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Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights

Why does the hon. Gentleman laugh? The Government are engaged—I think, again, in good faith—in an earnest discussion with the devolved Assemblies and Parliaments of the United Kingdom. I presume that quite shortly after the powers have returned, they will be properly devolved. As to the question of what guarantee there is that these major powers cannot be eroded, the first guarantee is that the Government have already made it clear that they have no plans to do so. They have given their word, and if they broke their word there would be very strong protests in here and there would be the usual pressures of public opinion, and then loss of seats for loss of faith should the Government proceed in that way. But as I understand it, primary legislation will guarantee all these rights and laws from the EU; these are not secondary matters, and so primary legislation will be required in order to deal with them in the future. And it may be that in the future we will want to improve these rights, which would entail amending them, and that is something we will be entirely free to do once we have taken back control; we can then do it in the way we see fit, without any complications from European law.

The 17.4 million people voted to take back control, and that was a remarkable vote. They voted to take back control despite being told by the great and the good, the Government and leading figures in the Opposition that there would be a short-term economic cost to them

if they dared to vote to have a sovereign Parliament representing a sovereign people. We did not believe them, however, and I am very pleased that we did not do so. We have now had four months of growth, with more jobs, more shopping, rising incomes and all the other things that they said could not possibly happen, were we to dare to exit the European Union. Is it not good that experts are sometimes wrong and sometimes too pessimistic, and that sometimes the people are more sensible and know what is right for them?

The people also understood that this was about more than money. They did not feel that their money was at risk; they felt that something bigger than money was at issue. What was at issue was the question of who controls. Do the people any longer have their sovereign power? Can they elect a Parliament to do the things they want Parliament to do? They realised that they could not. They realised that this Parliament could not abolish VAT on tampons or green products in the way that most people would like it to because to do so would be illegal under European law. They realised that this Parliament could not amend the fishing rules in order to have a fishing industry that was good for English fishermen and English fish—or Scottish fishermen and Scottish fish—because that would be illegal under European law. They realised that both the major parties in the general election wished to make changes to the benefit rules, but that both sets of proposals turned out to be illegal under European law.

The British people said, “For goodness’ sake, we’re fed up with this puppet Parliament. We want a Parliament that can carry out our will. We want a Parliament that will take back power.” It took the people to say that, because this Parliament was incapable, on its own, of realising that it did not have enough power, that it could not carry out the wishes of the British people in so many fields, and that it ought to do something about that. A lacklustre negotiation with our former partners produced absolutely nothing of value, so the British people took the matter into their own hands.