Cabinet papers on Brexit will not be released to public
MPS HAVE blocked attempts to force confidential Cabinet papers on Brexit to be released to Parliament.
Cabinet Office minister David Lidington claimed it would be extremely damaging for the quality of Government decisions if Labour’s motion requiring publication of papers prepared for a Cabinet subcommittee on the UK’s two future customs models, including any economic analysis, was approved.
Pro-EU Conservative MP Anna Soubry also hit out at the Opposition’s “Mickey Mouse motion”, adding Labour should have “done its job” by putting before the Commons a proposal about the customs union or customs arrangement.
But shadow Treasury minister Peter Dowd joked that Mickey Mouse was a well-respected, popular icon, respected by generations and millions of people, adding: “If this is a Mickey Mouse humble address, well, I’d have them every single day.”
Labour’s motion was the latest in a string of proposals using an arcane parliamentary procedure to make the vote binding on the Government by issuing a “humble address” to the Queen asking her to require ministers to comply. It was defeated by 301 votes to 269, majority 32, with Conservative MPs whipped to vote against it.
Speaking in the Commons, Mr Lidington said: “I believe that the implications of the Opposition’s motion today would indeed be extremely damaging for the quality of Government decisions, under government of any party.”
Ministers and officials should be free to have frank discussions in private, he said, and their candour “would be affected if they thought the content of their discussions would be disclosed prematurely”.
Mr Lidington went on: “It would not be in the national interest to release information that would form part of our negotiating position, and in order to ensure good governance, it is in all our interests, including the interests of those who might have the ambition at some very distant date to serve in a Labour government, to preserve the system of Cabinet government that allows for good and well thought through decisions.”
Tory former minister Sir Patrick McLoughlin said publication of all the documents required by Labour would help the EU.
However, shadow Brexit minister Paul Blomfield said this argument was bogus, adding that both customs options under consideration should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
“The Cabinet is unable to agree. Parliament has a deep responsibility to stand up for the people that we represent, and we need access to the information to do that,” he added.
Labour former minister Stephen Timms said Mr Lidington’s argument was fatally undermined given Cabinet ministers were already discussing the matter in public.
Ross Thomson, Conservative MP for Aberdeen South, said Labour’s “hokey cokey approach to the customs union” was astonishing. “In, then out, in, then out, then shake the shadow cabinet all about,” he said.
Labour’s Chuka Umunna (Streatham) drew comparisons with the Second World War in terms of the demands to back a prime minister, noting his party did the “unimaginable” in 1940 by helping to drive Neville Chamberlain from office.
He said Labour was criticised at the time for being opportunistic and undermining the then prime minister, adding: “A lot in tone very similar to the criticisms levelled at us now for scrutinising what this Government is doing on Brexit.”
Mr Umunna said Brexit was a very different situation but urged MPs against acting as a rubber stamp for the Prime Minister as he argued for the papers to be released.
Elsewhere, Mr Lidington suggested that shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer was “fearful of Trots in his constituency working to deselect him”, when he said Sir Keir had previously accepted the Government would have to enter into confidential negotiations. “I don’t know whether he is now fearful of the Trots in his constituency working to deselect him, or what’s caused him to abandon the principles that he once stood by,” Mr Lidington said.