Before I start my contribution, I would like to ask to be accorded the respect due to me as one of your peers also. I find heckling and criticism—that comes largely from the Labour benches—childish and unsettling. It is in that spirit of mutual respect that I make these comments. 

I don't think there is anyone in the UK or watching the Brexit debacle from outside that would disagree that it's a mess—a big mess. I won't repeat here the arguments, counter arguments, statistics, polling and counter polling that has been the foundation of many of the debates here in this Chamber or anywhere else. We have all heard them before, and so have our constituents, and we can all twist them to suit any of our narratives. 

Obviously, I support this motion today, and I can’t help but think that this is the natural conclusion of the last three years of arguing, backpedalling, poor leadership, hidden agenda, lack of preparation and taking the electorate for granted. We have a deeply divided country that now appears to me to have split along leave/remain lines. We all know that, and these lines are appearing to transcend usual party allegiances.

An example from yesterday: I met a couple outside talking, and we got on great for 20 minutes talking about the sheep and the pigs outside, and what I did in farming previously and things like that. And then just as I shook their hand—we'd also agreed on things like EU rules, about ticks and farming and things like that—and, then just as I went to go in, she shook my hand and she said, 'Oh, lovely to meet you, what party do you represent?' and I said, 'The Brexit Party', and it was like I grew horns. She took a step back and she said, 'Well, I'm sorry, we voted "remain" and we will have to agree to disagree', and yet we'd agreed for the last 20 minutes when I put things forward to her. She'd agreed with everything, you know—so, it's just really weird. 

You won’t be surprised to hear that I believe that the continued relative success of our democracy means that I believe the vote that took place in 2016 needs to be implemented. The whole premise of our democracy is built on the consent of the loser. That is the underpinning principle. If that no longer applies, what then? I've heard too many people tell me that they will never vote again because their vote in 2016 has been disregarded, and a lot of those are on the Labour side. They tell me it’s pointless and meaningless. And we all lose if our democracy is built on apathy and a lack of trust in it. This is not a sustainable foundation.

I attended my first meeting of the Brexit committee on Monday, and I’d like to thank the clerks and the Members for their very warm welcome. Thank you. It was an interesting evidence session, where we discussed the ongoing development of common frameworks. The standout moment for me was the admission that there is apparently no agreement across the various UK Governments as to what an actual common framework actually is and what it does. Luckily, the committee is now seeking to clarify this by writing to Westminster, the Welsh Government and Scotland as well, hopefully. There appears to be a big communication problem all the way through, and this is doing a disservice to our country. Indeed, my former committee’s report, 'UK governance post-Brexit', pointed this out and made recommendations around this in 2018.

In my opinion, we are currently at a tipping point in terms of our exit from the EU—which must happen—in terms of our rather dysfunctional relationships with the other Governments of this land, which need to be sorted, and in terms of our democracy, in which we need to restore confidence. For these reasons, I will be supporting this motion of ours today. Thank you.