Andrew has provided a video update on his Brexit position ahead of the Meaningful Vote. You can watch Andrew's speech on his Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/andrewpercyofficial/. A transcript of the speech is copied below.
Hi, I haven’t done a video like this before I don’t think, anyway I’m here in my House of Commons office, I just thought I’d update people on what I’m going to be doing today, we’ve got a big day in parliament today. It was a big day because we had hook primary school down earlier, so I spoke to them, perhaps more newsworthy is that it’s the next set of votes on Brexit.
As residents will know I led the campaign locally for us to leave the EU and continue to believe that we’ll be better off leaving and I support Brexit and delivering on the result of nearly 77% of our population in our area who voted to leave. Tonight, I will be voting for the Prime Ministers deal, I’ve always believed Brexit is a process rather than an event, so we will leave under the Prime Minister’s deal.
We will be outside of the common fisheries policy, the common agricultural policy, we’ll get back control of immigration, we won’t be subjected to EU laws and we’ll have control over immigration at the end of what’s called this transition period which would run to the end of 2020. That’s a sensible period to allow us to manage this divorce from Europe and deliver on the result. That may well not be voted through tonight, its looking again like the government could be defeated. What would happen then is, that there would be a vote tomorrow then on whether we leave on no-deal terms or not, even though its not my preferred option, because I do respect the views of local people and I want to deliver on Brexit because it’s something I believe in, I would then vote for us to leave on no-deal terms, that will probably be defeated in the house of commons.
This is one of the reasons I’ve always voted for the deal, because we’ve got a lot of people in parliament, its stuffed full of remainers who are trying to overturn the result and I’m afraid that they’re being helped by some of my brexiteer colleagues, who keep voting down the only way we’re going to get out which is the prime ministers deal. So, tomorrow what that would mean would be that we’d probably end up with no-deal being taken off the table, which would then mean the day after the house of commons would vote on whether to extend article 50 the period in which we leave, which the house of commons will probably vote for, I would vote against that extension.
All this leads me to conclude that the only way we leave is if we get the prime ministers deal through. There are a lot of people here trying to undo the result in parliament they stood on the same manifesto I did or on the labour manifesto which said they respected the result, but they clearly don’t. I’m really worried that we’re going to not get this delivered and I think that would be realty dangerous for democracy.
So, I’ll vote for the deal, I’ll vote for no deal if we have that choice tomorrow and I’ll vote against extending article 50 on Thursday if that’s how this week pans out. But I just think residents should be aware that this is what I’m going to do on behalf of the 77% of people who voted leave in our area, but there is a real risk that this could not be delivered and its time some of my fellow Brexit colleagues woke up to the political realities of what the arithmetic is in the house of commons. So that’s it from me, there’s going to be lots on the news in the coming few days, but I as ever will be keen to hear people’s views on this and please do keep getting in touch.