The Minister defending the government’s line said on the World at One that Conservative MPs who planned to vote against the Agreement did not understand it and had not thought it through.
Let me reassure him that I and my colleagues have read and thought about it in great detail, and have thought through the ramifications of signing this dreadful deal, and of not signing. It is not a good idea to pretend that we have idly decided to vote against a government we usually support. That will not make us want to vote for it. It is the absence of detailed government explanations and answers to our deep reservations that lead us to vote against. I do not make these remarks personal to the Minister, as I assume he was asked to take this line.

The Minister also wanted to know if they got some kind of tweak to the Irish backstop if then we would vote for the Agreement. It appears the Minister does not understand the reasons I and some others have given repeatedly and in public for rejecting this deal. Of course we would not suddenly support if there was a tweak to the backstop. Let me repeat for the Minister’s benefit I oppose

1. Signing away more than £39bn of our money for nothing in return
2. Signing a Withdrawal Agreement without having a legally binding text of a Future Partnership Agreement, despite the Manifesto promise that the two would be progressed together
3. Putting our country into a very weak bargaining position for 21 months or much longer, to try to get a future trade deal, having given away most of what the EU wants in advance!
4 Making us accept all existing and new rules from the EU for an indeterminate period, as they could then legislate without us present and do us harm if they wish

Any tweak to the Political declaration is irrelevant. What is needed is a dropping or complete re write of the legally binding Withdrawal Agreement.

The Minister also said I and my friends had to set out the detail of how our trade would work if we vote no. I suggest he reads the WTO rules and especially the 2017 WTO Agreement on non tariff barriers, and my submission to the Department of International Trade on the a customs schedule we should set with lower tariffs than the current EU one. In particular they should make it clear the UK will not impose any tariffs on components coming into UK factories. He might also like to tell me when under the government’s approach he thinks they might be able to tell us how we will trade with the EU after the end of the so called Transition period, as of course the Political declaration is both vague and contradictory on these matters.

I was pleased to see yesterday when I went to Wokingham to shop that the town centre was looking much better with more shoppers and an active street market again. It was also good to see the new Waterstones open for business. I do hope many of you will come into the town centre to see what is on offer in the shops before Christmas and to enjoy a coffee or a meal at one of the restaurants, cafes and bars that now offer us considerable choice of food and drink.

That’s news to me. More fake news?
In case Mrs May is in any doubt, I will be voting against the Withdrawal Agreement!

Mrs May’s surrender Agreement is not a deal. It is a requirement for us to enter months and months of possibly fruitless talks, with the UK’s future on hold and uncertainty maximised. Just leaving on 29 March as she originally promised would end the uncertainty and allow us to get on with our lives freed of all this argument and needless scare stories.

Most of us in the debate have accepted the Treasury estimate of the costs of the Withdrawal Agreement. However, there are no figures in the Agreement and certainly no cash limits on what we would have to pay. The readiness of the Remain establishment to use the £39 bn figure should be cause for concern. The out turn could be a lot higher.

The language is vague over how the sums will be calculated but tight and binding over our need to pay up. Under the Agreement the EU will set out how much it thinks we owe, and we have little power to push back and reduce it. No normal business or individual entering a contract would accept such an open ended and one sided arrangement. They will simply notify us of the bill, and charge us interest if we do not pay on time.

The pathetically weak Uk negotiation even lost out badly over the European Investment Bank. As they want us out of it we should be repaid our capital and share of the accumulated reserves, At some point we gave up our rights to the reserves and would get our starting capital back on its own over an eleven year period. Meanwhile we remain on risk for our full starting proportion of uncalled capital. The accumulated profits and reserves are more than twice the called capital. so we get back under one third of what we are owed. There’s a great one sided deal for the EU.

The EU told us the Withdrawal Agreement could not look forwards and tackle the future partnership, though it does where it suits them as over names of products from geographical areas. It also looks a long way forwards over money, requiring us to pay pensions for decades, to meet spending not yet committed and to meet benefit and public service charges for people not yet arrived here.

The UK is of course liable for full budget years 2019 and 2020 owing to effectively remaining in the EU without our vote and voice for the so called transition. We will pay our full share of own resources taxation and will continue to be liable after December 2020 for any money extra they wish to charge us. We will also be held liable for shares of commitments outstanding on December 31 2020 for payments to be made after we have left. and in the second year after we have left and beyond. There will be an attempt to have a final reckoning after 2028, though things like pensions payments go on long after that.

In other words the Treasury has effectively given them a series of blank cheques for a decade to come, without any apparent push back or argument over these huge and unspecified amounts. There are no figures in the main text of the Agreement to give the EU maximum flexibility to send us some big bills. What did the UK government think it was doing when it agreed to this?