I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), who I very much agreed with.
Today we are talking about the answer that Margaret Thatcher gave to Dean Acheson’s famous question, “What is Britain’s role in the world?” She was right: our national mission is upholding the rule of law. That lesson served her and our nation exceptionally well. It gave moral legitimacy to the courageous defence of British nationals in the Falkland Islands and strength to the treaty that she signed two years later with China to protect British nationals in Hong Kong. Trust in the treaties allowed Margaret Thatcher to start down the road of peace in our own nation and conclude the Anglo-Irish agreement with the then Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald.
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It is recognition of our legal principles that holds our Union together. Whether we celebrate the Boyne or the rising, Robert I or Edward I, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd or the Black Prince, we all know that this is a civic Union based on rules, not regiments, and we live together because together we consent. Prime Ministers and Taoisigh have known for decades that consent matters because one day our Union may change. The Belfast agreement envisions that possibility, and the treaty that gives Dublin a voice today could, one day, be used in reverse by Westminster. As a proud Unionist, I defend international law and the treaties that we have signed, because one day we may need it to protect us.
The treaty that the Government are negotiating today protects us as well. For 40 years, Brits have moved around and lived in EU states, and many businesses continue to rely on continental connections to prosper. They need to know that what comes next will enable them to plan their lives and futures. They need the law to protect them. But the law must not just be predictable: it must be fair. This is where I have sympathy for the Government. Some in Brussels have treated these negotiations as a legal game, forgetting that their intention is to build a common future, not simply to decide the rules of membership. The simple fact that the Government have felt the need to make such a blunt response to the EU’s offers shows how much Ministers must feel that they have failed to exert leverage at the table. The talks are fundamentally political, so could not a political signal have been sent that did not allow Communist dictators in China to use our own words to mock us, or see US leaders on both sides warn us of the risks that we are running? Perhaps it was; I am sure that the Government would be delighted to make that clear.
Of course, no agreements can ever be cast in stone. They are fundamentally made to enable the freedoms of peoples in countries around the world to co-operate. Most famously, President de Gaulle commented on the end of treaties when he took France out of the NATO command structure after only 20 years. “Treaties are like roses”, he said, “they last as long as they last.” But to threaten this one so soon after signing must have been a last resort. That, at least, is what the Government are now telling us. The PM said that he had not consulted the Foreign Office. Surely the Government must have considered the cost before taking this drastic step.
Now that so much of the damage is done, as has been set out today, the onus is on our Government to push hard for an agreement, because, sadly, the EU will now be able to point at us if the talks fail. Whatever we say, too many will now believe that it was we who broke the deal first, and this has put us at a disadvantage. We all know that the impact of a rupture will be felt very keenly in Kent, just as much as it will in Ulster, and we now know, clearly, that many of our allies are deeply concerned about what a failure of statecraft could mean.
With a parliamentary lock on these powers splitting the Bill into two parts and giving us the time to see if the EU really has broken faith with the deal before allowing the Government to act, the Prime Minister has at least moved towards the point of reason, and he could go one step further. The Government should restate what they have already agreed in public and in print—that Britain will abide by the arbitration proceedings
set out in the withdrawal agreement. That would turn the Bill into what it has been described as today by Ministers—an interim measure in case of emergency. Although it would still set out a way for Britain to be free of unfair treaties, it would at least make it clear that this was to be used only in extremis. Perhaps that would go some way towards restoring Britain’s reputation, as a regrettable second best to the removal of these clauses altogether. I recognise why the Government want this in parallel, but without accepting that the arbitration is binding, it is simply a reversal of the treaty. We need our word to count; global Britain depends on it.