Exiting the European Union
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
Yes. That is what we have negotiated —to ensure there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
World leaders are gathering in Katowice in Poland this week to agree action on climate change, the single biggest issue facing us in the world today. Instead, here we are embroiled in a massive act of self-harm, with us unable to move forward, the pound at its lowest point in 18 months and locked in a stalemate. Without any majority in Parliament for a deal, please put this back to the people—not for the second time, but for the first time on this deal.
Oral Answers to Questions
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nigel Adams
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the work he has done. I am very pleased that the Welsh language version of the universal credit system was rolled out last week, I believe. Hopefully it is working well, and we will continue to monitor it. Of course, this is a huge transformational project, and it is absolutely right that, on occasion, we pause, reflect and make sure we get the system right. Fundamentally, I agree with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who said that universal credit is a force for good.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
My constituent has 10-month-old twins and has not been paid universal credit for two months. She is at risk of homelessness and is using food banks. How are the Government responding to the recent judicial review on the impact of assessment periods, and what can the Minister say to my constituent and others who are suffering like her?
Nigel Adams
The hon. Lady will be aware that I cannot comment on an individual case. I am sure that if she raises her constituent’s case with the Department, she will get a response. As I said earlier, this system is a huge transformational project, and we must learn as we go along. It is designed to mirror the way in which people in work are paid. There are advances available for anybody who is waiting for their universal credit payment.
Leaving the EU
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. July 2020 is set in the withdrawal agreement as the date by which a decision will be taken, and there will be a number of issues to be taken into account at that stage. The first will be the key question of whether the future relationship would not be in place by the end of December 2020, and whether the extended period would therefore be necessary for either the backstop or the implementation period, or alternative arrangements. A balanced judgment would be made. In the implementation period, there would be an expectation of a financial obligation; there would not be a financial obligation were we in the backstop. We would not have free movement were we in the backstop; free movement would almost certainly be required to continue in the event of an extended implementation period. Those are the sorts of issues that would need to be balanced at that time.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
This deal leaves us poorer, and it leaves us negotiating Brexit indefinitely, as is made clear in the final paragraph of the political declaration. Hard-working families and workers are bearing the brunt of this uncertainty. That is not what anyone voted for. Is it not time for the Prime Minister, instead of buying off her own side with knighthoods, to ask the people what they want, and give them the chance to have a final say?
The Prime Minister
I refer the hon. Lady to the answer that I gave earlier.
EU Exit Negotiations
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
As I said quite a lot earlier in answer to a question, the process were that to happen is set out quite clearly for this House. The question is: how will individual Members of this House approach this decision when they come to make it in the interests of the country and in the interests of their constituents? They will need to have at the forefront of their minds the duty to deliver on the vote of the British people to leave the European Union, and the overall national interest of our country and the interests of their constituents.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
The world is looking on with horror and sympathy. My constituents, people up and down Wales and across the UK worry about how to make ends meet. They know now that Brexit is bad for Britain. Can the Prime Minister tell my constituents exactly how this deal will make them better off than they are now?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady says she is concerned. I have set out before why I think this deal, the future partnership we can have with the European Union and trade deals around the rest of the world can benefit our economy, benefit jobs and benefit the hon. Lady’s constituents. She says her constituents worry about how to make ends meet. That is precisely why this Government continue to increase the national living wage and put through tax cuts for millions of people.
October EU Council
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
Geographical indications are one of the issues we have spent considerable time considering with the European Union, because we recognise their importance. The hon. Lady says I said that 95% of everything is agreed, but 95% of the withdrawal agreement has been agreed.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Some 1.5 million young people have not had their chance to have a say on Brexit, yet they are eligible to vote. On the biggest issue facing us since the second world war, why deny them the chance to vote on this crucial issue for their future?
EU Exit Negotiations
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend raises an important sector, and there are many areas that we must consider when looking at our future relationship. One of the key issues—I have referred to it already this afternoon—is the question of ensuring that tourists can move across the border as easily as possible, and preferably as easily as they can today, so that there is no further encumbrance on tourists who want to visit my hon. Friend’s beautiful constituency.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Despite her protestations, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Prime Minister is unable to hold her party together, let alone the country. There is no doubt about it: my constituents did not vote to become poorer, which is what will happen if she proceeds along this route. Will the Prime Minister do the right thing and give the people a final say on the deal?
The Prime Minister
I refer the hon. Lady to the answer I have given previously.
Oral Answers to Questions
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend puts his point extremely well. Of course we are proud of everything that our servicemen and women do, and I, and other Members, will be pleased to welcome those servicemen and women and give thanks to them in the way that we can here in the House. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely right: we should never forget the families of those servicemen and women, and we should ensure that we support them. We should also recognise the importance of supporting those who return with injuries—some, of course, physical, and some mental—and of ensuring that we recognise both physical and mental injuries. We should never forget those who have laid down their lives for our freedom and security.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Oral Answers to Questions
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Oliver Dowden)
My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a strong case for his region. The Places for Growth programme demonstrates our commitment to rebalancing the economy by moving Government jobs away from London and the south-east, and the One Public Estate programme is supporting this collaboration. I am pleased to say specifically that the Devon and Torbay partnership expects to deliver 288 jobs and land for 201 homes by 2020.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Mr Lidington
There was a people’s vote in 2016 that, at the time, both the hon. Lady’s party and mine said would be the decisive moment. It is perfectly right that the civil contingencies secretariat in the Cabinet Office takes an active part in contingency planning for all eventualities.
Oral Answers to Questions
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stuart Andrew)
Universal credit is already operating in 15 jobcentres across Wales, with a further nine scheduled for roll-out this month. The number of people receiving universal credit in Wales is now over 40,000, and 36% of them are in employment. Wales’s jobcentres are in the latter part of the roll-out schedule and will be fully in place by December this year.
Anna McMorrin
My constituent suffers from Huntington’s and early onset dementia. As a result of a 10-week delay to receive universal credit, her rent arrears went up £1,000. A couple of weeks ago, she attempted suicide. Thankfully, I managed to help her on this, but there may be other cases in Wales just like it. Will the Secretary of State work with his colleagues and revise this damaging policy?
Stuart Andrew
I obviously cannot comment on the individual case, but I am sorry that the hon. Lady’s constituent was in that position. We have tried to do everything we can to ensure that the roll-out has been as smooth and as slow as possible, and where we have had issues such as those that she raised, we have made changes. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor made the announcement in the Budget about the changes—we want to deal with the housing issues that she raises.
The Prime Minister
I am happy to join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Gena Turgel and to the work she did over so many years. She was one of the first survivors to go into schools to share her story. I have seen, as I am sure other hon. and right hon. Members have, the impact on young people of a survivor of the holocaust going into schools to explain what happened. It is moving, and she showed considerable determination and strength. Her example is truly humbling.
It is right that Gena Turgel is going to live on in the national holocaust memorial and in the accompanying education centre, which will house her testimony for generations to come. We must never forget what Gena taught us. We must fight hatred and prejudice in all its forms.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
When I go walking in Wales I tend to walk up and down hills, rather than on the beaches, but I know that Wales has some fantastic beaches. The hon. Lady raises the important issue of marine plastic. The UK public, as well as Members across the House, have shown great energy in picking up this cause and in wanting to fight against plastic waste.
Indeed, the UK is going to be leading, jointly with Vanuatu, the newly formed Commonwealth Clean Oceans Alliance, and we are committing £61 million to fund global research and to improve waste management in developing countries to tackle plastic pollution. Again, this is another issue we took forward at the G7 summit and we got commitments on dealing with plastic waste.
I say to the hon. Lady that, with the greatest of respect, I am sorry but I think my diary has already been slightly changed as a result of what has been happening in the Chamber today. I regret that I will not be able to sit and listen to her speak to her Bill.
Leaving the EU: Customs
Anna McMorrin Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Lidington
No, I am not giving way at the moment.
If such details were made public, Ministers would feel inhibited from being frank and candid with one another. As a result, the quality of the debate that underlies collective decision making would decline significantly. That is not in the interests of any Government of any political party, and it is not in the interests of our constitutional democracy. Such discussions also need to be underpinned by full and frank advice on policy options and their implications. No Government of the past have tried to operate in an environment where papers can be finalised and distributed to members of a Cabinet Committee one week and then made public the next. It is simply not possible to do so and not responsible to pursue that as an objective.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales, I invite the House to consider the situation were we to accept the Opposition motion and adopt the practices that the motion embodies. If the motion were carried and the situation that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central advocated became the standard practice governing relations between the Executive and Parliament, we would soon see a deterioration in the quality of policy making within Government, and not greater but significantly less transparency. Indeed, that point was made by Mr Jack Straw, a former Labour Home Secretary, Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Leader of the House and Foreign Secretary, when he said about regimes that did not have the kind of exceptions to disclosure that are in the Freedom of Information Act:
“The paradox of their situation is that, far from that leading to an increase in the accountability of Ministers and decision makers, it has reduced accountability because it has cut the audit trail. Officials and Ministers have gone in for Post-it notes and oral decisions which should have been properly recorded, or for devices for ordaining all sorts of documents which have nothing to do with the Cabinet or Cabinet Committees as Cabinet documents.”—[Official Report, 24 May 1999; Vol. 332, c. 31.]
It was precisely those practices of avoiding the formality of Cabinet and Cabinet Committee agendas, papers and minutes that were severely criticised by both the Butler commission in 2004 and the Chilcot inquiry in 2016. I regret the fact that the Opposition’s motion appears to be moving towards backing a situation in which all those flaws identified by Chilcot and Butler would be reproduced in the future, and I hope that we do not go in that direction.
The justification that we have heard for the motion is that there are special circumstances, but I simply reject the idea that the Government have been insufficiently transparent on the issues in question. On the conduct of the negotiations, the Prime Minister has made important speeches at every stage to set out our approach. We published two White Papers and a series of papers last summer and autumn to set out further details. In December, the Government and the European Commission published a joint report to set out the progress made in the negotiations. The text of the draft withdrawal agreement is in the public domain. We announced only yesterday that we shall publish a new White Paper next month on our proposed future relationship with the European Union. There are six Brexit-related Bills before Parliament, all of which, as usual, are accompanied by impact assessments.
Select Committees have been able to scrutinise our plans for exit, as the more than 100 Select Committee inquiries into such matters testify, and the Government have engaged with all those inquiries. We have provided written evidence, and Ministers and officials have appeared for questioning. The Prime Minister has come to this House on numerous occasions to give statements on EU summits. Department for Exiting the European Union Ministers alone have given evidence to Committees on 35 occasions and have made no fewer than 85 written statements during the lifetime of their Department. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union has given 10 oral statements to the full House of Commons during the time he has held office.
It would not be in the national interest to release information that will form part of our negotiating position. In order to ensure good governance, it is in the interest of all of us, including those who might have the ambition of serving at some very distant date in a Labour Government, to preserve the system of Cabinet government that allows for good and well thought through decisions.
For those reasons, I have no hesitation in asking my right hon. and hon. Friends to oppose the motion before the House today.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)
This has been a wide-ranging debate. We have covered customs models and second referendums. We have covered the single market. There has even been a spirited attempt by my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) to challenge the very orderliness of the motion, and the Chair. He is a braver man than I am. We have heard the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) extol the virtues and the leadership qualities of Mickey Mouse, with which I am sure he is most familiar on his side of the House. However, I wish to bring Members back to the important matter of the motion, which calls for
“all papers, presentations and economic analyses”
presented to
“the European Union Exit and Trade (Strategy and Negotiations) Cabinet sub-committee, and its sub-committees”
to be laid before the House.
As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said in his opening speech, any papers or analyses created for the Cabinet are rightly confidential. That is a well-established principle. Ministers must be able to discuss policy issues at this level frankly and to debate the key matters of the day within a safe space. There is a real risk that if details of Cabinet Committee discussions were made publicly available, Ministers would feel restricted from being open and frank with one another. The quality of decision making would be diminished, the advice of officials would be exposed in the most unreasonable manner, the tendency to make oral decisions would be amplified and there might even be communication via post-it notes, as my right hon. Friend suggested.
I say this not in a partisan manner. It is an important principle that applies to any Government of any political composition. The concept is, of course, not new. My right hon. Friend quoted the former Home Secretary Jack Straw, whose own White Paper on freedom of information concluded:
“Now more than ever, government needs space and time in which to assess arguments and conduct its own debates with a degree of privacy.”
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister for giving way so graciously, unlike his counterpart earlier.
As was mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Jo Platt), there have been reports today that the Government are considering shelving the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and incorporating elements of it in a withdrawal and implementation Bill. What does the Minister say to that? Can he confirm that those reports are inaccurate, rather than risking possible defeats on the customs union?
Mel Stride
I assure the hon. Lady that the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which has gone through the House of Lords, will, in due course, return to this House for further consideration in the normal manner.
The concept of which I have spoken has been accepted by successive Governments and Oppositions. It was explicitly recognised in the terms of the last motion for an Humble Address tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), which called for documents to be made available on a confidential basis—a principle from which he appears now to have departed. By contrast, this Government have been consistent in respecting their obligations to Parliament.
Whether through debates on primary legislation in this place, Select Committee inquiries, statements to the House, written statements or parliamentary questions, Parliament has been kept updated and informed, and it will continue to be given ample opportunity to scrutinise the negotiations as they progress. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union has made 10 oral statements in the House, Ministers from the Department for Exiting the European Union have made 84 written ministerial statements to both Houses and the Department has answered more than 1,700 parliamentary questions from Members and peers. Ministers from the Department have also appeared before a wide range of Select Committees in both Houses on 34 occasions. The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), has given evidence before Westminster Committees on 10 occasions and to devolved Committees on six occasions, and looks forward to attending the Exiting the European Union Committee once again next week.