New Partnership with the EU

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The referendum last year set in motion a circumstance where the UK is going to leave the European Union, and the vote will not change that. We want to have a vote so that the House can be behind and support the policy that we are quite sure it will approve of when we get there.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s speech today in the sense that it gives certainty to the millions of Labour supporters who voted to leave and now know that, “Taking back control”, is not just a slogan but actually means something. Will the Secretary of State assure us that in this interim period before we leave the EU, we will continue to work to negotiate trade deals with other countries—some of which might be nearly finished—so that we are ready to go when we actually leave?

[Mr Davis]

Of course we will do that; the hon. Lady is entirely right. We are constrained by a thing called the duty of sincere co-operation, which requires us not to do things that jeopardise actions by the European Union, so if the European Union currently has a trade deal in negotiation, we have to be very careful about how we impact on that. Of course we cannot actually sign anything until the day we leave, but I have a very strong suspicion that there will be a lot of things ready to sign on the very next day.