New Partnership with the EU

Debate between David Davis and Dan Poulter

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady is wrong about the more lucrative markets. Once we are outside the European Union, we will be the largest market for the European Union, and it does not want to lose what it already has, which is the massive trade deficit—in their direction, as it were—that is very important for many millions of jobs on the continent.

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the statement by my right hon. Friend and the speech by the Prime Minister earlier. I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware of the importance of the British university sector for research, jobs and growth. That sector is particularly challenged by the process of exiting the European Union in relation to the workforce and many of the grants that it gets from the European Union. Will my right hon. Friend commit to prioritising working with the university sector to make sure it has a viable and strong future in a post-Brexit world?

[Mr Davis]

We are already doing that. As I mentioned to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), I was in Cambridge just before Christmas with that very much in mind. Let me reiterate the point—I know I have previously made it from the Dispatch Box—that my job is, as it were, to bring back control of immigration policy to the UK, but hon. Members should not assume that we will do anything other than interpret that immigration policy in the UK’s national interests. We are a science superpower, and that science superpower status depends on our access to talent—our ability to get people to come and work in our universities, win Nobel prizes and do what they do very well here—and that is very much square and centre in what we are attempting to achieve.