving opportunities for meaningful input throughout the process, as well as maximising input from civil society organisations, NGOs, charities, businesses, local authorities and other stakeholders. To claim that we want to take back control of the UK’s future, but refuse measures to maximise parliamentary and public scrutiny, is unforgiveable, contradictory and harmful.
The Greens argued during the referendum campaign that outside the EU there is a very real danger that the UK will seek to compete with other countries by weakening social and environmental protections and by becoming, in effect, a tax haven. That is still the case. In the debate running up to a second referendum on the terms of a Brexit, some of the key issues that we will want to keep in mind, in terms of how we might vote in that second referendum, are, for example, whether we can maintain freedom of movement and full rights of EU citizens in the UK, whether we can continue to have full access to single market and, crucially, whether we can have the important environmental protections that we currently enjoy thanks to our EU membership—whether on air, water, or wildlife. It is not just keeping what we have; we should improve that and absolutely lock it down in law. One big concern that people have right now is about what will to happen to the habitats directive and the birds directive; those are the gold standards for environmental protection and we need them to be preserved in any new environmental settlement. Perhaps that needs to be in a new environmental Act, but whatever happens, there must not be a race to the bottom on standards. We need to retain EU-derived workers’ rights, social and consumer protections and human rights, again, as a bare minimum that we should seek to build on. We should be putting young people first.
Finally, we should ask the Government right now to give a guarantee to EU nationals who have made this country their home in good faith; the Government should say right now that they are welcome to stay and that they have an absolute right to stay. Anything less is simply using people’s lives cynically as chips in a bargaining negotiation, and that is neither right nor moral.
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