Prime Minister’s Statement

Debate between Boris Johnson and Chris Leslie

Saturday 19th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I certainly can.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (IGC)]

Hon. Members are going to be promised—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are obviously going to be promised everything today by the Prime Minister; they should take it with a pinch of salt. I have to tell the Prime Minister that it speaks volumes that he and the Chancellor have refused to publish a fresh economic impact assessment of his proposal today. But I think the Chancellor has said, “Well, one was produced last year”—November 2018—by his predecessor, where, on the basis of an average free trade agreement, we would see the British economy lag by 5% of GDP. Can he at least give us the courtesy, at the Dispatch Box now, of saying that that model—that average free trade agreement: down 5%—is the expectation we could have of his plan?

[The Prime Minister]

No, it certainly is not.

Brexit Negotiations

Debate between Boris Johnson and Chris Leslie

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is with no little sense of relief that I listened to my hon. Friend, though he and I have talked a lot in the past few days and I knew that that was broadly his view. This is an opportunity to get this done and do it in a way that not only, I believe, satisfies all the requirements we have set out, above all the peace process in Northern Ireland, but allows the whole of the UK to take back control of our tariffs and our customs, and to do free trade deals around the world, in exactly the way that he has described and campaigned for for so many years.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (IGC)]

The Prime Minister is clearly trying his best to placate Members on his own side, but please will he stop the pretence that this is a proposal for anything other than a hard border on the island of Ireland? [Interruption.] Well, it has tariffs, checks and inspections, a customs frontier—these are not compatible with the Good Friday agreement. I really do not know who he thinks he is kidding. This is too important—too much is at stake for him to just brush aside the consequences purely for the party political interests of the Conservative party.

[The Prime Minister]

As a former shadow Treasury Minister, the hon. Gentleman should know that there already is a fiscal border in Northern Ireland. Far from adding to checks, as he will understand, and as the House understands, we are making a considerable move forward by saying that we will allow, by consent, regulatory alignment for sanitary and phytosanitary goods, agrifoods and industrial and manufacturing. That is a pragmatic way forward, and we are doing it by democratic consent. It is a method of solving the issue that should commend itself to moderate opinion in all parts of the House.

Prime Minister's Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Chris Leslie

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The real contrast is between the Conservative party, the democratic party, which wants to honour the will of the people, and the Labour party, which is trying to obstruct Brexit and will not have a general election.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (IGC)]

This is not a party political matter. It undermines the Prime Minister’s attempts to call out extremism or ideology when he himself mines that seam of extremism and populism by using the language of surrender and betrayal when discussing an Act of Parliament signed by the Queen and passed by Members of Parliament who were elected in 2017—after the referendum—and who in all sincerity are doing it because they care about their constituents, their jobs and their livelihoods. Hon. Members of all parties want the rule of law and care about our parliamentary democracy and do not want to have their patriotism impugned in that way.

[The Prime Minister]

With your leave, Mr Speaker, I will keep my answers pretty staccato from now on, because I have answered these points quite a lot. If people care about their constituents—it is quite proper, of course, that they should in every possible way—they should honour the will of their constituents and respect our democratic proceedings.

Priorities for Government

Debate between Boris Johnson and Chris Leslie

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend. The answer is as soon as possible—certainly within the next three years.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (IGC)]

The Prime Minister surely does not agree with the Home Secretary about the return of the death penalty, does he?

[The Prime Minister]

I have the fullest admiration for the Home Secretary’s policies on law. I do not support the death penalty, but what the people of this country want to see is proper sentencing for serious violent and sexual offenders—[Interruption.] I am glad to see some nodding from those on the Labour Benches. There are Members opposite who know where their constituents truly are on some of these issues, and they are right, unlike the current leadership of the Labour party. That is what we will do, but of course, we will also be pursuing all the preventive measures necessary to reduce our prison population and to pursue a humane and liberal approach at the same time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Chris Leslie

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s spokesman was reported as saying that,

“the transition rules could involve the European Court of Justice for a limited time…that’s all a matter for negotiation.”

That is the quote that was reported. So can the Foreign Secretary confirm this change in Government policy, and set out the rationale behind it?

[Boris Johnson]

We are in a negotiation whose objective is to come out from under the penumbra of the European Court of Justice, and outside the EU legal order, and that is what we will achieve.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Chris Leslie

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

If Labour Members will allow me, I shall say a couple more sentences.

The first of the conditions that are essential for the prosperity of global Britain is security. Unlike the Labour party, whose idea of a nuclear deterrent is to send our submarines to sea without a nuclear missile aboard so that the whole nation is literally firing blanks, this Government see the vital importance of maintaining our defences. This Budget therefore provides once again for the United Kingdom to set an example to our European partners by spending 2% of our GDP on our armed forces, thereby giving vital credibility to NATO, which of course serves as the guarantor of the security of all our major trading partners on either side of the Atlantic.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the point about our trading relationships, at the weekend, the right hon. Gentleman said that it would be perfectly okay for the UK to leave the European Union with no deal and to fall back on World Trade Organisation rules. Lord Heseltine said, “Well, that’s rubbish, isn’t it?” Is it rubbish?

[Boris Johnson]

I repeat what I said at the weekend, and I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman was paying attention. I do not believe, by the way, that it will come to that, because we will have no difficulty over the next couple of years in doing a deal that is very much in the interests of both sides. I shall come on to that later.

To get back to the defence of the planet, let me remind Members that we are not only committed to transatlantic defences, as we will also spend £3 billion east of Suez in the Gulf region over the next 10 years. In fact we are reopening and restoring our role east of Suez, arguably for the first time since 1967. We are reopening a naval base in Bahrain, which makes perfect economic sense as well. If Labour Members cared about these things, they would understand that there is an absolute connection between our security and our economic prosperity, because the region of the Gulf—the Opposition probably do not know this—is our largest and fastest-growing export market apart from the EU and the US.

It does not end there either, because we are also committed to the security of the wider world, including Asia. Last year, as the House will know, the Royal Air Force sent Typhoon fighters to Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, proving that Britain remains one of the handful of countries able to deploy air power 7,000 miles from its shores. Soon the Royal Navy will have two giant aircraft carriers, each of them longer than the Palace of Westminster—the biggest warships this country has ever possessed, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.

US Immigration Policy

Debate between Boris Johnson and Chris Leslie

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I am aware that there are other countries, particularly in the middle east, that ban the citizens of at least one country from entering their own.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Why did the Foreign Secretary make no reference at all in his statement to the Americans’ suspension of their refugee programme? Should not our Prime Minister have echoed the words of the Canadian Prime Minister by saying that we welcome those who are fleeing persecution, terror and war, regardless of their faith?

[Boris Johnson]

Our policy on receiving refugees has not changed, and we have a good record. The United States, to the best of my knowledge, has taken about 12,000 Syrian refugees alone. As I said earlier, I do not think that anybody could reasonably fault the United States of America as a great recipient of migrants from around the world. If we look at the numbers—45 million people in the US were not born in that country—we see that it has a very distinguished record.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Chris Leslie

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

May I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend on his well-deserved knighthood in the new year’s honours list? He speaks very good sense. I think that I can agree with him completely without in any way being convicted of giving a running commentary on our negotiations, so I thank him very much.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Never mind a running commentary, has the Foreign Secretary given any commentary at all to his own officials, such as Sir Ivan Rogers, who left the service saying that he had not been given any sense of the Government’s negotiating objectives? Will the Secretary of State perhaps speak to Sir Tim Barrow and give him a clue about what the Government intend to do?

[Boris Johnson]

If the hon. Gentleman consults the speeches of the Prime Minister more closely, he will discover a wealth of information about our negotiating position, but since he has not bothered to do that, I do not propose to enlighten him now, except to say that Sir Ivan Rogers did an excellent job and always gave me very good advice. I think his reasons for stepping down early were persuasive. Sir Tim Barrow, as anybody who has worked with him will know—I think that people on both sides of the House will have done so—is an outstanding public servant with long-standing experience of UK representation in Brussels, and he will do a superb job in the forthcoming talks.