EU Exit Negotiations

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend is introducing a whole load of hypotheticals. As I said earlier, the transition or implementation period might be an homogenous extension of what we have now, or it might be a piece-by-piece extension. We do not know at the moment; we have not yet even got into that negotiation. But the simple fact is that there are a number of things limiting how long that period can go on for. One of them is, frankly, that the Government have to deliver on departure from the European Union promptly—that is really what the British people expect. But there are also other issues, such as negotiability; if this period ran for too long, some of the Parliaments in Europe might think, “Actually, that’s a new treaty, and therefore we need to have a mixed-agreement procedure.” So there is a variety of things that will limit the extent it will go on for, and I am pretty clear it will be over before the next election.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Now that the Brexit negotiations are going so well that the Secretary of State has taken to calling his counterpart silly, will he publish the impact assessments his Department has overseen in relation to 50 sectors of the economy, or is he afraid that if he were to publish them, that might just make him look a bit silly, particularly if the leak is true from the Department of Health, which foresees a potential shortfall of 40,000 nurses by 2026?

[Mr Davis]

Let us start with a correction. I am sure the hon. Lady is not intending to mislead the House, but on television yesterday I corrected Mr Andrew Marr twice when he tried to say I had called Michel Barnier silly. I hope she will understand that that is not true. It does not help the negotiation to throw those bits of fiction into play.

The second thing I would say is that we are being as open as it is possible to be in terms of the information on this negotiation, subject to one thing, which is that we do not undermine the negotiation or give ammunition to the other side that is useful to them in the negotiation. That is the principle we will continue with.