Time to grow up and get real, Cox tells MPS
Attorney General hits back at attacks for failing to publish full legal advice on Prime Minister’s deal
THERESA MAY’S Brexit “backstop” would be just as painful for the European Union as the UK, the Attorney General said yesterday as he insisted it would deliver significant advantages for Britain.
Geoffrey Cox told the House of Commons the backstop would give the UK many of the benefits of being a member of the bloc without the responsibilities.
But he faced attack from both sides of the chamber as he sought to defend the Prime Minister’s deal, and criticised MPS for demanding that the Government hand over its Brexit deal legal advice in full.
Such was the ferocity of exchanges that Mr Cox on occasion was forced to raise his voice to a booming crescendo to be heard over the sound of jeering MPS who he claimed needed to “grow up and get real”.
The Attorney General admitted the UK would not be able to unilaterally withdraw from the backstop, which would see Britain remain tied to the EU customs union indefinitely in order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland in the event no deal was reached on future trading arrangements. His admission prompted Sir Desmond Swayne, a Tory former minister, to shout: “It’s a trap!” But Mr Cox insisted the backstop was a “risk worth taking” because both sides had agreed in Mrs May’s deal to find a way out of the arrangement as soon as possible.
In a bid to win over sceptical MPS he then argued the EU had given up much under the terms of the backstop.
Responding to Yvette Cooper, the
Labour chairman of the home affairs select committee, he said the UK would “pay not a penny” to access the customs union and regulations would be “policed solely by British courts and British authorities”.
He said: “In those circumstances what does that mean? It means they have split the four freedoms, they have created a situation where we can have regulatory flexibility that they can’t, they have granted access to the single market for no contribution, without free movement, without signing up to the fisheries policy, without signing up to the common agricultural policy.
“For all of those reasons, what I say to you is that this will be, if it is painful to us, as painful to them. Where we want to end up is an arrangement that suits us both. This suits neither.”
Mr Cox was taunted by MPS throughout his statement, which lasted more than two hours. But he refused to be cowed as he reserved his most ferocious response for a question asked by
Jacob Rees-mogg, the leading Tory Eurosceptic.
MPS voted on Nov 13 for the Government to publish its Brexit deal legal advice in full, but ministers yesterday only published a lengthy summary, something Mr Rees-mogg described as “not good enough”.
Mr Cox argued it was not in the “public interest” for the advice to be released, prompting Opposition MPS to shout out in protest.
The Attorney General responded by raising his voice and, repeatedly hitting the dispatch box in front of him for emphasis, he shouted: “It is no use the baying and shouting of members opposite. What I am trying to do is guard the public interest. That is all.
“It is time they grew up and got real. If there were a single item which I thought might be politically embarrassing I would have no truck with the idea that this advice or any that I might have given should be disclosed. It is because the public interest is at stake. What part of that proposition is the other side incapable of understanding?”
Mr Cox had begun his statement by promising MPS he would answer their questions with “uncompromising and rigorous fidelity”. He said the “divorce and separation of nations from long and intimate unions, just as of human beings, stirs high emotion and calls for wisdom and forbearance”.
That emotion was clear in the response of Nick Thomas-symonds, the shadow solicitor general, who claimed the Government was seeking to avoid the publication of the advice for “fear of the political consequences” amid reports it was far more damning than the summary ministers had published.
Ken Clarke, the Tory former chancellor and leading Remainer, offered Mr Cox support as he said the Attorney General had helped clear up some of the “paranoia and conspiracy theories” surrounding the Brexit deal.
Mr Cox then revealed he “would have preferred to have seen a unilateral right of termination” included in the backstop. “But I am prepared to lend my support to this agreement because I do not believe that we are likely to be entrapped in it permanently,” he said.
Joanna Cherry, the SNP frontbencher, said there was no legal mechanism which could prevent the backstop from becoming permanent. Mr Cox said the backstop would “endure indefinitely, pending a future agreement being arranged” but said it would be “highly vulnerable to legal challenge” by EU member states which would stop it stretching long into the future. He said such would be the “legal uncertainty” around the relationship between the EU and the UK under the backstop that Brussels would want to find a way out of it quickly. “That is one factor that convinces me that this risk is a risk worth taking,” he said.
But Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, suggested it could take 10 years for a prolonged backstop arrangement to be ruled unlawful by European courts. Mr Cox said such an estimate was “probably far too long but it is impossible to say”.
Meanwhile, Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory former leader, demanded to know whether a provision in the deal for both sides to act in “good faith” in order to strike a future trade deal was legally binding. Mr Cox said it was but conceded it would be “difficult to prove” that negotiations had broken down because of bad faith on the part of the EU. He suggested the risk of reputational
damage would be enough to compel both sides to negotiate constructively. Numerous MPS, including Nigel
Dodds, the DUP’S leader in Westmin- ster, called for the Brexit legal advice to be published in full. Harriet Harman, the senior Labour backbencher, warned the Government it risked openly defying the will of the Commons, but Mr Cox refused to budge. He again said it could not be published be- cause it was not in the public interest, but he further increased the anger of some MPS as he told them: “There is nothing to see here.”
Hilary Benn, the Labour chairman of the Brexit select committee, challenged the claim and said the Government’s decision to disregard the binding vote of the Commons for the advice to be published was a threat to democracy. Mr Cox hit back and said: “What do you expect us to do? When you were a member of the Cabinet, if you believed that to take an action would be fundamentally contrary to the public interest of this country, you would find it, I suspect, a very difficult situation to resolve.”