EU Exit Negotiations Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Exiting the European Union
Baroness Hoey
Main Page: Baroness Hoey (Non-affiliated - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Hoey's debates with the Department for Exiting the European Union
(7 years ago)
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Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s firm rebuttal of the ridiculous idea that Northern Ireland would be taken out of the rest of the United Kingdom and made to stay in a customs union. Does he also recognise that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee recently met the head of customs in Switzerland, which is not in the EU, and the one thing that he said over and again was that there was nothing that could stop this from working if there was full co-operation on all sides? Is that not what this is really all about—if the Republic of Ireland do not want to have a hard border, that can happen?
Mr Davis
The hon. Lady is exactly right. That is true across the board. We were told that a free trade agreement was impossible to achieve, but the former EU Trade Commissioner, Karel De Gucht, said that, no, it was not impossible if the political will was there. The same is true in this case. If the political will is there, this can be done. I am quite sure that the political will is there both north and south of the border.