I am proposing that one way to start the negotiations is to offer up a gesture of good will.
We are talking about people mostly engaged in crucial jobs that help to support and secure the jobs of many other British citizens. They were told that the referendum was a decisive result, but it could not have been much closer, and there are many parts of the UK, and indeed England, that did not vote to leave. My constituency voted by a majority of just over 2,000 to remain, but —to break that down further—two of four wards voted to remain and two voted to leave. I have no intention of speaking up only for the views of one group and ignoring the feelings and opinions of the others.
Rather helpfully, I carried out quite an extensive survey of my constituents in Selly Oak following the referendum, because of the closeness of the result and my wish better to understand what people were telling me. Sixty-four per cent said that they want the UK to continue to trade our goods and services within the single market, 76% think that we should commit to giving EU citizens already living and working here the right to remain, and people made clear their concerns about the cost of living, research funds and training programmes, employment and job security. We cannot simply leave those things to chance. We need to know the Government’s approach, hence the importance of the White Paper.
How are we to proceed? Will we have three strands: administrative, legal and trade? Will we try to deal with them all at once or sequentially? Will there be parallel WTO negotiations and talks with other countries. Who are our negotiators? Exactly how many do we have? Do we have the capacity for so many complex negotiations in so short a time? Do we have enough experts—I was going to say that I knew that would upset someone, but he has left the Chamber—at our disposal? We need to know what progress is being made on the bright new world that enthusiastic Brexiteers are promising.
I want to be optimistic about our future, and I was slightly encouraged to that effect by some elements of Government thinking in the recent Green Paper, “Building our Industrial Strategy”, but I do not feel sufficiently optimistic to want to trust our future to those who lied their way through the referendum, making promises of extra money for our health service that they have no intention of honouring. It is for those reasons that this House needs the Labour amendments, with regular feedback on the shape and progress of the negotiations, a right to intervene on the final offer and a right to reject that offer if it is plainly against the interests of the vast majority of our constituents.
6.47 pm