Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Alison McGovern and Robin Walker(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Walker
My hon. Friend is right, and I know that her constituency of Ynys Môn plays a vital part in the links between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The protocol was designed to address a particular set of problems in a way that upholds the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. It is a practical solution to avoid a hard border with Ireland, while ensuring that the UK, including Northern Ireland, leaves the EU as a whole. The protocol is also clear that the UK must function as a single customs territory in practice, and that means fulfilling our commitment to delivering unfettered access for Northern Ireland businesses to the rest of the Great Britain market as well.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Government’s EU Exit Analysis
Debate between Alison McGovern and Robin Walker(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Walker
I will give way to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) in a little while. I just want to finish my point about the nature of the analysis and the caveats that are contained in the document, as Members will see when they view it. Economies of all sorts face an uncertain future in the face of new technologies and the next phase of globalisation, which presents both challenges and opportunities.
Mr Walker
Not right now.
Of course, there is a specific role for this sort of modelling, but it must be deployed carefully and appropriately alongside a full range of policy work in our EU exit plans. On its own, no model or analysis will be sufficient to provide us with the full picture of the various benefits and costs of different versions of Britain’s future relationship with the EU. Such models cannot predict the future. It is the Government’s job to use these sorts of models appropriately and to develop them as best they can. Despite this—and, in many cases, because of it—the analysis remains extremely sensitive.
Mr Walker
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, as always, for her kind praise, but I think I have already answered the challenge she sets as to the reasons why some of the information in the report should be kept confidential. That is something on which the two Front-Bench teams clearly agree, because it is in the Opposition motion. I also just want to emphasise that the misrepresentation in some of the press reporting of this leak makes this an exceptional request that the Government agree to on an exceptional basis. They do not accept a precedent for future action.
Finally, it is also for those reasons that I believe that forcing the release of partial and preliminary analysis risks undermining the functioning of Government at a vital moment.