I say to the hon. Gentleman that we are only two months away from the referendum having taken place. Rather than saying everything is hunky-dory, he might want to wait a little bit longer to see whether everything is going according to his plan.
I do not believe that there should be an immediate second referendum, because I do not think we can have a never-ending referendum, as the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare said. However, as the right hon. Member for Tottenham indicated, we must consider what will happen once article 50 has been triggered and the UK Government have spent up to two years identifying what they want to secure from the European Union on trade and other aspects of the negotiations. I imagine that the end of that process will probably be in about three years’ time, because I do not think the Prime Minister will invoke article 50 at the beginning of next year. It will possibly be mid-year, or even towards the end of next year. Two years from then and three years from now, once the Government have identified what they are seeking to secure from the EU, I would be very surprised if the British public did not feel that there was a need for them to have their say on the outcome of those negotiations before the two-year period was exhausted and the UK exited the European Union.
On the subject of article 50, I was surprised that for the people on the Brexit side who campaigned so heavily for sovereignty during the campaign—sovereignty was apparently key to many of their concerns—all of a sudden sovereignty was not such a big issue after all when Parliament asked to be given the sovereign right to debate and vote on triggering article 50. I ask them to check whether they are being entirely consistent in the arguments they are deploying. We should be allowed not only to debate article 50, as has been suggested, but to vote on it. My personal position is that article 50 goes hand in hand with Brexit. Having accepted the vote, I would find it difficult to try to block article 50, because the two things are connected. We cannot vote to leave and then try to block article 50—those things are, in effect, a package.
There will be protracted negotiations. Incidentally, I hoped that we would hear something during the first statement from the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union about what he has been able to negotiate over the summer holidays. I had to leave his statement to get here, but 15 minutes in, we were still at the level of platitudes. There was absolutely no substance whatsoever to the statement that he was delivering. I do not know what he has done for the past two months—maybe he went off and had a long holiday—but certainly he has not been focusing on what Brexit means. We know that Brexit means Brexit, but that is a completely vacuous statement.
I hope that I have kept to the subject, Mr Gray, which is the issue of a second referendum. If the UK Government have secured in their discussions with the EU substantial protection of the rights of EU and UK citizens whose position is completely unclear and who want clarity; if they have secured substantial freedom of movement and the continuation of the UK in the single market; if they have maintained the environmental standards that the EU has, in some cases, enforced in the UK; if law enforcement and judicial co-operation continue as they are currently maintained at an EU level—the Secretary of State said in his statement that the Government wanted to expand on that area, which is welcome; if we have secured the protection of Erasmus; and if the travel and tourism benefits we derive from being in the European Union and the rights of the City are maintained, I am confident that if that package were put to a second referendum about three years from now, the British people would feel it was one of substance and one they would be willing to support.
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