The conundrum we are facing is that this is the first time in our history that the establishment and the Government of the day, having decided to have a referendum, have got a result that they disagree with. The Labour party’s 1975 referendum, and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish referendums, all delivered a result that was satisfactory to the establishment and the majority in this House. Today, we face the opposite.
Two weeks ago, I was at the annual general meeting of my local National Farmers Union office, and a lady said to me, “What is it about London—what don’t they get? We voted to leave. Leave means leave.” As a founder member of Vote Leave, I think that we were pretty clear right throughout the campaign about what we wanted—we wanted to take back control. The Government have been pretty clear that they are going to deliver on that.
We wanted to take back control of our money. On my first day at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my Secretary of State’s briefing said that we were handing back £642 million of real money because the Commission, under the ECJ, disliked the manner in which the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) had implemented the then CAP reform. So there was I, democratically elected and responsible to this democratic House, with nothing I could do about it. This House began from the principle of deciding what taxes were and who was responsible for them, controlling the monarch of the time, and it still has that fundamental role. The people will get back their role of kicking out politicians who raise taxes and spend them badly, because we do not have that at the moment.
We voted to take back control of our laws. I know about that in spades from my time at DEFRA. About 90% of DEFRA’s work is the implementation of European law. I tried manfully in negotiations to work with good allies, but we were outvoted on many occasions, and our farmers are struggling with the latest CAP reform. With many areas of activity competing strongly to be the worst, I would say that the EU’s governance of fishing wins, because it has been a catastrophe. Getting back our powers to control our fishing will restore our marine environments and fish stocks, and bring prosperity and wealth back to our most remote marine communities.