Future Relationship Between the UK and the EU

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

Let me complete my point.

The second half of the intervention by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) implied that anybody who voted leave would not countenance a common rulebook on goods; well, that is in the White Paper, because we have all had to work through the practical consequences of the referendum. It is no good to take such an extreme interpretation of Brexit that we wreck the manufacturing sector, abandon the service sector and abandon the solemn commitment to Northern Ireland. We have all been grappling with those issues for two years and we have to stop this suggestion that to put forward any practical arrangement for moving forward and safeguarding our country is somehow to frustrate or betray the referendum.

I see that the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), has walked in. Earlier, there was a suggestion that in my discussions in Brussels or elsewhere in the European Union I had somehow been trying to undermine what he has done. He and I know that that has never been the case, so I invite him to intervene, if he would.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has had many discussions with me, on Privy Council terms, over the past two years, and I have to say to the House that he has always been supportive of the country’s interests in those discussions and, indeed—at least in my understanding —in his conversations in the European Union.

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful for that intervention; I hope it deals with the suggestion made earlier.

Let me go back to the facilitated customs arrangement. It is a complicated, two-tier arrangement that involves different tariffs being charged at the border and, if it is not known what tariff should be taken, it involves the tariff being reimbursed later if it was wrong.