UK Parliament / Open data

Leaving the European Union

Proceeding contribution from Geraint Davies (Labour) in the House of Commons on Monday, 1 April 2019. It occurred during e-petition debate on Leaving the European Union.

As I mentioned, on 6 July 2016 I introduced the Terms of Withdrawal from EU (Referendum) Bill to give people a vote on the deal, in the knowledge that what they were voting on in good faith might not be what was delivered. We have certainly found that to be the case. It is now clear from the evidence that Britain will be poorer, weaker, more isolated and more divided if we Brexit.

I stand here on behalf of people in Swansea West who voted to leave. They voted for more money, more trade, more control over migration and our laws, and they are getting none of those things. They see a £40 billion divorce bill and an economy projected to shrink by 10%. It has already shrunk by 2.5%—around £360 million a week, when we were promised £350 million a week for the NHS. Under the Prime Minister’s deal, we will still be controlled by EU laws. Under the absurd and irresponsible idea of no deal, we would be controlled by the WTO, which has 260 members, a massive commission, and an unelected pool of judges who would force various laws on us so that we could not, for example, choose to bring the railways and water into public ownership.

Migration will not be controlled, with an open border in Northern Ireland, and the no-deal scenario is a sort of Evel Knievel irresponsible madness. People who voted to leave did not know that Trump would be elected. They did not know that Trump would undermine trade, whether it is steel or Bombardier, undermine the Paris agreement, or undermine our world security by withdrawing from nuclear deals with Iran and so on. We are in a completely different scenario. They did not know that the Chinese would abolish the limited amount of democracy that they had, and that in any trade deals—

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
657 c263WH 
Session
2017-19
Chamber / Committee
Westminster Hall
Back to top