Oral Answers to Questions

Callum McCaig Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I am not going to say definitely no to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant); on the contrary. He knows my prejudices—I think that is probably the right word—but it is for Parliament to decide what Parliament wants to do. The essential responsibility for the negotiation is quite properly the Government’s, and the Opposition—indeed, everyone in the House—will hold us to account for that. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman is right that there is a role for Parliaments to talk to other Parliaments about the joint interests of their constituents, and in that respect he has my support.

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

7. What his priorities are during negotiations on the UK leaving the EU on access to the EU single market.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Robin Walker)]

As the Prime Minister said, an important part of the new strategic partnership that we seek with the European Union will be the pursuit of the greatest possible access to the single market on a fully reciprocal basis. Let there be no doubt that that will be a high priority in the negotiations. However, we believe that it is in the interests of both sides to secure it, and it is of course intended to benefit the people of Scotland. We want to get the right deal for the whole of the UK, including Scotland.

[Callum McCaig]

Exports to Norway from Aberdeen alone amounted to more than £750 million in 2015, and they are a vital part of anchoring the world-class supply chain in oil and gas. Will the Minister ensure that the oil and gas industry will be taken into account in this process, and that access will not be lost as a result of hard Tory Brexit?

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the importance of the industry to his constituency, and indeed to the entire United Kingdom. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has held an energy roundtable with industry leaders who, of course, included oil and gas industry representatives. I look forward to visiting parts of the industry in Scotland in the coming weeks.

New Partnership with the EU

Callum McCaig Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

We have security arrangements with other allies—America for a start—which do not run into that problem, so I would not think that that is an issue.

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

“No deal is better than a bad deal”: I am slightly perplexed by that. How could a negotiated deal possibly be worse than something that the Secretary of State refers to as a “cliff edge”? Is he really that bad at negotiation?

[Mr Davis]

Another hon. Member referred to a deal in which we had to take all sorts of penalties from all sorts of European nations. That would be a bad deal.

The Government's Plan for Brexit

Callum McCaig Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

One moment. There is a range of means of arriving at a deal and there is a range of outcomes, and it does not make sense to box ourselves in. I am a believer in free trade, and I want to see the freest trade possible with the European Union and also with the rest of the world. We will be a global and outward-looking nation and a leading advocate for free trade. We want to be able to embrace the opportunities of Brexit—I know that the shadow Chancellor agrees with that, although it apparently makes my opposite number “furious”—but we want to maintain the best relationship possible with the European Union.

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Davis]

Not at the moment. We have made our aims clear on immigration, on the ECJ, on workers’ rights and, in fact, on European Union legislation more broadly. We have clear aims on justice and home affairs, on security and, finally, on trade. It is important that the House understands what we are aiming for, but it is also important that we do not close off options before we absolutely have to. Just this weekend the leader of the Opposition suggested that he would seek to tie the hands of the Government regarding certain outcomes, such as a particular status in terms of the European market. To do so would seriously undermine the national interest, because it would undermine our ability to negotiate freely.

As I said at my first appearance at the Dispatch Box in this role, Parliament will be regularly updated and engaged. Keeping in mind those strategic aims and the fact that to reveal our position in detail or prejudge the negotiations cannot be in the national interest, we will set out our strategic plans ahead of the triggering of article 50. It is well documented that when we have decided to trigger article 50, the Government will notify the European Council. As I have said on several occasions, the House was always going to be informed in advance of the process. We are happy to support the spirit of today’s motion, with the vital caveat that nothing we say should jeopardise our negotiating position.

The Government amendment underlines the timetable for our departure, affirming the Prime Minister’s intention to notify by 31 March. Many Opposition Members pay lip service to respecting the result of the referendum, while at the same time trying to find new ways to thwart and delay. The shadow Cabinet cannot even decide whether it respects the will of the people. We are well aware of the desire of my opposite number to keep his “options open” with regard to a second referendum—the most destructive thing we could do for our negotiating position at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

I will make some progress. Today needs to mark the beginning of a new phase in the Brexit debate. It is time to move beyond the re-running of the referendum arguments and accept what people voted for. The 700,000 people in Greater Manchester who voted to leave, many of them lifelong Labour voters, voted for change on immigration. I am clear about that, and it has to be our starting point in this debate. The status quo—full free movement—was defeated at the ballot box, so it is not an option. What is to be debated is the precise nature of the changes that replace it, so that we get the balance right between responding properly to the public’s legitimate concerns and minimising the impact on our economy.

[Callum McCaig]

The right hon. Gentleman’s party is suggesting that leaving the customs union was not on the ballot paper, so how come free movement of people was on the ballot paper? It simply was not. The ballot paper asked whether we should leave the EU or not.

[Andy Burnham]

I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he speaks to the public and listens to what they had to say during the referendum campaign. If he is saying that they were not voting for change on free movement and immigration, I am afraid that he simply was not listening to them.

I have long argued for a change in the system of free movement to reflect people’s concerns. As it stands, it is not working for the more deprived parts of our country, particularly those where traditional industry has been replaced by lower-skill, lower-wage employment. My preference was to work within the EU to fix those problems, but the country, understandably, lost patience with that approach.

Free movement does not affect all places in the same way; it affects cities differently from former industrial areas. It has also made life more difficult in places where it is already hardest. These are areas that got no real hope from the Government when traditional industry left and that saw house prices collapse and whole streets bought up by absent private landlords. They are places that, alongside taking new arrivals from the EU, continue to take in the vast majority of this country’s asylum seekers and refugees. Largely they do so without any real strife or difficulty, so I do not want to hear anyone claim that people in places such as Leigh who voted to leave are in any way xenophobic or racist. They are welcoming, generous people, but they also want fairness, and they do not think that it is fair that the country’s least well-off communities should expect pressure on wages, housing, public services, primary schools and GP services without any help to manage it.