Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about steel. Of course, the Government have done a considerable amount over the last few years to support the steel industry here in the United Kingdom, and I was very pleased earlier in the year to visit and meet steelworkers to talk about the prospects for steel in the UK. We will, of course, look carefully to ensure that the arrangements in place are in the national interest, and we have supported steel in the past.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

May I take my right hon. Friend back to the question from the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire)? Quite apart from commending the quality of the BBC programme she mentioned, may I draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to the fact that global policy on drugs prohibition is beginning to change, in the face of the evidential failure of the policy since the 1961 UN single convention on narcotic drugs? Will she look at the evidence that will emerge from the United States and Canada on the legalisation and regulation of cannabis markets there, as well as decriminalisation in Portugal and elsewhere—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have heard the gravamen of the hon. Gentleman’s inquiry. We are a little clearer now and are immensely grateful.

[Crispin Blunt]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That was quite enough. We are very grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

European Council

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My message to them is that we value the contribution they have made here in the United Kingdom and we want them to stay. That is what we are working for, and we have made significant progress in relation to citizens’ rights. I made a number of commitments in a letter I wrote last week to EU citizens living here in the United Kingdom, and I stand by those commitments. We want them to stay.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, by some happy accident, we have actually ended up in a rather more constructive space for a successful deal, because we are now going to have two months of private diplomacy on the future deep and comprehensive free trade agreement with our EU partners? Even so, it is necessary for us to prepare for no deal—these talks may fail—and even Gina Miller agrees with me that we should begin to surface the Government’s own preparations for their contingency plans. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the preparations should be surfaced so that not only the Government but businesses and people can begin to make the necessary contingency plans?

[The Prime Minister]

We are working to get the deal that we believe will be in the interests of the UK and the European Union for the future. That is where our focus is. Of course, as I have said, we are working across Government to make contingency arrangements for every eventuality. However, as I have also said, we are in negotiations, and we are not going to give a running commentary on every detail of them. We continue to work for what I believe is in our best interests, which is to get a good deal for us and for the European Union.

UK Plans for Leaving the EU

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The point that I made in relation to the Supreme Court is that the court proceeded on the basis that article 50 would not be revoked; and I gave the answer to another of the hon. Lady’s hon. Friends about what the Government do or do not say about legal advice.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

May I congratulate the Prime Minister on the tone she has set in the run-up to the decision of the October Council? I also thank her for the reply she has just given to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), making it clear that the Government have followed the recommendations of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs in its March report about the need to prepare for no deal. Will she confirm that individuals and businesses will also need to be in a position to make their contingency plans? Does she accept that, if the negotiations on the final settlement are postponed for at least two months in October, the Government will have to surface their no-deal preparations, so that businesses and individuals can share in making the necessary preparations? This will also rely on a vote of the European Parliament, and we saw what happened last week, with the Labour MEPs supporting a position that was absolutely against the interests of the United Kingdom.

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, obviously, I still expect that we will be able to negotiate a good deal, and that is what we are working for. It is important that we take businesses along with us and that we discuss and hear from businesses their reaction to the various issues being raised in the negotiations. Indeed, I and a number of other Cabinet Ministers were present at the business advisory council that was held in No. 10 Downing Street today. However, my hon. Friend’s question seemed to be based on the premise that, if we did not get a formal notification of sufficient progress in October, that would mean that we would not be likely to get a deal. I do not believe that that is the case. I believe, as has been indicated by other hon. Friends, that we are seeing more of a movement on the European Union side to recognise the importance of discussing the trade negotiations and to consider the necessity of an implementation period.

G20

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady may know that there is a limit to what we can put in place while we are still a member of the European Union, but that does not mean that we cannot discuss what a future trade agreement might be or how we can improve trade relations now. We can do just that in certain areas that are not covered by EU competences, and those are the discussions that we are having.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Behind some of the rhetoric coming from the other side of the House, there actually seems to be a consensus that a UK-US free trade deal would be a good and necessary thing when we leave the European Union. Does the Prime Minister welcome, like me, the clear support of the American Administration, as expressed at the G20 meeting? The other important decision makers in this are those in the American Congress. Following her successful visit to Philadelphia with the Republican caucus, will she allow the excellent congressional relations office in our Washington embassy to help Members of Parliament make the case for a trade deal to our congressional colleagues?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the role that Congress will play, and he raises an interesting idea. I did have discussions with members of Congress when I was in Philadelphia, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Trade has also been having discussions with members of Congress recently. We will consider my hon. Friend’s proposal, but he is right that we will be working with Congress and the American Administration on this.

Northern Ireland

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The problem with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis is his starting point that our party lost the election. No, we did not; his party lost the election—it lost its third election in a row. We all know that Labour won more seats than most of its own Members thought it would—there are people sitting on the Labour Benches who assumed that they would be out of a job now. In the spirit of non-partisanship, I welcome them back to this House but, nevertheless, the idea that the Labour party won the election is a fantasy that I think is dying out even on the wilder shores of Momentum.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Given that the DUP’s well known hard-nosed negotiators have generally done deals for about £1 billion when they need arrangements from the United Kingdom Government, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the fabulous value for money that he has obtained in a confidence and supply arrangement that will last five years and deliver Brexit? That compares rather well with the arrangement in 2008, when for about the same amount of money the then Government got one vote on 42-day detention—we were joined in the Lobby by the current Leader of the Opposition, shadow Chancellor, shadow Foreign Secretary and shadow Home Secretary—only for it to be reversed in the House of Lords three months later. This deal therefore looks like spectacularly good value for money for the United Kingdom.

[Damian Green]

I think that I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I am happy to agree with him that this is indeed a very good deal, not just for Northern Ireland but for the whole United Kingdom.

European Council

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The rights that we have set out and the specified date are about the point at which people are able to qualify for settled status here in the United Kingdom. Of course, as we are members of the European Union, the arrangements that have always existed for us and for those here will continue, but for those who are getting settled status and wish to retain it for the future, the cut-off date is pertinent, and that will be a matter for negotiation.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister chose, exceptionally, to raise this extremely important issue in the Council, but will she confirm that in future all the threads of the negotiations will pass through the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, therefore bringing the negotiation together, in the same way in which the European Council is standing behind Mr Barnier?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union is looking at all those threads, which he is going to pull together. We are very clear that at different stages as we go through the negotiations—in the working groups and so forth—a whole variety of people will be involved, but as we saw last Monday, when my right hon. Friend went to the start of the negotiations opposite Michel Barnier, the status and position that he holds is very clear.

Debate on the Address

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who always speaks a good deal of sense on these occasions. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I should like to thank my constituents for so generously returning me to represent them in this place for a fifth time.

This is clearly going to be an unusual Parliament, as the Gracious Speech demonstrates. In a hung Parliament, political power tends to pass from the Cabinet Room to the Floor of this House, and I hope that there are issues on which we can work together across the House. I hope that we can lift our eyes from the obvious party political domestic preoccupations. We did so over Syria in the last Parliament, when I had the great good fortune to work closely with Jo Cox. We were co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on Syria. Syria remains the defining catastrophe of our age, with 11 million Syrians—half the population—displaced from their homes. I am glad that the Gracious Speech supports an intensification of Britain’s efforts in the middle east. There is international consensus on the need to defeat and destroy ISIL, and this should be prosecuted with much greater vigour. However, defeating ISIL militarily is just a small part of our task. The much greater part is to defeat a nihilist death cult that has attracted young people to its cause.

We need to address Britain’s role in the world after Brexit. Britain stands for certain values—not so much British values as international values. We are the fourth largest military power, and one of the very few countries that can undertake expeditionary military activity. We have one of only three diplomatic services that span the world, and it is deeply respected, not least at the United Nations. Our international development work is saving millions of lives and transforms the way in which millions of the world’s poorest live. This British leadership is respected throughout the world, if not in certain quarters of the British press. I urge Ministers to stand up for the brilliant work being done by Britain, and not to cower under the table in the face of the onslaught of the Daily Mail. Of course Britain does not give bilateral money to North Korea, but as part of the United Nations we do try to stop North Korean children starving to death.

There is some concern in the development community about the apparent double-hatting of Foreign Office Ministers to cover the Department for International Development. If I may use a swashbuckling analogy that might appeal to the Foreign Secretary, there is some fear that his eye has alighted on a plump galleon loaded with bullion and that he wishes to board that galleon and plunder her cargo. The rules governing the spending of British aid are clearly laid down by the OECD development assistance committee. I think that those rules can be improved, but I do not believe that this House would agree to their being unilaterally abandoned by the United Kingdom.

Similarly, the Government have a duty to address the terrorist acts that horrified us all during the election. The whole House will also condemn the dreadful anti-Muslim hate crime that surged after the appalling atrocities in Manchester and London. Getting the balance right between collective security and individual liberty will not be easy, but many of us in the House are wary of tampering with ancient liberties and of giving additional power to the state unless it is absolutely necessary. If the terrorists alter our way of life, they win.

I am glad that the ill-advised idea of leaving the ECHR has been dropped. It would never have got through the House anyway. It might be possible to improve the Human Rights Act 1998, but we should not seek to repeal it just because it was drafted by Tony Blair. That brings me to the central issue in British politics today: our departure from the EU. I sometimes think that, when it comes to Europe, my party is the victim of a biblical curse. I hear the arguments eloquently put, by friends and colleagues I greatly respect, in favour of both a soft and a hard Brexit, but what virtually all my constituents want is the best possible deal. They care deeply not only about their living standards and quality of life but about those of their children and grandchildren. They want the best possible deal for Britain.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Would my right hon. Friend like to reflect on the utility of the terms “soft Brexit” and “hard Brexit”? I do not consider them to be of very much use in this discussion. They serve to confuse rather than to enlighten.