Leaving the EU: Mobile Roaming Charges

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that. He and I both stood for election on a manifesto that committed us to reach 95% of the UK landmass with a mobile phone signal. I am determined to ensure that we meet that target, and to do so we will rule nothing out that may achieve our objective.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have quite a lot of time for the Secretary of State, but if our Front-Bench team had not asked this urgent question, we would not know what was going on. He may not know this, but I am very popular with my Whips; I spend a lot of time in Committee Rooms upstairs dealing with statutory instruments relating to the withdrawal from the EU. These are little rooms, where measures are quickly pushed through; Ministers gabble through as fast as they can and the scrutiny is deplorable. Let me mention two issues we dealt with recently. The first was insurance for uninsured drivers, where the measure went through the other day and people will not be insured when they go to Europe. The second was air safety, and the Minister gabbled through without knowing the details. This is about parliamentary sovereignty. Today, the Secretary of State says the backdrop is that we all have a vote, so why is the rumour running round Westminster today that the Prime Minister has reneged on the vote next week?

[Jeremy Wright]

First, let me say that the respect is entirely mutual, not least because the hon. Gentleman has a well-deserved reputation as a scrutineer of legislation in this House; as he says, he does it a lot. The point here is that there has been no attempt to hide this; we are talking about a statutory instrument presented to the House so that it can consider it in the usual way. When it gets to the point of considering the statutory instrument, the House will of course have to decide how long it wants to take over it, but the objective is not to hide it; the objective is to make use of the powers in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which Parliament decided we should have, to correct deficiencies that arise as a consequence of our EU departure. We are doing it here to make provision for what would happen in a no-deal exit and to make sure that consumer protections we can roll over, we do roll over. I hope that will command the support of the House.